Borderology: Spatial Perspective, Theoretical and Practical 3031297199, 9783031297199

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Key Challenges in Geography EUROGEO Book Series

Jan Selmer Methi Basia Nikiforova  Editors

Borderology Spatial Perspective, Theoretical and Practical

Key Challenges in Geography EUROGEO Book Series

Series Editors Kostis C. Koutsopoulos, European Association of Geographers, National Technical University of Athens, Pikermi, Greece Rafael De Miguel González, University of Zaragoza & EUROGEO, Zaragoza, Spain Daniela Schmeinck, Institut Didaktik des Sachunterrichts, University of Cologne, Köln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

This book series addresses relevant topics in the wide field of geography, which connects the physical, human and technological sciences to enhance teaching, research, and decision making. Geography provides answers to how aspects of these sciences are interconnected and are forming spatial patterns and processes that have impact on global, regional and local issues and thus affect present and future generations. Moreover, by dealing with places, people and cultures, Geography explores international issues ranging from physical, urban and rural environments and their evolution, to climate, pollution, development and political economy. Key Challenges in Geography is an initiative of the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO), an organization dealing with examining geographical issues from a European perspective, representing European Geographers working in different professional activities and at all levels of education. EUROGEO’s goal and the core part of its statutory activities is to make European Geography a worldwide reference and standard. The book series serves as a platform for members of EUROGEO as well as affiliated National Geographical Associations in Europe, but is equally open to contributions from non-members. The book series addresses topics of contemporary relevance in the wide field of geography. It has a global scope and includes contributions from a wide range of theoretical and applied geographical disciplines. Key Challenges in Geography aims to: • present collections of chapters on topics that reflect the significance of Geography as a discipline; • provide disciplinary and interdisciplinary titles related to geographical, environmental, cultural, economic, political, urban and technological research with a European dimension, but not exclusive; • deliver thought-provoking contributions related to cross-disciplinary approaches and interconnected works that explore the complex interactions among geography, technology, politics, environment and human conditions; • publish volumes tackling urgent topics to geographers and policy makers alike; • publish comprehensive monographs, edited volumes and textbooks refereed by European and worldwide experts specialized in the subjects and themes of the books; • provide a forum for geographers worldwide to communicate on all aspects of research and applications of geography, with a European dimension, but not exclusive. All books/chapters will undergo a blind review process with a minimum of two reviewers. An author/editor questionnaire, instructions for authors and a book proposal form can be obtained by contacting the Publisher.

Jan Selmer Methi · Basia Nikiforova Editors

Borderology Spatial Perspective, Theoretical and Practical

Editors Jan Selmer Methi Center for Practical Knowledge Nord University Bodø, Norway

Basia Nikiforova Department of Contemporary Philosophy Lithuanian Culture Research Institute Vilnius, Lithuania

ISSN 2522-8420 ISSN 2522-8439 (electronic) Key Challenges in Geography ISBN 978-3-031-29719-9 ISBN 978-3-031-29720-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book was conceived and implemented during the aftermath of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The year 2020 was drawing to its end. Researchers from different countries, who had previously been brought together in various international projects related in one way or another to understanding the phenomenon of the “border”, decided to join forces again in order to investigate how the new global challenge—the coronavirus pandemic—was changing our reality. We completed this book and were ready to turn it to the publisher in early 2022 when another unpredictable crisis occurred that created a new global tension. On 24th of February, Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine. Even the symbol of this action created tension and challenged our cooperation. In Russia, and for those who agree with Russia, this is called a special military operation. In the rest of the world, this is called a war between Russia and Ukraine. But this is the same fight for the truth we saw in Yugoslavia (1991–1995), Iraq (2003), and Libya (2011). For some, these were military operations. For most of the world these were wars. Whatever symbol one might choose to use, the result is the same: death, destruction, and migration of refugees. So far almost six million people from Ukraine have migrated to their neighbor countries. It will take a long time to heal this wound. The editors are aware that many topics that were relevant a few months ago may seem insignificant now—at this particular moment in time—but that is not so; it is a kind of mental illusion because one problem does not cancel out another by its presence. Both pestilence and war are constants of human existence throughout history, and our task is to make sense of them within the parameters of the current historical context. Our book is a reflection on the pandemic and boundaries in the broadest sense, and its purpose is to make just such a “cast” of time, to grasp the meaning of what has happened, and to capture the trends of future development. You can’t leave problems in the past unexamined, you have to think everything through to the end. This is the third book by our independent research team: earlier, we have talked a great deal about Immanuel Kant and the perpetual peace, about Mikhail Bakhtin and his idea that dialogue is a necessary form of human existence and that one’s word is impossible without the word of the Other, we have analyzed various forms v

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of cross-border cooperation, and we have examined border practices along the Green Belt. We think that those intellectual findings in the present conditions become even more relevant and practically demanded than years ago when cooperation in the sphere of Borderology was just beginning. We hope that humanity, having left the age of tutelage and entering the age of adulthood, will still find the courage to use its own Reason, as the Königsberg thinker bequeathed to us. We want to thank all contributors for being patient in this difficult situation. Bodø, Norway Vilnius, Lithuania

Jan Selmer Methi Basia Nikiforova

Editors’ Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged our borderological concepts. The new phenomenon “lockdown” has created borders we could not have imagined as little as two years ago. Not only have States closed their borders, but restrictions have been established across different regions and even within families. “Illegally” passing these borders could risk strong reactions both from the virus itself and from the authorities. A new expression for border zones became the “social distance”. Rethinking the concept of distancing and closing borders as an important and global phenomenon requires a broad, interdisciplinary approach that draws from philosophical, sociological, legal, pedagogical, ecological, geographical, and other discussions and offers a new vocabulary and an innovative conceptual framework for human identity and sociality. The pandemic has not only challenged our understanding of borders and border zones but has also challenged our understanding of human rights and especially our understanding of what freedom is and where it doesn’t exist. What is visible to us today is likely only a fraction of the tragedy wrought by the pandemic. “Lockdown” and enforced social distancing have inhibited the world’s ability to tackle poverty, to provide health care and education, and have limited people’s freedom to migrate from disasters. The inclusion of critical approaches inspired by Foucault and Agamben, offers the possibility to develop a more pluralized view about the place of borders in modern political and social life. Since we cannot directly see the infectious agents like viruses, they become a part of our everyday life through various representations produced by many actors like the State, the healthcare system, the media, etc. The proposed volume can explore these representations, embedded in various orders of power relations as special tools of bio-politics. In connection with these issues, we also propose an analysis of the phenomenon of the “medicalization of society” (using the concept of Ivan Illich), which in the modern world is coupled with the fact of the existence of communication and observation networks and fits into the general model of total control and the (re)production of borders.

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At the same time as the virus forces us to “lock down” borders, people started to meet in “virtual reality” by using distance breaking media. These kinds of tools have existed for a long time but have not previously been used to anything like the extent they have been during this pandemic. Learning, conferences, seminars, staff meetings, family meetings, and new platforms of educations been going on as a “new normal”. The exchange of information has never been more extensive. This contradiction between “locking down” and “opening up” borders is what the chapters are discussions too. The issues of the book were discussed for a long time, and the final chord in this symphony of discussions was the IX International Kant/Bakhtin seminar entitled “Human rights, legal constraints, redefined borders in the pandemic era” which successfully took place on December 15, 2021, in online mode—quite following the spirit of the times. It was decided to keep the general structure of the thematic sections presented at this scientific forum, and the material of the book is organized according to the principle “from general theoretical topics to more particular (empirical) ones”. The first part, entitled “Borderology as a project for the future”, is devoted to the characterization of borderology as a special interdisciplinary field of knowledge and the clarification of some theoretical aspects of the concept of “border”. The book’s opening chapter “Borderology and Civilization” by Viggo Rossvær describes the ideological and institutional origins of the borderology and analyzes its philosophical background. It is shown that the Borderology Project is a useful model for cross-border cooperation between universities and institutes from different countries. It is demonstrated that first tentative attempts at Norwegian and Russian cooperation have developed into a Master Program in political philosophy and culture plus a Research Network where all partners play an independent and creative role. It might also be useful in a wider context of civilization. The establishment of various types of border zones might even have a place in future peace negotiations in Europe and elsewhere. Nadezhda Golik’s chapter ““Alphabet” of Borderology: The Question of What Is Enlightenment?” is following up with how borderology today is a multidisciplinary undertaking. It can be approached as political philosophy, as pedagogical philosophy, as human geography, and in many other disciplines. Kant left us a special philosophical Testament, of problematizing the present as a way of establishing oneself as an autonomous moral subject. The test is asking every one of us about the spelling out of our mental alphabet in the present situation. Only thus can enlightenment be realized in our own life and in our studies. It is an inspiration for our work in borderology. In the chapter “The Phenomenon of the Border and the Pandemic”, Andrei Sergeev shows that in the period of the pandemic the ideas about the border, which are associated with the Modernity, have changed and have been seriously corrected. At the same time, the practice of establishing various borders by man is based on the acceptance of the unconditional nature of the border and its open character. Andrey Vinogradov in his chapter “The Boundaries of Humanity” considers the border between the appropriation and alienation of the quality “human” in a living being. He analyzes the cultural, economic, psychological, and ethical reasons why

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people, especially migrants, are denied recognition of this quality”. Basia Nikiforova in her chapter “European Borders in Migration and Pandemic Times: Paradigmatic Changes” proposes a critical genealogy of the pandemic crisis based on growing uses of media, political, civil society, and academic discourses on borders and migration. Reasoning and research through the discourse of “crisis” as a starting-and-ending point have produced representations of mass migration and pandemic. Destroying barriers between the sciences and the humanities, mass migration, and pandemics increasingly have come to offer a new vocabulary and an innovative conceptual framework for sociality. This chapter is an attempt to describe the answers of philosophers and researchers of borders on such question: in what ways can border theory enhance both our understanding of and response to global pandemics and mass migration? The second part “Philosophical and Anthropological Dimensions of the Pandemic Crisis” is devoted to investigate the changes that the pandemic has made in our philosophical understanding of human relations and social ties, as well as in the fundamental epistemological approaches. The chapter “Turning to Face the Non-human: New Strategic Ways to Think About the Pandemic” by Aleksandr Sautkin and Elena Philippova contributes to the realization that the border between “human” and “nonhuman” (e.g., “viral”) can be understood differently—in the post-anthropocentric way, we can consider these entities on the same level, on a par with each other, without placing a humanity in a privileged position. Vasilii Voronov in the chapter “Existential and Cultural Aspect of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Prospect of Forming New Cultural Boundaries and the Phenomenon of Mood” analyzes the Covid-19 pandemic as a cultural phenomenon through the prism of a phenomenological and existential theoretical perspective. Differences in response to the pandemic and restrictive practices associated with it are seen as a difference in mood and people. The phenomenon of mood is understood in an existential-phenomenological way based on its understanding by M. Heidegger and V. Bibikhin. The author suggests the following typology of mood of attitudes toward the Covid-19 pandemic: covid-alarmism; covid-loyalism; covid-skepticism; covid-dissidence. The chapter by Alexandra Popova, “The Border Between Hierarchical and Network Approaches to Researching the Coronavirus Pandemic”, is devoted to a comparison of two approaches to the study of the problem of a pandemic: hierarchical and network, which are traditionally opposed to each other. The problem of the pandemic is proposed to be considered using the network method, which gives more optimistic results. The third part of the book entitled “Space and Borders in the Pandemic Context” gives the floor to representatives of a wide range of social studies and humanities: geographers, economists, historians, cultural researchers, and sociologists. They analyze already more concrete cases of manifestation of the crisis caused by the pandemic and migration in the borderological key. In her chapter “How Does the Pandemic Invalidate the Sociological Definition of the City?” Borbála Jász argues that due to the pandemic the classical sociological criteria of defining the city (size, density, and heterogeneity) changed. Showing the reshaping processes, the

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chapter analyses artistic photographs from the exhibitions of the PH21 Contemporary Photography Gallery Budapest, entitled: Silence (2020, 2021). The photographs show how people turned—in the terms by Jan Gehl—from the facultative or social activities to the necessary goals only. Eduardas Spiriajevas, in the chapter “New Economic and Cultural Biases of Strategic Development in Lithuanian-Polish Cross-Border Functional Area Under the Impact of Pandemic and Migrations”, discusses on functionalities of cross-border tourism models at Lithuanian and Polish borderlands. Due to the impact of pandemic on human migrations and on current tourism business models, a process of cross-border tourism development is suspended, but this period gives an opportunity to determine a new bias to generate a cross-border functional area of both countries based on common values and identities. Rui Alexandre Castanho, in his chapter “The Fourteen Critical Factors for Regional Development in Borderlands: Focusing on European Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) Areas”, focuses on empirical research about the critical factors that could influence the success or failure of Cross-Border Cooperation projects and strategies. The work details which one of the 14 critical factors identified by Castanho et al., 2016 for the European CBC projects. Teresa Nunes, in the chapter “Portuguese Perceptions on Borders—From the Escape Path to the Sanitarian Imposition 1950– 2020”, analyzes the understanding of Portuguese land borders at pivotal moments from the end of the Second World War to 2020. The scope of the work focuses on approaching the land border in different institutional and political contexts, taking into account the social and economic consequences. In their chapter “The Migrants, the ‘Stayers’, and the New Borderlands in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Brexit”, Katarzyna Anna Winiecka and Małgorzata Dzieko´nska analyze the Polish migrants living in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) and people living in Poland (“the stayers”) maintaining transnational contacts with the migrants, on the eve of complicated social circumstances caused by the Covid-19 and Brexit. They argue that two unprecedented processes of a different nature, at a certain point, coincided in time, building their own boundaries and borderlands which now overlap, producing some peculiar fluctuating borderland and different strategies of navigating these areas. Małgorzata Bie´nkowska describes in her chapter “Between Humanitarianism and Security—The Events at the Polish-Belarusian Border” events on the Polish-Belarusian border that took place in the second half of 2021. The Polish border with Belarus is at the same time, in accordance with the Schengen Treaty, the border of the European Union. In the summer of 2021, a wave of refugees appeared on this border. This was a new and surprising situation. As it turned out, the refugees were brought to the border by the actions of Belarus. The Polish Government declared a state of emergency in the border area. This text describes the course of events, the reactions of the Polish government and humanitarian actions. The fourth part of the book, titled “The Contours of a New (Post) Pandemic Reality”, examines how various social practices have changed during the pandemic period. Both institutional transformations connected, for example, with the legal

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system and the education system, and the manifestations of new trends at the microlevel of everyday life are considered. In his chapter “Self-Construction in the World Web and the Borders of Freedom in Pandemic Times”, Gábor Kovács gives an analysis about the new type of the identity-construction in the age of digital social media among the circumstances of Covid-19 pandemic. His conclusion: the cessation of the borders between private and public realms, overwrites the notion of freedom used in political philosophy. Béla Mester, in his chapter “Public Realm, Privacy and the Scholars’ Lifeworld—Reloaded: An Unintentional Voyeur in a Russian Kitchen”, offers an overview of the theoretical reflections of the social consequences of the pandemic, focused on the belief in and fear of communication technology, from a Hungarian aspect, and applies it for the academic sphere, focused on the discomfort the unintentional confusion of the private and public realms, and the lack of the intellectual inspiration in the online conferences. Based on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jan Selmer Methi will, in his chapter “Pandemic, Borders and New Technology—Distance Breaking Media (DBM)”, discuss the positive and negative sides with extensive use of new technology. He will show how the information technology broke down borders and created new, and how this effected ordinary people, their daily life activities, and the relation between them. The chapter will also show how this had a great impact on and changed the formation of activities in organizations. In the chapter “Communication-Contacts-Dialogue: The Transformation of Education During the Pandemic”, Inna Ryzhkova and Lada Sergeeva analyze the transformation of modern education against the background of the crisis caused by the pandemic factor. The authors show that the pandemic revealed the difference between communication and dialogue, the difference between sign and semantic communication, and the importance of direct dialogue for each and every person. In his chapter “Education in the Time of a Pandemic: Toward a Hermeneutics of Closed Borders and Travel Bans”, Andrei Kopylov argues that the pandemic-induced all-pervasive technological mediation of the educational process may lead to potentially detrimental changes in students’ patterns of perception and interpretation that can affect cognitive activities in their later lives. Jan Selmer Methi Basia Nikiforova

Contents

Borderology as a Project for the Future Borderology and Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Viggo Rossvær “Alphabet” of Borderology: The Question of What Is Enlightenment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nadezhda Golik

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The Phenomenon of the Border and the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrei Sergeev

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The Boundaries of Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrey Vinogradov

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European Borders in Migration and Pandemic Times: Paradigmatic Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basia Nikiforova

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Philosophical and Anthropological Dimensions of the Pandemic Crisis Turning to Face the Non-human: New Strategic Ways to Think About the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aleksandr Sautkin and Elena Philippova Existential and Cultural Aspect of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Prospect of Forming New Cultural Boundaries and the Phenomenon of Mood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vasilii Voronov The Border Between Hierarchical and Network Approaches to Researching the Coronavirus Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexandra Popova

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Space and Borders in the Pandemic Context How Does the Pandemic Invalidate the Sociological Definition of the City? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Borbála Jász New Economic and Cultural Biases of Strategic Development in Lithuanian-Polish Cross-Border Functional Area Under the Impact of Pandemic and Migrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Eduardas Spiriajevas The Fourteen Critical Factors for Regional Development in Borderlands: Focusing on European Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Rui Alexandre Castanho Portuguese Perceptions on Borders—From the Escape Path to the Sanitarian Imposition 1950–2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Teresa Nunes The Migrants, the ‘Stayers’, and the New Borderlands in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Brexit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Katarzyna Anna Winiecka and Małgorzata Dzieko´nska Between Humanitarianism and Security—The Events at the Polish-Belarusian Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Małgorzata Bie´nkowska The Contours of a New (Post) Pandemic Reality Self-Construction in the World Web and the Borders of Freedom in Pandemic Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Gábor Kovács Public Realm, Privacy and the Scholars’ Lifeworld—Reloaded: An Unintentional Voyeur in a Russian Kitchen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Béla Mester Pandemic, Borders and New Technology—Distance Breaking Media (DBM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Jan Selmer Methi Communication-Contacts-Dialogue: The Transformation of Education During the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Inna Ryzhkova and Lada Sergeeva

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Education in the Time of a Pandemic: Toward a Hermeneutics of Closed Borders and Travel Bans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Andrei Kopylov Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Jan Selmer Methi is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Center for Practical knowledge, Nord University in Bodø, Norway. He completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Åarhus University in Denmark in 2007. The topic of his Ph.D. was teacher’s professional identity and self-awareness. His research interests include philosophy of science, sociocultural and activity theory, borderology, and practical knowledge. Basia Nikiforova is Senior Research Fellow, Department of Contemporary Philosophy in Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. She completed her Ph.D. in philosophy in Moscow State University in 1977. Her interests of research include sociology of religion, cultural, and border studies and new materialism.

Contributors Małgorzata Bienkowska ´ Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Białystok, Poland Rui Alexandre Castanho Faculty of Applied Sciences, WSB University, D˛abrowa Górnicza, Poland Małgorzata Dziekonska ´ Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland Nadezhda Golik Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia Borbála Jász Institute of Philosophy, Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary Andrei Kopylov Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia xvii

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Gábor Kovács Institute of Philosophy, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary Béla Mester Institute of Philosophy, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary Jan Selmer Methi Center for Practical Knowledge, Nord University, Bodø, Norway Basia Nikiforova Department of Contemporary Philosophy, Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Vilnius, Lithuania Teresa Nunes School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal Elena Philippova Murmansk, Russia Alexandra Popova Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia Viggo Rossvær Nord University, Bodø, Norway Inna Ryzhkova Department of Social and Pedagogical Dimentions, Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, Saint Petersburg, Russia Aleksandr Sautkin Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia Andrei Sergeev Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia Lada Sergeeva Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russia Eduardas Spiriajevas Center for Social Geography and Regional Studies, Klaipeda University, Klaip˙eda, Lithuania Andrey Vinogradov Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia Vasilii Voronov Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia Katarzyna Anna Winiecka Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland

Borderology as a Project for the Future

Borderology and Civilization Viggo Rossvær

Abstract The borderology project was started at the University of Tromsø. When professor of philosophy Viggo Rossvær at 70 left this university to become a professor at Nord University in 2010, the project re-started as a project at Nord University in political philosophy financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It continued with Professor Jan Selmer Methi at the Centre of Practical Knowledge as a coordinate leader. Later Peter Utnes joined the team as a Ph.D. student. Keywords Borderology · Civilization · Mobile universities · Subsidiarity · The other · Cosmopolitan rights

Entering the New Border Zone If our borderology project were a child, it would be about 15 years old, having the border zone between Russia and Norway as its home and playground. But even if this child was born with high political and social expectations, it suffered already from it birth from an inborn illness. Looking back, I am remembering when we first entered the zone some 15 years ago. This border zone is an artificial construction. It is part of a political experiment of stimulating the borders own social life, trying to reduce the effect of the increasing global pressure created by the increasing international antagonism in the Arctic. The border zone was formally established in 2010 by the Foreign Ministers of Russia and Norway as a workshop for cross-border contact, on the territory of two very different nations. It is rather small; it stretches only 3 km into each country from the national borders. Even if the zone is opened, it is not an open zone. The change indicated by the Russian-Norwegian Document of Agreement primarily concerns the internal relations of its own inhabitants. The purpose of this zone is very precise, it if to V. Rossvær (B) Nord University, Bodø, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_1

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promote the border as a place of commerce and education based on folk-to-folk cooperation. Our project of borderology took its meaning mainly from this purpose. To develop cooperation between different populations is not easy, even if it is being nourished by deep historical roots. The difference in local time on the Russian and the Norwegian parts of the zone might be one hour in the summer and two hours in the winter, due to external regulations. The analogy with an island whose culture is afloat on the soil of two very different worlds strikes one’s mind immediately. We came in by car with our project just after the zone had been declared as opened. We came in from the Norwegian side, but as researchers did not find the zone open enough, the officials at the border confiscated two trunks with technological conference tools related to of our educational business. We had to leave most of our technical software one the Norwegian side of the border zone, to retrieve it on return when our first visit was over. The restrictions were not directed against our new project, they came from other regulations, e.g. preventing the use of advanced listening devices against very silentgoing Russian submarines. Instead of turning back, we had to go on into the zone. Nobody prevented us to introduce our project in the zone, so far, we fulfilled every academic promise given to the Barents 2020. Up to now, any academic cross-border project could be started up without interference from the state. For us, it sufficed to have the support by the two independent universities involved, one in Russia and one in Norway. Today, this is no longer possible, last year a new Federal law insists that any such project, even a renewed cross-border upstart after the corona pandemic will depend on an agreement with the Federal Authorities, first and foremost. The Bakhtin/Kant Institute was established in 2010 in Nikel by Nord University and Murmansk Arctic State University (today: Murmansk Humanistic University) as a common mobile university. The borderology project has its mobile homestead in the zone, its only office in the Children’s School of Art in Nikel, the name over its door is The Bakhtin/Kant Institute. Even our lecture rooms are kindly provided by the Children’s School of Art. In our Master of borderology, the focus is on a new understand the border zones. We want to let the students work out their essays by building on their own private experiences from their engagement in the zone. We want them to build an archive of sense and practice in the zone, fighting the observer’s veil of apparent surface meaning. On the surface, borderology seemed to be focussing on the concept of borders and border zones of the European national state. Its curriculum rests on traditional political philosophy and psychology. But unknown to the world at large, there is a hidden cosmopolitan culture of intersubjectivity in the Eastern borderlands of Europe. In the high north, this culture exists as a product of 400 hundred years of peaceful Pomor Trade between Norwegians and Russian partners in commerce.

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This means that in all tutorial practice, we had to institute slow-going working habits and communication, enabling our Master of borderology, quite from the beginning to search for knowledge with very old roots.

Borderology: Origin and Meaning As you may see, the term borderology is a mixture of English and Greek words. But the choice of this Gypsy term also shows that the term “borderology” originated on multinational seminars. To discover its sense, one has to go back to festivals and programmes for discussions conducted by officials from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat about border problems all along the old Iron Wall in Eastern Europe. The Barents Secretariat was established as a new type of Border institution by the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1993. But already from the beginning, it was more than a listening post for the political movements. It also conducted its own opinions, not dictated by the capitals of Norway and Russia. By travel and participations in conferences from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea in the south and in Caucasus, officials from the Barents Secretariat soon discovered many forms of cooperation across the borders of this oldest part of Europe. And work reports from the Barents Secretariat already from the beginning brought some surprises for the Norwegian political establishment. To their astonishment, they realized that these forms of cross-border cooperation were by nature cosmopolitan. Even if operating on the regional level, crossborder cooperation was connecting people from different nationalities on both sides of national borders, partly uniting them politically against the policies conducted in their national capitals. In order to integrate this constant surprise about border issues into the concept of borderology, the first political leader of the Barents Secretariat, Rune Rafaelsen, baptized our study of cross-border cooperation for borderology. The leaders of the Barents Secretariat were to some extent considering their own experiences and material from conferences on local culture and conflicts ranging from Balkan to the Ukraine and Caucasus as agreeing with the Kantian idea of borderology. Borderology, as a study and not only as a term, could be understood as having roots in our academic traditions. First of all, it renews the basic insights in Kant’s work on the perennial peace. His theses were based on generalizing from studies of peace and war on the constantly changing borders in Northern Europe, transforming his insights about border life to the global level. Firstly, they saw in Kant’s philosophy of peace a great improvement of the European Union’s ideas of peace research by replacing the idea of extending a “friendly neighbourhood” by a new approach. Thereby the new theoretical study of the promotion of peace could in the High North be coupled with the practical support of new cross-border projects.

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In addition, the Barents Secretariat also realized that borderology has another main root in ancient political philosophy. The focus on the cooperation in the zone is an implicit critique of the theory of the modern national state because it questions its problematic status of superiority. In essence, the borderology project repeats the famous platonic dictum that the state has no rights of its own, but instead serves its individuals.

Borderology and Peace Research The use of a specific border zone in our academic research, both as an object of research and a meeting place, means more than just a change of location. It is also an idea that the borders are most important for the study of peace processes. Instead of the more traditional ways of negotiating border conflicts by means of distant diplomacy, it shows an alternative route for preventing war and conflicts by means of local diplomacy. In borderology, one does not work to promote peace by reference to the idea of a future world state. Instead, like the mature Kant, one regards the existing of borders as necessary for any progress towards future peace. For us the borders are themselves the basic instruments of peaceful partnership. The model goes against the popular ideas of Samuel Huntington, who described the conflicts on the East European borders as “clashes of Civilization”. Similarly, the focus on conflicts is shifted from the big global affairs to the small business of border conflicts. The local diplomats are taking action to prevent further conflict by softening the conflicts before they are reaching a higher political level, threatening to create a warlike state. Now new types of solutions can be attempted in the capitals, using strategies already in use regionally. Take two examples. First, there are well-documented stories of how cross-border cooperation on the local levels around the Danube and Sava rivers has been a great success recently for both the tourism and the fishing industry in the region. Two, on the Pasvik river, separating Russia and Norway and Finland, the building of seven big powerplants during the beginning of the Cold War, were a great success factor in maintaining peace in the region.

Borderology and Learning to Be Human The northern cross-border cultures are covering individuals of more than one nation. Thereby, they are protecting the other, even if he or she is a neighbour living on the far side of a border line. This type of jurisprudence was first already acknowledged by the Stoic philosophers of Antiquity, who felt that the borders of their world were not only lines of fortifications against barbarians.

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The Stoics thought that borders were loaded by nature with a cosmic meaning. Consequently, to cross a border, is to seek protection under higher laws and make a progress in the understanding of whom you are by virtue of tour contact your neighbours. In their criticism of the platonic idea of the state as a perfect city, which still dominates the European literature about the best national state, the Stoics were denying that borders are only lines of separation. They are also arenas for developing a cosmopolitan regionality by confrontation with cosmic rights. For a citizen to belong in the world, he should according to the Stoics be taught to cross the safety of the city borders, looking for a second city. Only in this way, and by learning from the meetings with unknown people out there, can he become a better human being. This Stoic wanderer is a visitor, and there is an important Stoic metaphor in Kant’s essay about the perennial peace. Kant gives us the obligation to try to turn all citizens of the modern national states into global visitors, by asking them to cross the national borders and knock at another person’s door. In Kant’s strategy for perennial peace, the figure of the visitor is no tourist, he is on the contrary insisting on a new type of legal right by showing a competence to take the standpoint of the other, willing to share the world equally with him. He is thereby exhibiting a cosmopolitan right which sees the individual in the world as no longer national, but cosmopolitical, returning a political right of subsidiarity to everybody who is living in the border regions. This right does not simply exemplify any international right. An international right holds between different states, not people. The cosmopolitan right, as advanced by the visitor, is revolutionary; it gives a particular individual a right to enter, a right that holds the individual against a whole state.

Can the Human Being Become Civilized? Borderology contains more in its syllabus than an attempt to substantiate Kantian political principles. It is also the warning about an illness. Even Kant, a man of the Enlightenment, again and again warns us that modern man himself is the greatest obstacle for the realization of himself as human. It is not enough for visitors to fight to liberate oneself from the seductive voice of blinded sovereignty. If one wants to see through the systematic self-aggrandizement of the modern state, more working on itself is needed. Kant presented himself as a zetetic, a sceptic, since he sees modern man as the victim of a false normality. Even in its best efforts, the human reason is according to Kant producing a self-protection that is locking the human person up in a self-made prison. Therefore, man is only staggering slowly forward towards peace. He is split in two in his own consciousness, split between theoretical reasons that functions like the state, constantly building up illusions of self-sufficiency. On the other side of this,

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borderline stands a much more trustworthy practical reason. It is pointing towards the other and tries to make us think. This realization that the modern state systematically is producing misleading pictures of the public world made Kant awake from a long dogmatic slumber. The realization of cosmopolitan rights will have to involve a political practice based on more than just a study of principles; it must include a re-formation of the public’s personal intentions. Therefore, borderology today is only worthwhile if it is developed as a criticism aiming at civilization. Civilization requires that you are able to see yourself from a standpoint outside your own borders.

Borderology and Confucius As I read Confucius, the standpoint of the other is dependent of a revision of personal intention. The Master said: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

At fifteen, I bent my mind on learning; At thirty, I was established and well accomplished in the rituals; At forty, I was free from delusions; At fifty; I knew the decree of Heaven; At sixty my ear became subtly perceptive; At seventy, I was able to follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the rules of propriety.

This idea of this revision of intention from the Analects dating from the sixth century before Christ is even more ancient than the ideas of the way to perennial peace supported by Kant and the Stoics. Nevertheless, it adds to the European discussion by insisting that learning from the other is possible within a life span. It is giving an unexpected support to borderology as an attempt to maintain what is distinctly human in the modern world. Our child, the borderology, has a very old face.

“Alphabet” of Borderology: The Question of What Is Enlightenment? Nadezhda Golik

Abstract From antiquity (Plato), philosophy has searched for ways to overcome boundaries and promote a culture of subsidiarity. A new disciplinary space is emerging at the end of the twenty-first century—the doctrine of the border, borderology. It has three main roots. The first root is the Platonic tradition. The second root is the Stoic tradition. The third root of borderology is the Kantian philosophy with its Critique of the human reason. It is a great attempt to define the limits of the human enterprise on Earth. Kant’s hope for mankind is based on an analysis of conceptual borders relative to some basic concepts such as education, culture and Aufklärung or Enlightenment in order to find the proper balance of human capacities in social life. Keywords Borderology · Enlightenment · Subsidiarity · Autonomy

Borderology from a Philosophical Perspective: Origins, Meaning and Practical Implementation The border is always a meeting with the Other: different language, different customs, different culture, different mentality, etc. With all the variety of possible interactions with Other, it can be described in two large groups according to the principle (Friend– Enemy). Psychologically on an unconscious level always it is the division into “my” and “a stranger”, on a socio-historical level these relationships are relationships of peace or war (hostility). From antiquity (Plato), philosophy has searched for ways to overcome boundaries and promote a culture of subsidiarity. At the end of the twenty-first century, a new disciplinary space is emerging—the doctrine of the border, borderology. This term is a construction; it consists of two parts, “border” and “logy”, but you will not find the word in a dictionary. N. Golik (B) Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_2

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So, what does “borderology” mean? We know what “border” means, and we know the meaning of “logy” from the Greek word “logos”; thus, borderology is knowledge about borders. But there might be many kinds of knowledge about borders. So, I will have to repeat my question: What does borderology mean, also with respect to giving you an answer to the problem about what kind of knowledge we have to do with in borderology. Seen retrospectively, and without unnecessary words, but from a philosophical perspective, knowledge about borders has three main roots. The first root is the Platonic tradition. The borders of the Platonic city-state separate the inhabitants of the city-state from the barbarians living outside the city limits. The Platonic state is, as we know, a geographical unity with very strong borders. The second root is the Stoic tradition. The Stoics thought that borders carried their own independent meaning, given not by the state, but by the whole of Cosmos representing the cosmic moral order of Nature. This order is produced by cosmic strategies, not by the rulers of the city-state. There is a strong voice coming from Nature, inviting us to live together as human beings on this Earth with weak borders, accepting that the barbarian is equal to yourself. Therefore, the Stoics could not accept the limiting and separating function of borders in the Platonic state. To cross a border could be to gain a new understanding of whom yourself is. Then in consequence, according to the Stoics, the Platonic state is a failure; it cannot and could not teach the Greeks to be human. The third root of borderology is the Kantian philosophy, with its Critique of the human reason. Kant’s Critique is trying to stop the endless intrigue between theoretical and practical reason in human beings. This distinction, as we know, shows the conflicts between the theoretical side of the human mind and its other side, the practical reason’s potential for noticing the equality of others in practical moral life. The conflict between theoretical and practical reason is a conflict between strong and weak borders. The theoretical reason, according to Kant, is basically a medium for maintaining strong borders between oneself and the other. Strong borders, however, are leading us into deep illusions about the position of the human being in the universe. The theoretical reason only knows oneself, not the Other. The theoretical reason therefore needs to be instructed by the practical reason about the necessity of weak borders. Kant’s position is this: The practical reason knows a moral life that is higher and better than the life based only on private preferences, analogously to the Stoic philosophers who knew you had to listen to Nature and not the rules of the leaders of your own city-state to really come to know yourself. I’d like to open a small secret: Immanuel Kant was a Stoic. The primacy of practical reason over the theoretical is the key to borderology. Therefore, borderology is a kind of study of borders that is not only geographical. Borderology is based on Kant’s knowledge about the heavy influence and fight between Platonic and Stoic concepts of border in the European philosophy of Man. Since the old European problem about borders is so basic to Kant’s philosophical endeavor, it may come as no surprise that Kant’s philosophy is a great attempt to

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define the limits of the human enterprise on Earth. It is a great attempt at Aufklärung or Enlightenment about our basic situation. To sum up: Borderology, according to its third root, is concerned with a kind of knowledge that is not only about geographical borders, but still has its roots in the deep spiritual border problematic of the Greek. Like in borderology, Kant’s hope for mankind is based on an analysis of conceptual borders relative to some basic concepts such as education, culture and Enlightenment in order to find the proper balance of human capacities in social life. It is no accident that his final achievement is a philosophy of culture devoted to the concept of eternal peace. Now, if we go back to borderology, today it is a multidisciplinary undertaking. It can be approached as political philosophy, as pedagogical philosophy, as human geography and in many other disciplines. It is very important that the ideas of borderology were already embodied in practice. There was already a Master program jointly organized by two countries, more precisely by the Nord University (Norway) and Murmansk Arctic University (Russia). The participants, teachers and students, of this program came from several different countries. The students were often interested to work with cross-border cooperation and also topics concerned with how people in the border zones conduct their lives. Two years ago, some 14 students graduated in this Master program. Our program was also presented at the World Philosophical Congress in China (2019), where a round table was held. The participation in this congress was important. We came to China wanting to cooperate with philosophers and researchers from other countries. At last, and with a view to our historical introduction about the Kantian Enlightenment, the multidisciplinary studies of borders and border zones in borderology appear as contributions to the analysis of phenomena of culture, and therefore as a proper object for a philosophy of culture. It may not be very modest, but I consider that the main problem now and also for borderology in the future is the study of the varieties of human consciousness and its stereotypes. I want to argue that the work with borderology might be of interest in these matters, and that borderology might help us in becoming human beings. In the following, I will approach the problem from the point of view of Kant and his own attempts at analyzing the idea of Enlightenment.

Borderology and Its Most Relevant Classic—Kant’s Idea of Enlightenment Kant’s analysis of Enlightenment comes to the surface in 1784. In this year, he published an article in a German newspaper. The article is simply called: Answer to the question: What is Enlightenment (Aufklärung)?

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The article triggered a memorable debate about Enlightenment between Kant, Zolner and Moses Mendelsohn. Zolner accused Kant of bringing confusion under the name of Enlightenment. Most memorable is Mendelsohn’s famous comment. He insisted that the confusion concerning the understanding of “Enlightenment” is not specific for this word, the same thing also goes for “culture” and “education”. These terms have, according to Mendelsohn, “entered into our language only recently. But the crowd hardly understands them”. He thereby pointed to the deep cultural problems with Kant’s attempt at philosophical clarification. Kant wants to say something about Enlightenment as a cultural commitment, but his message is blocked by the same culture he wants to enlighten. The meaning of such important terms as culture, education and Enlightenment, according to Mendelsohn, belongs to a literary and philosophical language, and their sense is lost in a pseudoculture, as we would say today. Their real understanding is blocked by “politura”, the shine of a surface culture. These words rightly belong in our intellectual alphabet, but the basic commitment that gives sense to these words is not yet spelled out. The outcome of the Kant, Mendelsohn and Zolner debate is the challenge of explaining Enlightenment as a norm of civilization, not only as a shine, as a pseudounderstanding. In philosophy today also, we may still lack the language and the right alphabet to spell out the basic human commitment to a moral culture of Enlightenment that makes us into human beings. It is here, in this type of engagement against pseudoculture in cross-cultural research and concrete studies of conceptual borders and border zones that we may see the future importance of the study of borderology. A project to investigate Enlightenment as a basic norm of civilization can only be established as the result of long and hard labor. The importance of this point is formulated very well by Michel Foucault. It comes clearly to the view in Foucault’s own reflections on Kant’s idea “What is Enlightenment?”.

Enlightenment as a Basic Norm of Civilization: Foucault, Mamardashvili Foucault wants to point out that Kant elucidates the real problem of Enlightenment. Kant’s analysis does go into the real problem. But, he says, “The real problem posed by the Enlightenment, is the problem of Enlightenment itself”. The question of the Enlightenment was the question which the philosophy of this new age was not able to solve, but which it never managed to get rid of. For this reason, the issue of what is Enlightenment still remains the question. And Kant was not given to predict how his words would respond. And today, we see that the problem still repeats itself in various new forms. Foucault insists that: “After Kant, and from Hegel to Horkheimer and Habermas, including Nietzsche and Max Weber, there is no philosophy that has not directly

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or indirectly been faced with this question: What is the event we call the Enlightenment?”. Therefore, according to Foucault, it is a characteristic of modern philosophy that it has always tried to answer this question, a question which has been put up to it more than two centuries ago. Foucault presents his own understanding of Enlightenment by pointing to a commitment to which modern philosophy does not respond. He sees in Kant’s Enlightenment article a special philosophical Testament, of problematizing the present as a way of establishing oneself as an autonomous moral subject. The thread that connects us with Enlightenment is not faithfulness to the principles, but work on ourselves, says Foucault. Listen to this (in my own translation): The thread that connects us with the Enlightenment is not faithfulness to the principles of its teachings, and the constant re-creation of some installations. Instead, it is a particular philosophical ethos, which could be defined as a permanent critique of our historical being (the critical ontology of ourselves). The thread that connects us to the Enlightenment is a historical-practical test of the limits that we can cross as the work of ourselves - on ourselves as free beings.

This historical but also practical test—problematizing the present—naturally is connected with the fundamental intention of reverence and a deep, genuine respect for the Other—Another person, Another culture and Another world. Not politura, but real critique. The formation of an autonomous moral subject is possible only under the condition of a “Copernican” revolution of consciousness, in the process of which “unique” thoughts, desires, passions and whims of the “I” are displaced from the center of the world. In their place is put an understanding of the involvement of one’s own “I” in the general movement of culture and responsibility for everything that happens. Thus, the Enlightenment comes to pose the problem of the “culture of introspection”. The culture of introspection presupposes the ability to “moral reproach that a person should put to himself”, which has nothing to do with the “classification” of people, with value judgments: some are worse, others are better. This means the moral and political task of “having the courage in your work to go to the end of what you have seen in your soul and not stop at the democratic rituals of the environment, belonging to some party” (Mamardashvili). The test is asking every one of us about the spelling out of our mental alphabet in the present situation. Only thus can Enlightenment be realized in our own life and in our studies. It is an inspiration for our work in borderology.

The Urgent Task of Borderology Today Now the urgent task of borderology is to develop this respect for the other, and on this respect to build up a critical study, penetrating the cultural shine concerning the truly universal norms of our civilization.

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Borderology gives us the opportunity to become human; this philosophy is like an alphabet we learned in our childhood. It permits us to grow up with the conceptual means of seeing and developing the best sides of ourselves. The current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic has a serious consequence— a “parallel” pandemic of mental disorders. Increased levels of anxiety, existential experiences of loneliness, abandonment, depression, suicidal behavior, alcohol and drug use are characteristic features of a pandemic of mental disorders. Its burden is growing among those who have never sought help to protect their mental health. Among them are children and adolescents. They potentially make up the entire generation whose mental health is undermined by the epidemic. Mastering the “alphabet” of borderology in the modern situation is necessary; it can help in a difficult situation of stress of social changes to cope with the negative aspects of the psychology and the psyche of a person of the twenty-second century.

The Phenomenon of the Border and the Pandemic Andrei Sergeev

Abstract The current pandemic has seen an erosion of many familiar notions, including that of the essence of the border. However, a closer look at the phenomenon of the border reveals that the concepts of the border that are now subject to change and serious correction are those associated with its understanding in the Modern period. At the same time, the practice of establishing different borders and boundaries proceeds from a readiness to accept their unconditional character, as well as the need for performing acts of distinguishing without which the existence of a human being as someone who is there prior to any act of identification is impossible. This article seeks to address the phenomenon of the border with particular emphasis on its metaphysical understanding. Keywords Pandemic · Border · The world · Distinction and identification · The closed and the open side of the border · Present and past · The whole · The unconditional and the conditional · Other

Introduction The pandemic which is now sweeping the world has disclosed many significant points in the perception of man that would sometimes seem to have turned it upside down. This is understandable, for serious trouble comes unexpected, even if people feel they have seen it coming: disasters strike, catching people unawares. A human being is never ready for them. In this sense, it is possible to speak of the transcendence of the pandemic, the consequences of which have, albeit belatedly, to be accepted by every person. Our contemporaries, in their understanding of the world and of their relationships with it, fundamentally rely on the culture of thought originating in the Early Modern period, with all the modifications it has undergone since then. This attitude—specific to Modern Europe—is associated with people’s increasing orientation towards the A. Sergeev (B) Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_3

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human being as subject and actor, these statuses both accounting for their position in the world and conditioning it, when man perceives himself not only as the basis of his actions, but also as the basis of everything that surrounds him. In this paradigm of perception of himself and the world, man considers nature (including the nature of his body and the environment) as a sum-total of objects fundamentally accessible to analysis, with a few exceptions associated with growing environmental problems and the problem of renewable natural resources. In the parameters of the abovementioned position, emerging epidemics are considered as waves, i.e. repeated events characterized by frequency, which, despite their number and constant reappearance, are still perceived as controllable, calculable and predictable phenomena. Beginning with the Early Modern period, life has been consistently understood by man as an event with an underlying ‘human dimension’ whence he seeks to perceive nature in terms of how it is connected with him and his mind, rather than as it is in itself (Markov et al. 2020). But a pandemic comes to be seen as a unique, special and exceptional event, i.e. an out-of-the-ordinary event the nature of which may force people to rethink many of their ideas. The established boundaries of the human mind become blurred in such a perspective, and the forms of identity found by people undergo a significant change which goes far beyond mere transcoding. Everything that has revealed itself during the pandemic should now be regarded not only from the perspective of unwilling acceptance but, perhaps, even with certain positivity. It should be clear by now that our recent and all-too-familiar past will no longer be there: the world has assumed a new aspect—the aspect of the pandemic that has befallen it and become ‘the case’,1 and will now have to be taken seriously. The world is just that—“all that is the case”, all that has befallen us, has been “laid out”, “displayed” and “exposed”, and therefore it is associated with a certain aspect that prompts one to respond to it. In our case, respond to the pandemic. The world has always already revealed itself and appeared to us through a rigid correlation of things with each other, a correlation which is this particular one, but not that. The realized aspect of the world is beyond human will, but man always responds to the world in one way or another and cannot help but do so. Even if a person deliberately avoids what has befallen him, has become ‘the case’, and tries to ‘put right’ the current state of affairs, all such efforts ultimately turn out to have been in vain. One has to respond to the world, and this is beyond human wishes. To come back to the problem of the current pandemic, it should be noted that the skill of understanding apocalyptic events, in human anticipation of them, which was characteristic of some past periods, was associated with the realization that, when 1

Here and further in the text, the author draws on the terminology of L. Wittgenstein associated with his use of der Fall and Satz, Setzen. Cf.: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the very first proposition of the treatise: ‘Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist’, i.e. ‘The world is all that is the case’ [like der Fall and fallen, ‘case’, Lat. casus, is derived from cadere, ‘to fall’] (Wittgenstein 1974, 2019: 467–469). It is noteworthy that in the Wittgenstein 2019 edition, the text of the Tractatus appears in German, Russian and English on facing pages. For the latter, two English versions are included: those by C. K. Ogden with an introduction by Bertrand Russell (first published 1922) and by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinnes (first published 1961).

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confronted with the prospect of such an event, man was forced to see some important truths and undergo qualitative change. But, since the beginning of the Early Modern period, this skill of perceiving apocalyptic and eschatological moods has been gradually relegated to secondary roles, so that now it is only vaguely present in the marginal layers of cultural experience. And here it is important to emphasize that the fear of the consequences of the pandemic which seems to have paralysed the mind of our contemporaries should not be allowed to emerge as its only result. The destruction of consciousness associated with this fear is no more than a connotation that should not interfere with a person’s thinking in his understanding that the pandemic encourages him to open up to what is new and to find himself—as an Other—in this change. What is new can never be seen in one’s blind moments: when one is dazzled by oneself, by one’s own power and achievements. This is why, during a pandemic, one needs to awaken to other, non-habitual modes of thinking and a new perception of what may seem to be things that have long been well understood, that have become familiar and commonplace, things which do not cause any tension and serve as a basis for maintaining our comfort zone. The influence of the pandemic changes the understanding of various kinds of borders: borders between the natural and the social, those between states and regions, personal and social borders, borders between the permissible and the impermissible, the acceptable and the unacceptable, the boundaries of free action, coercion and violence. However, in our opinion, this is only part of the matter in question, even if this “part” overshadows the gaze of the Other and, in fact, almost everything that can reach one’s own eyes. It is more important, in our view, to suggest an essential understanding of the phenomenon of the border which happens to be associated with all acts of distinction and identification.

Appearance and Phenomenon, Interpretation and Disclosure There exist two possible approaches to understanding something. One of them involves an initial study of the spectrum of conceptual considerations of a phenomenon, i.e. an analysis of as complete a list of different points of view on this phenomenon as possible. Proceeding from this understanding, the phenomenon is made to appear as a point of concentration of various conceptual lines, and it presents itself to the human mind as a complex of various theoretical approaches related, in their turn, primarily to the interpretation of the phenomenon. The significance of this approach lies precisely in considering the very aggregate of various interpretations of the perception of the phenomenon, attention being focused not on the phenomenon itself, but on how it is considered and understood within a framework of certain concepts, without which it is simply not perceived. But an alternative way is also possible, with attention being focused on the phenomenon itself, and various approaches to its conceptual consideration being less significant than the phenomenon itself, with its openness and accessibility to

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man. The strength of this approach lies in revealing the very phenomenality of something related to its uniqueness. Here, theoretical consideration proceeds from the phenomenon itself, being a result of its disclosure (Heidegger 1996, 2001). This uniqueness of any phenomenon is due to the impossibility of ascribing typical characteristics to it or using synonyms with reference to it. The very possibility of coming up with a synonymic series turns out to be an unnecessary and counterproductive act (Saussure 1990: 199; Losev 1976: 51, 128; Bibikhin 2002: 212–213). The strange nature of the phenomenon of the border manifests itself in different ways. Man encounters restrictions to himself everywhere, perceiving at the same time the narrowness of any restriction. As one grows older, one’s life becomes associated with the identification and modification of various boundaries, in the parameters of which the content of one’s existence is realized. However, existence is not enough for man—he needs self-realization. Therefore, he not only defends, but also changes boundaries by either narrowing or expanding them (Sergeev 2019: 232–233).

The Problematic and Variable Character of Any Border Sooner or later, man has to face the disintegration of many things without which he had previously considered his life impossible, and then he has to accept such losses. Apparently, the meaning of this is connected with the need to realize the finitude of one’s existence and of any ‘enterprise’ that is undertaken in the process of life, as well as the conventionality of any boundary originating with man himself. Life is finite, and man has to accept it. As one begins to understand the conventional nature of any of one’s limitations, something related to the fact that one continues to live even when that without which life used to be perceived as impossible disintegrates, one begins to penetrate the mystery of the border and to understand one’s relationship with it (Sergeev 2020). As everything established by man becomes increasingly problematic, and awareness grows of the changeability of any such boundary, the scope of life is revealed to man. Spatiality turns out to be an important characteristic of life: man lives by creating and protecting various spaces, the parameters of which disclose not so much his presence-at-hand as his Dasein and enable his inner world to be realized. We are expanded by questions: it is the question form applicable to everything that has taken shape and been established that enables us to feel the expanse and inner space of life, creating a possibility for one’s realization. But then any question eliminates any established guarantee and involves a risk to it. A guarantee is the identity of one and the same thing, i.e. some kind of mechanical constancy, while the protection from everything else given to man by the definiteness of the border is manifested precisely in the possibility of adopting different attitudes to anything whatsoever. Life is just that, change: changing what has been achieved and revealing a new attitude (Sergeev 2020).

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The State of Affairs.2 The Contradictoriness of the Human Situation Every change of border is connected with a new state of affairs that one can accept or reject. We seek to prolong the existing balance between ourselves, and the world reflected in a certain fixing of the border and in finding a certain measure, and we are not always prepared for their radical change. However, in addition to identifying a certain state of affairs, it is important for man to perceive himself as someone who is capable of performing transcendental actions. In his very need to have a limit, man encounters, albeit vaguely, his connection with the fact that he stands on the border between the existing and the other. The finitude of man itself indicates that there is something other than himself that always finds a way to seize him and presupposes his response to being seized by this other. It may be intentional or not, but man always somehow relates to the other (Sergeev 2020). The human situation is contradictory in principle, no matter how much man may try to resolve this contradiction by identifying himself with the internal or the external side of the border. Man needs certainty but he also explores different ways of exceeding it, focusing on the external, or open, side of the border. It is precisely his connectedness with the open and the unlimited that enables him not only to exist, but also to attain self-realization by exceeding himself and his finitude, by exceeding the definiteness of space and time. The very act of man ‘expending’ himself turns out to be an answer to the infinite. In his attempts to measure up to the unlimited nature of life and its plenitude, man perceives the business of ‘expending’ himself as something important: using up the potential of one’s forces may not prove to be a means of measuring up to human life as a force, but it is at least an attempt to do so. Moreover, human life itself comes to appear as a series of attempts to identify such a correlation of man with the immeasurable. The very attraction that man feels to the other, associated as it is with crossing borders, is an important factor in the viability of a human life connected with one’s Dasein (Sergeev 2020).

Distinction and Identification. The ‘Cases’ of the World and the Establishment of Borders The principal act of establishing a border is an act of distinguishing in which the border separates and isolates one from the other. It is important that before the border has been drawn, there is neither the ‘one’ nor the ‘other’. The very emergence of what is ‘different’, i.e. of the difference between the ‘internal’ and the ‘external’, is associated with the establishment of a border. If this happens, then an area of local and spatial identity is formed inside the closed dimension, an area which man 2

Here again, the author draws on L. Wittgenstein when reference is made to the German Sachverhalt, which corresponds to the English state of affairs or state of things. Cf.: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.0121 (Wittgenstein 1974, 2019: 36–37).

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correlates with himself, as well as himself with it. But identity is preceded and presupposed precisely by this distinction. When the distinction has ‘occurred’, man concentrates on keeping within a certain continuum singled out by the closed shape of the border and the disclosed ontological unity which is perceived by him as substantive identity. On the contrary, what emerges beyond the border is another dimension, with a different inherent substantive identity, which from the outside is understood rather vaguely and unclearly, for such an identity is an ‘other’. The basis of any act of reasserting oneself is the choice of a certain dimension—internal or external—with which one identifies oneself, and a distanced relation to the other dimension. Here it is necessary to emphasize that man correlates himself with only one ontological continuum, identifying it with one place and one space, although he can distinguish between two times. One of them is the time of the present which is linked with ‘now’ and ‘here’. But, alongside this, the time preceding the present also comes to the notice, a time that differs from the present as its past associated with ‘before’, ‘initially’ and ‘at first’. The present appears rooted in another time, that of the past, but, in fact, it is connected with the act of distinguishing itself, due to which it is established and is there. Moreover, it becomes apparent that the emergence of a border leads to doubling. Where there was one, the other appears alongside it: both of them need to establish a limit and a boundary in relation both to what is opposite to them and to themselves (Spenser-Brown 1969; Sergeev 2020). Man is able to perceive the estrangement of something from himself as the past, i.e. to notice that a border has “appeared” or “emerged” and is now there, but he does not establish it himself. Borders are established by the ‘cases’ that the world happens to be, by the way it is now ‘the case’, and by the human response to that ‘which is the case’. Still, it is not a question of multiple and different ‘cases’ and, accordingly, of different responses to such ‘cases’. This is no more than abstract speculation that has no direct bearing on the essence of the problem, as man is always associated with, and relates to, one aspect, there is no other aspect, and if it emerges, it cancels out the previous one. The world is always somehow the ‘case’, and it requires a human response to it, and no appeals to the past are possible here, as there is nothing to appeal to, because the world has taken a form that is the only one in existence. It is within the power of a human being who has discovered such a border to occupy a place near it, but to be only on one side of it, the other side of the border being only implied and presupposed. Moreover, finding himself in such an ambiguous position, man cannot say for sure that one side of the border is preferable and more valuable than the other, although he undertakes to protect only one side of it. The preference given to the value of one of the two principles of the border is connected with one’s choice and the fact that one occupies a certain place precisely as one’s own, distinguishing it from what is not one’s own. The choice itself is a response to the fact that there is one and the other, a response to the fact that everything has an inverse side. Human life and human thoughts are man’s dialogue with himself as another, where he cannot be one without the other: he

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is another—to himself. By making a choice that is not necessarily comprehensible even to himself, man connects himself with one without the other, that is, without its other side.

The Border and a Change of Aspect. Choosing One of the Two Sides of the Border Crossing the border from one to the other is noticed, albeit not immediately, by man. If the change of aspect itself is rapid and even instantaneous, the consequences caused by it are not instantaneous and take time to become fully realized. The human being lives by the present, i.e. the aspect that happens to be the ‘case’. It is impossible to return to what has been cancelled by the new aspect, but it is possible see the world in the present aspect and to restore yourself to the world, returning to the world as one’s beginning. In this regard, it is important to distance oneself from the content of what is now a past life, but people find it almost impossible to accept this: it is difficult to accept a border that separates one from the other. The very division into ‘past’ and ‘present’ is akin to living in different worlds where the already accomplished distinction between the present and the past has been consolidated. And these are different worlds with different things within them. Moreover, thought shows that it is capable not only of establishing connections, something normally expected of it; thought is also capable of separating things (Wittgenstein 1974; Bibikhin 2005, 2019; Sergeev 2021). The task of man involves guarding borders and protecting limits. As noted above, borders are established not by man, but rather by his direct response to what is the ‘case’ in the world, or only by implying such an answer when this lack of response is associated with human irresponsibility. Man must accept the establishment of borders as a given, something that is in fact very difficult for him to accept. Ethics discusses such borders, inducing us to respect, first of all, such limits as cannot be re-defined, re-drawn or retracted without it leading to the loss of reference points and to arbitrariness, therefore one of the goals of human life is to preserve borders. It should be noted that ‘must’ and ‘accept’ make an uneasy combination. The fact of the matter is that full and unconditional acceptance is similar to love: more precisely, accepting is the same as loving, the one who loves, accepts, and he is open to what he accepts. At the same time, ‘must’ is associated with the acceptance of the unconditional as conditional, when what is unconditionally accepted is just that which is only on one—this—side of the border. In other words, what becomes unconditional in this case is the defence of conventional, i.e. conditional, borders of the world. The border is connected with acceptance when man connects himself exclusively with one side of it, taking this side to be his own. This is why he undertakes to defend it as his own. And this is not protection of property: in fact, you can sometimes get rid of property, not least through your choice of your side of the border. The word

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‘identification’ does little to convey the meaning of one’s choice and action. It is precisely a matter of choice: not only do people choose something and take it as their own, but they also find themselves taken over by that which they have chosen, thus separating themselves from what is not their own. In making such a choice, one inevitably separates something from oneself as being not one’s own but someone else’s, something that cannot be taken calmly and peacefully by either those who make the choice or those who perceive this act. Moreover, this separation from what is not his own and acceptance of what is takes over the entire person (Sergeev 2021).

Preserving the Borders of Your World Borders still have to be defended, as each person seeks to preserve the borders of their world. But this only takes us half-way through: man’s conscious defence of the border of his world is derivative in character, because the borders of any world whatsoever are not established by us, and we have to put up with them. Here it should be noted that habits which are the result of man’s appropriation of a certain area of the world are associated with separation from everything strange: the strangeness of the world passes unnoticed by man because he considers this area to be his own. However, in doing so man forgets about his finitude and mortality, he forgets that he is no more than a wanderer in this area of the world. The very situation of man in the world takes its shape in the parameters of what he has been caught up in. Man is thrown into the miscellany of the world as something that cannot be his own: always and everywhere his presence (Dasein) turns out to be situated. Moreover, man’s presence can be situated on the border of himself when he encounters some kind of absence of himself in himself. Man’s situation, whatever it may be, suitable or not, close or distant to him, is not his own: you can get used to your situation only with significant reservations. Habits hide or disguise the true state of affairs associated with something new, to the extent that situation is taken by man for his presence, when his being thrown into his situation is not perceived by him. The surprising and strange character of what is new (which, it would seem, should not frighten people, because it is only near and around it that they are able to encounter themselves and find a way into their inner selves) is made vague and unclear by habitual attitudes. All this serves to expose the old truth that the present is the present precisely because it is impossible to get used to it. It is not produced by man but is only accepted: man either accepts the present and goes through his life with it or, getting frightened, he sticks to the habitual (Sergeev 2021).

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Two Sides of the Border. The Act of Introducing Order and the Whole Carrying out an initial act of distinguishing, man seeks to establish certain identities by similarity and likeness, because without such acts there can be no ontological unity in his life. However, in addition to the general, it is important for man to gain the experience of getting in touch with the whole, which manifests itself in his ability to be open to everything and be present everywhere. The whole ‘embraces’ that which ‘is located’ on both sides of the border. To be more precise, the whole is paradoxical, because it extends on both sides of any border and admits of both ‘this’ and the ‘other’. The whole is such that it is already present in each place (at each point): it is a relation to the whole that ensures the ontological viability of any place. Addition is fundamentally unable to reveal the whole, rather, any act of summation, including that of finding the difference, is possible solely due to the whole and its relation to it. Ordering, including finding the sum or difference of the identical, is well described as something applied: it is applied to something that in itself has a different character, the character of the whole. No matter how hard we try to replace the whole with its ideal construction, this construction itself already implies the whole as such, even if we fail to realize this. The very act of man turning to ideal constructions indicates that any relation man has to something implies the relation of this ‘something’ to the whole. Order and norm that man seeks to apply to something presuppose that everything ‘made’ and ‘designed’ always has an open side that cannot be ordered and normalized. What we mean is the side that is connected with the whole and is its boundary. A careful look will reveal such a boundary of the whole in everything to which man seeks to give his order and on which he seeks to impose his norm. Such a ‘remnant’ of a disordered whole is opposed to man’s intention to have the whole at his disposal and normalize everything at his discretion, so he seeks to adhere to the boundaries and limits that are determined by himself. But being caught and captured by the unbounded and the indeterminate, man faces the destruction of limits set by himself and the experience showing that one side of the border, its open side, is always connected with what is the other. The open side of the border is connected with the whole (Sergeev 2021). The nature of the whole becomes more readily comprehensible if we turn to acts of representation to which man periodically resorts. Moreover, today representation is seen as almost the basic mental act, since it is by turning to representation as a form on which individual contents found by man are based and various syntheses of contents are built up that the modern man tries to find his essence. However, representation itself—when it is passed on by one person to another—does not necessarily clarify this situation to another person. Rather, representation will probably confuse them, because it will be perceived as the content of the worldview of the person who conveys the representation, although the representation itself is not contained in such a picture and is ‘added’ by the person himself or herself. In addition, communicating certain

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thoughts to another person is associated with language, which also leaves a certain imprint on the transmitted content. Thus, representation turns out to be a boundary, that is, a limit to what is unimaginable in principle. It is therefore to do with the irrepresentability of the whole: it is impossible to imagine the whole, whereas it is due to one’s access to the whole that one is able to build up different representations (Sergeev 2021). In view of the fact that the dimension of the factual generated by man’s nominative activity and having its borders is ‘superimposed’ on the whole with its open borders, the position of man himself is contradictory and can only partially be reduced to something singular. Man is drawn into the naming of the unconditional, but he gets stuck in the conditional: he can extricate himself from it only by turning to the unconditional nature of the whole.

The Involvement of the Indefinite in Our Lives. The World and Man Establishing borders, man both upholds and violates them. At the same time, professional skills and experience are realized only within certain boundaries that are established and upheld in a conscious way. Man introduces a border and adheres to a certain limit within which there is no longer anything independent of him. However, any introduction of specific and artificial boundaries is based on the need to live within something limited, i.e. the need to have a boundary that separates the conditional from the unconditional and the definite from the indefinite. Man is faced with the fact that the indefinite itself—through the establishment of a border between it and the definite—participates in his life. We are speaking here about the indefinite in principle: not defined by us, nor by anyone else. This kind of the indefinite which is realized through the definiteness of the ‘laid out’ and the ‘ordered’ is our world. And this indefiniteness—the indefiniteness of the world or direct indefiniteness—should not be confused with the indefiniteness that interferes with our understanding within a certain logical space and is connected with the fact that the world is already somehow the ‘case’ and has already somehow ‘taken shape’. The latter kind of the indefinite must necessarily be ‘translated’ into the definite (Wittgenstein 1974; Bibikhin 2005, 2019; Sergeev 2021). The world is revealed as a certain logical space through which everything in it is connected, correlated and made commensurable. The important thing is that though the world is separated from the contents of human existence, it is directly connected with human life. Moreover, the world itself is not only separated from physical existence but is also impregnable to it. In the life of every person, there are lines along which he or she moves precisely as one does along lines and within the boundaries of their own world. Such guidelines become understandable if the actions and behaviour of a human being correlate precisely with a logical space that is not a

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continuation of the space of his existence (Wittgenstein 1974; Bibikhin 2005, 2019; Sergeev 2021). The border encourages man to concentrate, since here everything is concentrated to the extreme. Near a border, everything becomes sharper and more condensed. The understanding of the ‘work’ of form becomes clearer and more readily perceptible: here—at the border—form is more important than content. It is only later, when he is already moving away from the border, that man begins to delve into the content, whereas it is impossible to be near a border without recourse to the form because borders concentrate in themselves such energy that a human being cannot cope with them without the benefit of form. There are metaphysical boundaries associated with the world itself and with man, with existence and non-existence, with being and non-being, which are irremovable. It is impossible to reconstruct such borders, albeit man may try to participate in such—Modern period—games connected with self-will and arbitrariness. The very conventionality of borders established by man in the course of his life, when he perceives himself as an independent source and subject of his actions, is associated with an understanding of the essence of the border in which it is difficult to disclose its unconventional character. The current pandemic has cancelled many of these ‘constructions’, scrapping them and throwing them aside as something unnecessary. All this has only emphasized the inviolability of the first-order borders on the basis of which man draws his own borders—always temporary and schematic in character. And this difference between first- and second-order borders is a border itself.

The Unconditional and the Conditional When we speak, we condition the unconditional and, therefore, we not only fail to approach it but, in fact, distance ourselves from it. Silence, an alternative to the desire to grasp the first word that has come our way in our attempt to form a speedy judgement, preserves the border between man and the unconditional, enabling them to be what they are. Man stumbles upon the unconditional, tries to reach out to it, but the border does not allow him to connect it only with himself. Where there is no border, there will not be any whole: or rather, it may somehow be, but it will be outside man himself, taken in his individuality. In other words, without a border man cannot express his attitude towards the unconditional (the whole). When the border between man and the unconditional (the whole) suddenly disappears, everything is immediately destroyed and perverted, and man is left connected only to one side of the border, being unable to perceive its other side. The very problem of establishing borders, including that between the unconditional and the conditional, is multidimensional. Firstly, near the place where such a boundary is to be established, the energy of the unconditional comes to be felt and manifests itself. Note that in the topos of the unconditional there is no freedom: it is here that it is determined what is what and who is who. There is nothing superfluous here, i.e. there is nothing that man believes to be exclusively his own. And

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in this sense, the unconditional, which man does not have as his own, ‘purifies’ him from what is not his own. Secondly, the person who establishes and protects such a border, affected as he is by the unconditional, cannot but defend its inviolability. And, thirdly and most importantly: the primary border between the unconditional and the conditional is established not by man but by the world, where and when the unconditional is separated from the conditional. Therefore, all other boundaries emanating from man turn out to be no more than definiteness and definitions replaced by other definiteness’s and other definitions (Sergeev 2021). Man may draw any boundaries he pleases, but only as long as he does not collide with a border that is established not by him but by what is the ‘case’ in the world. He stumbles upon the ‘between’ where something can be portrayed and interpreted by him, but there is also a border that distinguishes one from the other, and this entity—that which distinguishes in itself—is beyond portrayal and interpretation. In other words, the very change of aspect, i.e. the disclosure of a certain state of affairs, is something that man fails to portray and interpret. In view of the fact that man simply proceeds from such a disclosure, he has to accept the change of aspect as a given (Wittgenstein 1974; Bibikhin 2005, 2019).

Openness as an Essential Feature of Man The openness of openness is man himself. It is man that is the greatest openness which can explain many things. Man is open to everything: he can accept everything and can enter everything. He can become a boundary of the manifold, of any and all. If this does not happen, it is because man deliberately seeks to change his nature and to connect himself exclusively with something in particular. He is able to single out one thing and then wants to stick to this ‘is’ in order to prevent himself from meeting something else and changing. In other words, man establishes the boundary of entities by means of such an ‘is’. But this is the boundary of entities, whereas any entity is defined in an opening of Being. However, by associating himself with only one side of the boundary of entities, man must take into consideration that the other—the open—side of the border also runs through him and is essentially connected with him. Man is not only the boundary of entities: being caught by the world, and in answer to it, he is the boundary of Being. The border is the most difficult of things and expanding knowledge about it is of little help. Such knowledge cannot cancel the ontology of man’s openness and the need to understand that the establishment of borders itself runs right through and within him. Man comes up against a border as he would against a wall, one that cannot but stop his progress and that he cannot but strive to overcome. But the very same border does not cancel man’s openness to what is separated—from him—to another. Man himself is the border and limit of the world, for all his feelings and his body, his thoughts and his words are not only inside that which they interact with, but also outside him. Besides, stepping over a border is always associated with the destruction

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of the regulated condition of the person who does this: what was inside the border cannot but lose itself and change when someone steps over it. Stepping over a border cancels any definiteness, no matter how significant it may have seemed before.

The Need of Giving Account Let us focus our attention on the very need for a human being to give account. Of course, one can give account to oneself of the openness of only one—internal—side of the border. However, it is equally important for man to give account to what is revealed to him in its ultimate openness in the parameters of transcendental action. The fact of the matter is that man gives such an account not only to himself , but also to the world. The very form of ‘account’ may imply a certain special instance the emergence of which is associated with the sacralization of the other and with giving it the status of a ‘principle’. If man only gives account to himself and seeks not to exceed the limit, or border, of himself, then the instance of consciousness is vested with special powers. Ultimately, however, account can be given only to what is itself unaccountable: such is thinking that relates man to Being and the world. Man is always late for the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ of himself, he does not know them and only states that he ‘is’ in something, as well as that he ‘is not’ in something else. Such ignorance of himself turns out to be the reverse side of his openness to the world. At the same time, it is man’s fundamental ignorance of himself that prompts him to seek himself and self-knowledge. Man can interpret his relationship with the world proceeding from himself rather than from the world, i.e. not from a logical space that enables man to relate himself to the word. As a result, he tries to overcome the loss of logical space associated with the oblivion of the world, relying on himself, when the point of reference now becomes his Self, and the dimension of life is identified with the space of deployment and construction of consciousness. ‘Between’ is the boundary that indicates that man is in the middle where the permission given to him to move towards the manifold is also associated with deterring him from such movements. There is no world in physical space and in its contents, as well as there is no physical space in the world, and there is no world in various physical contents. The world is a logical space within which everything is connected and correlated because everything has been ‘laid out’ in such a space. Therefore, man cannot enter the world by continuing his physical actions, and here a change of aspect is required.

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The Border as a Disclosure of the Other Where there is a border, there is and there can be no smoothness of its crossing when you supposedly do not notice it, just as there is and there can be no continuation of the same. Crossing a border is invariably associated with change in man: this is a transcendental action that cannot but lead to man’s connection with another. A meeting with another does not happen without leaving a trace: this is simply impossible. By means of another, man encounters the ‘not’ and the ‘is not’ of what has just happened, and finds himself face to face with the ‘is’ of another, cancelling all that was before. Such encounters with another are extremely important for man, even if they cannot become a basis for any specific action related to the content of his life. The fact is that in a meeting with another man understands not only what is there, but also himself as another. He understands himself through a border. Reflected in man’s experience of understanding the world and himself as a boundary of everything, something which is almost impossible to use, the one appears as a manifold, and the entirety of the manifold as one. The border is strange in that it is not similar to anything, and man connects himself with only one of its sides. The phenomenon of the border is associated with distinguishing one from another as from something different: and such a difference of one from another—of one place from another place, of one time from another time—is understood by man because he relies on the border, being able to identify himself with it. The rigour of the border is comparable to the rigour of form, when there is one thing, but not another. There are physical actions, but there are also actions proceeding from logical space, there are things metrical, but there are also things topical, there is narration, but there is also display. The border separates one from the other, preventing them from clinging to each other. If you only allow one to be a continuation of the other, everything will disappear at once. There is a lot to be said about crossing a border as a change of aspect, but not a direct continuation of one by the other. However, narration is always based on the experience of past border crossings which has no direct relevance to the crossing being made here and now. Such a narrative will last as long as it is not ousted by display. However, even if a border crossing has taken place, the one has who made it has no knowledge of the other side of the border, because he is always on only one side of it (Bibikhin 2005, 2019; Sergeev 2021).

Conclusions The current pandemic has turned out to be just such a ‘case’ of the world and its related aspect that man has to accept, and to accept it as such, driving away from himself the memory of those ‘cases’ and the related aspects of the world that are still close in time but are already irretrievably things of the past. Accepting the

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essence of the pandemic and opening up to it through his understanding, man certainly becomes stronger, although such strength—internal strength—is associated with the loss of a familiar and accommodating environment, including the presence-at-hand (Vorhandensein) of the world and the comforts of a life that has already become habitual. Strengthening is associated with losses, too, including the loss not only of ‘distant’ people included in statistical reports but also of your loved ones. We are led to conclude that, while being undeniably a tragedy, the pandemic has not changed man’s basic understanding of the border, including the problems of establishing it, of man’s understanding of the limits of the world and those of his own which are established in openness and in response to the world. During the pandemic, many regulations and limits have changed, revealing new facets of understanding of the border, with the definiteness of which borders seemed to be identified, as well as being perceived as something derived from human action. However, the pandemic prompts us to understand the primacy of the act of distinguishing, as compared to that of identification: it is the border that turns out to be a primary condition of any relationship and understanding, whereas the identification of such an action itself with the definiteness of life is always only conditional. The need to have limits, i.e. to identify certain boundaries, to uphold and change them, like the phenomenon of the border itself, has not disappeared: distinction precedes and determines the character of identifications, although it is impossible to completely separate them. At the same time, it should also be stated that the pandemic has placed focus on the fact which for a long time remained in the shadows—in the shadows generated by the activities of human consciousness. The pandemic enables man to focus on the fundamental issues of his life related to the need for self-realization along with existence, as well as on getting involved in the problems of understanding Being and entities, of the relations between man and the world. In the parameters of such problems, as in the topos of the problematic nature of seeking one’s place and time of life, as well as of the direct ‘participation’ in man’s life of the whole, the unconditional and the other, one is able to understand many things precisely on the basis of the phenomenon of the border. An important point relevant to understanding the border is realizing that it has two sides, and while the inner side of the border did attract people’s attention before the pandemic, the external, open, side of the border was treated mainly in an ill-conceived way, namely, as a continuation of its inner side. At its outset, the pandemic appeared to be a factor revealing the weaknesses and even the powerlessness of many mental constructions put forward by man. It was here that its transcendent character came to the fore. It would seem that a person who perceives himself as an heir and successor to centuries of history should find sufficient strength not only to confront the pandemic, but also to change himself and understand—through understanding the pandemic—his place and time correlated with the state of affairs in the world.

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References Bibikhin VV (2002) Yazyk filosofii (The language of philosophy), 2nd edn, revised and enlarged. Izd-vo ‘Yazyki slavyanskoi kultury’, Moscow Bibikhin VV (2005) Vitgenshtein: smena aspekta (Wittgenstein: a change of aspect). St. Thomas Institute of Philosophy, Theology and History, Moscow Bibikhin VV (2019) Vitgenshtein: Lektsii i seminary 1994–1996 godov (Wittgenstein: lectures and seminars of 1994–1996). Izd-vo ‘Nauka’, St. Petersburg De Saussure F (1990) Zametki po obshchei lingvistike (Notes on general linguistics). Russian translation: Narumov BP. Edited, introduced and annotated: Slyusareva NA). Izd-vo “Progress”, Moscow Heidegger M (1996) Being and time. A translation of Sein und Zeit (trans: Stambaugh J), 7th edn. SUNY Press, Albany, NY Heidegger, M. (2001) Zollikon seminars. Protocols – conversations – letters (ed: Boss M; trans: Askay R, Mayr F). Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL Losev AF (1976) Problema simvola I realisticheskoye iskusstvo (The problem of the symbol and realistic art). Izd-vo “Iskusstvo”, Moscow Markov BV, Sergeev AM, Bocharnikov VN (2020) Fenomen epidemii (pandemii) v prisme metafizicheskogo,antropologicheskogo i sotsialnogo izmerenii (The epidemic [pandemic] phenomenon through the prism of its metaphysical, anthropological and social dimensions). Chelovek [Man] 31(3):7–24 Sergeev A (2019) The need for being disinterested as a key characteristic of human nature. In: Methi JS, Sergeev A, Bie´nkowska M, Nikiforova B (eds) Borderology: cross-disciplinary insights from the border zone (Along the Green Belt). Springer Sergeev AM (2020) Blizkiye mysli (Thoughts close at hand). Slovo o sushchem (Speaking of the essential) series, vol. 130. Izd-vo “Vladimir Dahl”, St. Petersburg Sergeev AM (2021) Chelovek i mir (yazyk – myshleniye – soznaniye) (Man and the World [language – thinking – consciousness]). Slovo o sushchem (Speaking of the essential) series, vol. 134. Izd-vo “Vladimir Dahl”, St. Petersburg Spenser-Brown G (1969) Laws of form. Allen and Unwin, London Vitgenshtein L (Wittgenstein L) (2019) Logiko-filosofsky traktat (Tractatus logico-philosophicus) / Pamyatniki filosofskoi mysli (Monuments of philosophical thought) series. Kanon + ROOI ‘Reabilitatsiya’, Moscow Wittgenstein L (1974) Tractatus logico-philosophicus (English trans: Pears DF, McGuinnes BF). 2nd revised edn. Routledge & Paul Kegan.

The Boundaries of Humanity Andrey Vinogradov

Abstract The paper discusses the most fundamental, i.e., philosophical, aspect of the way people relate to themselves and to others, looking specifically at the mechanisms they employ to identify human nature in themselves and in others. For all its seemingly abstract character, this problem has an important practical dimension: on a personal level, the loss of self-identification is often a sign of a profound spiritual crisis potentially leading to suicide, whereas on the level of society at large, the refusal of the majority to recognize a particular social group as having equal rights with the rest of society often results in social crises and conflicts. The article is devoted not to the content of ‘human nature’, it studies the relation to it. This relation may manifest itself in two opposing attitudes which may be described as ‘appropriation’ and ‘alienation’ of humanity. The article looks at where the dividing line between these attitudes lies and why people find themselves making a choice between them. By failing to recognize the equally human status of another human being, an agent of alienation performs an act of dehumanization. The results of this practice are obviously destructive for both individuals and society. Keywords Human nature · Borders · Appropriation · Alienation · Migrants

Introduction This article will focus on people’s relationships with themselves and with others. Of course, the range of such relationships is very wide. But we are interested in the most fundamental of them, that is, in the philosophical aspect of these relations: we will try to determine how the mechanisms work whereby people identify human nature in themselves and in others. Despite the abstract nature of this topic, it is of great practical importance. Loss of self-identification is often a sign of a deep spiritual crisis of the individual, leading to suicide, while the refusal of society to A. Vinogradov (B) Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_4

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identify some social group as a fully fledged part of it often leads to social crises and conflicts, even armed clashes. An obvious prerequisite that makes it possible to consider this problem is the recognition of something definite that we can call ‘human nature’. This designation does not claim to revive essentialism in the concept of man. Axel Honneth is right when he remarks that (Honneth 2014: VII): Philosophical developments of the past decades on both sides of the Atlantic have put an end to such essentialist conceptions; we now know that even if we do not doubt the existence of certain universal features of human nature, we can no longer speak objectively of a human “essence” of our “species powers” or of humankind’s defining and fundamental aims.

Nor will we declare the existence of ‘humankind’s fundamental aims’ which, in Honneth’s words, lead to ‘a falling back into a musty essentialism’ (Honneth 2014: X). We will confine ourselves to the recognition of the ‘universal features of human nature’, without specifying what exactly they are. Ultimately, people, in order to position themselves as human, must have some idea of ‘human nature’ or ‘humanity’, at least intuitively. A preliminary analysis of people’s relationship to human nature shows that this relationship can manifest itself in the form of two opposite options: appropriation and alienation of humanity. Over the millennia of the existence of human society, the use of one or the other option has been an important factor determining the nature of both human life and the life of society. Our purpose here is to find out where the border between the two variants of attitude to humanity lies, what it is determined by, and consequences the choice between them entails.

Appropriation of Humanity We will begin by considering the mechanism for the appropriation of humanity. It involves a reciprocal action of two parties. The first side may be described as individual. It embraces the ideas of an individual person and consists in the fact that he identifies himself as a full member of the human race, fundamentally different from the rest of nature. Similar experiences are manifested in the well-known sense of unity with one’s closest social group or country, in solidarity on a professional, gender or any other basis. The well-known ‘male’ or ‘female solidarity’ is a good case in point. True, not all these examples relate to the appropriation of humanity as such. They are about associating oneself with a group within human society whose human status is not doubted. However, these examples show that it is natural for a human being to draw mental borders, claiming membership in various communities and thereby delimiting himself from all other people who do not have the defining characteristics of his community. Appropriation of humanity has a similar mechanism. The difference is that a person identifies himself not with some group within society, but with all people,

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with humanity as a whole. The underlying feature here is not specific, but generic. More often than not, appropriation of humanity is a tacit attitude, from which a person proceeds, taking it as a prerequisite for his life as a human being. This attitude becomes obvious at those moments when people find themselves in the face of natural disasters. (As everyone knows, a common enemy unites.) At such moments, one feels like a part of humanity that is fighting against nature for collective survival. Against the background of this global struggle, all internal borders separating groups of people become meaningless. One border assumes supreme importance—that between man and nature. This creates a sense of solidarity between people. To give only one example, people from armies fighting on opposite sides at war are known to have helped each other when they were both struck by a natural disaster. The coronavirus pandemic has become just such a challenge for humanity. It has made people think that humanity should combine its efforts in fighting against this common enemy. Unfortunately, in practice, such unity has hardly been achieved. The political, economic and other interests of certain groups of humanity prevented this. This time, the unity of humankind has mainly remained a desire of the majority of people on the planet. Perhaps, a more dangerous threat than the coronavirus is needed to achieve unity in practice. A threat of this very kind existed during World War II. Fascism set the task of destroying a significant part of humanity, and this idea united states with opposite social systems against it. The leaders of these states managed to rise above the differences that separated them. Russian and American soldiers on the Elbe saw in each other not ‘communists’ and ‘capitalists’, but simply people who, despite their differences, were serving a common cause—saving humanity from the threat of extermination. Each of these soldiers felt like a part of a universal human brotherhood. However, the mechanism of appropriating humanity has a second side. It can be called social, as it involves the recognition of this status by other people. Let us again consider the operation of this mechanism, using a similar example with the membership of some kind of social group. No matter how insistently I may declare that I belong to a certain professional community, if the rest of the members of this community do not recognize my belonging to it, then my opinion of myself will have no social significance. Man is to a large extent a social being, and he needs social recognition. Thus, in order for the acquisition by a person of the status of a member of some social group to take place, it is necessary for this acquisition to be legitimized by members of this group. If we apply this principle to the topic under consideration, the picture will fundamentally be the same. It is not enough for a human being to consider himself human. For him, it is necessary to see that this is recognized by society, that other people see in him the same kind of person as they are. The normal functioning of the mechanism of appropriation of humanity presupposes the work of both its sides—the personal and the social. When one of these sides fails, the appropriation of humanity cannot take place.

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It is here that the boundary of the appropriation of humanity lies, here is its end, and the mechanism opposite to the appropriation of humanity comes into action—this is the mechanism of its alienation, or in other words, of dehumanization.

Alienation of Humanity First of all, it should be noted that it is more difficult to discuss alienation than appropriation. Professor Walter Kaufmann, who has devoted much time to the study of alienation, remarks: “we shall always be reduced to confusion when we read about alienation” (Kaufmann 2015: XIII). Kaufmann, in his introduction to Richard Schacht’s book, emphasizes that “there is no single general meaning of ‘alienation’ of which different writers could be said to have discussed different aspects” (Kaufmann 2015: XIV). In our opinion, Kaufmann expresses a highly pertinent idea that “the experiences widely associated with that term are often held to be distinctive characteristics of our time, or of capitalistic societies; but we shall see that they are actually encountered in abundance in past ages and in non-capitalistic societies” (Kaufmann 2015: XIV). This idea is a premise of our research: we proceed from the fact that alienation is an integral characteristic of human activity, and diversity in its understanding is associated with the multidimensionality of its manifestations in people’s lives. Similarly to the mechanism of appropriation of humanity, the mechanism of its alienation also presupposes the involvement of two sides: the individual and the social. However, in this case, the impact of society on the individual is built on something negative. If the appropriation of humanity is a ‘struggle for’ (for the human being, for his dignity, his human rights, etc., aimed at improving the social well-being of an individual), then alienation of humanity is always a ‘struggle against’ (against human dignity, against human rights, against fair demands, etc., aimed at discriminating against people). Of course, a human being can ‘play against himself’, losing his human essence. This is not necessarily an active process. Man loses his essence even if he ceases to strive for the appropriation of humanity, ceases to ‘fight for’. In real life, this is expressed in man losing the meaning of his life. In the Encyclopedia Britannica article on alienation, the second variant of the meaning of this term is defined as follows: “meaninglessness, referring either to the lack of comprehensibility or consistent meaning in any domain of action (such as world affairs or interpersonal relations) or to a generalized sense of purposelessness in life” (‘Alienation’ v. 1, 270). At the same time, the article mentions “self-estrangement, perhaps the most difficult to define”. The individual experience of alienation is primarily the concern of psychology and art. One of the popular literary plots is a reflection of the tragic situation of man’s alienation from himself. The existentialists have shown this especially clearly. In their works, “modern man often finds it hard to be himself; he has become a stranger to himself” (Daronkolaee and Hojjat 2012: 202).

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All other, much more common variants of meaning given in the article of the Encyclopedia Britannica, one way or another, connect the alienation of humanity with the relationship between man and society: “powerlessness, the feeling that one’s destiny is not under one’s own control but is determined by external agents, fate, luck, or institutional arrangements”, or “normlessness, the lack of commitment to shared social conventions of behaviour (hence widespread deviance, distrust, unrestrained individual competition, and the like)”, or “cultural estrangement, the sense of removal from established values in society (as, for example, in intellectual or student rebellions against conventional institutions)”, and finally “socialisolation, the sense of loneliness or exclusion in social relations (as, for example, among minority groupmembers)”. Rahel Jaeggi, in Honneth’s interpretation, distinguishes two main traditions in understanding alienation (Honneth 2014: IX): First, the tradition of Marx and his heirs, who, following Hegel, understand alienation primarily as a disruption in human beings’ appropriation of their species powers due to the structure, especially the economic structure, of their societies; second, the existentialist tradition of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, who understand alienation in terms of the increasing impossibility of returning from the universal into self-chosen, authentic individuality.

Indeed, Karl Marx developed the most famous social concept of alienation, but it is predominantly economic in nature. Marx showed how workers under capitalism are alienated from the material goods they produce (Marx 1844). Of course, he pointed to the serious consequences of this process both for the individual and for society, such as man’s depersonalization, his reduction to the level of a thing, etc. However, for Marx, the source of alienation lies in the field of the economy. In the twentieth century, views on the sources of alienation became broader, mainly due to the inclusion of more diverse factors. For example, apart from existentialists, E. Fromm developed an interesting concept. According to him, alienation is the result of the psychological reaction of a modern person to the entire set of social factors. The conditions in which a person has to live, through the action of the instinct of self-preservation, induce him to abandon his individuality, to become “like everyone else”, to conform not to his essence, but to the expectations of other people. Therefore, “behind a front of satisfaction and optimism, modern man is deeply unhappy; as a matter of fact, he is on the verge of desperation” (Fromm 2001: 220). Richard Schacht, whom we have already mentioned above, remarks in his fundamental study ‘Alienation’ (first published in 1970) that “there is almost no aspect of contemporary life which has not been discussed in terms of ‘alienation’. Whether or not it is the salient feature of this age, it would certainly seem to be its watchword” (Schacht 2015: lix). He analyzes in detail Marx’s concept of alienation, showing it as a development of Hegel’s ideas. In addition, he devotes considerable attention to views on alienation in the twentieth century: he examines the traditions of psychoanalysis, sociology, existentialism and theology. But, at the same time, Schacht formulates the following provision regarding their ideas about ‘alienation’: “An examination of traditional standard uses (of this term), therefore, can at most serve simply to prepare the way for an analysis of the special uses” (Schacht 2015: lxi). This concept does, in fact, change its meaning depending on the sphere of human life in which it is used.

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In another paper, Schacht writes about the concept of ‘alienation’: “those who would continue to make use of it must revise their thinking about the status of the notion, and about the role(s) it is capable of playing in the kinds of intellectual endeavor in which it is to be employed” (Schacht 1976: 133). The time that has passed since these words were written has confirmed their correctness: indeed, there is a constant rethinking of this term and its application to various spheres of human life. For example, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the problem of alienation occurring in the online space began to be actively discussed. Researchers of this phenomenon note that communication on the Internet “makes human life more comfortable and safe”, but “the reverse side of the freedom, acquired by a human being due to the ‘high technologies’, is the phenomenon of social and psychological alienation” (Safina et al. 2018: 9). Of course, these are not all the possible variants of understanding alienation, but they show that the mechanism of alienation of humanity, acting at the social level, has various forms of manifestation. In our opinion, all these theories have one important feature in common: they consider alienation resulting from the effect of some objective conditions. This is a fairly well-researched topic. However, why is alienation, as a rule, explained on the basis of conditions external to man? In our opinion, the subjective side of alienation may be of even greater interest, since alienation is associated precisely with man as an agent of alienation. Michael Hardimon introduces a distinction between objective and subjective forms of alienation, but by subjective alienation he means the feelings that people experience if they do not find their place in the existing social structures. He writes, “Presumably, pure subjective alienation will be rooted in certain objective features of the modern social world (e.g., the scale of the modern state and the complexity of civil society)” (Hardimon 1994: 121). In Hardimon’s theory, subjectivity is only partly realized: in his view, a person positions himself in relation to objective social conditions. Therefore, the concept of ‘subjective alienation’ needs to be clarified. We propose to consider it without going beyond the subjective sphere, when some subjects are the initiators of the alienation experienced by other subjects. In this case, some people deny the status of a human being to other people, that is they dehumanize them. Let us turn to some specific examples of this mechanism. Example 1. Among Russian motorists, there is a common expression used with reference to drivers who perform dangerous or ill-advised maneuvers on the road. In relation to such drivers, the insulting definition ‘goat!’ is used with the help of which their stupidity, traditionally attributed to these animals, is emphasized. However, the definition of people as ‘goats’ is fundamentally different from their definition as stupid: the former assumes a whole complex of qualities in addition to stupidity (stubbornness, bad smell, etc.), and the definition of a person as stupid covers only one aspect of his nature, since otherwise he is still seen as human. Example 2. One of the slogans during the Second World War was “Let’s crush the fascist reptile!” (the Russian formula has ‘gadina’ for ‘reptile’, from the Slavic ‘gad’

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meaning ‘snake’). Here an idea found expression according to which the fascists who committed terrible crimes could not be human, they were disgusting snakes that were only worthy of being destroyed and crushed. Another slogan of the same historical period “Forward to the den of the fascist beast” was an expression of the same idea—that of the complete absence of human nature in the fascists, of their bestial nature. Example 3. The target of dehumanization is sometimes reduced not only to the level of an animal, but even to that of an inanimate object. For example, in the Soviet army conscripts from Central Asia were called ‘churka’ (roughly, ‘chunk of wood’). In its literal sense, the Russian word denotes a round short piece of wood that can be cut into smaller logs. This definition was intended to emphasize their alleged stupidity and insufficient command of the Russian language. All this is not only a thing of the past. In fact, nowadays people quite often dehumanize their opponents, portraying them as falling short of high human standards. The most striking example of this kind is the attitude toward migrants. The disparities between their culture and that of the local population, these people’s different appearance, their ‘southern’ temperament, etc. can cause misunderstanding and disapproval, the extreme degree of which is the refusal to recognize their human nature, that is the alienation of their humanity. An ethnically homogeneous population that has lived compactly in a certain territory for a long period of time tends to subconsciously consider their traditions and habits as a standard for all people, as a standard of humanity. The failure of people of a different culture to follow these traditions and habits can create an impression of their failure to meet human standards. As a result, migrants find themselves forced out of the boundaries of human civilization, which gives the more radical xenophobes an excuse for hostile actions against them. A study on illegal migration conducted by The Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Section of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports a massive scale of inhuman and degrading treatment of migrants. The attitude to migrants as to things is evidenced, for example, by the following testimony of a 32-year-old woman: “When we planned our escape, we were very scared. If they find you they would bring you to a little room which was like a box, with a ceiling which was 40 cm high, it was worse than the beatings” (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2021: 37). If you think a migrant is a thing, then why not keep it in a box?

Reasons for Alienation Why does this happen? Let us turn to the reasons for alienation. The simplest and most obvious explanation is that a person deserves the name of an animal when his behavior resembles that of this animal. A person who eats extremely carelessly,

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munching and dropping pieces of food, soiling his clothes deserves a comparison to a pig. But then, it is only a comparison. We consider situations when a person is directly defined as an animal or inanimate object. The terms of affection used by people in love to address each other (some Russian words for such occasions roughly translate as ‘my little bunny’, ‘my little fish’, ‘my little kitty’, etc.) are also outside the topic under consideration. In this case, there is an analogy in a number of features that these animals have, but not alienation of humanity. Besides, this is only an individual manifestation of subjective feelings. Dehumanization is a phenomenon that exists at a social level, manifested in the opinions and behavior of entire groups of people. Let us consider its reasons. I believe there are several reasons for this phenomenon: at least four are of utmost significance: the cultural, economic, psychological and ethical reasons. The most ancient of them is the cultural one, since it is deeply rooted in the culture of mankind. It consists in the idea that a person or a group of people can be represented by an animal or an animal species. This idea was embodied in totemism which is based on the belief in a mystical relationship between a group of people and a species of animals. Ancient man anthropomorphized the world, that is likened it to himself. Here the mechanism of the appropriation of humanity manifested itself. In particular, animals, thanks to the action of this mechanism, appeared to be anthropomorphic creatures, simply having a different appearance from that of humans. This allowed a person to feel a kinship with animals. The logic here is something like this: “If I belong to the tribe of the tiger, then the tiger is my ancestor, he is my relative and I have the same qualities as he has”. This means that people from other tribes also have the properties of their totem animals. People from the clan of the snake are cunning; those from the clan of the horse possess endurance, etc. They are, to a certain extent, tigers, snakes and horses themselves. This idea constitutes a general subconscious, implicit premise of dehumanization. The second reason is economic. Its essence lies in the fact that material inequality of people can turn one part of them into the property of another. For a significant part of world history, slavery existed in human society. The definitions of a ‘slave’ that were given in classical antiquity show that the human essence of a slave was considered alienated. Thus, Aristotle defined the slave as an ‘empsychon organon’, that is, ‘an animated instrument’, and the Roman Terrentius Varro, as an ‘instrumentum vocale’, that is, ‘a speaking instrument’. The fact that an instrument had a soul or the ability to speak did not change the attitude toward it as a thing that could be disposed of at your own discretion, with no consideration for its desires or moods. In the above example of the treatment of an illegal migrant, we can see the same attitude. Two other reasons directly trigger the dehumanization mechanism. The psychological reason lies in the desire to humiliate your opponent, which is akin to verbal name-calling. Such actions make up for the impossibility of inflicting harm on the adversary with the help of physical means (in accordance with the logic “If I cannot hit, I will at least give you a bad name!”). Comparing an adversary with a stupid, vile, or harmful animal brings people a sense of psychological satisfaction.

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Finally, in my opinion, there is one more reason for setting in motion the dehumanization mechanism, and it is not as obvious as, for example, the psychological one. One of the few researchers who paid attention to it was Peter Railton. In his article “Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality,” he wrote: “Living up to the demands of morality may bring with it alienation - from one’s personal commitments, from one’s feelings or sentiments, from other people, or even from morality itself” (Railton 1984: 134). Even calling his opponent a ‘reptile’, a ‘dog’, a ‘goat’ and other similar names, a person, nevertheless, always subconsciously understands that he is dealing with another person like himself. Therefore, he needs to justify his (especially violent) actions against this person. Here these ‘goats’ and ‘dogs’ come to his aid, enabling him to dehumanize the enemy, to reduce him to the level of an animal, in relation to which it is more forgivable to use cruel methods of confrontation than in relation to a human being. Thus, a paradoxical situation arises: the process of alienation of humanity is based on a purely human striving for moral justification of one’s actions. It is the conscience of the person who dehumanizes others that compels him to dehumanize his opponents. If you cannot silence the voice of conscience, then you need to change your idea of the one against whom your unseemly actions are directed. What is immoral in relation to a human being is morally neutral in relation to someone who is not human. Such reasoning creates the appearance of freedom from moral obligations and puts one’s conscience to sleep.

Consequences of Appropriation and Alienation of Humanity In conclusion, a few words about the consequences of the appropriation and alienation of humanity. The appropriation of humanity means that people begin to treat the external with special care and caution, since they see a human essence even in natural objects. They are cherished and cared for. And dehumanization has the exactly opposite effect, since in this case a human being is reduced to the level of a natural object. Unlike the appropriation of humanity, its alienation has the direst consequences. A person in the eyes of the one who dehumanizes him loses his essence, his high human destiny. This provides an excuse for the most disgusting actions. After all, to kill such a creature is the same as to kill a rat or a cockroach (although, in fact, we are dealing with a human being). When today we sometimes hear the opinion that migrants who have fled a war in their homeland do not behave like “normal” people, do not live up to human “standards”, then we see the action of the dehumanization mechanism, which can easily be used to legitimize killing these people and to exonerate the murderers. There appears to be only one way out of this situation. A broad education effort is needed to explain the operation of the mechanism of alienation of humanity in order to ultimately result in a legal prohibition of dehumanization on this basis, at least in the space of public authority. This should happen not only in one country, but right

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across Europe. If this community considers itself civilized, then it must overcome the barbaric mechanism of alienation of humanity. In my opinion, this is the main path for the further humanization of law and the state. No matter what a person or a group of people does, no matter what mortal sins they are accused of, no matter how other people assess their actions at the level of their individual consciousness, representatives of public authorities have no right to make statements leading to the dehumanization of these people, to the alienation of their humanity. People who have committed a crime can and should be put on trial, but just as people. It would be useless and even foolish to bring an animal before a court, since it acts instinctively and cannot account for its actions. Therefore, for a proper trial of criminals, it is necessary to proceed from the preliminary premise of their human status. In my opinion, the manifestation of dehumanization should be legally prohibited by analogy with the propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi symbols and symbols of extremist organizations. Only this way will humanity be able to overcome the bestial legacy of its past.

Conclusions The theory and practice of dehumanization undermines moral values and lowers the threshold of responsibility for the use of cruel, inhuman actions. Therefore, a society that claims to be civilized cannot afford to put up with manifestations of dehumanization in public space, especially in the political space. Such manifestations must be unequivocally condemned. Nothing can justify the alienation of the humanity of representatives of any social group, be it migrants, various minorities, ethnic communities, or other groups of the population. Even the most extravagant features that members of these groups can possess do not deprive them of their human status. These characteristics can lead to violations of the laws of the country in which such groups live. However, this circumstance is no basis for alienating their humanity. On the contrary, it is very important that the status of humanity be preserved for them. After all, only a human being who is able to understand legal norms and be held accountable for his actions can bear responsibility before the law. The denial of this ability for certain people takes the solution of the problems related to them beyond the boundaries of the legal field, and therefore opens up a wide scope for arbitrariness and violence. The boundaries of humanity must remain unassailable, and no feature that a person or a group of people may have can serve as a reason for throwing them out of these boundaries.

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European Borders in Migration and Pandemic Times: Paradigmatic Changes Basia Nikiforova

Abstract Reasoning and research through the discourse of “crisis” as a startingand-ending point have produced representations of mass migration and pandemics. The image and the discourse have come together to form a new vision of European borders. Both cases look exceptional and depoliticized, they justify most emergency interventions carried out by the state, in order to rectify the “abnormality”. The European migration and pandemic crises have pushed the researchers to rethink the process of re-bordering, the change of border functions, and the new role of the European borderlands. The idea “to move from a geopolitical to a biopolitical horizon of thinking” inspired by Foucault and Agamben has given the possibility to develop a more pluralized view about the place of borders in modern political and social life. Destroying barriers between the sciences and the humanities, mass migration and pandemics increasingly have come to offer a new vocabulary and an innovative conceptual framework. In the situation of the migration and pandemic crisis, the appeal to borders as powerful symbols of political order and stability may intensify. This article is an attempt to describe the answers on such a question: In what ways can border theory enhance both our understanding of and response to the global pandemic and mass migration? Keywords Biopolitics · Border · Pandemic · Mass migration · Necropolitics

Introduction The subject of the article is closely connected with the meaning of the Anthropocene and the possibility for researchers beyond the “core set” of those from various disciplines to take “the new tools” to join many urgent tasks (Horn and Bergthaller 2020). B. Nikiforova (B) Department of Contemporary Philosophy, Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Saltiniskiu Srt. 58, LT – 08105 Vilnius, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_5

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Our task to describe how is used these “new tolls” for explanation of contemporary situation. The implications of this historically unprecedented situation extend to questions of philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, and critical geography. It makes it possible to look at such crises as mass migration and pandemics are being taken up and interpreted on a planetary level. “Borders’ researchers found a necessity of re-thinking such concepts as European migration crisis, the process of re-bordering, the change of European border function, the new role of the European borderlands and the meaning of materiality in the border context” (Nikiforova 2017: 70). Philosophers turned out that the centuriesold division between the sciences and the humanities no longer works, and there is a need to deconstruct a former conceptual framework for understanding the new relationship between human sociality, ecology, and immunity. That moves us to two inevitable conclusions: the situation will never change backward and this is now our reality. The virus also destroys many social illusions as such: unlimited self and collective control under every situation, invulnerability, and our belief that material well-being guarantees our safety from contamination. May more general lesson be that the current situation, despite its uncertainty, is very likely not to be exceptional, the temporal exceptionality may become the new normality. Today in the globalized world people live in the risk society. The research aims to discuss methodological approaches of the intersection between mobility, risk, and security. A crisis as such has mostly portrayed an extraordinary event, leading to instability and danger and affecting pre-existing normality. The notion of crisis also holds a performative potential regarding prescriptions how to return to the past normality. The notion past normality seems to be the pure metaphor because the twenty-first century started with the cycle of the crisis: ecological, global warming, mass migration, financial, and other. Nowadays crises have become a recurrent features of the “second modernity” leading to the second metaphor—the “risk society”. Today we are the witnesses of many new non-territories and non-places: empty megapolises, airports, rail stations, gigantic shop centers, fitness clubs, stadiums, and refugee camps. The motto Don’t move has radically changed our relationship with space and territory where the process of the closure of existing and non-existing borders started as well as the process of the establishment of new borders. During a short time, new local borders appeared in the cities, suburbs which divided families, places of residence and work, study, culture, and sports. Past epidemic frequently forced philosophers “to speak of a sort of general logic of ‘autoimmunization’, for thinking the relations between faith and knowledge, religion and science, as well as the duplicity of sources in general” (Anderson 2014). In a pandemic, we found a new general actors on the border—the body that can be healthy, infected or infecting others and the latter is in its essence the reason for the closure of borders. During this year we have heard voices like that: “Closing borders is not about science; it is about symbolism, nationalistic and isolationist power”. What it means re-territorialization in pandemic times? Is the meaning of the re-territorialization includes rejection of our right to free movement in pandemic times? How has pandemic led this process to an apogee? Pandemic as such makes the process of a re-territorialization a global

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one. As a European phenomenon, the closure of borders becomes unprecedently global, working in the same scenario. Over the last twenty years, we assumed that space and territories will be similar to waves of territorialization and re- and deterritorialization in an endless process. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari place the figure of the nomad at the center of their political philosophy. They emphasize that “If the nomad can be called the reterritorialized par excellence, it is precisely because there is no reterritorialization afterward as with the migrant, or upon something else as with the sedentary” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 381). They found the differences between migrant and nomad, types of speed, the goals of moving. The last one they define as “the extensive movement from one point to another and the nomad, defined by the ‘path that is between two points’, whose stopping points are only relays or consequences of the nomad’s principal trajectory” (ibid.). They divided the deterritorialization into “relative” and “absolute”, leaves for the “relative” deterritorialization possibility of re-territorialization or returning to the past situation (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 110). Europe in the pre-pandemic phase of history was a new form of post-national construction in which “they start to be a ‘transitional object’, an object of permanent transgression” (Nikiforova 2017: 73). Yet, nobody can suggest that this rare possibility will be realized during only some months and that reterritorialization will acquire a global level. “The social sciences must seek to theorize limits when movement is no longer a temporary state between two stable states, and instead becomes the main form of production of space” (Nelles and Walther 2011: 37).

What Is the Meaning of the Border Closure? Pandemic destroyed border controls appear to negate the most visible achievement of European integration. This situation is not something radically new for the last five years. The European migration crisis prompted border researchers to rethink the process of border crossing and stated the need to revise the functions of the European border. The idea “to move from a geopolitical to a biopolitical horizon of thinking inspired by Foucault and Agamben, gave the possibility to develop a more pluralized view about the place of borders” (Vaughan-Williams 2022). Directors of Global Strategy Lab Steven J. Hoffman and Patrick Fafard have made an attempt to look at the border closure from bioscientific, public, and juridical views. They conclude that too many governments give way to the international public opinion pressure. Border closures against high-risk regions, implemented by many countries from the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, isolated vulnerable to virus communities and quickly ruined their economies. At the same time, in conditions of isolated space, their wish to report new cases of the disease decreased. In Natalie Delia Deckard’s view (she referred to WHO), the travel restrictions not only divert resources from containment effort but have real human costs in themselves. From her view, “the moving restrictions say more about our institutions than about the illness” (Deckard and Vosoughi 2020).

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“Rather than uniting, we are shutting out the world in response to a threat, which for us more conveniently cast as external. From her view,” “the main task after the pandemic will be the need to reconcile the ‘Canadian inclusive image’ we worked to construct with the reality of our closed borders” (ibid.). Since the beginning of the pandemic, there are doubts about the need to close the borders. Some researchers including Angela Mitropoulos underlines that “‘epidemic’ is a statistical, variable category, the accuracy of which depends on the scope of testing, and it yields an incomplete and conditional number. Its method of accounting is exclusive of confirmed cases that are not a result of travel or contact with someone who has traveled beyond national borders” (Mitropoulos 2021: 2). For a little bit more than a year, the opinion about the closure of borders changed from time to time. The stages of these changes can be given conventional names. I named the first stage Fear and trembling. This stage started when WHO declared the infectious coronavirus a public health emergency. WHO advised the states to keep borders open first of all in the view of international solidarity, health and science cooperation. However, almost all countries ignored this advice, and some countries even closed their borders to all states, contributing to an unprecedented stop in global moving which is partly going on today. The second stage is the stage of Global closing and protest. It is characterized by inconsistent border conditions. Striving to be adequate to the rapidly changing Covid situation, a number of countries began to use a system in place that is based on a “traffic light model” allowing quarantine-free entry to the country only from a few green countries. During this stage, EU calls for common politics border closure, but the states had to deal with mass migration and this was a severe problem and try to find their own form for separation from “unwanted aliens”. The “unwanted aliens” were not only the refugees but also EU citizens from the countries with a high incidence of infection. In condition of the pandemic, the supporters of fortressed policy and closure of external borders have found one more important argument—COVID-19. For Latour, the refugee is an “assemblage” that as assemblage has become a refugee (Latour 2005). The refugee image is increasingly associated with a threat to the health of others and less with other aspects such as justice, security, solidarity and care about them. Drahoslav Štefánek, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Migration and Refugees, underlines that the biggest challenges started as twofold: one was that already before the COVID crisis, the refugee camps and centers had been overcrowded. “Now, we have found ourselves in a situation when we need to respect social distancing or more sanitary measures in places which are totally overcrowded with not enough sanitation facilities. The states have the right to manage their borders and the public health emergency situations, but it should not be at the expense of human rights”. For him, “asylum procedures have to be open and in place even during the pandemic situation, as in COVID” (Štefánek 2021). Bruno Latour warned about this in 2005 year when wrote that the modern changing world requires a new look and understanding of our ideas about sociality.

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A new vaccine is being marketed, a new job description is offered, a new political movement is being created, a new planetary system is discovered, a new law is voted, a new catastrophe occurs. In each instance, we have to reshuffle our conceptions of what was associated together because the previous definition has been made somewhat irrelevant. We are no longer sure about what ‘we’ means; we seem to be bound by ‘ties’ that don’t look like regular social ties. (Latour 2005: 6)

The Quiet Voice of a Philosopher at the Beginning of the Pandemic Today there is no need to talk about the unity of approaches of philosophical interpretations of the pandemic. In the article “Epidemic Philosophy”, Warwick Anderson, the researcher of “planetary health” and its philosophical interpretation tries to answer the question “Can a virus ever prompt good philosophy?” (Anderson 2020). He offers a short but comprehensive list of philosophers for whom such problems were subject of philosophical interpretation: autoimmunization, bare life, state of exception, biopolitics, necropolitics (Agamben, Badiou, Butler, Casanova, Deleuze, Espinoza, Foucault, Latour, Mbembe, Nancy and Zizek). Thomas Nail supplemented the list with the names of Félix Guattari, Hannah Arendt and Étienne Balibar. Agata Bielik-Robson offers one more important name. This is Carl Schmitt and his explanation of emergency event as a situation of the suspension of the political law and where normal rules of behavior no longer apply. She cited Schmitt who said that “the rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also, its existence, which derives only from the exception the norm loses its autonomy and becomes only a secondary result of the original decision, a mere ‘crust of the mechanism’ behind which there lurks ‘the power of real life’” (BielikRobson 2016). Nevertheless, each of them is useful for own potential interpretation of future changes and consequences in the “pandemic century”. Gerard Delanty offers some of the approach of philosophical pandemic interpretation: the utilitarian political theory, libertarian theory, Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s a permanent state of exception concept that has numerous followers of humanitarians, social and political activists. The utilitarian political theory, which Delanty understands how intention to that “the greatest good should always be sought after” on practice often was perceived how a pragmatic exclusion which might produce a negative effect on public opinion that some categories of patients “do not deserve help” (Delanty 2020: 1). Delanty translates the Kantian moral philosophy on contemporary pandemic language: “the Kantian position would require the state to save the lives of those who may be too ill to be saved even if this meant resources maybe unavailable to those who could be saved. In other words, the ethical obligation of the state is to save all lives and not to distinguish which ones are of greater value” (Delanty 2020: 3). As an additional argument, he quotes interview, in which Jürgen Habermas told “the efforts of the state to save every single human life must have absolute priority over a utilitarian offsetting of the undesirable economic costs” (Habermas 2020).

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The next one is libertarian theory and its pandemic consequences. For Delanty, the next popular view includes libertarian theory and its important pandemic consequences. Delanty uses concludes that “the reduction of the death rate does not justify extreme restrictions on freedom of the individual where these restrictions entail the removal of rights previously enjoyed” (Delanty 2020: 4). The libertarian motto: “death is preferable to the loss of freedom” was one of the popular slogans of pandemic time protest. The pandemic situation needs us to look at this motto from the view of the common good and safety. Then these words “you have the right to live free” require their continuation “with consequences to the lives of others”. Libertarian point of view has positive aspect from the reason that it concentrating attention on the problem, which start to be important in pandemic time about where the borders of governmental power should be drawn. What humanity has experienced over the past two years turned out to be consonant to what the philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben call about permanent state of exception. The Foucauldian discussion of disciplinary mechanisms that were created to control plaques, such measures as a lockdown, distancing, and masks was not only to stop the spread of the virus, but they were forms of authoritarian surveillance and discipline. Agamben identifies the difference between freedom and authoritarianism, based on Foucault’s work on surveillance in times of plague which leads to interventions against plagues and involves increased information about individuals in fact means surveillance. Agamben interpreted it as the loss of individual freedoms that increase in authoritarianism. Potentially, he looks on this situation as a condition of fear and anxiety, which possibly leads to collective panic. Following Foucault’s analysis of plagues and surveillance some philosophers see the beginning of a new authoritarian regime of governance taking shape in the contemporary pandemic situation. Nevertheless, it turned out that “lamenting lost freedom” is not always appropriate during a pandemic. In the book “The Meaning of Sarkozy” Alain Badiou claims that “the intimate link between politics and the question of foreigners is…absolutely central today” (Badiou 2008). From the beginning of the pandemic, Badiou held a special position in relation to possible changes in the mass consciousness and political rhetoric. He predicted a change of public mood “to return to those sad effects - mysticism, fabulation, prayer, prophecy and malediction - that were customary in the Middle Ages when plague swept the land” (Badiou 2020). In his opinion, the response to the pandemic is multifaceted: it shares a curious contempt for the pandemic simplicity and the ignorance of the novelty of the current epidemic situation. Badiou connects some simple ideas to the wholeness: • the current situation, characterized by a viral pandemic, was not particularly exceptional, • an epidemic is rendered complex by the fact that it is always a point of articulation between natural and social determinations, • the initial image of the pandemic offered the idea of the local picture, however, “the epidemic is instead transversal”,

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• the local transit between animal species that eventually reaches human beings is the origin point of the whole affair and only after that we can operate “a fundamental datum of the contemporary world: the rise of Chinese state capitalism to the imperial rank inside our global existence” (Badiou 2020). At the same time, he is sure that the best pandemic lessons will not be the revolutionary actions but a political critic of an agency, a struggle about justice in the sphere concerning hospitals, public health, egalitarian education, the care of the elderly, and of course new policy of state borders. “Only these might possibly be articulated with a balance-sheet of the dangerous weaknesses on which the current situation has shed light” (Badiou 2020). According to Jaume Castan Pinos and Steven M. Radil, the pandemic condition changed the attitude to the myth of a borderless Europe and the current pandemic makes it “just another folktale”. They conclude: “While the myth of a borderless Europe may have helped to justify the openness of previous border practices in the EU, the harsh reality of the Covid-19 crisis has unveiled just how resilient and meaningful Europe’s national borders continue to be” (Pinos and Radil 2020). For them, the establishment of the strategy of tightening borders comes into direct conflict with the limitless mobility associated with the borderless world narrative. Pinos and Radil note some specific features of the process of re-bordering: • for states all around the world, borders started to be one of the main obstacles to the spread of the virus • the virus, which was portrayed as a foreign invader, became the logical justification for an immediate border closure despite the idea of a borderless Europe has always been important for states—candidates for the EU. Pinos and Radil conclude that “if these border restrictions are eventually lifted, show that the idea of a borderless politics is no longer an inescapable destiny for Europe” (Pinos and Radil 2020). The authors rightly point out that national borders have increasingly operated as barriers to the movement of people within the EU as was during the 2015–2016 refugee crisis in Europe. They think that in the long perspective can see the following pandemic consequences. “In a global context of fear and uncertainty, borders may generate a (perhaps false) sense of protection, stability, and most importantly legitimacy for struggling governments. After all, borders are the ultimate symbol of state power” (Pinos and Radil 2020). Because of the reasons relating to mass migration, the pandemic crisis, and the war in Ukraine does not disappear, the idea of returning to borders as a powerful symbol of political order and stability may intensify in the public consciousness. The latter twenty-first century decade shows us that national borders still matter. Many refugee studies researchers emphasize that from the beginning of the pandemic mass migration problem looks less actualized. Cecile Cantat’s notion of marginalizing solidarity with refugees reflected the shift in priorities during pandemic time (Cantat 2020). What mean marginalizing solidarity for border researchers? First,

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the symbolic reconstruction of political entitlement and exclusion from social life, second, intensification of its internal and external frontiers, third, in the public opinion and political statements the growing priority of security vs. humanitarian.

Necropolitics in Pandemic Necropolis: Density Is Destiny Several philosophical and political concepts have reappeared as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them there was the concept necropolitics which was very popular at the beginning of the twenty-first century and was often associated with the deadliest sea crossing and refugee camps. The lack of access to health care for some population groups and the lack of protection for vulnerable people became necropolitical acts. More than 50 million people worldwide were considered forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, and human rights violations. The discourse of neo-colonialism became an important part of political, sociological, and philosophical context. Pandemic has shown us a new face of the necropolis: Hart Island in the Bronx, Angela Maria Canalis cemetery, the cemetery of Cinisello Balsamo, a Bronx Island, The Behesht-e Masoumeh complex in Qom, the northern city of Manaus and other nowadays mentions as “XXI century necropolis”. This is actualized attention to the concept of necropower (A. Mbembe, G. Agamben, J. Butler, R. Braidotti) to explain, “how life in a biopolitical frame is always already subjugated to and determined by the power of death” (Mbembe 2003). The topic of bio-, necro- and cosmopolitics has become a popular subject and Foucault’s notion “making live and letting die” becomes a modernized rule, which embodies the social body as such. In pandemic times, one of the necropolis’s elements becomes “a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted” (Foucault 2003: 245). From the view of Achille Mbembe, necropolitics based on a strongly normative reading of the politics of sovereignty… “My concern is those figures of sovereignty whose central project is not the struggle for autonomy but the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations” (Mbembe 2003: 14). An interview (2020, March 31) that titled “The Pandemic Democratizes the Power to Kill” Mbembe told: “Now we all have the power to kill. The power to kill has been completely democratized” (Mbembe 2020). Pandemic for him is a new possibility to map the necropolitical underpinnings of injustice and vulnerabilities in the current situation of COVID-19. For Keith Grint, every necropolis is reminder of how thin the veneer of civilization can sometimes be and why it is the responsibility of political leaders to reinforce our collective struggle against the virus, not against the alleged enemy next door. “As such, the language should reflect our common human values, not distinct nationalist values, because the virus does not have a nationality, is uninterested in political boundaries, and unconcerned by border walls: a global pandemic requires a global, not a nationalistic response” (Grint 2020: 317).

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Nicholas Mirzoeff in his essay Notes from the Necropolis shows a bright pessimistic image of New York City. He admits that the city which was the capital of the twentieth century now looks like the memorial to the spectacular incompetence. The city, which has always ranked first in the United States, nowadays was known to be the most infected. He names it the new necropolis, the city of the dead where a new spatial, visual image of the death formatted. “Density is destiny”. New York has always been the city of modern, imagined futures, never taking the time to see what happened in the past. The coronavirus first afflicted the cities that are international megapolis and capitals in most countries in the world. New York is a more famous case, which is literally dying of globalization, and which is also ignoring human social and city human infrastructure in favor of networked communications. Mirzoeff adds, “The signature creations of the world-city were the blue-glassed supertall buildings that have sprouted in the past decades, where the super-wealthy were already self-isolating as a lifestyle and the epidemic has spread fastest in the structures built to warehouse people, above all places for older people and prisons” (Mirzoeff 2020). He summarizes the situation: the point is not to escape the necropolis; the point is to change it. He named the general rule that if an area without infections receives visitors from another area that is infected, it will inevitably become infected. The borders, fences, and walls have become the means to be part of resisting necropolitics. What categories of people have experienced the most difficult consequences in necropolis? Many researchers underline the increased vulnerability of certain populations to pandemic, such as people with disabilities, the elderly, women, people living in poverty or experiencing homelessness, refugees, including the racialized and indigenous minorities. Famous Swedish banker Jacob Wallenberg has notified that common conclusion is pessimistic: “There will be no recovery. There will be social unrest. There will be violence. There will be socio-economic consequences: dramatic unemployment. Citizens will suffer dramatically: some will die, others will feel awful” (Wallenberg 2020).

Modest Attempts to Reality Reconceptualization I would like to concentrate your attention on one of the first humanitarian and social studies reaction on COVID-19. On April 14, 2020, just one month after the lockdown and the launch of quarantine regime Brad Evans who curates Los Angeles Review of Books introduced a series of reflections on pandemic life and policy with the title Quarantine Files: Thinkers in Self-Isolation. The opinions and views were contributed by leading thinkers. Most of them were philosophers, who show a very wide specter of views, experiences, and explanations about images of mass death, social distance, and protests. I thought for a long time about how to present Quarantine Files and whether to structure the main problems or the personalities. Different thinkers use different approaches, and forms of descriptive (poetry, visual art, and autobiography). As a

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result, I opted for a descriptive approach, while maintaining the diversity of the author’s intonations. Brad Evans, a political philosopher and curator of these philosophical reflections, named his own essay as The Love Leviathan. He begins his essay with the simple and scary conclusion that “fear is the invisible killer. We are on a war footing — or so, they say. From an enemy that’s nowhere and everywhere. And so, the State returns out of the ashes of its failures… What good are all your armies now? What good all those missiles and tanks? Like thought itself traveling on the wind, you cannot bomb this out of existence. Out of us” (Evans 2020). The famous frontispiece of Hobbes’s Leviathan, drawing by Abraham Bosse and image of pandemic inspired Brad Evans to give us some contemporary lessons. These lessons include fear, the invisibility as the sum of all known fears; the political always should be embodied in body; death recognizes no continents and borders, and sovereignty seems like a metaphor. Evans identifies the definitions which are of great importance to the changing sense of contemporary philosophy and they include a rhetoric of war, new species of authoritarianism, security, border, and politics of survival. In the introduction to Simon Critchley book How to Stop Living and Start Worrying (2010) Carl Cederstrom offers the following approach. “If a world is defined by ever-growing inequality, political violence, ecological devastation, war and ethnic conflict, there are good reasons to worry; in a time where death has become the last great taboo, we should revive the philosophical art of dying well: ars moriendi” (Cederstrom 2010: ix). In the reflection named Sorry to Disappoint (I knew I should have been a hairdresser) Critchley’s account of pandemic includes some joking and paradoxical idea: • the virus might look really bad for the world, but—hey—there’s a market opportunity for philosophers here. Let’s sell some books! • philosophy has always been about self-isolation: Descartes, Boethius, Pascal. • shortly having dealt with contemporary philosophers (Agamben, Nancy, Habermas and Žižek), he offers “maybe a moment’s pause would be advisable”. The last advice looks a very close to the Jose Ferrater-Mora’s title article “In Times Like These: Wittgenstein, a Symbol of Troubled Times”, where he wrote “those who know what the words ‘troubled times’ mean, do not know Wittgenstein; those who know Wittgenstein do not know what the words ‘troubled times’ mean” (FerraterMora 1953). Cynthia Enloe, whose research focuses on militarized culture and war, in her essay Pulling my COVID-19 language investigates more popular slogans and terminology in pandemic time. She enumerates such phrases as “we’re in a war zone, we’re all soldiers now, we’ll defeat this enemy” (Enloe 2020). In her opinion, such approach is not helpful for the explanation of the pandemic situation. She offers some arguments against a militarized language: • Wars are the privileges of men, but they are not general actors on the pandemic stage: in a public health crisis, most of the world’s healthcare workers are women.

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• The war usually requires enemies. “As result, many Americans have focused their militarized anger on their Asian-American fellow citizens, especially when the current US president chooses to erroneously label the disease the ‘Chinese virus’” (Enloe 2020). • Saying that it is war, we open doors for the suspension of the democratic processes. To the visible marks of this Cynthia Enloe relates such tendency as “legitimizing state secrecy, suspending civil rights, discouraging messy public debates, and shrinking the meaning of genuine national security” and what very important for her “cut back environmental safety regulations” (Enloe 2020). Enloe is sure that “none of those militarized practices and democracy-subverting is capable to effectively protect the uninfected and to cure the infected” (Enloe 2020). She offers some linguistic substitutes, which may demilitarize our imagination: “social solidarity, first responders, struggling together, common challenge and shared sacrifices” (Enloe 2020). Roberto Esposito in his essay Instituting Life wrote that the coronavirus has its own goal—vitam instituere. This definition belongs to the times of Demosthenes, but today it means that life as such, is beginning from an institution. In his view, the city and its political life push out nature and “the biological as such into the limits of a historical horizon”. For him, these autonomous configurations separate the space of logos and nomos from the bios. “The richness of its configurations, the space of logos, and then of the nomos, has never been able to separate itself from that of the bios” (Esposito 2020). However, “our life has never coincided completely with mere biological matter — even when it is violently smashed against a wall… such life reveals its own way of being which, deformed, violated, trampled, and remains such a form of life” (Esposito 2020). For him, only this formal character, other than simple biology, gives it its belonging to a historical context. Esposito emphasizes that “in pandemic time we face two approaches that keep us alive and we must defend the instituted life and the sociability of our relationship with others” (Esposito 2020). The impossibility for humans to stop instituting life defines his second approach that general idea concentrated in his motto “to live in common. Even alone”. For Esposito, human life cannot be reduced to mere survival—to “bare life,” using the Agamben expression. Our communitarian life never coincided with pure biological. “Today this symbolic connection between distance and proximity — the symbol is precisely the figure that articulates them — acquires even greater importance. In the time of the pandemic, human beings are united by a common distance” (Esposito 2020). Deleuze describes the patient situation lying on the hospital bed as existentially borderline: “The life of an individual give’s way to an impersonal yet singular life that releases a pure event freed from the accidents of internal and external life … ‘Homo tantum’.” The life of an individuality (what Benjamin called “qualities” and “attributes”) “fades away in favor of a singular life immanent to a man who no longer has a name” (Deleuze 2005: 28–29).

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Is Europe Without Borders a Chimerical Myth? There are three important things to realize about borders—humans create them, they don’t just occur at the external edge of a state, and not all borders involve the government. These examples start to reveal them. For some people, these new borders are restrictions, for others, they provide certain freedom—maybe not freedom from fear but freedom to move inside limited but safe space. The present 2020-year special issue of Canadian journal Borders in Globalization (BIG) dedicated to The Borderlands in the Era of COVID-19. The BIG editors ask some questions. “What is the role of border policy in confronting infectious disease? Can international boundaries contain pandemics? What are the impacts on local communities of using borders as blunt public-health instruments? What do COVID-19 border closures look like from inside borderlands? How have borderland communities responded? In what ways can border theory enhance both our understanding of and response to global pandemics?” (Brunet-Jailly and Carpenter 2020: 7). The answer we will find in offering BIG essays, which focuses on the many ways’ governments implemented lockdowns nationally, regionally, and locally. At this time, artists and scholars from many parts of the world showed tremendous interest in documenting the border closures as they happened in their communities. The authors challenge the notion that international borders were ever receding under globalization and argue that the synchronous and sharp border closures around the world in the spring of 2020 rather exemplify processes of everywhere “bordering”. The Borderlands in the Era of COVID-19 was written by thirty researchers who documented experiences of more than 20 international boundaries across nearly all continents of the world. It also includes two book reviews. These timely case studies help to imagine better the borders in a post-COVID-19 world. Most of the essays were devoted to the situation on borders between two states: French–Italian, Portuguese–Spanish, Israel–Palestinian, German–French, Danish– German, and other; some of them research situation on the concrete borderlands or raise issues of identity, mental body, divided families, ruined small cross-border businesses. COVID-19 shadow is noticeable within all of these situations and processes. In the opinion of the editors, “the spread of the virus around the world immediately connects each human being with the rest of the world and gives the world a wholeness” (Brunet-Jailly and Carpenter 2020: 9). In my view, border theorists did an excellent job with the task set by the editors: to encourage to rise to the challenge of the moment and develop new concepts, enhance public understanding, and better inform governmental policy” (Brunet-Jailly and Carpenter 2020: 9). Adrien Delmas and David Goeury titled their essay Bordering the World in Response to Emerging Infectious Disease: The Case of SARS-CoV-2 in which they go through close history of pandemic situation. Their task was to interrogate the strategies of border closure in the context of the global epidemics spread, going beyond the simple medical argument and discussing the world bordering process through the old and new borders functions.

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The authors offered hypothesis that pandemic situation has allowed governments to display their biopower by imposing a new sanitary governmentality. Delmas and Goeury emphasized that “the millions of individuals on the move at the moment of closure the border system thus erected came to generalize the experience of irregular migrants” (Delmas and Goeury 2020: 17). They conclude that the novelty of experiencing the uncertainty of movement, which was only the sad preserve of irregular migrants, nowadays spread to European citizens. In their opinion, such a rapid closure of borders was made possible thanks the prolonged “implementation of more and more drastic filtering systems, particularly in the context of the fight against terrorism and clandestine immigration” (Delmas and Goeury 2020: 16). Regarding pandemic times borders, the authors use such metaphors as acceleration, reversibility, thickness and geographical fiction of border ((Delmas and Goeury 2020). The Pierre-Alexandre Beylier’s paper presents of Clément Montcharmont testimony, who works in Geneva and lives in France and who was much impacted by the closing of the border. In his view, “the French–Swiss border is a sign of the re-bordering phenomenon that has been emerging throughout the world in the last 30 years,” and “governments have reinforced their borders with controls and construction of walls” (Beylier 2020: 27). The author finds that the acceptation of protectionist and nationalist instincts visibly grows in times of crisis. Researchers of borders raise the question which today has no answer: “will the pandemic have a long-term impact on how we see (open) borders, or will it reinforce in the long run the rebordering phenomenon…?” (Beylier 2020: 27). The most influential for me was the essay Return of Mental Borders: A Diary of COVID-19 Closures between Kehl and Strasbourg by a researcher of borders Birte Wassenberg. This diary retraces the personal experience of the COVID-19 lockdown at the Franco-German border. For us dairy was important by four reasons: she is a cross-border worker living in Kehl, and working in Strasbourg and a Franco-German citizen with a family and children of both French and German sides, this is author’s personal experience of the border closure and what is important for us, she is a researcher specializing in border studies. Reading her diary from 11 March until 15 June 2020, we are witnessing a deterioration in the conditions of her professional and private life. In her viewpoint, the closure of the border was used by both side national authorities as a measure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Wassenberg conclusions about situation on the Franco-German border deep and analytical: • territorial governance was not considered from a “bottom-up” governance approach: they ignored opinion of the local and regional authorities; • she concluded that the boundaries of the nation-state rather than the areas contaminated by the virus, the absence of a specific health protocol to check border-crossers with regard to medical criteria; • on this background, appear mythical ideas that the virus could be associated with a “nationality” and can be stopped at the national border;

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• she interpreted the meaning of mental borders according to the pandemic situation and shows how “this return long thought forgotten and even overcome which were being drawn along national lines” (Wassenberg 2020: 119). Wassenberg was most worried about the surface of political discourse without account of the many-level identities of inhabitants of borderlands who closely integrated into cross-border spaces. She concludes that “the danger of this national rescaling is to recall into question the very founding principles of the European Union which were based on a unification of the European people and not on their national differentiation” (Wassenberg 2020: 119). The special issue of the Canadian journal Borders in Globalization (BIG) dedicated to the borderlands in the different parts of the world gives us a detailed and important picture of the border closure.

Conclusions In the changing historical circumstances (globalization, mass migration process, ecological crisis, pandemic and war in Ukraine), the EU borders image and its functions begin to change before our eyes. The researchers and media warn that COVID19 is only a modest emergency compared to what is coming in our mobile, global world and wonder whether the contemporary world order which has been in existence over the past seventy years will survive in the crisis’s times. In the title of the chapter, we used the definition “paradigmatic changes” and show such changes that are not temporary but that created a completely new image of economy, connection, moving, education, and healthcare that probably no will return us to the old “normal” way. Today we found a new general actor on the border: the migration case we have deal with an “alien body”, in the pandemic—with an “infected or sick body”. The mass migration and pandemic return us to reality of embodied and embedded world. For borderology one of more important conclusion is that in a global context of fear and uncertainty, borders may generate an emotion of protection, stability, and a desperate need to regain legitimacy and trust to them. In the situation of the mass migration, pandemic, war in Ukraine, appeal to borders as powerful symbols of political order and stability intensified. Today the notions of the nationalist gestures sound more strongly. At the same time, the war in Ukraine opens Pandora’s box about double standard of relation to Ukrainian refugees (2022), unregular refugees (2015– 2017) and migration path on the East EU (2021–2022). Nowadays most researchers concentrated on the pandemic lessons, that will include a range of recovery ideas: to rebuild our societies, the international order, and, what is more, important the understanding that our future is co-determined with others. For recovery world the border situation and we hope in the global but not eternal re-territorialization. Amitav Ghosh asks himself and readers of his book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable: “could it not also be said that the earth has

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itself intervened to revise those habits of thought that are based on the Cartesian dualism that arrogates all intelligence and agency to the human while denying them to every other kind of being?” (Ghosh 2016).

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Foucault M (2003) Society must be defended. Lecture 11, 17 March 1976, Lectures at the College de France. Picador Press, Paris, pp 239–264 Ghosh A (2016) The great derangement: climate change and the unthinkable. Penguin Books, New York Grint K (2020) Leadership, management and command in the time of the Coronavirus. Leadership 16(3):314–319 Habermas J (2020) There has never been so much knowledge about our ignorance. Interview by Markus Schwering. 04/10. https://www.fr.de/kultur/gesellschaft/juergen-habermas-corona virus-krise-covid19-interview-13642491.html Horn E, Bergthaller H (2020) The anthropocene: key issues for the humanities. Routledge, Oxfordshire Latour B (2005) Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford Mbembe A (2003) Necropolitics. Public Cult 15(1)(Winter):11–40 Mbembe A (2020) The pandemic democratizes the power to kill. An interview Diogo Bercito, March. https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/the-pandemic-democratizes-the-power-to-killan-intyerview/ Mirzoeff N (2020) Notes from the necropolis. In: Quarantine files: thinkers in self-isolation. Curator Brad Evans. The Los Angeles Review of Books, April 14. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ quarantine-files-thinkers-self-isolation/ Mitropoulos A (2021) The pandemic, and the pandemonium of European philosophy. Political Geography 84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102275. Nelles J, Walther O (2011) Changing European borders: from separation to interface? An introduction. Articulo. J Urban Res 6. https://doi.org/10.4000/articulo.1658 Nikiforova B (2017) European borders: new materialist approach and beyond. Sovijus 5(2):69–79. http://www.sovijus.lt/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/69_79-p.-Nikiforova-SovijusT.-5-Nr.-2.pdf Pinos JC, Radil SM (2020) The Covid-19 pandemic has shattered the myth of a borderless Europe. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2020/06/12/the-covid-19-pandemic-has-shatte red-the-myth-of-a-borderless-europe/ Štefánek D (2021) The speech the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Migration and Refugees to the 41st session of Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, March 21. https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/covid-19-migrants-refugees-and-asylum Vaughan-Williams N (2022) Introduction. In: Border politics: the limits of sovereign power. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburg, pp 1–13 Wallenberg J (2020) Coronavirus ‘medicine’ could trigger social breakdown. Financial Time, March 25. https://www.ft.com/content/3b8ec9fe-6eb8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b Wassenberg B (2020) Return of mental borders: a diary of COVID-19 closures between Kehl and Strasbourg. In: The borderlands in the era of COVID-19. Bord Glob Rev 2(1):25–29, December. https://doi.org/10.18357/bigr21202019886

Philosophical and Anthropological Dimensions of the Pandemic Crisis

Turning to Face the Non-human: New Strategic Ways to Think About the Pandemic Aleksandr Sautkin

and Elena Philippova

Abstract Based on the theoretical framework of a non-anthropocentric objectoriented ontology, an attempt is made to offer a new perspective for considering the “pandemic reality”, in which the key is the interaction and mutual influence of the human and the non-human, taking into account the complexity of drawing a clear boundary between them. The concept of non-human (in this case, viral) is investigated in the context of its social agency and analyzed through the lens of H. P. Lovecraft’s materialistic worldview as a zone of reality “inaccessible to our understanding and control”. In addition to the dominant medicalized representation of the pandemic, its social (discursive) dimension is also highlighted. It is concluded that the pandemic has not “radically changed the world” but has rather contributed to the implementation of certain possible options for the development of social processes, updating and accelerating some of them. Keywords The non-human · Materiality · Subject-object dichotomy · Non-anthropocentric attitude · Flat ontology · Assemblage · Pandemic reality · Pandemic discourse(s)

Introduction The question of the non-human is one of the key questions of modern philosophy and social sciences, including actor-network theory, speculative realism in all its varieties, dark ecology, social anthropology in the methodological framework of the so-called “ontological turn”, etc. One can speak of a stable trend, which, perhaps, is common for humanitarian and natural science knowledge: it is a rejection of the A. Sautkin (B) Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] E. Philippova Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_6

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anthropocentric point of view, or, to use the formulation of Jean-Marie Schaeffer, a rejection of the thesis of “human exceptionalism” (Schaeffer 2010). This means that we have to conceive of the world beyond the parameters of humankind, not proceeding from a man’s peculiar position in being. This is difficult to do because as we are humans, we think like humans. However, we are able to try to model such a discourse. This is especially relevant in the situation of the pandemic crisis, which is based on a purely non-human etiology. What is non-human as a category of thought? This concept occurs in different contexts. It is often met in works regarding the problems of transhumanism: for example, a cyborg (cybernetic organism) or a digitized consciousness will have some characteristics of the non-human. We find this concept even more often in discussions about the granting of rights to so-called non-human persons, i.e., animals. Actually, all animals including Homo sapiens belong to one kingdom of organisms (Animalia). It is about giving rights to other animals on an equal basis with humans. In this case, the criterion of personality and the basis for granting rights is the presence of high intellect or at least a complex nervous system and brain.1 However, a number of questions arise on the justification of the distinction, making up a kind of gradation: (a) Why do we single out animals, discriminating against all other living things? Why are we contrasting animals as such with non-animals (e.g., plants)? (b) Why do we single out higher animals, contrasting them with animals with a less complex organization? Why do we single out animals of some taxonomic groups at the expense of others? No one will now perceive these questions as a purely rhetorical device, since they have already been seriously posed in academic discourse. For example, Michael Marder in response to Deleuze and Guattari’s injunction (“Follow the plants!”) is ready to be engaged “in irreverent plant-thinking, which will set us on the path of becoming-plant” (Marder 2013: 134). And his own call goes like this: “Let us then try to get accustomed to the idea that thinking is not the sole prerogative of the subject, or of the human being” (ibid.: 134). However, the gradation devoted to arbitrary distinctions can be continued: why do we generally exclude from consideration all other natural objects (stones, soil, rivers, etc.)? Why cannot a river have the right to flow in its bed, why do we ignore the soil’s needs for decaying organic remains? It turns out that we are simply replacing anthropocentrism with broader biocentrism. But the discovery for thinking of the realm of the “non-human” makes it possible to go further. Perhaps we should take two mental steps here: 1. Equalize with each other all objects found in the world; 2. Try to think of ourselves, human beings, in this “flat” ontology. 1

For example, The Nonhuman Rights Project (USA) formulates its mission in the following way: “Our groundbreaking work challenges an archaic, unjust legal status quo that views and treats all nonhuman animals as “things” with no rights”. There is a clarification that it is about great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales who should possess “such fundamental rights as bodily liberty and bodily integrity”. See the website: https://www.nonhumanrights.org/.

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As Levi Bryant sums it up, “rather than two distinct ontological domains, the domain of the subject and the domain of the object, we instead get a single plane of being populated by a variety of different types of objects including humans and societies” (Bryant 2011: 24). How might this turn toward the non-human affect our understanding of the pandemic?

The Non-human as Revelation of Materiality: Lovecraftian Overture in a Fashion Style Howard P. Lovecraft, the weird fiction writer so popular among speculative realists, in one of his most famous stories From Beyond writes, that science and philosophy “should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair, if he fails in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed” (Lovecraft 1934). Despair as a result of a failure of scientific research is still a completely understandable feeling, but “terrors” in case of success can only be explained if we use the lenses of the specific Lovecraftian worldview. This terror is due to the penetration of science into those areas that are located beyond human perception and comprehension, but with which the researcher somehow managed to enter into some kind of interaction. In Lovecraft’s story, an experiment by a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast opens up an opportunity to come into contact with other “worlds of matter, energy, and life” that are near us but cannot be detected by our senses. In other words, we are talking about a collision of a person with something radically non-human. This happens as a result of some physical influences on the characters’ perception with the help of the machine invented by Tillinghast. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the discovery of such non-human worlds can be carried out, as the narrator says, not only by means of experimental science but also by practicing philosophy. In other words, with the help of speculative reasoning and procedures, one is also able to identify the non-human dimensions of being—so that they appear in all their completeness and clarity. It is difficult to recall a work of Lovecraft, where the main character would be a philosopher in the proper sense—as a rule, that is rather a scientist, a researcher. But if we understand philosophy in an extremely broad way, that is, including occult doctrines, magical practices, etc., on the pages of Lovecraft’s texts we constantly meet such “philosophers” who read the Necronomicon and other “esoteric books”. At the same time, in many cases, these characters combine an interest in occult philosophy with an interest in science; in particular, Walter Gilman in The Dreams in the Witch House studies non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics, trying “to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner” (Lovecraft 1933). In principle, we can say that the collision with the non-human occurs as a result of predominantly discursive efforts, i.e., it stems from purely mental activities.

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This synthesis of various types of knowledge in Lovecraft is not accidental: it is due to his fundamental materialism, which, moreover, had certain ethical consequences (Materialistic ideas, by themselves, do not imply any strictly defined ethical attitude). We should not be misled by the mystical spirit of Lovecraft’s plots, for in his oeuvre there is a certain paradox that is not immediately realized by the readers: the author of works filled with descriptions of immemorial magical cults, the inventor of a powerful mythological pantheon, constantly depicting the invasion of dark forces into the everyday life of ordinary people, was a materialist and an atheist (see: Joshi 2001; Hanegraaff 2007; Zeller 2020). No spiritualistic ideas, including the ideas of God, the immaterial soul, posthumous existence in any form, do not fit into this radical cosmic nihilism. Therefore, even where it is about magic and some seemingly supernatural beings, there unfolds the same theme about the fact that the human cognitive apparatus is inapplicable to the whole variety of materiality of the world. All incredible creatures of this writer are purely material, even if they are invisible or difficult to describe. It is just that these are some properties and aspects of materiality unknown to people, but always threatening and suddenly invading our world. Terror comes from the collision of limited ways of “dealing” with the world, inherent in humans, and those aspects of the material existence of this world that humans cannot imagine or predict in the same plane of existence. The abovementioned character named Tillinghast seeks, in his own words, to know the “absolute nature” of things; however, this absolute nature lies somewhere in the depths of materiality, where the usual human concepts no longer work, where there is essentially nothing related to Logos, rationality, habitual patterns of perception. Both occult knowledge and the regular science of Modernity reveal the non-human since ultimately they strive to “peer to the bottom of creation” (Lovecraft 1934). The Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin calls this “bottom of creation” the “worlds of the Great Mother”, or “the area of Cybele”. In his ingenious metaphysical concept of the “three Logoi”, Cybele complements the usual differentiation of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles, which dates back to Nietzsche. The area of Cybele is the lower domain of the universe, completely unintelligible, something reminiscent of the abode of Mothers from Goethe’s Faust. The mentioned thinker writes that this is “a zone of apophaticism from below, a sterile nothing giving birth to nothing, a multiple nothing, which is the opposition to the unified nothing” (Dugin 2013: 498). This is the lower limit of materiality, which can be designated as extremely nonhuman, non-logic, incomprehensible. The paradox is that it is precisely this zone of the non-human that one should try to comprehend, and there is reason to believe that it is possible. However, what should be the philosophy, what tools should it create to talk about the “Mothers”? We will return to this question in the course of further reasoning, but for now, we will only note the basic parameters of our task: we have revealed that in the concept of the world, devoid of all religious-spiritualistic features, the key point is the collision of humans with something non-human. Accordingly, the key task is to think the non-human, to give it a place where the kingdom of Human race was previously undividedly extended.

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The Human and Non-human: Establishing Differences and Distinguishing Boundaries When we say “non-human”, the first thing that comes to mind is the whole world minus us and our creation. But if we give ourselves a little time to think, then we will have to admit that, firstly, it is quite problematic to draw the line between the non-human “world” and us, humans, and secondly, the very concept of the World is problematic, as well as the concept of Nature (i.e., in essence—of any Wholeness). Timothy Morton in his book Ecology Without Nature explains why nature does not exist (Morton 2007), and Levi Bryant, relying on him (but also involving Badiou and Latour), declares that the position “the world does not exist” is fundamental for a consistent flat ontology. Expanding this provision, Bryant argues that it is necessary to establish that the world is not a container within which beings are found. Alternatively, it must be shown that the world is not a super-object composed of all other objects as sub-multiples that form a harmonious whole consisting of beings as complementary and inter-locking parts. (Bryant 2011: 271)

Revealing by our thought the realm of the non-human as a kind of “object” of this thought immediately refers us to the initial distinction that precedes the “indication to”. That is, here the process of reflection is launched in relation to the boundaries that constitute ourselves (how do we define ourselves?), as well as the synchronous process of problematization of this “constitution”. It is as if we always have a basic and comprehensive definition of the human, from which we proceed, assuming everything else as “unmarked”, in the G. SpencerBrown term (Spenser-Brown 1969). However, this initial definition of the human (no matter whether it is scientific, philosophical, theological, etc.) always turns out to be non-exhaustive: every time we have to add some new feature like “with broad flat nails”. Problematization occurs because we find a constant “shading” of the border, which seems to cease to separate this and that, conjugating them. Rather, we always have a “spreading” border, adsorbing elements both on this side and the other side. This adsorption creates a kind of zone of non-distinction, uncertainty, due to which we constantly shift our definitions relative to previous positions. On the one hand, the mark of distinction seems to always precede our statements about the human and the non-human, but at each specific point of the discourse, instead of definiteness, a “blur” is found. In addition, when we assume a difference based on a seemingly fundamental definition of the human, we lose sight of and miss both what is different from us (the non-human) and the difference itself. Levi Bryant speaks of the need to “redefine differences”, referring to the ideas of the already mentioned George Spencer-Brown, expressed in his Laws of Form. He suggests taking objects from the “unmarked” zone to the “marked” one: …the placement of objects in the marked space of distinction within the framework of ontology transforms the subject into one object among many others, undermining its privileged, central, or foundational place within philosophy and ontology. Subjects are objects among objects, rather than constant points of reference related to all other objects.

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In fact, flat ontology can be seen as one of the realizations of a non-anthropocentric attitude, which tends to give preference to networks and rhizomatic weaves over centered hierarchical models.

COVID-19 Pandemic Through Non-anthropocentric Lenses Let us try to show that such a phenomenon as a pandemic, which significantly determines the modern world, can be best considered through a non-anthropocentric attitude. Obviously, a pandemic is both a biological and a social phenomenon. Is it decomposable into these components? Probably not. We can come up with a definition like “biosocial” or “sociobiological” without hesitation, but it would be unlikely to clarify anything. When we say “pandemic” we do not mean to separate its biological and sociocultural components. Trying to define the pandemic, we face the aforementioned blurring border similar to a cloud of paint in water. A simple question “When did the pandemic start?” immediately problematizes the very concept. On the one hand, we can say that from a biological point of view, a pandemic means a sharp increase in the number of cases and the rapid spread of an infectious agent. But it can also be argued that each of us learns about the pandemic from the media and the published decisions of the authorities, that is, a pandemic is “announced”: a situation becomes a “pandemic” when it is called that and certain actions are taken. This is the most elementary level at which we can demonstrate that a pandemic is an assemblage of various details, a certain configuration of objects of different ranks, located nevertheless on the same plane. We should also note that it is not worth thinking about a pandemic as having some kind of integrity or fundamentally unambiguous unity. It is precisely the constantly redefined assemblage, or a “collective” in Bryant’s terminology. This specificity of the pandemic as a phenomenon, which is largely associated with discursive practices, was brilliantly noted by Paula A. Treichler in her 1987 article on the AIDS epidemic. She writes that AIDS is a real and fatal disease, and because of this, there is an attitude to consider science and medicine as having the closest relation to the reality of this disease, and therefore as if having the right to make “true” judgments about it. However, science is not at all the basis of various ideas about the epidemic, on the contrary, they are constantly generated in the course of a complex interweaving of rational ideas and irrational beliefs (in the case of AIDS, the situation was complicated by the specific stigmatized status of risk groups). Actually, we are talking about “a continuum, not a dichotomy, between popular and biomedical discourses, and these play out in language” (Treichler 1987: 35).

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In other words, the epidemic as a social construct is being produced discursively, and the meanings multiply without any scientifically grounded “reality”.2 Hence follows the key thesis of P. Treichler that “the AIDS epidemic is simultaneously an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or signification” (Treichler 1987: 32). Nevertheless, she still emphasizes language and meanings in the spirit of postmodern linguistic reductionism: “I am arguing, then, not that we must take both the social and the biological dimensions of AIDS into account, but rather that the social dimension is far more pervasive and central than we are accustomed to believing” (Treichler 1987: 35). The social dimension is acquired by us in language, so that from this point of view, the epidemic, the bodies, and the attitudes to the epidemic are produced in the discursive space of diverse languages. However, we do not find it productive to highlight one of those dimensions. The point is just to think of them in continuous conjugation—otherwise, we again find ourselves in the same anthropocentric trap, only instead of individual wills and consciousnesses and even instead of the universal structures of the Mind, we have impersonal discursive streams that all the same arise as a result of initial distinction between Society and Nature. However, we can redefine this distinction simply by observing the blurring of the border and the disappearance of the human mark on objects, their realignment on a single plane of being, according to the way described by Deleuze, to whose ideas the “nonhuman turn” goes back in many ways: “Being is said according to forms which do not break the unity of its sense; it is said in a single same sense throughout all its forms” (Deleuze 2001: 304). It is not about stopping thinking of the pandemic as a human phenomenon and start thinking of it as the non-human one. The non-human is just a way to see and hear “the univocity of being”. This univocity of being is the reducibility of all objects to one plane. Differences between things do not create hierarchies. The importance of a thing is determined, so to speak, “ad hoc”, in the current situation, taking into account the momentary state of affairs, and not by its inherent properties. Ultimately, in our right mind we completely distinguish between a person, on the one hand, and bacteria and viruses, on the other, and we are unlikely to declare that they are the same. However, we realize that we are the habitat of many microorganisms, and hardly can we oppose ourselves to them in a rigid way since we are embedded in some symbiotic continual networks, spread out on a single surface of being. Eugene Thacker, in particular, writes that epidemics are an exemplary case of this de-scaling of the human, in which it is not simply a particular manifestation of the living (human host, microbial parasite, animal vector), but rather a whole network of vital forces that course through the human in ways that function at once at the macro-scale and micro-scale. (Thacker 2009: 135)

2

We should not forget that the language of science itself is not at all unified, which, in particular, Donna Haraway draws attention to: “‘Science says’ is represented as a univocal language. Yet even the spliced character of the potent words in ‘science’ hints at a barely contained and inharmonious heterogeneity” (Haraway 1991: 204).

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The way we define differences and draw boundaries is in a sense arbitrary, although it presupposes a certain set of starting points. For example, if we recall the Great Plague, then the Middle Ages discourse field set the conditions for speaking about a pandemic in a significantly different way, just as the possibilities to resist the disease were completely different. That pandemic was also a combination of “epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings”, only the components and their configuration were different. Notable is the fact that even then the detection of the “non-human” was the most important hermeneutical condition for the construction of the “theory of pestilence” with the difference that it was the Divine that acted as the non-human, whereby, according to E. Thacker, in “pre-modern concept of plague and pestilence biology and theology are always intertwined in the concepts of contagion, corruption, and pollution” (Thacker 2011: 105).3 The border is the zone of contact where we can only enter into some kind of interaction with the non-human, establishing a certain stand toward it or trying to grasp its relation toward us, because while moving further toward the non-human, we are losing the ability to comprehend and speak about it. We are plunging into the area of that very fundamental “indescribability” and “inconceivability” of non-human entities that have long been the subject of jokes in the communities of Lovecraft’s admirers. However, just as Lovecraft always “gives us some indication of where to look for the elusive reality even as he undercuts his own descriptions” (Harman 2020: 118),4 so philosophical immersion into the sphere of Great Mothers (the world of pure materiality) can give a special form of philosophy. As Alexander Dugin writes, “Mother’s intuition is a world where God is absent, and this absence is escalated to such an extent that it elevates materiality to the highest principle, exalts its nonexistence and insignificance to the status of an ontological absolute, and the divine Logos dissolving materiality is radically carried out outside of the zone of her matriarchal being” (Dugin 2013: 501). However, the type of thinking that we can calls Dionysian (Logos of Dionysus), in search of the ontological limits of the world, penetrates the kingdom of Mother Cybele and bestows upon her black Logos “the awareness that it is also a Logos, and not just absolute darkness”. This Dionysian logic is constructed in such a way that “any identification presupposes 3

We are not able to analyze in detail the content of these concepts and compare them with the modern understanding of the pandemic, however, we note that some medieval ideas about the mechanism of the onset and spread of the disease, as well as some religious ideas, are actively used today among deniers of the COVID-19 pandemic. 4 Harman writes: “First, there are the numerous moments when Lovecraft merely alludes to realities that are impossible to describe Second, there are those additional moments that we described as forms of literary cubism (close in spirit to the philosophy of Husserl), in which no allusion is made to a thing exceeding the powers of language. Instead, in these cases numerous bizarre or troubling features of a palpable thing are piled up in such excessive number that it becomes difficult to combine all these facets neatly into a single object, thereby giving us the sense of a purely immanent object that is nonetheless distinct from any bundle of features. Third, there were a small number of additional cases in which both the object and its features resist all Description” (Harman 2020: 219).

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the preservation of differences, and any difference preserves invisible connections” (Dugin 2013: 502). This ontological-epistemological optimism differs from the materialistic pessimism of Lovecraft, similar to the gnostic myth, from which the possibility of salvation through gnosis is excluded. However, for our reasoning, both of these ways of dealing with the “radically other” are of equal value, since they show different ways of constructing a non-anthropocentric philosophy.

“Brave New Pest”? In the recent publications on the pandemic, one can often come across statements that “the pandemic has radically changed the life of mankind” and that “life will never be the same again”, etc. These rather dramatic statements are based on the belief that the pandemic is some kind of unique event that “happened” to us. However, this is an obvious delusion: it cannot be said that the pandemic “happened to us”, since we are an integral part of it, as well as it is an integral part of the process of our coexistence. The way in which the pandemic entered our life and intertwined with all its aspects can hardly be called simply an “occurrence”, an “accident”. Rather, the pandemic took place and came true as some kind of possible state of affairs. Next, we will state a rather strong thesis: the pandemic has not changed anything, and the world has not ceased to be the same. The pandemic simply revealed all possible ways to reconfigure some parts of this assembly (adapting to changed conditions). For example, why are we witnessing the intensive usage of “breaking distance media” in education? Perhaps because they became technologically possible a decade ago, we already had them for some time and there were plans for their increasingly active use in the educational process. It would be wrong to say that some exceptional event gave rise to this trend, the pandemic just catalyzed and strengthened the transition to remote forms of educational activities, that is, in fact, just revealed the tendency. The same goes for hiring remote employees. Many large companies (such as Yandex) had practiced it long before the start of the pandemic, and nothing has changed in the organization of work of such employees in a situation of restrictions and lockdown. Internet commerce also appeared quite a long time ago and has been actively developing until now, although the pandemic crisis has undoubtedly intensified it. In addition to the above examples from the realms of mass communication and economics, here is an illustration from the sphere of politics. President Trump had been fighting against immigration to the United States since he took office in 2017, well before the outbreak of the pandemic, which simply gave him additional reason to pursue his anti-immigration policy (we will discuss this case in more detail below). Let us give one more example from the intellectual realm. Various versions of “flat ontology” and object-oriented approaches are also not something new, they

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have been actively developing in the sociohumanitarian thought of recent decades, and the onset of the “new pandemic reality” only made them even more actual. On the practical side, the fact that our whole life is medicalized directs us to fight the virus using science and medicine (and not by repentance through massive movements around the country, accompanied by self-flagellation, as it was during the Great Plague in the Middle Ages). But this is also nothing new: the modern civilized world has been living this way for quite a long time. The situation with vaccination passports, QR codes, quarantine measures, etc. is also not something exceptional—suffice it to recall the variola vera outbreak in Yugoslavia in 1972 and the tough measures taken by the federal government. We want to say that this pandemic does not bring radically new things, but is itself another condition that actualizes certain ratios of some elements. Of course, we are not talking about any epidemic or any biomedical discovery, but about the current one.5 It is important to emphasize that the borders, which at the beginning of the twentyfirst century began to seem invisible and even non-existent, in fact, just kind of faded. However, under the influence of some special circumstances (migration, pandemic, etc.), they regain their distinctness and brightness. Russians of the older generation remember from childhood a story from a Soviet children’s book about Vladimir Lenin, who being imprisoned wrote letters to his comrades, using milk instead of ink to deceive the jailers (first published 1939, see recent edition: Zoshchenko 2008: 469–472). When the paper was heated, the text written with milk became visible. Similarly, the migration crisis and the pandemic “heated” our maps, and now the borders are visible on them again.

The Case of One Trump Tweet: Some Not Very Serious Hermeneutics In April 2020, then US President Donald Trump tweeted: “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” This short text has concentrated a whole range of topics and motives important for understanding the attitude toward the pandemic. First of all, let us pay attention to the expression “invisible enemy”. This indicates a certain non-human entity, which, nevertheless, is the bearer of the agency. The effect produced by this agent is harmful. This is a direct threat to the nation, i.e., the political body. It is possible to suspend the influence of this dangerous agent by closing the borders.

5

For the impact of microbial theory on American culture and social norms, see Tomes (1999).

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In other words, this agent is seen as connected to the bodies of those whose physical presence in the United States must be suppressed. Their bodies are a threat to the general political body of America. At first glance, the non-human appears here as something human-like: (a) Trump uses the metaphor of the enemy to designate a virus, and (b) he identifies the movement of the virus with the movement of human bodies and marks it as an invasion. However, we need to understand that we can offer a different, non-anthropocentric interpretation. Most often we perceive the virus as something external, opposing our bodies; yes, this entity is very small and invisible for us, but it is a separate thing, just like a human body is another one. However, it would be more productive to think of the relationship between a person and a virus not as a connection between two separate entities, but as a network hybrid, and the pandemic itself as an assemblage, including objects of different classes: human, non-human, natural, technical, etc. Viruses are more widespread than any life form, but the question is still not resolved whether viruses are a specific (non-cellular) life form or only a nonliving infectious agent? This is probably the most Lovecraftian class of creatures on Earth since it is difficult to conceive, but it can be described with the help of allusions to something more customary for our minds (e.g., an enemy is something quite understandable). This liminal entity has the necessary and closest connection with Homo sapiens and other organisms in the very mode of its existence. As Ben Woodard writes, “microbial life becomes an interiorizing network that does not slow or cease in the face of survival but continually bores into and simultaneously in the name of life. The microbial is then perhaps particularly insidious example of a Latourian hybrid” (Woodard 2012: 18). Accordingly, we can read Trump’s tweet as follows: the invisible enemy is a hybrid of microbial life and human bodies, and the pandemic is an assemblage that includes, in addition to the above hybrid, also vehicles and transport networks (and also much more, let’s add on our own). In the first volume of Horror of Philosophy, Eugene Thacker writes that Our very concepts regarding disasters generally betray a profound anxiety. That some disasters are “natural” while others are not implies a hypothetical line between the disaster that can be prevented (and thus controlled), and the disaster that cannot. The case of infectious diseases is similar, except that the agency or the activity of this “biological disaster” courses through human beings themselves – within bodies, between bodies, and through the networks of global transit and exchange that form bodies politic. (Thacker 2011: 104–105)

E. Thacker points out an important thing: it is difficult to discern the epidemic from the bioweapon, and therefore we are to redefine entire relations of enmity. Indeed, this “invisible enemy” ceases to be a foe nation or terrorist group. The agency of the non-human is intertwined with the human in such a way that the causes of the outbreak of disease become less important. As Thacker says, “the threat is itself biological; biological life itself becomes the absolute enemy. Life is weaponized against Life, resulting in an ambient Angst towards the biological domain itself” (Thacker 2011: 105). However, it may seem that Trump speculates in terms of the habitual anthropocentric paradigm because he emphasizes the ability to manage this threat: we will close

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borders and keep citizens safe, as well as save jobs for them. That is, here migrants are considered not only as a biological threat but also as a socially harmful agent. B. Woodard believes that the media (and political discourse in general) do not often do justice to “viral life” and its functioning as an independent reality. Thus, he writes: “The attention is shifted from the potential horror of viewing the collective biomass of the human race as only viral food, to the demands of our external capabilities found in technology government and reason” (Woodard 2012: 22). However, technology, the government system, and the military—all need to be included in the assemblage if we follow the object-oriented approach. In the light of this approach, the indicated actions of President Trump (like all other efforts) can be considered as a kind of analog of the immune response: since Life fights Life in this pandemic assembly, then socially in appearance actions (e.g. restrictive measures) are nothing more than biologically relevant reaction in the struggle for the survival of a population. We are not suggesting that Donald Trump became the forerunner of postanthropocentric politics. We were just trying to show that a post-anthropocentric view of the pandemic is possible. Many politicians, government actors, and influence groups continue to think anthropocentrically, that is, they seek to derive some benefit for themselves by making money on the introduction of a certain type of vaccine, having achieved a redistribution of financial flows, or by establishing a system of total digital surveillance.

Conclusions The current situation is characterized by fundamental uncertainty about boundaries, both old and new ones. The pandemic has generated (or rather revealed) many sociocultural and political phenomena that might be cataloged, described, compared but we believe that it is not yet possible to identify their essence as a whole. Therefore, the questions that interest us are related to an attempt to find a correct and acceptable mode of generalization in a conversation about the pandemic and borders. A network understanding of sociality may be useful here, considering both human and non-human actors (viruses, animals, objects of material environment). The object-oriented approach of “flat ontologies”, the rejection of ontological dominants (such as human beings in a secularized new European society) also seem productive in the context of a conversation on the current crisis. Attempts to generalize our pandemic discourse are shattered by the heterogeneity of the layers, levels, and components of the “pandemic reality”. Firstly, we observe the huge difference in situations in the countries of the North and the South, and secondly, we see completely different approaches to regulating social processes in the period of the pandemic, even in countries of the same socioeconomic level. The pandemic situation as a biosocial phenomenon (or assemblage) is a complex interweaving of the human and non-human agency.

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Human agency is represented by different levels of sociality. At the international, geopolitical level, we have such actors as national states and some global organizations (e.g. WHO). The question of the origins of the pandemic, vaccines approved/recognized by the state, the possibility of communicating with certain countries—all this not only depends on sanitary reasons but also overlaps with the existing balance of power in world politics. Here we are dealing with a medicalized discourse within a political framework. At the intrastate, societal level, there are such agents as government bodies, authorities (who develop and implement administrative measures, regulations, and prohibitions), mass media, experts, various communities, social groups, and the population as a whole. Much depends on the awareness, attitudes, and behavior of ordinary citizens, businesses, organizations. Various social agents form a heterogeneous discourse field of understanding the pandemic, which combines popular ideas, biomedical discourse(s), rational and non-rational components. The “new reality” has not yet acquired the proper ways of its managerial comprehension; rather, we are talking about some kind of situational reactions that generate decisions that are often canceled and disavowed after a short time. There is some inconsistency in sanitary and medical measures taken: for example, an increase in cases in the spring of 2020 caused a complete lockdown in many countries, and a similar later increase in cases did not. While there is no strategic vision of the development of the situation, the population is constantly encouraged to do something, including forcibly, while a significant part of the population believes that the measures taken are chaotic and do not pursue the goal of the public good. The situation is being complicated by the fact that the character of the emergence and spread of the virus and its mutations are not clear; we do not know by now to what extent this process is natural (spontaneous) or artificially directed. The worst thing is not the pandemic itself or the mutations of the virus (we can still adapt to this and fight by means of science), but the uncertainty of the situation and the fact that it is changing unpredictably. We feel anxious and powerless, realizing the limitations of our ability to meaningfully manage what is happening. “Natural” again becomes incomprehensible and hostile to “human”. In a sense, we are witnessing a repeated “demonizing” of the world that was “unenchanted” during the positivist era. The occult-materialistic literary works of Howard P. Lovecraft provide a good artistic analogy for understanding the non-human in a pandemic: the virus appears to be an incomprehensible entity, it eludes the human desire to learn how to control it. Viruses, as liminal things, on the verge of living and inanimate, are part of our daily existence. But since we cannot directly see them, they become a part of our everyday life through various representations produced by many actors like the state, the system of medical institutions, the media, etc. For the most part, however, all representations of those non-humans are subordinate to medical discourse. As a result, even everyday language is saturated with “virological semantics” (computer viruses, metaphors of infection and immunity, etc.). In the conversation about the pandemic (whether it be by the government, the media, or the common people), the medical discourse is the leading one, if not

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exceptional. Nevertheless, there are other modes: religious, socioanthropological, artistic, etc., that remain outside the main field of vision. In the article, we have tried to actualize some of these “other” modes of the pandemic discourse by raising the issue of human interaction with the environment in a new way (in the parameters of networks and non-human actors) and by considering non-obvious, non-manifested modes of pandemic representation, in addition to the dominant medicalized one.

References Bryant LR (2011) The democracy of objects. University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor Deleuze G (2001) Difference and repetition (trans: Patton P). Continuum, London and New York Dugin AG (2013) V poiskakh Tyomnogo Logosa (filosofsko-bogoslovskie ocherki) [In search of the Dark Logos (philosophical and theological essays)]. Akademichesky Project, Moscow Hanegraaff WJ (2007) Fiction in the desert of the real: Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Aries 7:85–109. https://doi.org/10.1163/157005906X154728 Haraway DJ (1991) Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. Routledge, New York Harman G (2020) Weird realism: Lovecraft and philosophy. Hyle Press, Perm Joshi ST (2001) A dreamer and a visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in his time. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool Lovecraft HP (1933) The dreams in the witch house. https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/ fiction/dwh.aspx. Accessed 29 Oct 2021 Lovecraft HP (1934) From beyond. https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/fb.aspx. Accessed 29 Oct 2021 Marder M (2013) What is plant-thinking? Klesis—revue philosophique 25:134 Morton T (2007) Ecology without nature. Rethinking environmental aesthetics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Schaeffer J-M (2010) Konets chelovecheskoy isklyuchitelnosti [The end of human exceptionality] (trans: Zenkin SN). Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow Spenser-Brown G (1969) Laws of form. Allen and Unwin, London Thacker E (2009) The shadows of atheology: epidemics, power and life after Foucault. Theory Cult Soc 26(6):134–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409347698 Thacker E (2011) In the dust of this planet. Horror of Philosophy, vol 1. Zero Books, Washington Tomes N (1999) The gospel of germs. Men, women, and the microbe in American life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Treichler PA (1987) AIDS, homophobia, and biomedical discourse: an epidemic of signification. In: AIDS: cultural analysis/cultural activism, vol 4. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 31–70, October/Winter Woodard B (2012) Slime dynamics: generation, mutation, and the creep of life. Zero Books, Winchester Zeller BE (2020) Altar Call of Cthulhu: religion and millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Religions 11:18. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010018. https://www.mdpi.com/20771444/11/1/18/htm. Accessed 29 Oct 2021 Zoshchenko MM (2008) Inogda mozhno kushat’ chernilnitsy [Sometimes you can eat inkwells]. In: Zoshchenko MM Belkin’s sixth story/collected works, vol 6. Vremya, Moscow, pp 469–472

Existential and Cultural Aspect of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Prospect of Forming New Cultural Boundaries and the Phenomenon of Mood Vasilii Voronov

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic is understood as a cultural phenomenon inextricably linked with restrictive practices, new patterns of behavior and, above all, attitude toward it. The main line of analysis is connected to the clarification of existential and, at the same time, intersubjective factors that can potentially lead to the formation of new cultural boundaries. As a kind of dotted lines of potentially new cultural boundaries, we understand those cultural gaps that can be seen in the difference in reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic. In our opinion, the difference of positions can be classified as follows: Covid-alarmism, Covid-loyalism, Covid-skepticism, Covid-dissidence. Differences are manifested in the attitude to the assessment of danger, to restrictive control measures, and to their consequences. Empirically, the author’s position is based on the results of a secondary analysis of the data of sociological opinion polls, which were conducted as part of the implementation of the corona-POF project. For theoretical analysis, the author refers to the concept of mood, understanding it in an existential-phenomenological way, following the line of M. Heidegger and V.V. Bibikhin. Keywords Covid-19 pandemic · Cultural gaps · Cultural boundaries · Mood phenomenon · Tuning · Disposition · Covid-alarmism · Covid-loyalism · Covid-skepticism · Covid-dissidence

The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Cultural Phenomenon: Group Differences The Covid-19 pandemic, which was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, opens up a wide field for philosophical analysis. In the current situation, a number of

V. Voronov (B) Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_7

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interrelated aspects can be distinguished: biomedical, socio-political phenomenon, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and existential. The focus of our article is on the topics revealed in the aspect of intersection of cultural and existential meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The main socio-cultural trend is associated with the abrupt transformation of a number of everyday practices (work, education, communication) under accepted restrictions (the so-called lockdown) and at least the temporary transfer of many of them to new formats, often of an online nature. In an existential sense, one can speak both about one’s own direct experience of illness in severe form, illness of loved ones, loss of loved ones, struggle with serious consequences of illness, and about the experience of actualization of existential closeness in the perception of illness, death, and loss. Finally, the very experience of the changes brought by the pandemic as a whole, as well as the experience of collisions and conflicts that are produced by different attitudes to what is happening, also is of an existential nature. The fundamental difference in positions regarding the assessment of the pandemic and measures to combat it leads to the formation of new cultural gaps associated with differences in reactions to the pandemic, to restrictive measures, to transformation of everyday life. We understand cultural gaps as a consequence of the inconsistency of intersubjective meanings that determine the difference in the behavior of different people in the same situation. In fact, we can talk about group differences, first of all, on a cultural and informational basis—that is, by attitude to the very fact of the pandemic, the official discourse around it, restrictive measures, and the consequences that it has caused. The facts of difference in relation to these aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic are recorded by the data of sociological surveys conducted in different countries. In general, in relation to the perception of the pandemic and restrictive measures, we distinguish four positions: (1) “Covid-alarmism”—recognition of the fact of the pandemic, the existence of the virus and, at the same time, conviction that the measures and restrictions taken are insufficient; (2) “Sovid-loyalism”—recognition of the fact of the pandemic and the existence of the virus and, at the same time, confidence that the measures and restrictions taken are sufficient; (3) “Sovid-skepticism”—recognition of the fact of the pandemic and the existence of the virus and, at the same time, conviction that the declared assessment danger is exaggerated, and the measures and restrictions taken are excessive; (4) “Sovid-dissidence”—conviction in the fake nature of the pandemic, or at least the conviction that the new coronavirus is not much more dangerous than the flu, and, therefore, a strongly negative attitude to the measures and restrictions taken. As a fact, we are facing the inconsistency of ideas about what is happening, which manifests itself in differences in the assessment of danger of the pandemic, and in different attitudes to the practice of restrictive measures (changing everyday life), their socio-economic and socio-political consequences. These differences are also

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manifested in conflict clashes: disputes, ridicules, mask conflicts, etc. Difference is also manifested in the so-called Covid vocabulary, and especially in words with a pronounced negative coloring, which kind of stigmatize the position of opponents. The principal methodological position of the author of the article is that these differences cannot be explained only by reference to socio-economic or sociopolitical reasons. Of course, the socio-economic aspect of the problem cannot be discounted, but at the same time, in practice, people whose economic situation has not been seriously affected are also dissatisfied with the restrictive measures. On the other hand, among those affected by the policy of restrictions (in the socio-economic aspect), one can find people discontented not so much with the restrictions but with the measures of economic support insufficient for them. It appears that even if the authorities of most countries introduced the maximum possible measures of social support (e.g., guaranteed income during the period of restrictions), we would still face a struggle of opinions and possibly political protests. This idea can be illustrated using the material of sociological studies of the Russian society conducted within the framework of the corona-POF project, implemented as part of the work of the Russian sociological company Public Opinion Foundation (https://covid19.fom.ru/). First of all, we’ll seek data revealing the social portrait of a Russian Covid dissident. The definition of Covid-dissidence used in the research of the corona-POF project is close in meaning to our definition: the position of “those who are sure that the coronavirus does not exist, that it is fiction” (Zakutina 24/07/2020). In July 2020, there were more unemployed people among those who denied coronavirus (19%, and an average in the sample—12%), and those who assessed their financial situation as poor and very poor (45% vs. 34% on average in the sample) (Zakutina 24/07/2020). However, in January 2021, on the contrary, among Covid-dissidents there were more of those who rated their financial situation as good than average in the sample (12% vs. 6% on average for the sample) (Zakutina 02/02/2021). Respectively, if, according to the data obtained in July 2020, it is really easy to see the connection between the denial of coronavirus and unfavorable socioeconomic factors, then according to the data obtained in January 2021 it is already difficult to do it. According to the survey conducted in September 2021, the only difference between the group of Covid-dissidents was a higher percentage of men aged 31–45 years old—17% than average for the sample—10%. It is important that the share of Covid-dissidents, at least in the Russian society, does not tend to zero in a situation of collision with the “harsh realities” of the coronavirus pandemic. So, in July 2020, 12% of the surveyed Russians denied the fact of a pandemic, in January 2021—6%, in September 2021—10% (Zakutina 01/10/2021). It is characteristic that Covid-skeptics and Covid-dissidents often operate with the same explanatory logic as those researchers who reduce the difference of positions to socio-economic factors. We are talking about the belief that the reason for the measures taken (mask regime, restrictions, mass vaccination campaign) is the lobby of state and business structures that benefit from this. A similar explanatory scheme is associated with a reduction to socio-political goals. Here we can talk about a palette of views: from the conviction that state structures are trying to use the situation for their own purposes to the radical belief that everything that is happening is the result

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of a secret world conspiracy. In our opinion, the very prevalence of such reductionist arguments, as well as their easy mutual reversibility in the discussion, serves as indirect proof that the situation is more complicated. If we talk about the attitude to the pandemic as an existential event, it should be noted that the overall assessment of danger depends on the personal assessment of risk to yourself and your loved ones. So, older people tend to agree with the imposed restrictions more, while corona-dissidents and corona-skeptics are mostly young people. At the same time, the actual degree of risk and the degree of its assessment in one’s mind may differ significantly. Therefore, it can be claimed that general and personal assessment of danger are both influenced by cultural and informational factors. The importance of the cultural and ideological component in the adoption or non-adoption of restrictive practices can be illustrated by the example of different attitudes to the pandemic in the American society in March 2020. At that time, among the supporters of the Democrats, the percentage of those who believed that the severity of the crisis was exaggerated equaled 31%, and among the supporters of the Republicans—62% (Sheipin 2020: 366). As you know, the then Republican president, D. Trump, actively promoted the idea of exaggeration of the danger by media in the interests of the bosses of the Democratic Party who stand behind them. On the one hand, it can be assumed that the supporters of the Republicans and personally President Trump, in principle, were more disposed to take this position. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that without such an active Trumpist information policy, the percentage of Covid-skeptics, at least among the Republican supporters, would be lower. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, two points are crucial for us: (1) cultural and informational factors, in principle, influence a person’s position; (2) we can talk about a certain disposition (attunement) of a person to occupy a particular position, respectively, to the perception and rejection of specific information, which (disposition) cannot be reduced only to socio-economic or socio-political factors. The stability of fundamentally different positions regarding the risks of illness and restriction practices is partly due to the cultural and informational trend that T. Nichols referred to as “death of expertise” (Nichols 2017). The point is that the broad masses of people who have open access to knowledge (primarily through internet resources) stop taking the figure of an expert scientist seriously. A kind of challenge of our time is the hyper-availability of knowledge, which is presented mainly in the forms of informational messages and popular science programs. Although the position of Nichols may seem somewhat radical, however, there is a certain rational kernel in it. In particular, with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are facing such hyperavailability of information. Due to easy accessibility of both general and special information resources, many are beginning to consider themselves to be sufficiently competent experts in relation to what is happening. Ironically, this situation is fixed in everyday discourse through jokes about the increase in the percentage of “virologists” in the circle of friends and acquaintances.

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It is also important that in the modern conditions of information flow about the pandemic, the thesis that for each expert there will always be a counter-expert approximately equal in status (an expert with the opposite position) is clearly confirmed. Accordingly, a person can consider himself, at least, capable of choosing one or another expert position. In particular, in the sphere of philosophical reflection of what is happening, for example, we can point out the difference in the position of such left-wing European thinkers as G. Agamben and S. Žižek. It is important that these philosophers cannot be called purely academic authors only. Due to their relative famousness in the non-academic community and access to information channels, they can also be considered as key opinion leaders (KOLs). According to G. Agamben, whose position can be defined as close to Covid-skepticism, the main problem is not the danger posed by the epidemic, but the excessive reaction of the authorities and society to the pandemic situation (Agamben 2020). On the contrary, according to S. Žižek (2020), restrictions are necessary and the taken measures are adequate, but problems and risks are caused by weaknesses of modern capitalist economy and insufficient role of global institutions in modern politics. Accordingly, people whose position is close to Covid-loyalism and Covid-alarmism can refer in particular to the authority of S. Žižek, while Covid-skeptics and Covid-dissidents to that of G. Agamben. This difference between qualified expert and counter-expert opinion is also present in medical and biological discourse. Of course, there is a mainstream line on the basis of which WHO recommendations are adopted, but there are also expert biomedical assessments criticizing the practice of restrictions and many of the measures taken.

The Covid-19 Pandemic in an Existential Sense: A Mood Phenomenon In order to clarify the ontological grounds by virtue of which new cultural gaps are actualized, it is productive to turn to ontological theoretical optics. The main methodological key to which we turn to is the phenomenological interpretation of the phenomenon of mood (tuning, attunement, disposition). We turn to the meanings of the concept of mood developed in the works of M. Heidegger and in the works of one of Heidegger’s translators into Russian language and an independent Russian philosopher—V.V. Bibikhin. M. Heidegger revealed the understanding of mood (Stimmung—in German) not just as an individual psycho-emotional state, but as an existential and intersubjective phenomenon. Following the Heidegger line, we understand mood as a kind of disposition (openness) to something or, in other words, as “attunement to …” (Heidegger 2013: 105–118). As close in meaning M. Heidegger used the concept—disposition (Befindlichkeit in German) (Heidegger 2006: 134–138). The meanings of the related concepts of mood, tuning, attunement, disposition are revealed in Heidegger’s works in at least three interrelated aspects:

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(1) as people’s attunement to one another fixed in everyday experience and manifested in the ease of transmitting and picking up specific moods; (2) as fundamental attunement to the key parameters of one’s own existence (“beingto-death”, “being-in-the-world”, etc.) expressed in the so-called fundamental moods; 3) as a kind of general pathos, message or general desire (general mindset) to reveal a certain intention or principle, i.e. “attunement to …”. In the field of Russian thought, the topics of mood as an intersubjective phenomenon of culture that determines the nature of various historical times and the course of historical movement were developed by V.V. Bibikhin (2015, 2017). Mood, according to the Russian philosopher, constitutes the attitudes and expectations of people, readiness to act in a certain way, to expect decisions and measures of a certain type from the authorities. Thus, criticizing the interpretation of Peter’s reforms as a local Russian version of catching up modernization (in a polemic with H. von Wright), Bibikhin draws attention to the extreme nature of the reforms, aptly noticed in the wellknown image of “bucking Russia” (Bibikhin 2017: 9–16). The Russian philosopher associated such extremeness, as well as readiness of the people for such extremeness, with the attunement manifested in the course of the Russian history. We are talking about a disposition to eschatological submission to suffering, deprivation, loss, as well as disbelief in the possibility of a final earthly arrangement, and, as a result, readiness (disposition) for any drastic reorganization of the existing order, as a rule, in a radical and decisive way (Bibikhin 2015: 354–365). In addition to the general moods, the tones of a certain culture, we can talk about moods that highlight the features of certain historical times. In this sense, mood acts as a kind of color, tone, coloration of the epoch (Bibikhin 2015: 180–182). According to Bibikhin, it is impossible to finalize analytical explication of such sentiments due to their volatility, variability, and, therefore, it is impossible to fit them into some kind of a complete logical scheme of history. Extrapolating, it is worth saying that moods, respectively, cannot be completely “driven” into any psychological scheme. Such understanding of mood relieves from schematism but makes this phenomenon extremely volatile and resistant to any analysis, including philosophical analysis. We understand mood as an ontological phenomenon that can be accessible to philosophical reflection and defines specific ontic phenomena (cultural patterns, language games, etc.). In mood, as in an ontological phenomenon, we distinguish two interrelated aspects: (1) the disposition of people to think, speak, act in a certain way, which (disposition) produces particular ideas and positions, determines cultural attitudes and language games; (2) emotional-volitional tone, a kind of pathos, associated with this disposition and influences specific cultural attitudes and language games. The main methodological advantage of using the concept of mood in this case is that it allows us to consider the cultural gaps associated with the pandemic not only at the ontic level, but also at the existential-ontological level. To clarify our methodological

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position, we can cite the following thesis by M. Boss: “all ontological characteristic features of some case (Sache) are always viewed only through ontically described givennesses, and vice versa, all ontically perceived givennesses are grounded in their ontological definitions and – since they take place – are permeated by them” (Boss 1994: 88). In this case, the principles of our analysis of socio-cultural phenomena are built by analogy with the thought of M. Boss in relation to mental and psychopathic phenomena. Our principled position consists in the thesis that not only the Covid-19 pandemic itself as a biomedical phenomenon has become possible due to the peculiarities of the modern world (open borders and the scale of tourist, migration and business flows), but also the introduced restrictive measures have become possible only due to a certain state of modernity. Meditating in such a way, we should shift the focus of the analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic as a socio-cultural and existential phenomenon from the Žižek’s question: “what is wrong with our system?” (Žižek 2020: 4) to the question: “what determines the differences in our perception of the current situation?”. Answering it, it is worth focusing on the historical tuning that is beginning to unfurl in the era of Modern times. Of course, there are grounds to define the current state of affairs as modernity or as post-modernity or as meta-modernity or even as post-postmodernity and, accordingly, clearly separate it (the present state of affairs) from the historical era of Modern times. However, following the thought of M. Heidegger, it can be noted that in many aspects modernity is grounded by the unfurling of that historical mood, which for the first time is clearly manifested in Western Europe in the era of Modern times (Heidegger 1993). The key mental patterns that can be pre-captured in the modern European mood as relevant for our analysis are as follows: 1) disposition to rational-technical (rational-instrumental) control of the world with reliance on science and technology and, therefore, desire to control and dominate nature; 2) disposition of a person to forget himself as a mortal being and, precisely, as a suddenly mortal being; 3) disposition to freedom, understood as freedom of will (freedom of volition) and, mainly, within individual limits.

Groups the Boundaries Between Them and the Specifics of the Modern Mood The desire to minimize the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, and, ideally, to put an end to it, expresses a common modern European intention for a rational (re)structure of the world. This aspiration is expressed in a succinct form in the famous formula – scientia potentia est (scientia est potentia) = knowledge is power attributed to F. Bacon. Although there is no full correspondence in Bacon’s texts to this formula, but in this form it conveys well the dominant tuning of the modern European thought. In particular, we can quote from “Novum Organum” by F. Bacon: “Knowledge and

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power of a man coincide, because ignorance of the cause makes it difficult to act” (Bacon 1972: 12). Knowledge or science is understood, first of all, as natural science knowledge, and power is understood as the power to transform nature and people’s lives. The expression of this intention can be seen in the universalist philosophical and historical concepts of Modern times, based on the idea of the so-called end of history. The idea of the end of history in the modern European sense is the idea of the future rational and technical reconstruction of the world. Of course, in the modern European concepts of history there is also a theme of the progress of reason in the sense of moral and legal progress. However, the initial intention of the modern European thought is the belief in the positive role of knowledge, first of all, as a source of power over nature. In any case, such an understanding of the purpose of history explicitly postulates the understanding of a man as a subject of history. This modern European intention is also visible in the Marxist understanding of history, when history, on the one hand, is thought of as an objective process, but, on the other hand, a man is understood, though implicitly, as its subject. Of course, it is not about an individual, but rather about a subject in the collective sense. As such a subject, at various times, the following phrases were used in the language of programs and slogans: “proletariat”, “soviet people”, “progressive forces”, etc., aware of their position. Such an attitude toward a man as a subject of history determines the lines of comprehension of the pandemic in modern philosophy. It is no coincidence that Žižek discourses upon the communism of emergency measures during the pandemic (Žižek 2020: 92–93, 97–105) and, in fact, sees salvation from such challenges in the acquisition of collective subjectivity of humanity. In this sense, indicative is the logic of the Slovenian philosopher, according to whom: state governments are more successful as subjects of combating the pandemic than individual capitalists and corporations, and transnational institutions are more successful than individual states (Žižek 2020: 85–105). It can be said that the nominal modern European pathos manifests itself both in the fact that modern man is not ready to allow either epidemics like the medieval ones, or epidemics like those of the twentieth century (“Spanish flu”, “Hong Kong flu”, etc.). Generalizing, we can say that we are not ready to allow non-subjectivity of a man. It is indicative that for such a modern philosopher as A. Badiou, in the situation of a pandemic, nothing else is most disturbing than a kind of de-subjectivization in the face of current events: “It seems that the challenge of the epidemic is everywhere dissipating the intrinsic activity of Reason, obliging subjects to return to those sad effects – mysticism, fabulation, prayer, prophecy and malediction …” (Badiou 2020). Summarizing the above, we can say that the mood foundation that grounds the position of Covid-loyalism and partly Covid-alarmism is the disposition to preserve the status of the subject, i.e. in this case, to preserve the idea of control over nature. Naturally, the new virus, which obviously shows the illusory nature of an attempt of total control, begins to be perceived in the transformed form of an enemy, and not just an object of medical science.

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It is fundamentally important that raising the ontological status of a person to the status of a subject of the cultural and historical process implies oblivion the key characteristic of existence—mortality, and, namely, sudden mortality. The idea of dominating nature as a way to gain historical power leads to oblivion of those aspects of existence that do not fit with such an understanding. We are not talking about oblivion in the sense of direct forgetting, but rather about existential-ethical oblivion. In this sense, the current situation of the global pandemic, in contrast, actualizes the experience of understanding one’s own mortality, and the mortality of loved ones and significant others. Such existential experience is skillfully described in L.N. Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”. The main character, Ivan Ilyich, finds himself in a situation of serious illness and gradually comes to the understanding of the immediate prospect of death, the thought of which is extremely difficult for him, and ends his days with a cry of horror lasting several days, and only at the very end finds calm and clarity. It is noteworthy that Tolstoy defines the described story as “the simplest and ordinary and the most terrible” (Tolstoy 2006: 68). The literary character finds himself in a situation discrediting the typical mode of attitude to death, which M. Heidegger defines as displacement of death “for some time later” (Heidegger 2006: 257–259). Such oblivion of death was interpreted by M. Heidegger as a characteristic feature of human existence in its closest mode—i.e. in a situation of averaging everyday life. The closest mode of existence, we find ourselves in, receives from Heidegger the title—das Man. The experience of das Man is an experience of being among others, in which the impersonal middle-accepted prevails. In this sense, impersonal maxims: “people die”, “people are actually mortal”, close the possibility of tuning their own being, since they obscure the true meaning of death. Strictly speaking, das Man is a way of existence that closes a person’s own opportunity to be what Heidegger refers to by the title—Dasein (Da-sein). The existential analytics developed by Heidegger in “Being and Time” suggests a fundamental distinction between one’s own death and the death of others. One’s own death is understood within the framework of existential analytics as the only one necessary for existence. In our opinion, one’s own experience of pain and anxiety, acquired in connection with death and dying of Others, can also be understood not just as a psycho-emotional experience, but precisely as an existential experience. Agreeing with E. Fink, we can say that, in principle, it is impossible to definitively resolve the issue of the priority of one’s own death, always given to us as impending, or the death of another close person that affects us phenomenally (Fink 2017: 137–143). Of course, the experience of Other’s death can be stopped as the experience of death of an easily replaceable person, and, in fact, other accidental person. So, Ivan Ilyich was quite easily replaceable both as an official and as a card-player partner. At the same time, the experience of Other’s death as that of a close and significant person is also possible. It is difficult to call a close and significant person accidental and easily replaceable. It is also important that in such existential experience it is easier to see your own mortality, even if only for a short time. An indicative moment in the Tolstoy’s story is when Ivan Ivanovich’s colleague, Pyotr Ivanovich, even for a short time, is horrified by the thought that “this” (suffering and death) “may come now, any minute” for him too (Tolstoy 2006: 67). In this sense, the modern

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pandemic (especially due to its presentation in the media and in the internet), by virtue of showing the unexpected death of other person, can help to exit the existential “oblivion” of death, into which the dominant cultural tuning plunges us. The dominance of das Man in relation to death is also manifested in the displacement of the discourse of sudden mortality from language games that claim to be serious, not entertaining. In this regard, it is significant that such an actual pandemic was hardly imaginable for the situation of average everyday life in successful countries of the modern world as a real possibility, and not as a possible plot for a movie, book, TV series, or computer game. As rightly noted by A. Badiou regarding the French, and, more broadly, European society (community): “…no one had predicted, or even imagined, the emergence in France of a pandemic of this type, except perhaps for a few isolated scientists. Many probably thought that this kind of thing was good for dark Africa or totalitarian China, but not for democratic Europe” (Badiou 2020). Thus, the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic is also the experience of an existential reminder to a modern man (at least from a prosperous part of humanity) about his sudden mortality. In this sense, the position of Covid-alarmism as caused by collision with this sudden mortality can open up the possibility of genuine being to a person. At the same time, for this purpose it requires that a person does not dwell in this situation of Covid-panic constantly, but proceeds to follow the principle of existence that M. Heidegger designated as resoluteness (Entschlossenheit—in German). Disposition to the unfurling of human freedom also lies in the basis of the modern European mood. Freedom itself is understood, first of all, as freedom of will—that is, as freedom of volition. As the historical experience of the twentieth century shows, a willing subject can be understood both as an individual and as a collective subject: class, people, race, state, etc. The collectivist understanding in practice means restriction of individual freedom of will, generating a certain antagonism. At the same time, the collapse of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, which aspired to be an ideological alternative to western liberal democracy, marked strengthening of the understanding of freedom as, first of all, individual freedom, only consistent with the collective will. In this sense, it is no coincidence that in the western philosophical and ethical thought (from B. Spinoza to E. Fromm and modern authors), the themes of genuine freedom, criticism of arbitrariness, affirmation of the connection between freedom and reason, etc. have such significance. The framework of individual freedom in the situation of modern restrictive measures is seriously compressed. Compression requires legitimization, and it is not by chance that the metaphor of war is gaining popularity in the official discourse. At war, in many ways, there are other things to worry about than individual stuff; and restrictions and prohibitions are common. However, such metaphoric affects to the extent, to which a person is disposed (attuned) to it. In this sense, a modern Covid-skeptic or Covid-dissident, violating quarantine rules and restrictions, can be partly understood based on the position of Agamben (2020), i.e. as a person dissatisfied with the “bare” life that the accepted restrictions leave for him. And this is just one aspect of the problem. After all, a significant part of life of a modern man already largely takes place in the virtual space, someone is a stay-at-home person by nature, and many have discovered that the remote format

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of work is more convenient for them, etc. However, all these advantages crash into the fact that restrictions are directive. In this sense, there is an obvious difference between, for example, a decision on a remote format of work reached through an agreement between an employee and an employer, and a forced transition. Because of this, there is often a tuning in to that negative emotional-volitional tone (pathos) that supports language games that deny accepted restrictions. It appears that it is no accident that the metaphors expressing dissatisfaction with restrictive measures are so emotionally negative: “digital concentration camp”, “digital prison”. If the metaphor of war serves to mobilize, to reconcile society with restriction (there is no freedom in the trench), the opposite metaphors concentrate protest moods (prison is no home).

Conclusions Summarizing the above, in an existential-ontological sense, we can talk about the mutual inconsistency of the basic mental patterns of the modern European mood. It is this contradiction that grounds the difference in positions regarding the pandemic and restrictive measures. The position of Covid-loyalism is to a greater extent constituted by the disposition to rational-technical control of the world with reliance on science and technology and, therefore, the desire to control and dominate nature. Manifestations of Covid-alarmism are associated with an existential collision with the sudden mortality of a human being, which (collision) throws a person out of the mode of oblivion and postponement of death. Finally, disposition to freedom, understood as freedom of will (freedom of volition), mainly within individual limits, grounds the positions of Covid-skepticism and more radical Covid-dissidence. In this regard, it is important that recurrence of such an experience of a global pandemic is quite possible. Obviously, in this case, it is quite possible to institutionalize or, at least, to routine those restrictive measures that are now perceived as force majeure and which are legitimized through the metaphor of war against the virus. In extreme cases, the desire to control nature can contribute to the actualization of radical post-humanistic ideologies, i.e. actualize the danger of the “abolition of man” using biotechnological means described by F. Fukuyama (2004). Accordingly, it is quite likely that radical counter-trends (“escape to nature”, open protests) will be formed, which will be constituted by another aspect of the modern European mood, namely the disposition to preserve freedom of will as individual freedom. In this case, will the existing cultural gaps, expressed in the difference of the considered positions, take the shape of new cultural boundaries? Is it possible that comprehension of what is happening now as a new cultural and existential experience will allow us to open up to a different mood, not defined by the modern European pathos? For example, a mood that implies weakening of the disposition to rational-technical control over the world and strengthening of the disposition to a more poetic attitude to nature and to one’s own life? Shall we be more ready for existential acceptance of the fact of

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sudden mortality of ourselves and significant others, or will the intention to control and dominate nature sooner or later lead to the formation of our post-human future?

References Agamben G (2020) Clarifications. Retrieved from An und für sich website: https://itself.blog/2020/ 03/17/giorgio-agamben-clarifications/ Bacon F (1972) Novyj Organon (Novum Organum). In: Bacon F (ed) Works in 2 Volumes, vol. 2. Mysl, Moscow (In Russian), pp 6–224 Badiou A (2020) On the epidemic situation, 23 March. Retrieved from Versobooks.com website: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4608-on-the-epidemic-situation Bibikhin VV (2015) Pora (vremya-bytie) (Time (time-genesis)). Vladimir Dal, Saint Petersburg (In Russian) Bibikhin VV (2017) Drugoe nachalo (Another beginning). Nauka, Saint Petersburg (In Russian) Boss M (1994) Vliyanie Martina Hajdeggerana vozniknovenie al’ternativnoj psihiatrii (Martin Heidegger’s influence on establishment of an alternative psychiatry). Logos (5):88–100 (In Russian) Fink E (2017) Osnovnyefenomeny chelovecheskogo bytiya (The basic phenomena of human existence). Kanon+, Moscow (In Russian) Fukuyama, F. (2004). Nashepostchelovecheskoe budushchee: Posledstviya biotekhnologicheskoj revolyucii (Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution). AST, Luks, Moscow (In Russian) Heidegger M (1993) Evropejskijnigilizm (European Nihilism). In: Heidegger M (ed), Vremya i bytie: Stat’i i vystupleniya (Time and being: articles and speeches). Respublika, Moscow (In Russian), pp 63–176 Heidegger M (2006) Bytiei vremya (Being and time). Nauka, Moscow (In Russian) Heidegger M (2013) Osnovnye ponyatiya metafiziki (The fundamental concepts of metaphysics). Vladimir Dal, Saint Petersburg (In Russian). Nichols T (2017) The death of expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. Oxford University Press, Oxford Sheipin S (2020) Kovid i obshchestvo (COVID and society). In: Proshchaj (ed) COVID? (Goodbye, COVID?). Izdatel’stvo instituta Gaydara, Moscow (In Russian), pp 356–370 Tolstoy LN (2006) Smert’ Ivana Il’icha (The death of Ivan Ilyich). In: Tolstoy LN (ed), Works in 90 volumes, vol 26. Russian State Library, Moscow (In Russian), pp 61–113 Zakutina E (2020) «Ne veryu!» – sociologicheskij portret kovid-dissidenta (“I don’t believe it!”— A sociological portrait of a COVID dissident), 24 July. Retrieved from KoronaFOM Project website: https://COVID19.fom.ru/post/neveryu-sociologicheskij-portret-kovid-dissidenta (In Russian) Zakutina E (2021) Otkaz ot illyuzij (Abandoning the Illusions), 2 February. Retrieved from KoronaFOM Project website: https://COVID19.fom.ru/post/otkaz-ot-illyuzij (In Russian) Zakutina E (2021) Somneniyu vsegda najdetsya mesto (There will always be a place for doubt), 1 October. Project website: https://covid19.fom.ru/post/somneniyu-vsegda-najdetsya-mesto (In Russian) Zizek S (2020) Pandemic!: COVID-19 shakes the world. OR Books, New York and London

The Border Between Hierarchical and Network Approaches to Researching the Coronavirus Pandemic Alexandra Popova

Abstract The article is devoted to comparing two approaches to studying the problem of a pandemic: hierarchical and network. Hierarchical and network methods have traditionally been opposed to each other since the mid-twentieth century. This opposition is most clearly recorded in Deleuze and Guattari, who introduce the concept of “rhizome” and describe in detail what a network is. In our opinion, one can consider the network not only in the manner traditional for postmodernists, but also referring to how Heidegger interpreted the concept of “theory.” Another author who refers to the concept of the ancient Greek “theory” considered by Heidegger is Leibniz. The network approach allows us to view the pandemic not as a “problem,” but as a stage in history, inextricably linked to politics, art, family, and all aspects of human life. Keywords Network · Hierarchy · COVID-19 · Biopolitics · Leibniz monadology · Heidegger

Pandemic Situation in the Focus of Hierarchical Power Relations on the Example of Foucault’s Idea of Biopolitics The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 is seriously affecting the daily lives of people around the world. This situation has caused a number of discussions about the origin of the pandemic, about power and politics. One of the central questions about the nature of the coronavirus was the question of the conditions for its occurrence. There are two main versions of its origin: evolutionary origin in nature or artificial creation in the laboratory. Also, during the period of the pandemic, a huge number of conspiracy theories have spread. Some of these theories are associated with the “search for witches,” that is, the persons responsible for the current situation. For example, several conspiracy theorists see a link between the global pandemic, Bill Gates’ A. Popova (B) Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_8

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efforts to create microchips and the spread of a new type of 5G communication. The concern of some people is the forced vaccination: in different countries, thousands of protests against this measure are taking place. The other part of the population, on the contrary, worries about too low precautions and government control during a pandemic. Thus, the health of the population and the specific area of government concern about it became an important topic for discussion. In this regard, the popularity of the concept of biopolitics by Michel Foucault has increased, for whom the health care system is directly related to state power. According to Foucault, control over bodies is as important for state power as control over the minds and ideology of the population. Thanks to “access to the body,” social medicine helps to track the health and productivity of the population for the needs of the state. Social medicine has terrifying power in monitoring the actual state and behavior of each person and also has the ability to isolate a dangerous or sick person from the rest of society. As Foucault writes, this type of state has emerged since the Age of Enlightenment and is historically associated with European civilization, which is characterized by a very powerful desire for the rational since antiquity. Excessive rationality leads to disastrous consequences: rational power is bloody power. According to Foucault, power also changes the perception of a person, turning him into a political subject that exists only within the framework of power relations and is interesting only for the purpose of state use as a resource. The establishment of the state according to this rational logic ends with the total administration of all spheres of human life, and in the highest form of its own development turns into “the coldest of the hateful monsters,” that is, into a “police state” (Foucault 2010). If such regimes of a police state, as, for example, fascism, manifest themselves in a rather obvious way, then modern forms of control are hidden. The essence of the control of modern regimes is “a state that cares about the safety of the population” (Foucault 2010). The logic of the development of such “care” is quite simple: any “exceptional event” leads to exceptional forms of “protection” by the state, even to the point of ignoring the law. If we consider the pandemic in such a focus, then one can be horrified by the measures of state violence and control that are applied in relation to society and the individual. In this case, the situation of a deadly virus is that “exceptional event” that opens up wide opportunities for “state care,” which can be understood primarily as tightened control over the population. In this case, compulsory vaccination can be viewed as unquestioning “access to the body” in order to preserve the working capacity of the population. So, for example, when promoting vaccination, scientific data, links, and articles are used, and any disagreement is ridiculed from the standpoint of rationality. Virus and disease in the focus of Foucault’s idea of “biopolitics” are viewed as significantly less of a threat than the threat of increasing control by government. In this view, the virus can be used as an excuse to intensify coercive government “care.” Such theories underlie a number of conspiracy theories. So, for example, one can argue that the existence of a pandemic is beneficial for the state. The state could even be complicit in the emergence and spread of the virus. It is curious that the state turns

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out to be guilty on two sides: not only in using the pandemic to strengthen control, but also in insufficient measures to effectively protect the population, that is, in the lack of control. This approach is possible when we consider the pandemic situation in the focus of hierarchical power relations.

Two Focuses of Pandemic Studies: Hierarchical and Networked In the study of the problem of a pandemic, there are two main focuses: “hierarchical” and “networked.” It is necessary to designate the main positions and note that the concept of “network” is etymologically associated with the ancient Greek verb Ñρšγω, which is translated as “to stretch” and which is compared with the Roman word “rex” (Benveniste 2016). This verb can be viewed not only as “to stretch,” but also as “to spread in breadth,” “to stretch in a straight line,” “to draw a straight line forward from the point occupied,” “to move forward in a straight line.” Thus, Benveniste writes that such an important word as “regio” originally expressed not the meaning of “region, area,” but “a point of movement in a straight line.” It is important to note that the meaning of “regio” and “rectus” as “direct” has not only physical, but also ethical meaning: the direct is opposed to the curved and crooked and is identified with justice and dignity, while the crooked is associated with deception, lies, etc. The duality of the concept is clearly manifested in the expression “regere fines,” which is a sacred action preceding construction and literally meaning “to lay boundaries in the form of straight lines” (Benveniste 2016). As Benveniste notes, it was this action that the ruler or priest performed before starting the construction of a temple or city: in this way he determined the boundaries of the sacred site on the ground. This action was of a magical nature: in this way, their land was separated from someone else’s, and profane territory from sacred. With the help of the action “regere fines,” on the one hand, the physical boundaries of the site were delineated, and on the other hand, the special status of the delineated place was established. This duality of semantic meaning must be taken into account when working with the concept of “network.” With regard to the concept of “hierarchy,” it was introduced into circulation by Pseudo-Dionysius. The word ƒεραρχ´ια is derived from the words ƒερ´oς, “sacred” and ´ “beginning” and literally translates as “hierarchy.” Nevertheless, the roots of ¢ρχη, the concept of hierarchy probably grow from the birth of classifications: for example, Plato uses in his dialogues δια´ιρεσις, which is a dichotomous method of dividing concepts and builds with it a “tree” of definitions. Aristotle also relies on this method in some works. It is important that later the philosophical reasoning of Aristotle was read through the perception of Porphyry of Tyre, who developed a tree-like dichotomous system of dividing concepts, also called the Porphyrian tree or Arbor porphyriana. The Porphyrian tree naturally narrows at the very top and represents an

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ideally adjusted staircase descending from the highest point along a number of ranks of being.

The Dichotomy of Hierarchical and Network in the Philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. The dichotomy of “hierarchical” and “network” was outlined in philosophy for a long time but did not manifest itself as clearly as in the middle of the twentieth century. One of the most striking examples of the opposition of “hierarchical” and “network” is the book “A Thousand Plateaus” by Deleuze and Guattari, in which hierarchical structures are criticized (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of a network structure or rhizome. The rhizome is opposed to a hierarchical tree-like organization: in contrast to it, there is no definite order in the rhizome. Only, the principle of multiplicity is decisive for the rhizome. In a tree-like structure, each element has only one active “neighbor,” the so-called hierarchical leader, and the entire system of communication between the elements already exists in advance: the tree exists before the individual (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). In rhizomatic networks, in contrast to tree-like organizations, communication channels do not exist in advance: all elements of such a network are interchangeable and are determined only by its state at the moment. An element’s importance does not depend on its place in the structure, but on its own state (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Obviously, Deleuze and Guattari-related tree-like hierarchical structures to Western culture. For example, the importance of transcendental philosophy in the West is very high, and it is precisely related to tree-like thinking. The pursuit of hierarchy is characteristic of Western thinking and affects all European institutions and all of European history. The tree-like structure, being vertical, presupposes the presence of a center, a rigid hierarchy and a certain “root,” i.e., foundations: thus, the world of phenomena in the Western culture of thinking needs a metaphysical foundation, which is most evident in the continental philosophical tradition. Here, we can point to the opposition of the “world of ideas” to the “world of things” in Plato, the categorical apparatus of Aristotle’s thinking, associated with the separation of the discourse of “genuine” and “not genuine,” the opposition of the “the City of God” and “the Earthly City” by Saint Augustine, and so on. Postmodern philosophy, however, should just abandon the “domination” of the tree in thinking. It is important that the whole culture is considered as a text, and the subject is an element of the text, that is, it is inside the text, and not outside of it. An integral subject is possible only in a hierarchical focus, since any assemblage into integrity presupposes a hierarchy of structures and events. In particular, for Foucault, discourse can be called a way of subjectivation, with the help of which people become subjects of a particular experience (Foucault 1994). For Deleuze, there is also no integral subject: he can be represented only in the constant process of maintaining his own

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“virtual integrity.” The concept of a “multiple subject” turns out to be associated with an attempt to demonstrate an alternative to hierarchical systems. The postmodernist position on the subject is clearly opposed to the modern European metaphysics, which in many ways became the basis of the usual perception of this problem.

The Concept of a Network and the Difference Between Two Methodological Approaches In our opinion, the concept of “network,” which has entered the language of philosophy and social sciences, in a semantic sense, goes back to the above concepts. The concept of a “network” is related to the disintegration of the subject and the impossibility of further building one’s own experience in an objective sense. Any “assemblage” into integrity means for the subject the simultaneous building of a hierarchy of events, situations, and elements of being. Accordingly, the “network” is a kind of embodiment of the absence of such assemblage. So, the network is viewed as something opposed to the hierarchical. Another semantic layer in the concept of “network” is the ability to store something in oneself, to entangle, support, and embrace the whole. Thus, Myers describes the fascial network of the body through comparison with the environment as an allpervading communication network of the body that completely encompasses the entire body (Myers 2020). For a long time, the fascial network remained unnoticed by researchers because the traditional method of medicine—anatomy—consists in cutting the body into parts, in violation of the integrity of the body. The concept of anatomy contains the root “τšμνω,” which translates as “ruble, cut”: as Myers writes, from Galen to Vesalius and after them, the tools for working with the body were taken from the tools of the hunter and butcher, and it was with their help that those basic differences were highlighted that we now take for granted (Myers 2020). According to Myers, any division of an integral human body into parts seems to be artificial, because the body is an integral and closed unit. Myers describes the fascial network as the pervasive communication network of the body that completely encompasses the entire body: we could not isolate a single cubic centimeter, not a single gram of flesh, without bumping into this collagen network. And yet, in the traditional anatomical view of the body, researchers overlook this integrity, since their method consists in dismembering the body into parts (Myers 2020). The difference between the two methodological approaches to the study of the human body can demonstrate a deep difference in ideas not only about the body, but also about other objects, that is, about the real in general. It is necessary to refer to Heidegger, who deeply pondered the concept of “theory” in Science and Comprehension and noticed a change in attitudes toward reality from the ancient Greeks to modern Europeans (Heidegger 1967). His thought is opposed to the position of Foucault. The Greeks never had the kind of rationality that modern Europeans have. “Theory” for the Greeks is an attempt at pure contemplation,

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disinterested impractical curiosity, and the ability to see a thing without making rational efforts. Heidegger interprets the concept of “theory” in this way, since he ´ considers two roots, thanks to which the concept was formed—“θšαν óραν.” “Θšα” is interpreted as the ability to see a thing without making rational efforts. “Oραω” is translated as “to see, to look” and is revealed by Heidegger as disinterested curiosity (Heidegger 1967). The translation of the concept “theory” into Latin led to the fact that the verb “θεoρετν” was correlated with the verb “contemplari,” the root of which (“templum”) is translated as “delimited area for observation” (Heidegger 1967). This semantic “substitution” according to Heidegger’s thought is evidence of a completely different from the Greek new view of reality. So, if earlier the theory was an attempt of pure contemplation, consideration of the world and things, then in the Latin equivalent the theory implies a rational division of reality into fragments, each time redefined by the cognizing subject depending on his own intellectual limited ideas, experience, etc. Thus, later “theory” began to denote the procedure of rational division of reality into fragments by the cognizing subject, which depends on his knowledge, experience, etc. This is the root of modern science. So, it can be noted that anatomy is just extremely rational and utilitarian: an anatomist examines the human body in an applied manner. But with this approach, the importance of the integrity of the body escapes, since there is no such method that would allow you to “see” this integrity in practice. Detachment from the desire to rationally explore something, an attempt to “selflessly contemplate” in Heidegger’s terminology will allow the world to “open up,” that is, to appear in those original qualities that are not shown in the new European analytical approach. The use of the concepts “hierarchy” and “network” presuppose different methodological approaches to the object under study. Paying attention to points and nodes and their relationship to each other is hierarchical. Paying attention to communication lines is a network method.

Pandemic Situation Outside Hierarchical Relations on the Example of Leibniz’s Philosophy In a pandemic situation, we declare an enemy either the state, or the virus itself, or a neighbor that violates quarantine, thereby building again and again a hierarchical structure of power relations and analyzing what is happening rationally. But how can a pandemic be viewed outside of hierarchical relationships? We can start with the philosophy of Leibniz, because in his work there is that type of acceptance of reality that distinguishes him from other philosophers. Despite the fact that Leibniz can build hierarchies: for example, God—and multiple worlds, as well as the actual world—possible worlds, nevertheless, when he describes the current “best” world in which we live, he shows its absolute integrity and shows in

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relation to all its aspects such acceptance, which, perhaps, in some way brings him closer to the ancient Greeks. Leibniz distinguishes between two types of truths: eternal and accidental (Leibniz 2015). The opposition of the two truths is characteristic of medieval philosophy, and in Leibniz it can be traced from his first works. By “eternal truths,” we mean truths that are absolutely and metaphysically necessary, probably in the sense of logical necessity. For example, Leibniz argues that these truths “cannot be rejected without falling into absurdity” (Leibniz 2015). The opposite to the “eternal truths” is absurd and logically impossible, and these truths are universal for all “possible worlds,” since the uniform laws of logic established by God operate in them. That is, truth in all worlds is completely independent of experience. The area of experience is represented by “accidental truths”: they are random, and their number goes to infinity. In this case, the difference between “eternal truths” and “accidental truths” by analogy is compared with the difference between rational and irrational numbers. If “eternal truths” can be reduced to identities, then “accidental truths” are so diverse that their inference goes to infinity, and it is impossible for a person to calculate them. Leibniz’s problem of “eternal truths” and “accidental truths” is closely related to the problem of identity. Expanding the concept of identical, it should be noted that for Leibniz, to be identical means to be true, and, accordingly, on the contrary, to be true means to be identical. Identity means equality of objects or one object with itself: A = B or A = A. For identity, it is necessary that all properties of A are completely suitable for B and vice versa. Leibniz’s reflections on identity, “eternal truths,” and “accidental truths” are directly related to the meaning that the philosopher attaches to the subject-predicate structure of the sentence. Leibniz states that if the general affirmative sentence is true, then it is necessary that the number of the subject can be divisible exactly, without a remainder, by the number of the predicate. And if this is possible in relation to “eternal truths,” then in the case of “accidental truths,” the number of which tends to infinity, difficulties arise. So, if we consider the situation with “accidental truths” on any individual example (Leibniz often considers this issue on the example of Caesar or Adam), which exists as part of our world and in those circumstances that make up its individuality, we will have to “unfold” (devolvere) it is an individual concept until it begins to include all the diversity of the world in the past, future, and present. Thus, Leibniz asserts that the concept of Peter is complete and embraces infinity, therefore, it is impossible to achieve an absolute conclusion [ad perfectam demonstrationem], but one can always approach it more and more so that the difference is the smallest. One can infinitely deduce “accidental truths” one after another, but this resolution will never reach the limit, because the “root of chance” is infinity in the search for a solution (raison). Therefore, a consistent proof of “accidental truths” is impossible, even for God: but God can see not the end of the conclusion, but the entire interconnection of terms and, consequently, the inclusion of the predicate in the subject, since

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he knows everything that is included in this series. That is, God thinks all complete concepts. God does not need experience, since he knows everything a priori. Deleuze connects the idea of infinite derivation of “accidental truths” with the concept of differential calculus. The philosopher notes that if the “eternal truths” are governed by the principle of identity, then the “accidental truths” are continuity associated with the constant unfolding of the connections of these facts and the absence of gaps between them. Deleuze states that it will be possible to define continuity as an act of difference that tends to disappear. Continuity, in his opinion, is a vanishing difference (Deleuze 1980). It is the variety of “accidental truths” that constitutes the peculiarities and differences of “possible worlds.” For example, in our world, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, and Adam is expelled from paradise: but in many “possible worlds” these facts may differ. That is, individual random facts can vary, while logical laws, “eternal truths,” are the same for all worlds, since no others are logically impossible. Possible worlds turn out to be a necessary and important element of Leibniz’s system. With the help of this concept, Leibniz substantiates the theory of “the best possible world,” which he calls the real world: God creates the world by choosing the best from a huge variety of possible worlds. The theory of the “best world” provoked the fiercest criticism of Leibniz’s philosophy: Voltaire became one of the first fierce critics already in the eighteenth century. The main complaints are related to the fact that in the “best world” there is injustice and evil, which is associated with the will of God. Nevertheless, Leibniz openly admits the existence of evil and does not justify it, but draws an analogy with dissonances in music, which are necessary to maintain the harmony of the entire work. Another argument is that an absolutely perfect world would be indistinguishable from God and, accordingly, impossible. The act of divine creation is subject to logical necessity, so the possibility of evil that exists in the divine mind must be realized. There are two main traditions of interpretation of the principle of God’s choice of the “best world.” One of them is connected with the moral grounds of this choice and explains it by the fact that God chose the most prone to perfection of the world from the set of “possible worlds.” The real world can then be considered the world of ‘least evils.” Only a limited human mind is unable to imagine that even evil in the world “serves the multiplication of good.” The second interpretation of the “best world” connects the choice of God with combinatorial art: God, playfully, creates a world with the least logical contradictions. Deleuze notes that when God creates the world, he only does what he counts: God calculates, the world is created. According to Deleuze, the Idea of the God-Player is found everywhere and we can say that God created the world playfully (Deleuze 1980). Moreover, these two traditions do not contradict each other, since the creation of the world according to the principle of the best logical possibility and according to the principle of moral perfection in the Leibniz system can be united by one principle—the principle of harmony. According to Leibniz, people are unable to know the exact names of all things, since for this they would have to know the totality of all the facts of our world. So, a single concept of any person includes all kinds of events that will ever happen to him and his descendants, as well as all the events that happened to his ancestors. For

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example, the concept of Adam “our world” contains everything that happened after his expulsion from paradise in the real world. Leibniz argues that a sentence is true when the subject in the sentence fully includes the predicate. As Deleuze notes, this idea boils down to the fact that, ultimately, the subject includes the entire “totality of the world.” Taking this reasoning to the extreme, one can rightly ask the question: what then is the peculiarity of an individual subject, what is its difference from any other subject, since each of them contains the whole world? The answer to this question was Leibniz’s concept of many monads. In Leibniz’s monadology, all monads have a subjective perception of the world, that is, the ability to observe a part of the world from their individual place. Deleuze points out that this particular perspective of the world view can be called a “point of view.” He writes that it is not difficult to establish what distinguishes one individual substance from another: it is necessary in a certain way that individuals should not be reducible to each other. It is necessary that each subject, each individual concept of the world, express this total world, but from a certain “point of view” (Deleuze 1980). Deleuze calls monadology “the theory of points of view,” which he connects with projective geometry and perspective in architecture and painting. The subject is completely constituted by the “point of view.” “Individual substance,” the monad, reflects the universe from a certain position of its own. So, according to Leibniz, every individual substance is like the whole world, like a mirror of God or the entire universe, which each individual substance expresses in its own way. Metaphorically speaking, this is a bit like the fact that the same city appears differently depending on the different position of the one who is looking at it. So, the universe in some way multiplies as many times as there are substances. “Point of view” means that a certain part of the world, individual substances see clearly and distinctly. As Deleuze notes, what defines a “point of view” is like a kind of searchlight that, in the darkness of a vague and intricate world, maintains a limited area of clear and distinct expression (Deleuze 1980). Monads, in addition to the individual perception of the world from their own “point of view,” also have a certain unclear concept of the subjective perceptions of other monads, due to which they can vaguely imagine the general picture of the world. This “small perception” is indefinite and indistinct, disorderly and “looks like a kind of splash” (Deleuze 1980). Leibniz compares this to the sound of the sea. Being on the shore and listening to the sound of the sea, it is impossible to say that we hear distinctly every single wave or drop of water, but their universal interaction merges into an unintelligible noise. It is interesting that this metaphor is taken up by Deleuze, who talks about the “general hum” of people, against the background of which a person needs to express what one can express clearly and distinctly (Deleuze 1980). Thus, in spite of the fact that monads are not connected with each other and “have no windows,” there is a universal connection between everything and everything in the world, if only because of a certain unified continuum and unified logic. Since man, like everything else, consists of monads, he may have a vague idea of the objective nature of everything.

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The world of monads, the concept of which Leibniz proposes, is network, not hierarchical. Monads are not directly related to each other: there are no visible communication lines between them. But they are united and synchronized by the divine principle of pre-established harmony and common vague perceptions of the world as a whole. The principle of pre-established harmony forces each monad to occupy a certain place of their own in the world, from which they can “observe” the world. Thus, each monad has its own unique “point of view.” So, the world is completely permeated with many monads, which are synchronized due to an external principle, which refers us to the image of the network as a kind of enveloping all-pervading structure without a single center and any levels of hierarchy. Another principle that unites monads is not external to them, but internal: it is a vague perception of the general picture of the world and those principles of harmony on which it is based. If the perception from a specific “point of view” in monads is clear and distinct, then the perception of the picture of the world in general is very weak and vague, and it is necessary, according to Leibniz, to “clarify.” This “clarification” is possible with the “Universal Characteristic,” or Characteristica Universalis, which is the ideal language that Leibniz conceived but was never created. Thus, the most important thing is that in each individual subject the whole world is “rolled up.” If we begin to give a precise definition to any particular subject, then we will have to list all the facts that are somehow connected with it. These facts include all the events that led to his birth, associated with him during his life and subsequent after his death. Ultimately, we will need to list all the facts of this world in general, since each fact inevitably attracts another, and so on along an endless chain. Thus, the world seems to be the most accurate definition for each subject, that is, as Leibniz writes, each subject is a “mirror of the universe.” It can be noted that the facts of the world are not always well evaluated by us in terms of morality or are useful from a practical point of view. But it was precisely the entire cumulative combination of all the facts of the past that became the basis for the present and the future. So, using the example of the expulsion of Adam from paradise, Leibniz demonstrates that this act of the terrible first sin made possible the entire human history, which consists not only of negative facts, but also of such events as, for example, the Coming of Christ. The human mind is not able to operate with all the many facts of the world, therefore, a person is not able to know the exact definitions of things, and also cannot see clearly the complete picture of the world and the consequences of each specific fact. According to Leibniz, only God possesses such a complete picture of the world. And if we take into account the fact that the world in which we find ourselves was chosen by God as the “best” possible due to the most harmonious and favorable combination of all facts, then this means that even negative facts will ultimately lead to the best consequences. Therefore, the struggle against the facts of the world is somewhat senseless, especially when there is no way to change an event that has already occurred. Leibniz’s philosophy offers a way to fully accept this world and all the events that take place in it. In this sense, the concept of a pre-established harmony in the world of an infinite set of “accidental truths” by Leibniz turns out to be surprisingly close to disinterested

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contemplation of the world and openness to natural phenomena among the ancient Greeks, which Heidegger describes.

Conclusions Therefore, one of the possible options for dealing with a pandemic is full acceptance of this fact that has already occurred. This does not mean that you need to stop fighting against the virus and its negative consequences. But you can internally accept the fact that for some reason (it does not matter whether the virus arose evolutionarily in nature or was created artificially in a laboratory), a pandemic situation occurred in the world, which we are living today. We are not able to cancel this event, but we can accept and comprehend it. It is also worth recognizing that not all the consequences of the pandemic are negative: we can see the positive consequences already now. So, the positive consequences of the coronavirus pandemic include: opening new niches and areas of remote work; improving the means and quality of the Internet connection; rejection of paper documentation in favor of electronic, which has a beneficial effect on nature; the development of domestic tourism and the “discovery” of their home countries by their citizens; freeing up time for your favorite activities thanks to remote work; development of measures to prevent diseases in the workplace; improved air quality around the world due to the low number of flights; reduced urban air pollution due to lessened commuting; support for local farmers and local production; reduction of influenza infections due to widespread wearing of masks; even the revival of the traditions of family dinners, etc. Thus, the fact of a pandemic is causing many positive changes. Leibniz’s theory of “points of view” makes it possible to recognize the uniqueness of each individual person. The concept of the best world of pre-established harmony helps to realize the importance of each specific fact in the world, and, therefore, the importance of each specific person. If we apply this concept to the situation of state regulation during a pandemic, then we can conclude that the state does not “enforce” quarantine or vaccination measures, but rather, people unite and self-organize as a network structure in response to the threat of disease for their own protection and survival. With the help of diverse connections, people resist the virus even through disagreements, since they also generate new solutions and new levels of discussion. Isolation is another consequence of the pandemic that is often viewed negatively. But it is important to recognize that isolation through the focus of Leibniz’s philosophy brought a number of positives. So usually a person, being in a world of endless unlimited possibilities, is faced with a huge number of alternatives, from which he must constantly choose. All this set of choices in many respects constitutes the integrity of the subject. The continuity of the subject, according to Leibniz, is due to our personal volitional choice, and the decision to maintain our own “self” requires constant attention, composure, and memory. The obstacle on the way to this is the

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“lazy mind”: a person’s choice not to think and not to know. Human behavior can be free only if it is motivated by “eternal truths”: only in this case is a person a truly acting subject. Thus, a person exists in a situation of constant need to make personal volitional decisions. With the help of constant tension, a person needs to maintain his own “self” in order, thanks to this, to make the right choices from an infinite number of possibilities, the true causes, and consequences of which “drown” in infinity and are known only to God. If our world is the best possible world, then any “right” choice is necessary, even if it may bring personal suffering. Moreover, the subjective will of a person in this case is a particular manifestation of world harmony. Only, the achievement of a situation of “reasonable” choice can give the final existence of a person a real justification, make him a truly acting subject and a genuine subject in general. Personal human happiness, therefore, is possible only when personal human will does not violate the integrity of world harmony and is inscribed in it. In fact, Leibniz provides guidance on how a person can relieve existential anxiety in a situation of a huge number of alternatives and possible solutions. In such a context, isolation and restriction of travel and flights cannot be perceived negatively: a person discovers opportunities for himself to spend time alone, explore an area, park or forest near his home, and explore his own country. Limiting alternatives can lead to a decrease in anxiety and the kind of fear that psychologists call FOMO—the fear of missing an important event. In conclusion, it is worth noting that the pandemic has become a powerful challenge that has forced us to rethink a huge number of familiar everyday things and ideas about ourselves and the world. The situation of a pandemic can be compared to a sobering shaking that requires a person to “come to their senses,” to comprehend themselves and show their own subjectivity. Thus, another positive consequence of the pandemic is that it has become a factor in the formation of a “self” for many people. In my opinion, even the status of a person with such an approach turns out to be much higher and significant. Person is not a victim of an endless enemy. Deleuze and Guattari wrote in “Thousand Plateaus” that they were tired of hierarchy. I want to note that in 2021 we are also tired of the constant anxiety and pessimism, and the state of the victim. In my opinion, the network approach to studying the pandemic is finally showing more optimistic results.

References Benveniste É (2016) Dictionary of Indo-European concepts and society. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, HAU Deleuze G, Guattari F (1987) A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Deleuze G (1980) Leibniz: philosophy and the creation of concepts. Concepts Seminar at the University of Paris, Vincennes-St. Denis

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Foucault M (2010) The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Lectures at the College de France). Picador, London Foucault M (1994) The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. Vintage Books, New York City Heidegger M (1967) Vorträge und Aufsätze. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart Leibniz GW (2015) Die Theodicee: Abhandlungen über die Theodizee von der Güte Gottes, der Freiheit des Menschen und dem Ursprung des Bösen. E-Artnow, Prague Myers TW (2020) Anatomy trains: myofascial meridians for manual therapists and movement professionals. Elsevier, Amsterdam

Space and Borders in the Pandemic Context

How Does the Pandemic Invalidate the Sociological Definition of the City? Borbála Jász

Abstract This study argues that the restrictions imposed globally due to COVID-19 have reshaped the usage of our urban space, making the sociological definition of the city questionable. The compulsory home office and digital education and the minimalisation of social interactions also affect the nature of the city and, consequently, its definition. Therefore, we are talking about changing cities even though the physical structures themselves have not changed. There is a need to create a new definition specifically for a pandemic or post-pandemic situation that is not a sociological definition based on a community of individuals. This study will first summarise the sociologically based city definitions of the second half of the twentieth century. Then I will analyse the application of these definitions to the usage of cities, to the emergence of new services, and to the apparent emphasis on necessary functioning of the city. Finally, I will examine an option for a new definition, where the user of the city is a society without a community, whose appearance in urban space, for example, with social distance and masks neglects a sense of the classic postulates of the definitions of the city: heterogeneity, density, and size. Keywords Heterogeneity · Society · City definitions · Chicago School · Pandemic

City Definitions Based on Sociological Conceptions We can speak about cities as the built environment of communities from the Neolithic era. A common method for defining the cities was based on form and structure, but most of the cities grew in organic way due to the cosmic kind of urban planning This paper is based on my presentation held in the IX International Kant/Bakhtin Scientific Seminar entitled Human Rights, Legal Constraints, Redefined Borders in the Pandemic Era, organised by the Murmansk Arctic State University (MASU, Russia) and the Nord University (Bodø, Norway), in Murmansk, October 20–21, 2021. B. Jász (B) Institute of Philosophy, Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_9

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method of the Renaissance and the Baroque era. In the nineteenth century there were new type of rationalisation processes in urban planning due to neglecting this— sometimes chaotic—organic growing tendencies of the built environment. One of the emblematic programmes in Europe was organised in Paris by Baron Hausmann. The project included to recreate a more understandable, rationalised, and systematic rethinking of the city, moreover, to implement the current issues of protecting and health care, and of course to create the concept of the representative European capitol. The masterplan of Hausmann’s Paris was the prototype in the nineteenth century for all over Europe, for example in case of Vienna and Budapest, as well. One of the aims of this plan was to symbolise the power of the bourgeois class with renewing historical elements of the Antique democracy. The visual appearance of the city was the embodiment of unified concept (Jordan 1992: 99–100). Ever since the activity of the Chicago School, it is not enough to apply merely architectural or economic descriptions to define the city and its elements, but it is necessary to focus on the society that uses the city. In the second half of the twentieth century several city definitions emerged that were already trying to interpret and analyse the city as a dynamic unit along this concept. “For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals”—as Louis Wirth, the American sociologist, writes in his Urbanism as the Way of Life (Wirth 1996: 190). Although Wirth speaks of individuals as elements of urban society, the postulates he defines can only be interpreted in a social setting, not at the level of individuals. Later, Lewis Mumford, Spiro Kostof, and Kevin Lynch also argue that the city is not merely equal to the built environment but is based on an active relationship between buildings and the human presence. The sociological approach to architecture today can be seen in the work of Jan Gehl, who distinguishes among necessary, optional, and social activities. In the twentieth century several changes were developed in urban planning, because of the new tendencies and another type of analysation process of the built environment emerged: the sociological concept of the city. Of course, the number and identification of the inhabitants were important in the previous era, but there was a need for creating a new systematic research method for describing more components. These components focused not only the physical elements of the city, but for more the people who are living in and for the changing and unchanging properties of these people. In the twentieth century we arrived at a point, when the pure description of the built environment and the quantifiable data were not exhaustively enough for defining the city: next to the size, other criteria emerged, like the density and heterogeneity. The result was the sociological definition of the city by Louis Wirth, which combines three components: the size, the density, and the heterogeneity. “For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals”—as Louis Wirth (1996: 190), the American sociologist, writes in his Urbanism as the Way of Life. Although Wirth speaks of individuals as elements of urban society, the postulates he defines can only be interpreted in a social setting, not at the level of individuals. Later, in 1973 Louis Mumford emphasises the importance of social actions between different people, aside the physical components of the city. “The city in its complete sense, then, is

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a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity” (Mumford 1996: 93). Mumford uses the theatrical metaphor to describe how we, together with the personality, interact socially with each other individually, thus creating a sociologically definable city. “The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theatre and is the theatre. It is in the city, the city as theatre, that man’s (sic) more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and co-operating personalities, events, groups into more significant culminations” (Mumford 1996: 93). The Turkish-born American historian of architecture, Spiro Kostof, argues that “cities are places made up of buildings and people” (Kostof 1991: 40). Kostof considers it important that through human activity, the city becomes a city, with which he consciously returns to the idea of Kevin Lynch. Kevin Lynch argues that in addition to the physical features of the city, the sense of the city is also an important factor, as we are always informed in the city based on our personally created (Fig. 1) mental map. This mental map is created while using the city. So, if we focus only on necessary functions, unlike our usual routes, our sense of the city is transformed along with our mental map (Lynch 1960). These definitions by Louie Mumford, Louis Wirth, and Spiro Kostof put the core of the inquiry of the city the properties of the inhabitants. If we would like to extend the research not only for the inhabitants but for the activity of the people, the toolkit of the contemporary Danish urban designer and theorist Jan Gehl need to be used. Gehl in his book Life Between Buildings, after analysing the city about its contemporary usage, distinguished three different kinds of human activity in the built environment: necessary, optional, and social functions (Gehl 2011: 9–12). This study will focus on these Gehlian functions combining with the sociological definitions of the city during the pandemic times in 2020 and 2021.

Fig. 1 Angela Lucari (ITALY). A pair of Chairs No. 2, 2020. From the series “Silent Waiting”

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Reshaping Urban Spaces Under the Pandemic 2020–2021 If the starting point of our analysis is the sociologically based notion of the city with its three components, size, density, and heterogeneity, we can argue as follows. While the criterion of size is unchanging, static, or slowly (Fig. 2) changeable, the density and heterogeneity have a dynamic changing character. Of course, we can find the footprint of the pandemic and the global lockdown on the behaviour of city inhabitants, as well. The primary personal experiences can underline that sense of the city totally changed. The cause was that the density and heterogeneitybecause of their dynamic changing characterwere re-formed, but we can find different tendencies in the process of the political decisions connecting to the virus situation. In the first year of the pandemic in 2020, under the lockdown we were not able talk about density, and the appearance of heterogeneity was not understandable. In the Gehlian terms, under the lockdown people needed to totally neglect the facultative/optional and social/community functions; everyone focused on the necessary function only, e.g. working in home office, ordering food, going only to buy food in the shop, etc. From the spaces of the city social and facultative functions turned to the online spaces. The result was the dismissal of the borders between the private and public spaces – of course online only. The sense of the city was totally changed: empty streets, cultural institutions, and education building were seen all over the world. In the space of the city, we find emptiness or running people keeping the social distance (Hall et al. 1968) everywhere. In 2021 the role of the size did not change, because it is static (or slowly changeable), but another component of the dynamic category, density, became relevant again. In the second year of the pandemic the component of heterogeneity disappeared, because of the uniform appearances of wearing masks. Next to the necessary functions, social and facultative functions started to return to the everyday life, but in a controlled way by the government. Keeping social distance and meeting with other people in a limited way resulted specific actions by the city inhabitants. If we accept the three components of the sociological description of the city and we realise the new way of human’s behaviours, we have to conclude that the sociological definition of the city loses its validity in the pandemic times. If we would like to answer the question how does the pandemic invalidate the sociological definition of the city, we need to compare the first and the second years. The before-mentioned changes are not analysed scientifically only; there were a huge effect on the person’s behaviour. These personal experiences resulted the focusing on necessary functions only without any social and facultative actions. Because of the personal involving, self-expressing—especially art—became more important (Fig. 3).

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Fig. 2 Tommaso Carrara (UK). Barbican in Covid Times, 2020

Fig. 3 Rheana Gardner (USA). Jan. 11, 2021 (11,221 COVID Deaths Reported Worldwide Since Previous Day), 2021. Jan. 18, 2021 (14,376 COVID Deaths Reported Worldwide Since Previous Day), 2021

Artistic Reflections on the Pandemic The world of art has been shaken very strongly by the lockdown. In general, it is customary to think that artistic activity is a solitary process, much more taking place in a space isolated from the outside world and less connected to reality and everyday life. However, this is not entirely true; in fact, it is not at all typical of today’s artistic life. The artist is an active and accepted member of society who has the right to make criticisms and whose activity manifests itself in the community space. Thus, the

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concept of the classical artist has completely changed, so the traditionally expected documentary activity or the activity that shows only beauty has also changed. The contemporary artist is vigilant about the socio-political changes around him or her and responds to them through art. All of this is particularly interesting in the field of photography, which was originally intended to capture reality with a perfect, documentary need—thereby reducing the raison d’être of painting with similar needs in the beginning. Because of the genre endowments of photography, it can never be completely detached from reality like painting. Nevertheless, a variety of photographic genres and increasingly widespread new technologies allow artists to work with tremendous freedom. The lockdown affected non-profit and for-profit galleries completely and differently. Non-profit and state-run galleries and museums were closed in most cases, while for-profit organisations tried to survive in some way. Various ways to do this were, for example, the online version of exhibition openings, the development of social media platforms, and more intensive contact with customers. In addition to these, the terms lockdown, pandemic, virus, corona, quarantine, etc. have become more and more common in art topics and calls for entries. People in general, but artists in particular, are concerned with how to reflect on such situations, but similar calls have appeared in such quantities that they have lost their novelty and interest. In our daily lives, we are constantly informed from the news about the virus situation, disease numbers, and vaccination data – so measurable, concrete data has dominated and dominates our lives. So, numbers and data dominate our lives, neglecting all personal aspects. This has affected artists very sensitively, so there is a need for a call in which we give space not only to quantitative but also to qualitative reflection. This is similar to the distinction between urban activities mentioned by Jahn Gehl: what is necessary is quantitative, and what is optional and social is qualitative. Reflecting on all these antecedents, we have created a call to the exhibition Silence at the PH21 Contemporary Photography Gallery. “PH21 Gallery is a contemporary exhibition space established in 2012 in Budapest, Hungary. The mission of the gallery is to provide group and solo exhibition opportunities and international exposure for contemporary photographers around the world. To this end we invite emerging and established photographers to participate in our regular calls for entries for solo and themed group exhibitions. We have hosted a number of inspiring shows since we opened, and we have had the honour of exhibiting works of talented photographers from all corners of the world” (www.ph21gallery.com/about). It is important to mention that the calls of PH21 Gallery, like scientific publishing methods, focus solely on the work submitted. The application is not tied to a photographic degree, either amateur or professional photographers can submit their work (Fig. 4). For the first time in the spring of 2020, during the lockdown, we announced the call Silence because we wanted to inspire the artists’ imagination to develop a common visual co-thinking in the exhibition space. Unlike the calls of other forprofit galleries, the goal was to think about pandemic visually, not directly, but even through multiple reflections. Accordingly, we formulated the text of the call: “Silence is (Fig. 5) always conceived against its opposites; sound, noise, loudness. Silence is strongly associated with loneliness and alienation, the unknown and disturbing

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Fig. 4 Peter Devenyi (Canada). Untitled, 2002

landscape on the one hand, and the known tranquillity and peace on the other hand. Photographically, the contrast between deep darkness and dazzling light is also decisive. After natural or social catastrophes, everything falls silent; empty cities, villages, abandoned public transport and empty workplaces remind us for the transience and fragility of humankind. Silence is accompanied by quiet activities such as contemplation and meditation, which negate the very nature of action itself. Silence is also often present in still lifes, cityscapes, portraits, and many other photographic genres” (www.ph21gallery.com/silence-20). The photographs exhibited in 2020 are in dark tones in most cases (Fig. 6). There are no characters or people in the photographs, and the focal point of the images shows the visual appearance of the deficiency. The chair on which no one is sitting and the room with no one in it will be an abandoned landscape with common themes with the artist. The lack of previous community life is elementary. Shaped with the visual tools of photography, it all shows a world full of fear and uncertainty. You can create three different categories to classify the photographs, and through these, let us reflect on the changing concept of the city as the scene of our lives. The first category is the lonely cityscapes and landscapes, e.g. in the nocturnal photograph by Peter Devenyi, where you can see only the footprints of the past human activity in the snow by the light of a car. Ryuten Paul Rosenblum’s photograph entitled Schwartzwald

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Fig. 5 Marian Rubin (USA). The Office, 2017

Fig. 6 Ryuten Paul Rosenblum (USA). Schwarzwald Snowscape No. 2, 2012

Snow 2 is a classical, sophisticated, and current visual formulation of infinity and boundaries. The duality is important not only for the earth and the sky, but also for the significance of the colours: they are significant, yet not significant (Fig. 7).

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Fig. 7 Albert George (USA). “One Quarter of a Second (for John Cage)”, 2019

The second category is the empty interiors, mostly cultural institutions and community spaces. In the focus is the emptiness, the absence. Rather, a kind of indirect, instinctive reaction determines the subject of the photographs. It is intellectually interesting to meet these places we have always seen full of people. Now emptiness dominates these communal spaces. Marian Rubin’s photography also depicts an empty interior that allows us to immerse ourselves in the texture of the chair, something we may never have done before (Fig. 8) because we focused on its use and the user. The situation of abandoned spaces evokes bad connotations in the viewer, especially the idea of passing, cessation, closure, and death overwhelms the viewer. The third category in 2020 was an approach that took the first step towards a kind of indirect, abstract kind of artistic thinking: different genres in abstraction symbolising the emptiness. Albert George’s photography (Fig. 7) is a beautiful, metaphorical visual representation of the objectification of objectless reality. The patterns drawn by the drapery go back to classical painting traditions. Bruce Berkow, similarly, goes back to the traditions of classical Dutch painting, but is spiced with its relationship to the transience of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both photographs are very nice examples of how to show the Nothing, the lack of something that confronts us with the meaning of our own lives (Fig. 9). From 2021, the gallery introduced a catalogue for exhibitions; so from 2021, a picture collection of the exhibitions with short curatorial criticism will be available.

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Fig. 8 Bruce Berkow (USA). Still Life with Flowers, 2018 Fig. 9 Franziska Ostermann (Germany). Off Faces No. 1, 2020. From the series “Off Faces”

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The Silence exhibition of 2021 was very touching and intimate. This aspect also appeared most in the critical review, and the boundaries became more emphasised. The analysis of “border situations” clearly entailed the mention of existentialist philosophy. “We experience silence mostly as a deficiency. As a lack of sounds, speech, or noise, we connect it primarily to auditory knowledge of the world. Another nature of silence is also manifested in music, which is creation: silence and sound together create melody. Whether we examine the creator or hiatus nature of silence, our personal experience proves too that it manifests itself not only in time but also in space. The silence of vacated spaces, abandoned landscapes, and sculptural human figures or objects confronts us with the transience of our own existence. The study of the dual nature of silence is therefore central to existentialist philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, who explains in his work ‘Being and Time’ an important means of reflection on our transience” (www.ph21gallery.com/silence-21). We have reached a new level of abstraction in (Fig. 10) 2021, when in most cases photographs depict a situation independent of space and time. In many cases, we encounter a deep reflection that completely neglects the material appearance. Although we can identify some figural details of the picture, the composition itself is no longer to be understood materially, objectively, but transcendently. The tones are getting brighter; light is emerging as a new creative medium, as in case of Franziska Ostermann’s and Mildred Alpern’s photograph. A direct rethink of the pandemic supplies is emerging, tied to the objects of use that have become active parts of our lives in this new situation. The masks that hide individuality and instead uniformise us are the necessary evils that inspired Rheana Gardner. Of course, in 2021 we will also find photographs in the exhibition depicting the lonely landscapes where we can admire the power of nature alone. There are no events in the pictures, no attracting agent, and no sounds. Marian Rubin’s photographs go back to the 19th centurial approach in painting, the “ideal landscape”, but with their emptiness they are also connected to the inner silence within us (Figs. 11 and 12). In 2021, a new symbol will appear thematically in the exhibited photographs: the window. The window, the gate, and the bridge are all archetypal architectural elements whose function is to create a connection between the outside and the inside and between the two shores. The window in this case also has two additional symbolic meanings. This is what separates us from the outside world, as it did during the lockdown. Second, it is a symbol of hope that connects you to the outside world and a visual promise of where you will be able to get there. The colours slowly disappear, all tones become neutral, and the motif alone prevails (Fig. 13). In the PH21 Contemporary Photography Gallery, we organised two exhibitions entitled Silence in connection with the pandemic situation, one in 2020 and the other in 2021. Both exhibitions were very instructive, and it can be felt that as the epidemic changed, so did the artistic approach of the photographers.

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Fig. 10 Mildred Alpern (USA). The Square of Silence, 2021

Fig. 11 Marian Rubin (USA). Snow Fences, 2014

Conclusions It is evident that the pandemic has caused changes in all areas of life. We all felt it in our skin that the process of our use of urban space, our contact with people, and our administration has changed. Even if we could not put it professionally,

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Fig. 12 MARIAN RUBIN (USA). B146, 2013

Fig. 13 Joanna Madloch (USA). Silence of the Woods, 2021

terms that have so far only been used in the sciences, such as social distance, have begun to dominate our lives. Art, and especially contemporary art, has always reacted deeply to the changes that have taken place in society. And because of the medium, photography was not only an artistic but a documentary genre of fine arts. In this study, I compared the unsustainability of the sociological definition of the city with the Silence exhibitions in the PH21 Contemporary Photography Gallery, which is an international gallery based in Budapest, Hungary.

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In the first section, I presented the views that a mere physical and economic description of the city is not sufficient. After all, a city is made up of buildings and people, so a sociological definition is needed. In the second section I argue that during the pandemic period, as city dwellers carried out only the necessary (rather than optional or social as Jan Gehl argues) activities in urban space, the sociological definition is not applicable today either. In the third section I compare the Silence exhibitions in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 the focus was more the emptiness and the absence. Photographers used more dark tones, and there was a direct reflection to the pandemic. In 2021 photographers more focused on rethinking and reflecting, so the depicted forms became more abstract. Neutral tones became more important, and the window as the visual symbol of hope and promise appeared. To sum up, the changes in urban behaviour that have taken place through the pandemic can be paralleled with photographic topics, because in both cases we need to talk about the relationship to necessary, optional, and social activities.

References Gehl, J (2011) Life between buildings. Using public space. Island Press, Washington, Covelo, London Hall ET, Birdwhistell RL, Bock B, Bohannan P, Diebold Jr AR, Durbin M, Edmonson MS, Fischer JL, Hymes D, Kimball ST, La Barre W (1968) Proxemics [and comments and replies]. Curr Anthropol 9(2/3): 83–108 https://www.ph21gallery.com/silence-20 (December 5, 2021) https://www.ph21gallery.com/silence-21 (December 5, 2021) Jordan DP (1992) THE CITY: Baron Haussmann and Modern Paris. The American Scholar 61(1):99–106 Kostof, S (1991) What is a city? In: The city shaped: urban patterns and meanings through history. Bullfinch Press, Boston, pp 37–41 Lynch K (1960) The image of the city. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mumford, L (1996) What is a city? In: LeGates RT, Stout F (eds) The city reader. Routledge, London and New York, pp 91–95 Wirth, L (1996) Urbanism as a way of life. In: LeGates RT, Stout F (eds) The city reader. Routledge, London and New York, pp 190–197

New Economic and Cultural Biases of Strategic Development in Lithuanian-Polish Cross-Border Functional Area Under the Impact of Pandemic and Migrations Eduardas Spiriajevas Abstract The concepts of functional region and functional area are under the implementation in the regional policy of Lithuania and Poland. This is considered as a new narrative of territorial cooperation with clearly assigned functions, but with limited geographic space of interaction on the both sides of borderlands. Cultural heritage values are the most important factors from which the image of tourism in the cross-border functional area must be created as a concept for communication of Lithuanian and Polish cultures. Global uncertainties affected the vulnerable social, cultural and economic ecosystems in both borderlands. Due to the impact of pandemic, traffic circulation and human migrations at the border crossings were reduced. The economic and social activities started to stagnate keeping minimal functions on cross-border exchanges. An agreement on common values and identities is a focal strategic point for perspective functioning of cross-border functional area. Keywords Borderlands · Lithuania · Poland · Tourism · Cross-border cooperation · Functional region

Introduction Research on borderlands and border landscapes has concentrated heavily on those associated with international boundaries and has given scant attention to ones between local state units (Meyer 2022). D. Newman and A. Paasi (1998) observed borders that separate local political units. The borders directly affect people’s lives more than international ones do (Agnew and Muscarà 2012). Borderland economies are typically located in the fringe of nation states whose economic-geographical position varies from interactive to isolated. Borderlands separate the different institutional systems of territories. Their location determines greatly whether they become integrated borderlands, gateways, special economic zones, shatterbelts or peripheries (Tykkyläinen 2020). E. Spiriajevas (B) Center for Social Geography and Regional Studies, Klaipeda University, Klaip˙eda, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_10

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The European Union (EU) has clear goals of becoming the world’s leading tourism destination via, for example, promoting sustainable tourism, developing innovation in the tourism sector and cross-border tourism initiatives. It has been recognized that cross-border tourism can potentially address issues of peripherality and enable transnational synergies, leading to promotional and profile-enhancing gains for the tourism sector of the EU as a whole (European Commission 2010; Makkonen et al. 2020). In Lithuania as well in Poland, a definition on cross-border functional area is a new narrative in national and regional policies as they related to cross-border functions and their distinctions and either territorial or functional disparities in the borderland of both states, which is neither sufficiently examined theoretically nor practically yet. Both political and public awareness are accepted by many public and private regional development agents, which imply and stimulate the cooperation between both neighboring borderlands. An important role was given to local municipal authorities, as their cooperation was able to create an essential added value needed for better economic and cultural interaction on both sides of the border.

Precondition to Develop New Biases for Cross-Border Tourism Functional Area in Lithuanian-Polish Borderland The border can be a barrier, hindering and controlling cross-border activities and contacts. Borderlands can be spaces where migration and secuturization efforts often meet and collide and formal and informal precarious camps often emerge where migrants and refugees are detained. Daily life in the borderlands depends crucially upon the permeability of borders permitting border people to develop specific crossborder economic, social and cultural cross-border activities (Wastl-Walter 2020). Many international borders and border areas were treated as politically marginal and economically disadvantageous places, especially during the Cold War era. Along with the increasing trend of economic globalization, they are also the front lines for their respective hinterlands to pursue international and cross-border trade and cooperation. As the global interactions increase, cross-border areas are becoming more or more important to policymakers (Guo 2018). Many local and regional development policies attempt to promote innovation in local establishments, often drawing upon notions of clusters and local interactions that may be inappropriate for regions with sparser settlement patterns and less institutional thickness than cities (Makkonen and Kahila 2020). Borderlands exist when two or more political, economic and social systems—usually nation states—meet. All cross-border relations and activities are framed by international or binational treaties (Wastl-Walter 2020). Tourism as an interdisciplinary economic and social activity can connect all the economic factors of a region, that is, strengthen crossborder geographical areas (Milenkoviˇc 2012). The knowledge on neighboring border

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regions: it leads toward an efficient regional cohesion and it solves different socioeconomic, cultural and spatial problems. Elaboration of the international tourism reciprocal activities: it creates the conditions for better spatial interaction of neighboring regions, as these regions become more integrated in international policies, and they indicate the effectiveness of cross-border cooperation (Spiriajevas 2019). A previous experience related to the functionalities of borderlands between Lithuania and Kaliningrad region of Russian Federation (in particular between municipal administrations of Pagegiai in Lithuania and Sovetsk in Russia), between Lithuania and Latvia (Zarasai and Daugavpils towns, Mazeikiai and Saldus, Birzai and Barbele), between Lithuania and Belarus (Druskininkai and Grodno), between Poland and Russia (TriCity and Kaliningrad), between Poland and Czechia (Cieszyn and Cesky Tescin), between Finland and Russia (the North Karelia and the East Karelia), etc. All these above-mentioned bipolar models of cross-border cooperation have a deep historical and traditional background and experienced different transformations in regulations on strategic development of cross-border activities. Recently, with a support of local and regional authorities as well stakeholders, the actions of cross-border cooperation transformed into different forms of activities and territorial models. One of the newest forms of territorial cooperation is determined and designed in an organizational structure of cross-border functional area in Lithuanian and Polish borderlands. This is considered as a new narrative of territorial cooperation with clearly assigned functions, but with limited geographic space of interaction on the both sides of borderlands. The geographic space is designed as limited due to the purpose to implement intensively acting cross-border functional area in order to support development of a certain economic specialization. Secondly, to activate local communities to create the new local economic activities and to promote cultural interactions within geographic space of the cross-border functional area. In numerous documents on strategic spatial, regional and economic development, a concept of functional region is introduced with limitations on evidence-based explanations. However, there does not exist any evidence-based typology of functional region or functional area on the state level. The concept of definition on crossborder functional area even is not determined in national legislations of Lithuania and Poland. Primarily, the functional region related to the concepts of problematic territory and target territory. In national legislation problematic territory is distinguished according to the criteria, which indicate social and economic disparities and which adjoined to the purpose and tasks determined in the plans on development of those territories. A concept of target territory is distinguished according to the purposes and tasks of the target territories in relation to the strategic planning documents, national and regional development strategies and the EU financial programs in relation to regional development initiatives. Thereof, both concepts of functional region and functional area are under the implementation in the regional policy of Lithuania and Poland as well. At this stage, no classification or typology of functional regions or functional areas has so far been created in both neighbouring countries. In addition, in the White Book on Regional Policy of Lithuania for the period of 2017– 2030, the basic principles of regional policy related to the sequence, wide consensus

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and evidence-based regional governance. A concept of functional region is determined as a system of interactions related to economic development, migration of labor force, sharing of common infrastructure, functions of transport networks and public services within urban and rural territories of the functional region. A determination of geographic space of functional region must be distinguished according to the territorial distribution of socio-economic problems, but not necessarily must correspond to the boundaries of administrative territorial units. According to these principles, three large-scale functional regions will be created in Lithuania. A formation of cross-border functional areas also can be enhanced according to these principles either on meso- or on micro-scales. This approach has been assigned to Proactive Regional Development Policy and implementation of Place Based concept in order to balance better territorial cohesion and socio-economic development between two neighboring regions. According to the Law on Regional Development of the Republic of Lithuania, the municipalities are free in their decision to form voluntary-based territorial structures as target areas for efficient regional development and to create a network of stakeholders and other partners for better territorial interaction and regional cohesion. In particular, in Poland, the local municipalities as powiats (NUTS 4 level of administrative division) and gminas (NUTS 5 level of administrative division), firstly, they need to apply for central government to get permission to create a voluntary-based territorial structures as target areas in cooperation with foreign municipalities. This is an important precondition for administrative territory to get permission to be involved in the system of functional area. According to observations of territorial cooperation projects that have been implemented with a support of Interreg V-A Lithuania-Poland Cooperation Programme 2014–2020, the jointly elaborated and implemented projects had a larger geographic extent in program’s territory but with smaller focus on Lithuanian-Polish borderlands. The reason for this inequality is due a lack of competences of local municipal authorities, NGOs and other public enterprises as well SMEs to implement joint projects on the both sides of the borderlands. With the support of the EC, in cooperation between national authorities and local municipalities, in June 2019, the Lithuanian—Polish cross-border functional area was created in order to reduce economic, social, and cultural peripheral features of the borderland. The key function has been given to local municipal authorities to promote tourism development as a tool to activate economic development and cultural interaction in this specific and geographically limited area. The improvement of existing and creation of new ones’ tourism systems depends on national tourism sustainability of inter-regional relations and inter-governmental political approach based on efficient actions of municipal authorities. Thus, an elaboration of tourism products based on determinants of common cultural and historic values, which promote and reinforce spatial interaction within cross-border region.

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Borderland in Retrospectivity and Spatial Dynamics The Lithuanian-Polish border is the result of the historic events and territorial transformations of boundaries between both countries. A process of transformations started since 1920s and was finally formed in 1945 after the Word War II. Political tensions and objections to demarcation of the two countries’ borders since 1920s had a negative impact on the political dialogue and cooperation between two neighboring countries. Until the beginning of World War II, a boundary between Lithuania and Poland was more temporal than permanent. In some of the border areas was a lack of coherent planning, a lack of infrastructure facilities, and there were not any joint activities (interactions) on the both sides of the borderlands. This border had not any positive mental image as an attractive territory for economic development. Due to the territorial changes of the boundary, thousands of Lithuanians became a diaspora on Polish part of borderland and integrated into the state of Poland lately. In the meantime, a diaspora of Lithuanians was able to keep their Lithuanian cultural identity as language and cultural traditions. After the World War II, a boundary between Lithuania and Poland was re-demarcated and became an external boundary of the former Soviet Union. At that time borders of Poland were also changing. Poland’s border with Lithuania, which was already part of the former Soviet Union, became a closed border, and until the 1980s there was no social or cultural interaction on both sides of the border, except for the transportation of goods and raw materials by railways. This border became a part of the former Iron Curtain, which was strictly protected by the border guards of both countries in the former communist system. The inhabitants of Lithuania and Poland practically did not maintain any mutual relations. On Polish side a diaspora of Lithuanians had only minimal relations to Lithuanians beyond the border. An internal migration of the population took place in both border areas, and new residents from other regions were resettled, which led to a growth of a cultural diversity and weakened the importance of local identities and local cultural values in both borderlands (Fig. 1). The borderlands of both countries lost their essential common heritage identities, and the emerging new identities have been different and had little to do with the historic development in these borderlands. These distinctions in borderlands reinforced creation of different interpretations of the common heritage, which until now is difficult and rather contradictive to combine in order to create the attractiveness of borderlands of both countries as a common historic and cultural space. The common heritage development and the equal interpretation of the facts of historic memory of both countries are the most important factors of social and cultural durability of borderlands. An alignment of both Lithuanian and Polish cultures and history enables to create a new spatial dimension as a functional area for the purpose to increase an attractiveness of the borderlands. Due to the historic and political events in the past, the stereotypes and associations still remain uncertain, and in both nations they are being interpreted differently. During the former Soviet times Lithuanian part was the external one of the former Soviet Union. Thus, it was also named after Iron Curtain with a very strict border

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Fig. 1 Ethnographic territories of Lithuania beyond state boundaries until 1939

control system. After the regaining of independence of Lithuania, this borderland became a gateway to Europe as a land transport corridor for the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and even the Finns as a transit region going to different countries in Central and Western Europe. Due to started international trade, intensive traffic flows and human migrations, a circulation on the both sides of the borderlands created a longstanding question what affected a creation of a negative image in general, with dominant association of lengthy procedure of border-crossing (Fig. 2). Since 1991 until 2007 the basic function in this area was to ensure the control of traffic flows and human migrations. The territories on the both sides of the borderlands, especially around between Lazdijai (Lithuania)—Sejny (Poland), Kalvarija (Kalvarija)—Suwalki (Poland), all these territories did not interact economically. Since the accession to the Schengen zone (since December 2007), these borderlands became more opened with reduced control at the border crossings, but the mental barriers still remained with associations of long queues to cross the border, as a formerly strictly controlled border area with less knowledge on natural, cultural and historical values and common identities. These values and identities insist a reciprocal understanding, and they create conditions for cross-border cooperation among societies that experience different scenarios of social and cultural transformations recently. A case of Lithuanian-Polish border and borderlands still was not discussed in detail by researchers. Therefore, the comparison of borderlands by different aspects leads toward better understanding of existing problems and

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Fig. 2 Recent Lithuanian and Polish boundary

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Fig. 3 Map of cross-border functional area between Lithuania and Poland map elaborated by Dr. T. Studzieniecki, 20201

ongoing processes between two neighboring regions that have common historical past and cultural values, but still remained separated due to the former existence of the former Iron Curtain in the previous times until opened and socio-economically and culturally passive border area recently. The remarkable researches in the field of social-economic geography, demography, geopolitics, regional development geography, cultural geography and ethnogeography conducted and recognized as pilot researches. A priority for tourism development strategically regarded as key determinant in order to promote inter-regional cohesion that based on cultural and economic

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Table 10.1 Social and economic profile of Lithuanian part of the cross-border functional area Municipality

Population 2016

Population 2020

Emigrated per 1000

Immigrated per SMEs 1000 2016

SMEs 2020

Vilkaviskis

43,588

34,666

29,8

22,5

418

433

Kalvarija

12,465

10,187

39,0

23,3

107

133

Lazdijai

22,861

18,324

29,9

23,3

204

220

Marijampole In total:

63,579

53,772

142,493

116,949

26,6

24,0

1,214

1,290

Average 31,32

Average 23,27

1,943

2,076

Source Statistics Lithuania, 2021

cooperation that facilitates local economic development and the flows of human migrations in the borderlands (Fig. 3). A territorial determination of geographic area of cross-border functional area requires the application of critical assessment due to administrative and ethnographic diversities in planning of the functional area. On Lithuania’s part in comparison to Poland’s part, this territorial determination is based on geolocation of municipalities (lith. Savivaldybes) along the state’s boundary. Vilkaviskis district municipality and Kalvarija municipality belong to Marijampole County, which is one of the ten regions in Lithuania. Lazdijai district municipality belongs to Alytus County. On Polish borderland the elderships (gminas) such as Sejny town, Sejny, Krasnopol, Giby and Punsk belong to Sejny district (powiat), and the elderships such as Szypliszki, Jeleniewo, Rutka-Tartak and Wyžajny belong to Suwalki district (powiat) involved in tourism cross-border functional area. Taking into consideration the geographic space of existing Lithuania-Poland Cross-border Cooperation Programme 2014– 2020 and the future for the period of 2021–2027, the territory of action of this program is considered as too large and focused more on transboundary cooperation than on cross-border cooperation. On the basis of different implemented projects within this program, the stakeholders and municipal representatives on August 20, 2019, at Lazdijai Tourism Information Center determined the territorial scope of this program in order to sustain activities for cross-border cooperation and to solve the common problems on the both sides of Lithuanian-Polish borderlands. Thus, taking into consideration the principles of the EU Regional Development Policy, the key principles of concentration and complementarity should be used in formation of the target area of cross-border functional area (Table 10.1). A concept of cross-border functional area on Lithuanian and Polish borderland first of all must have a continuous socio-economically based character, which should be devoted for stimulation of economic activities firstly and with inclusion of local communities secondly. A bond of both economic and cultural factors creates new 1

Remarks: Lenkija-Poland, Lietuva-Lithuania, Valstybi˛u sienos-state boundaries, Administracini˛u teritorini˛u vienet˛u ribos-boundaries of administrative territorial units, Pasienio regiono funkcin˙e zona-functional area of cross-border region, Savialdyb˙es (Lietuva)-municipalities (Lithuania), Sein˛u apskrities valsˇciai-elderships of Seinai district, Suvalk˛u apskrities valsˇciai-elderships of Suvalki district.

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Table 10.2 Social and economic profile of Polish part of the cross-border functional area Gmina

Population 2020

Change % 2016–2020

Emigrated 2016

Immigrated 2020

SMEs 2016

SMEs 2020

Sejny town

5,159

−1,78

45

47

420

485

Krasnopol

3,756

−0,61

41

54

178

218

Giby

2,685

−0,97

45

26

150

166

Punsk

4,156

−0,17

29

35

217

304

Jeleniewo

3,156

0,00

33

43

149

206

Rutka-Tartak

2,330

−0,50

41

29

85

113

Wyzajny

2,311

−0,92

33

28

117

125

Szypliszki

3,884

−0,46

47

40

171

208

Sejny

3,933

+0,72

45

47

214

235

31,370

–

359

349

1,701

2,060

In total:

Source Statistics Poland, 2021

biases for strategic development of Lithuanian and Polish borderland in the spatial form of cross-border tourism functional area (Table 10.2). The functional regions are defined by their organizational structure, and they also are called as nodal regions. The idea of the functional region captures the idea of a territory characterized by economic activities, which lead toward creation of joint economic and cultural outcomes and products in cross-border area. Since the accession to the Schengen zone, this borderland has not got any proper economic, cultural or tourism image due to low intensity of common functions and due to a lack of commonly agreed values and joint initiatives. The concept of functional area must have a role of facilitation of circulations between the two nodes, e.g., between Lazdijai and Sejny. The territorial determination of the nodes and enabling the functions for intermutual cooperation are the key preconditions for establishment of cross-border functional area with a core space between Lazdijai and Sejny. On the basis of the previous examples, in many countries there are established and determined geographic spaces of functional regions, whose geolocation not necessarily must be within borderlands. Such examples exist in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Czechia, Poland, etc. A narrowed model of functional region can be enabled on Lithuanian-Polish borderland in a form of cross-border tourism functional area, which is regarded as a new concept of territorial cooperation in order to promote the functioning of tourism systems on both sides of cross-border area as an outcome of spatial interaction and strategic development. Thus, the concept tourism limology is a key determinant in creation of cross-border tourism functional area for better regional cohesion of Lithuanian-Polish borderlands.

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Borderlands and Their Potential for Tourism Development The territory of the border region of Lithuania and Poland is characterized by spatial dynamics, which was due to historical events of the past. The most important factor in spatial dynamics is the demarcation of the border between the two countries, which has been stable for almost 75 years. Recently, borderlands are being perceived as a region of cooperation between both countries. This space is opened for implementation of common strategies in order to achieve greater spatial interaction, and tourism is the most important social, economic and cultural factor, which reinforces intensive human migrations in the cross-border functional area. Development of tourism is an intrinsic factor in both borderlands. Lithuanian borderland is comprised from two ethnographic regions of Suduva and Dzukija, and both stretch to the territory of Polish borderland as a spatial continuation of Lithuanian ethnographic regions. From Lithuanian perspective, this strengthens the attractiveness of the functional border area for potential Lithuanian tourists to be more interested in the attractions of the cross-border region with expression of cultural heritage values and artifacts of historic memory of both nations. These borderlands are distinctive with unique tourism-based natural, historic and cultural resources in one of the most sparsely populated areas in the Eastern Europe. The borderlands are rich with pristine forests, lakes, wetlands, hilly and picturesque landscapes. There are located the national parks such as Vistytis, Meteliai, Veisiejai, Wigry and Zuvintas reserve and the lakes of Dusia and Wyzajny (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 Tourism development potential on Lithuanian cross-border functional area (Source Author’s own archive)

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The history of noble persons such as Emilia Plater, Vincas Kudirka and Czeslaw Milos ties the borderlands with European history. A tourist potential of the borderland stands in the timeline from the historical heritage of the former Baltic tribe Yotvingians and their hillforts and involves the military heritage of the former border of Iron Curtain. Development of tourism ecosystem and revitalization of Lithuanian cultural identities, especially through the applications of creative tourism concepts, determined a potential to create new unique border tourism business models and tourism products that strengthen the identities of border cultures and in the meantime, to increase the awareness and attractiveness of the borderlands onto the European international tourism market. The expression of Polish culture includes the area from the Lithuanian-Polish border with extension to Vilnius region in the Southeast Lithuania. A cultural space of both nations has different geographic distribution: the area of reflection of Polish culture covers a larger part of Lithuania and concentrates more beyond the geographic boundaries of the cross-border functional area. Lithuanian cultural area in Poland is concentrated in the functional border area and beyond, but its geographic area is smaller with greater concentration of Lithuanian tangible and intangible cultural heritage (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5 Tourism development potential on Polish cross-border functional area (Source Author’s own archive)

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Fig. 6 Key concepts for perspective tourism development in cross-border functional area (Elaborated by Dr. T. Studzieniecki and Dr. E. Spiriajevas 2020)

Cultural heritage values are the most important factors from which the image of tourism in the cross-border functional area must be created as a concept for communication of Lithuanian and Polish cultures. The tourism brand of the border functional area should be related to strengthening the identities that are important for the culture of the Europe as a whole. Such a cultural identity suggests to distinguish the former culture of Yotvingians as one of the former of the Baltic tribes with an emphasis on their historical and cultural artifacts. The historic heritage of the Yotvingians should become a leading concept of the cultural tourism identity with a geographic core of this identity in the European context. Based on detected and determined tourism potential, there are four elaborated tourism concepts for perspective development (Fig. 6). A concept of magical borderland represents a potential to enable nature and culture values for better integration onto national and international tourism systems of both countries by creating cross-border tourism products and routes. This concept most likely could be implemented uniting the initiatives of local SMEs and local stakeholders. A concept of Green Retreat—Slow Tourism and Healthy Life represents a potential to enable pristine landscape (as forests, lakes) and unique forms of landscapes for green retreat, which leads toward development of slow tourism based on promotion on healthy life traditions. Both borderlands are characterized as green territories and one of the most sparsely populated territories in Eastern Europe. Therefore, a potential of nature recreation in the forms of both green retreat and slow tourism has a real promise to be developed in the future. Unlocked tourism potential is related to development of the following branches of tourism as ethnographic, architectural, gastronomic, linguistic, religious and spiritual, topographic, heritage of historic memory and social tourism. The potential for social tourism development is considered as the key factor which enables a circulation of human migrations for cognitive purpose of both nations to get more familiar with peculiarities of common heritage and its evidence-based interpretation by both nations in order to reinforce social and economic cohesion within the borderlands. In particular, social tourism development increases awareness of younger generation to pay attention to the former historical events that affected cultural, social and economic development of the borderlands and for more tight dialogue of neighboring nations in the future, when trans-border human migrations play a significant role for better spatial cohesion of economic ecosystems and infrastructure. A concept of common

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heritage has a potential to increase awareness and acceptance of both nations to agree on values and identities and their modern interpretation agreed by both nations, what leads toward development of social tourism as an interactive cross-border form to attract attention of younger generation to visit these borderlands in particular.

New Economic and Cultural Biases Under Impact of Pandemic and Migrations The Lithuanian-Polish border functional area is characterized by various structural disparities, which have been formed separately regarding economic development on both sides of the border. Tourism services such as accommodation, catering, entertainment, transportation, tour guiding, information dissemination and tourism infrastructure such as cognitive scenic trails all were created separately without economic and human interactions across the border. The structural disparities in tourism sector and infrastructure remain evident. Tourism sector and infrastructure is not in fully developed quantitative and qualitative conditions yet. The tourism services are rather fragmented and unevenly distributed in border areas, settlements and towns. In comparison, there is more advanced tourism development on Lithuanian borderland, but without spatial-structural relations to Polish borderland, i.e., there are two different tourism ecosystems running in neighboring borderlands without a strategy for continuous development. There is still a lack of the most important tourist services, a lack of diversity of accommodation and catering services, innovations in tourism business models, insufficient offer of creative tourism products, authentic and unique tourism and leisure services. Tourism information infrastructure is better developed on the Lithuanian side. Tourist information centers have been operating for a long time, and tourism marketing tools have been developed, which are related to national tourism, but still have a weak relation to cross-border tourism actions. In addition, numerous projects on tourism information infrastructure have been implemented with partners from the Polish municipal authorities. Tourism information centers of Lazdijai and Vilkaviskis are mostly prevailing and distinguished in the development and maintenance of tourism structures, which initiate tourism infrastructure and tourism marketing projects through cross-border cooperation activities. Tourism economic structures are created by the national parks of Meteliai, Veisiejai and Vistytis on the Lithuanian borderland and by Wygry National Park on the Polish borderland. The cross-border functional zone is characterized by economic periphery, so the dynamics of tourism economic structures is extensive. Several important international tourism routes can be distinguished, which combine tourist structures in both borderlands and beyond—the pilgrimage route Camino Lituano and Camino Polaco, both belong to the European St. Jacob’s pilgrimage road structure. The created functional area is important for this section of road in particular from Lazdijai (Lithuania) to Seijny (Poland), and a total length of these routes comprised 22 km.

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Another important road is the border road Iron Curtain, which presents the historic memory of the border area and the objects of the Cold War that remained there. This object is an important structure in the border area for the promotion of cross-border tourism, but it does not have a defined image for representation of the cross-border functional area as a tourism destination as this Rocadic road does not have a relevant identity of the historical memory between Lithuania and Poland. This structure rather represents the former political and physical barriers between the former Soviet Union and the Republic of Poland. Different tourism economic structures in both borderlands of both countries do not create stereotypes of the image of the tourism of the united border area. So, it is necessary to create an implicated model of the image of tourism, consisting of different elements in relation to the history and heritage values of both nations by creating the new values favorable to attract more national visitors and to stimulate economic interaction as biases for development of borderlands. Tourism as a form of cross-border function is an outcome of cross-border interaction, which tends to continuous economic and cultural development of cross-border functional area. The impact of global pandemic situation affected the processes of strategic development and created new biases which turn down economic activities and cultural interactions. In addition, processes of illegal migration from Belarus affect openness of cross-border area, which instead of economic and cultural cooperation area expectedly transform into closed zone with administrative-political restrictions for an uncertain period (Figs. 7 and 8).

Fig. 7 Flow of traffic in borderlands in April 2019 (Author: Dr. E. Spiriajevas)

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Fig. 8 Flow of traffic in borderlands in May 2021 (Author: Dr. E. Spiriajevas)

Global uncertainties affected the vulnerable social, cultural and economic ecosystems in both borderlands. The pandemic period affected traffic circulation and human migration flows at the border crossings. The economic and social activities started to stagnate keeping minimal functions on cross-border exchanges. The development of cross-border tourism ecosystems and business models is delayed and/or in a process of modifications in order to adapt new conditions of global pandemic and geopolitic uncertainties. Climate change is also becoming an important natural factor, as these areas start to suffer due to a lack of humidity in summer time, which affects the development of the green retreat concept in cross border tourism. Global pandemic uncertainties affected the market and flows of international tourism. In many countries these ecosystems started to decay, in particular when local business models are getting dependent on the inflow of international visitors. In Lithuania and Poland pandemic uncertainties affected touristic areas mostly: significantly decreased number of international visitors and lost incomes in local economies from international tourism businesses. In the meantime, due to intensifying migrations of locals within the regions and countries for tourism purposes and different recreational needs, an economic significance of local (national) tourism arose in local and regional extents. Thereon, the ecosystems of national tourism become more durable in a long-term perspective and more resilient against global uncertainties. Therefore, the models of cross-border international tourism and cross-border tourism functions must be developed and adjoined to existing durable systems of national tourism. The analyzed cross-border functional area before the period of started global pandemic did not have developed international tourism and developed cross-border tourism ecosystems, and the affection of pandemic created less negative economic consequences in borderlands in comparison with other developed tourism regions. Otherwise, the potential of cross-border tourism functional area has to be used in development of local (national) tourism ecosystems with cross-border implications

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in order to attract to the borderland the more national tourists of both countries. An agreement on common values and identities is a focal strategic point for perspective functioning of cross-border area. Due to geopolitical tensions with Belarus and inflow of migrants, Lithuanian and Polish borderlands experience new economic and social biases and restrictions in interaction for undetermined period under affection of uncertainties in cross-border cooperation. A geopolitic catastrophe between Russia and Ukraine affected development of tourism-based cross-border functional area due to increased movement of military and humanitarian aid traffic. The temporal function on tourism development is being kept by Lithuania-Poland Cross-border Cooperation Programme in the borderlands.

Conclusions The improvement of existing and creation of new ones’ tourism systems depend on national tourism sustainability of inter-regional relations and inter-governmental political approach based on efficient actions of municipal authorities. An elaboration of tourism products based on determinants of common cultural and historic values, which promote and reinforce spatial interaction within functional area among different local social groups and interested stakeholders. Major obstacles for the development of cross-border cooperation include: low cross-border mobility, low interest in the neighboring country, poor social integration and mutual prejudices, resulting, e.g., from historical occurrences. A model of cross-border functional area could be enabled on Lithuanian-Polish borderlands in a form of cross-border tourism functional area, which regarded a new concept of territorial cooperation as an outcome of spatial interaction and strategic development of Lithuanian-Polish borderlands.

References Agnew J, Muscara L (2012) Making political geography, 2nd edn. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD Europe, the World’s No. 1 Tourist Destination: A New Political Framework of Tourism in Europe European Commission, Brussels (2010) Guo R (2018) Territorial discontinuity and cross-border cooperation. Cross-border Resource Management, 3rd edn, pp 269–298 Makkonen T, Gretzinger S, Hjaltadóttir RE, Lorentzen A, Shearmur R (2020) Guest editorial: innovation in peripheries and borderlands. J Rural Stud 78:531–533 Makkonen T, Kahila P (2021) Vitality policy as a tool for rural development in peripheral Finland. Growth and Change 52(2):706–726 Makkonen T, Williams A, Weidenfeld A, Kaisto V (2018) Cross-border knowledge transfer and innovation in the European neighbourhood: tourism cooperation at the Finnish-Russian border. Tour Manage 68:140–151

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Meyer WB (2022) Borderland of the local state. Polit Geogr 92:102498 Milenkoviˇc M (2012) Procedia—social and behavioral sciences 44, XI International conference “Service sector in terms of changing environment”, Ohrid Ecoregionalism-Factor Cross-Border Cooperation and Tourism Development, Published by Elsevier, pp 236–240 Newman D, Paasi A (1998) Fences and neighbors in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography. Prog Hum Geogr 22(2):186–207 Spiriajevas E (2019) Borderlands of Lithuania and Kaliningrad Region of Russia: preconditions for comparative geographic approach and spatial interaction. Borderology: cross-disciplinary insights from the border zone. Along the Green Belt. Springer, pp 15–29 (ISBN 978-3-31999392-8) Studzieniecki T, Spiriajevas E, Jakubowski A, Kurowska-Pysz J (2021) Identification of key elements for creating the touristic cross-border functional area at the Lithuanian—Polish border. Report. European Commission. Regional and Urban Policy General Directorate, 60 p (ISBN 978-83-66887-00-8) Tykkyläinen M (2020) Borderland economies. International encyclopedia of human geography, 2nd ed, pp 365–372 Wastl-Walter D (2020) Borderlands. International encyclopedia of human geography, 2nd ed, pp 373–379. Vitality policy as a tool for rural development in peripheral Finland. Growth and change. J Rural Stud 78:531–533

The Fourteen Critical Factors for Regional Development in Borderlands: Focusing on European Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) Areas Rui Alexandre Castanho

Abstract Border regions are very particular and intricate areas to understand deeply. Nevertheless, their governance is very delicate. In this sense, in recent decades, these borderlands’ interactions and synergies have achieved unparalleled levels. This evidence is not only due to their vast potential for regional integration but additionally regarding their position in the international arena and consequent processes; i.e., infrastructure construction or planning projects on European territories are just a few examples. Nonetheless, practices of Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) have expanded not just in European regions but all over the globe, enabling the development of a global network of connections linking people—perpetually seeking to produce mutually beneficial situations, the so-called “win–win-situations”. Contextually, the present study will be based on the findings of Castanho et al., in 2016 were fourteen critical factors for territorial success in CBC areas have been identified. Those findings will be further investigated to go deeper into the definitions of the above-mentioned fourteen critical factors to achieve such success in borderlands planning processes. So, this work intends to contribute with additional theoretical thematic knowledge regarding the border regions’ dynamics and their planning, governance, and management and how Cross-Border Cooperation could be decisive for the achievement of sustainable development. Keywords Borderlands · Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) · Regional common planning · Strategic planning · Sustainable development

R. A. Castanho (B) Faculty of Applied Sciences, WSB University, D˛abrowa Górnicza, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_11

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Introduction To this day, borders are just lines on maps… are they? Currently, this problem is doubted, revival old ghosts of the Cold War and World War II periods (Dale 2016; Holmes 2016; Jurado Almonte et al. 2020; Castanho 2020). In this regard, we can consider the not-so-far conflict in Crimea, the dilemma between Greece and Germany, the increase in terrorism phenomenon in the European territories in the last decade, the Brexit, or even the so recent COVID-19 pandemic that are just a few examples (Castanho et al. 2020). These circumstances have directed to a more intense debate concerning free movement in EU territories and the resurgence of a sense of radical nationalism among European citizens (Dale 2016; Holmes 2016). Such dilemmas drive us to explore strategies for a different approach, in which it is possible to reach a more comprehensive regional cohesion. Thereby, it becomes evident that identifying the critical factors for regional success is pivotal in the current situation (Loures et al. 2019; Vulevic et al. 2020). Moreover, development and regional cooperation initiatives and programs have been formed within the neighboring countries of the EU through the Neighbor Association tool and financed and co-financed by the European Development Fund. According to Martin (2008) or Batista et al. (2013), more than a third of the European population lives in border areas, being the most affected by community policies and aware of these policies’ deficiencies. Furthermore, the transformation of cities throughout the world has produced a growing interest in the necessity to rethink how they develop and cooperate (De Sousa 2003; Portney 2003; Loures and Crawford 2008; Spirkova and Ivanicka 2009; Loures, Burley and Panagopoulos 2011; Castanho et al. 2017). If we take the example of the common projects between Portugal and Spain, it is possible to understand how, in many cases, this Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC), regarding regional planning, presented interesting results: i.e., COORDSIG, PLANEXAL, GEOALEX, OTALEX, OTALEX II, or OTALEX C (Dominguez 2006; OTALEX-C 2013; Castanho 2017). Also, CBC is increasingly emphasized at the European level, i.e., cooperation between Bratislava (Slovakia) and Vienna (Austria), where the former, in the face of such cooperation, is one of the cities in Central Europe with a tremendous and faster growth pace. In fact, the above-mentioned guides us to comply with something comparable to what Emil Gött (2019) had stated by the end of the nineteenth century: “… the border should not be something limiting, but something that means growth and prosperity among the people”. Contextually, the present study will be based on the findings of Castanho et al. (2016) were fourteen critical factors for territorial success in CBC areas have been identified. Those findings will be further investigated to go deeper into the definitions of the above-mentioned fourteen critical factors to achieve such success in borderlands planning processes.

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Materials and Methods Bearing in mind the objective of this study, special attention was paid to the literature review and consequently to the improvement of the methodological structure since the study demands the application of different techniques, including direct and indirect approaches. So, in the study that this chapter was based on, the author, to complete the proposed purpose, twenty CBC-selected cases in European territories were examined by an exploratory methodology based on the empirical research method put forward by Yin (1994). In brief, the study’s first phase focused on the European border areas that should be analyzed; thus, potential candidate cities were signalized to carry out a preliminary study. In those cases, their territorial planning was analyzed in the context of border areas. Throughout the literature review carried out, multiple questions were gathered, i.e., the situation regarding the CBC process and possible divergences as a consequence of the appearance of nationalist currents that are beginning to emerge in Europe. Thereby, with all this information, conversations and interviews were held with technicians, experts, and leading actors of the CBC procedure to determine the importance of this study and the most pertinent questions that should be taken into account to further develop in this thematic field. Accordingly, the study that this chapter was based on (see: Castanho et al. 2016) enabled to identify fourteen critical factors for territorial success in CBC regions, which were: (1) connectivity—movement between cities; (2) strong territorial strategy; (3) avoid duplication of infrastructures; (4) increase the sense of belonging; (5) diverse infrastructural offer—Euro citizenship; (6) access to European funds; (7) stronger economy; (8) better life´s quality standards; (9) young and talented people magnet; (10) common objectives and master plans; (11) stronger political commitment; (12) citizen involvement; (13) political transparency and commitment; and (14) Eurocity marketing and advertisement. Consequently, in the following section those factors will be further investigated. More specifically to go deeper into the definitions of the above-mentioned findings so relevant to achieve the so-desired success in transboundary planning processes.

The Fourteen Critical Factors for Territorial Success in CBC Regions: Factor-by-Factor Contextually, this section presents the findings mentioned above and a factor-byfactor explanation of its meaning.

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Connectivity—Movement Between Cities The connectivity factor—travel between cities refers to the existing transport network between cities and its importance in the territories’ success. The factor also takes into consideration the ease or not of mobility of citizens between urban centers.

Strong Territorial Strategy In specific cases, such as the existence of a privileged geographical location, strengthening the territorial strategy is essential for the CBC procedure to achieve the intended success. Nevertheless, if this factor is not considered, even if there are a priori advantages, such as geographical location or proximity to trade flows, a higher level of development will not be reached, and there may be a risk of stagnation.

Avoid Duplication of Infrastructures This factor refers to the non-duplication of investments in nearby areas so that public capital or the development of the territories, through CBC projects, is used more efficiently and can respond to other priorities that the territories can sue. An example is the case of Basel-Saint Louis, where the Saint Louis Euro-Aeoroport responds to nearby towns, such as Basel, preventing the same type of infrastructure from being duplicated.

Increase the Sense of Belonging The factor of fostering a sense of belonging is essential for the territorial success of some regions, given that there are populations whose shared past dates back much earlier to the administrative divisions of the borders on modern maps. Examples are common dialects and cultural specificities, among others. It would be the cases of Haparanda-Tornio, Valga-Valka, or Bayonne-San Sebastián.

Diverse Infrastructural Offer—Euro Citizenship Based on the principles of the above-described factor of “avoid duplication of infrastructure”, this goes further. After the non-duplication of equipment, the populations of both territories have a Eurocitizen Card that allows them to benefit from the same

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advantages on the “other side of the border”. It already occurs or is in the process of implementation in cases such as Chaves-Verín or Tuy-Valença.

Access to European Funds Access to European funds is crucial for the territorial success of almost all the cases analyzed. A broader range of fundamental development issues can be addressed through European funds, as there is more capital for CBC projects. However, for lessdeveloped regions and more remote from the standards of the rest of Europe, access to European funds is even more critical for territorial success to be achieved, mainly through joint territorial/regional development projects. Ruse-Giurgiu, Gorizia-Nova Gorica, and Oradea-Debrecen are just some of the examples.

Stronger Economy Based on principles similar to the factor “strengthening the territorial strategy”, the economy is applied to cases where there is already a territorial cohesion or characteristics that denote advantages for significant development of the territories. However, an economic strengthening, that is, a joint strategy to achieve this strengthening, is seen as a lever for rapid growth/development for the territories. Aachen-Liège could be one of the examples in this regard.

Better Life’s Quality Standards Improving the level of quality of life, seeking to bring populations closer to European standards is one of the critical factors to achieve territorial success. This factor is of utmost importance in territories where the level of quality of life is too far from the European average, i.e., in some cases in the Polish-Czech borderland.

Young and Talented People Magnet Attracting young entrepreneurs to the region or not letting them leave it is essential to create a sustainable development base and future for the regions. Frankfurt OderSlubice is an excellent example of a CBC case based on this factor.

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Common Objectives and Master Plans The development of common City Plans (master plans) between cities in different territories is essential for achieving common objectives. With such common technical tools, cities can respond to a wide range of questions where both municipalities will win and the CBC project will be strengthened. Current CBC projects such as the one in Vienna-Bratislava, in Central Europe, are an interesting example of how this factor, combined with other factors, is crucial for the success of the territories.

Stronger Political Commitment Political commitment to the CBC procedure is obviously a crucial factor in its success or failure. Taking this factor into account is essential to define and achieve joint objectives through the CBC.

Citizen Involvement Given that citizen participation is a democratic form of public demonstration, and knowing a priori its ability to influence political decisions, the CBC procedure is no exception. For this reason, the factor of citizen participation, along with others, such as a strong political commitment, is seen as fundamental for territorial success.

Political Transparency and Commitment Transparency at the fiscal/financial level, together with a strong political commitment in the same sense, is a critical factor for success to be achieved. Through transparency, funds earmarked for the CBC procedure can be consciously tracked and used. This factor was identified in the case studies analyzed, such as Nice-Monaco or La Línea de la Concepción-Gibraltar.

Eurocity Marketing and Advertisement Marketing and advertising, carried out around Eurocities, is seen as a critical factor for success, mainly in territories where its strategy is based on the creation of Eurocities. This factor can be identified in cases such as Chaves-Verín or Tuy-Valença.

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Table 1 Fourteen critical factors arranged by thematic group Socio-cultural

4

5

8

9

12

Resources sustainability

1

3

–

–

–

Financial-economic

7

6

–

–

–

Political-strategic

2

10

11

13

14

The Fourteen Critical Factors for Territorial Success in CBC Regions: By Thematic Fields Besides, it is also possible to group those fourteen critical factors to consider in the CBC projects and strategies into themes (Table 1). (1) Connectivity—movement between cities; (2) strong territorial strategy; (3) avoid duplication of infrastructures; (4) increase the sense of belonging; (5) diverse infrastructural offer—Euro citizenship; (6) access to European funds; (7) stronger economy; (8) better life’s quality standards; (9) young and talented people magnet; (10) common objectives and master plans; (11) stronger political commitment; (12) citizen involvement; (13) political transparency and commitment; (14) Eurocity marketing and advertisement.

Discussion and Conclusions The concept of sustainability today acquires a level of importance that it has never had before. In fact, the recent worldwide developments have contributed to the resurgence of a concept that has been the subject of discussion, since, at the epicenter is the economic deterioration that many developed countries have come to feel (with an almost daily worsening), has led to the word or concept of sustainability is considered as a principle, not only as a concern of urban planners but also within political circles (Sassen 2001; Antrop 2004; Williams 2007; Loures 2011; Pickett et al. 2012; Childers et al. 2013; Pickett et al. 2013). Due to all the recent problems named above (Brexit, COVID-19 pandemic, migratory fluxes, among several others), it is necessary to find new solutions. Thus, it is essential to consider the adoption of different measures and methods, i.e., new land use and urban planning approaches (Naranjo Gómez et al. 2020; Castanho et al. 2021; Yilmaz Genç et al. 2021) consistent with the concerns expressed and with the objectives of integration and bilateral cooperation as well as with the values of sustainability and socio-economic recovery of the territories (Couto et al. 2020; Celik Omeraga et al. 2021). The circumstances in which we live and those to arrive need innovative practices and public policies adjusted to the obstacles and requirements facing the countries/territories. It depends on the social and economic advancement that only

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freedom, autonomy, cooperation, a social, and regional union can be delivered as a common objective of the nations, without neglecting sustainability. In fact, in the end, it will be a responsibility of us all to prepare, through reflection, research, and democratic election, the public policies and methods related to the use of the most suitable land and urban planning approaches that will define the path interrupted in the countries affected by the current sanitary, social, and economic crisis. Thus, learning from the past is essential. In the same sense, handling the legacy of those who, in other circumstances, attempted to accomplish the same goals, giving expression to the feelings and values of man’s reencounter with nature, is pivotal. We live in a time when the concept of sustainability and cooperation between territories and territorial cohesion is inseparable from any political discourse. However, these same values must not compromise the use of natural resources by future generations. Contextually, Cao & Wang (2016) explore the relationships between Twin Cities and neighboring cities—the common planning concept. The work of Ballas (2013) analyzes the quality of life in urban territories. In this line of research, urban systems are investigated through exploratory testing methods to define measures and models, exposed by Craglia et al. (2004), Lambiri, Biagi and Royuela (2007), or Stimson & Marans (2011). Such studies show that a growing number of investigations based on topics similar to those exposed in the present study have been applied and developed in various territories around the globe. Through the current paper, it was possible to establish that, additionally to all the attempts and efforts that have been produced in recent years to increase the CBC in various nations all over the world (Rifkin 2004; Mau 2007; Vobruba 2008; Lee and Na 2010; Veemaa 2012; Boehnke et al. 2015; Vulevic et al. 2020), there is still a complex process to continue in order to reach a genuinely sustainable methodology based on scientific principles that can add to promoting the creation of economic, environmental, socio-cultural, and political advantages in CBC projects and strategies. So, considering the study this chapter is based on, the fourteen critical factors for the success of the CBC identified were explained in detail. Moreover, based on those factors, and on the actual panorama, it is also possible to determine the main challenges that cities should consider in the upcoming years, i.e., delivering coordinated actions to accomplish integrated development and the will to progress in the growth of effective cooperation policies and strategies collectively with the commitment to break down cultural barriers that could contribute to enhancing the sense of belonging in EU territories. As closing remarks, even if this study provides us interesting insights about this thematic issue, more research and different case studies (and in different continents) should be carried out to enable us to understand this issue more deeply through different perspectives and with more results and data to work on. Funding “The project is funded under the program of the Minister of Science and Higher Education titled ‘Regional Initiative of Excellence’ in 2019–2022, project number 018/RID/2018/19, the amount of funding PLN 10 788 423,16”.

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Portuguese Perceptions on Borders—From the Escape Path to the Sanitarian Imposition 1950–2020 Teresa Nunes

Abstract Multi-secular state, known for its relative territorial stability within the European perimeter and for its maritime vocation, Portugal has developed a specific perception of land borders. This study intends to analyse the national understanding of borders in a chronological context characterized by successive historical changes with structuring consequences, namely from the end of the Second World War to the dawn of the twenty-first century. The analytical approach assesses the relevance of land borders in pivotal moments such as Portugal’s inclusion in EFTA, the economic and social changes of the 1960s, without forgetting the effects of the colonial wars (1961–1974), the political rupture of 1974 and the redefinition of national priorities, the Portuguese integration in the European project after 1986, the impact of the financial crisis at the beginning of the twenty-first century and the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on national experiences in relation to the land border. Keywords Portuguese-Spanish border · Historical evolution · Migrations · Economic crisis · Pandemic

Introduction Portuguese geographical position has generated an accurate understanding on borders, especially the terrestrial one after the foundation of the so-called Catholic Monarchy or Spanish Monarchy in 1512, which rearranged the political configuration of the Iberian Peninsula in a composite and unbalanced scenario of two unique forces, quite unequal in dimension, but considerably close in linguistic, cultural or even economic terms—given the physical characteristics of the respective territories. These proximity factors, as well as the expression of unequal dimension between the kingdoms, induced the emergence and maintenance of phenomena of constant tension, which were based on the insecurity of borders, on the Spanish expectations of absorption of Portuguese territory or, no less relevant, on the options of Portuguese T. Nunes (B) School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_12

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diplomatic policy, of alliance with Atlantic powers and, among these, with the United Kingdom. Such feelings, retained in the Portuguese popular tradition with the adage “From Spain, neither good wind nor good marriage”, raised different understandings about the other, which were motivated by greater or lesser contact with the Spanish population, giving rise to diverse, even contradictory conceptions, about what Spain represented for the Portuguese population. Naturally, with an impact on the generalized understanding of the Portuguese border population, often the object of mistrust by their counterparts. Distrust, even fear, dominated relations between Portugal and Spain during the nineteenth century, despite the attempts of proximity such as the 1893 treaty of commerce and navigation, until the signing of the Iberian Pact between the dictatorial regimes of the Iberian Peninsula in March 1939. After the Second World War, especially in the 1950s, land borders acquired a renewed meaning that of escaping hunger and misery among the most disadvantaged strata of the Portuguese population. Trend began after the Great War; this migratory movement to European countries with growing labour needs represented the possibility of overcoming a daily experience without expectations. Even more visible in the 1960s, “jumping the border” also meant escaping compulsory military service and participating in the ongoing war in Angola, since 1961; Guinea Bissau, since 1963; and Mozambique, since 1964. Naturally, the contestation of the independence movements in favour of the end of Portuguese sovereignty in Africa restored the quest for preservation of national borders—the overseas borders—a matter in which Portugal could count on Spanish help and support. Thus, in the 1960s and 1970s, borders simultaneously represented the aspiration to persist in geopolitics according to the national maritime expression, as the country’s identity axis, and the escape from the internal conditions of hunger and unemployment especially felt in rural areas. The revolution of April 1974 marked a turning point in widespread understanding of the border. If, during the revolutionary period, it served as a gateway to exile, immigration continued, fuelled by the consequences of the economic crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. However, Portugal’s accession to the European Economic Community signalled the beginning of a dynamic of progressive dismantling of the land border as a formula for integration in the European space and synonymous with belonging to the European institutions. This trend prevailed despite the logics of globalization whose internal impact led to the demand for measures to protect the national economy and Portuguese society— particularly evident in the context of the sovereign debt crisis and the intervention of the IMF and European institutions in Portugal. The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic produced a rapid and painful inflection in the understanding of the national space as a single bloc, governed by the same rules and principles. The imposition of restrictions in certain Portuguese regions or even the sanitary cords gave rise to contradictory feelings about the meaning of the border, felt in the internal dimension, something that Portuguese society had no memory of. On the other hand, the return of national borders, naturally the border between Spain and Portugal, meant a dramatic rupture in economic and commercial flows based on a logic of wide circulation of people that dated back to a temporal scope prior to 1986.

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Therefore, the revival of the border physical, supervised and interdicted to the movement of people, represented an additional confinement of the Portuguese border regions, characterized by their peripheral expression vis-à-vis the national power centres. Portuguese-Spanish border issues, namely its political meanings, have been fully analysed by national historiography for the last decades. Among several studies, José Mattoso works,1 regarding the mediaeval ages, should be underlined, such as Rui Miguel Branco’s conclusions over the effects of Portuguese perception on terrestrial border during the nineteenth century, in close bond with the emergence of the Portuguese liberal state.2 Other approaches should be mentioned due its innovative premises regarding the debates, controversies and reflections of PortugueseSpanish border on the relations established between the Iberian countries. On those subjects, José António Rocamora’s perspectives on Iberism and nationalism ought to be emphasized3 ; likewise, the analyses of Maria da Conceição Meireles Pereira4 and Teresa Nunes5 focused on the new diplomatic instruments and means achieved by the Iberian states, late nineteenth century, attending also to its political, economic and social repercussions on border understanding. Still the transnational cooperation between Portugal and Spain inspired the study of Alberto Herrero de la Fuente,6 a subject also addressed, on an economic perspective, by Eloy Fernandez Clemente.7 Not least relevant, Portuguese-Spanish borderlands and its specificities have concentrated the attention of several researchers, namely sociologists, as Heriberto Cairo Carou, centred on the differences regarding the national, regional and local scales, as public and transnational policies were concerned.8 So far, the political and social meanings of Portuguese-Spanish border, as a privileged pattern of economic and social modernization after the Second War World, 1

José Mattoso, Identificação de um país. Ensaio sobre as origens de Portugal, Lisbon, Editorial Estampa, 1983. 2 Rui Miguel Branco, O Mapa de Portugal. Estado, Território e Poder no Portugal de Oitocentos, Lisbon, Livros Horizonte, 2003. 3 José António Rocamora, “El Iberismo en el Contexto del Nacionalismo en la Peninsula Iberica”, Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Oporto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, s.d., pp. 113–123. 4 Maria da Conceição Meireles Pereira, Relações entre Portugal e Espanha no 3ª Quartel do séc. XIX—os aspectos cultural e económico”, Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Oporto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, s.d., pp. 101–112. 5 Teresa Nunes, A Espanha na Diplomacia Comercial Portuguesa na Segunda Metade do Séc. XIX e o Tratado de Comércio e Navegação de 1893, História (São Paulo), vol. 36, 2017, pp. 1–19. 6 Alberto Herrero de la Fuente, “La Cooperación Transfronteriza Hispano-Portuguesa. Nuevos Instrumentos Internacionales”, Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Oporto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, s.d., pp. 263–282. 7 Eloy Fernandez Clemente, “Las Relaciones Economicas Portugal.España (segunda mitad del s. XX)”, Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Oporto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, s.d., pp. 243–262. 8 Heriberto Cairo Carou, Portugal e Espanha: entre discursos de centro e práticas de fronteira, Lisboa, Colibri, 2009; Idem, Rayanos y Forasteros. Fronterización y Identidades en el limite hispanoportugués, Madrid, Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2018.

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and the challenges intrinsic for the Portuguese authoritarian regime, have been less developed by national historiography. In this sense, the present analysis intends to contribute with new research premises and aspires to highlight how national terrestrial border represented an issue of continuous endogenous tension for Estado Novo, divided between permanent growing necessities and the most recent obligations, imposed by the responses to the economic and financial crisis arouse during the late 1940s and the beginning of the following decade. Accordingly, the paper aims to address the repercussion of the national belligerence in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea, on Portuguese-Spanish border. Not least relevant looks for understanding how the reconfiguration of national sovereignty, after the 1974 revolution, and the emergence of a political and institutional power characterized by strictly by the European dimension represented modifications on the border perceptions and the relations with Spain. Both Iberian states rapidly evolved to strengthen ties with the European Economic Community, a desire accomplished in 1986. The conclusion of the accession process implied substantial differences to border policies as altered deeply Portuguese traditional role of an exclusive emigration source to become also a receptacle of European immigrants, namely originated from Eastern Europe, after the collapse of Soviet. Accordingly, this present paper aims to address how the emergence of growing porous borders contributes to new endogenous understandings of the immediate neighbours, extremely affected by the sanitary restrictions adopted to overcome COVID-19 pandemic.

The Understanding of Border During Estado Novo—Portuguese Border Perception (1950s–1974) In the aftermath of Second World War, Portuguese authoritarian regime, Estado Novo, was confronted with a complex political and economic framework. During the 1939– 1945 belligerent period, in which national state assumed a neutral position, along with the Spain and other European powers, Portuguese trade balance observed an expansive trend, based on the foreign demand and the state’s guidance of acting according an ambiguous concept of neutrality, characterized by its openness, thus favourable to a large commerce scope, at the expenses of war conventions with the Allies, namely United Kingdom. Consequently, the growth of exports encouraged the Portuguese economy and actively contributed to the appreciation of the national currency, two dynamics that converged with the decline in domestic consumption and the following increase in private savings. Despite those dynamics, Portugal was harshly affected by Dollar Gap in late 1940s, a situation which forced Portuguese executive to rethink the original position regarding the mechanisms of European cooperation associated to Marshall Plan. From the initial reluctance, Estado Novo was obliged to incorporate the Organization for European Economic Cooperation guidance on sensitive matters since eroded key political principles in which the authoritarian regime was based on. Furthermore, the economic crisis revealed Portugal’s fragilities such as

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the inaccuracy of the aimed absolute national independence. In this sense, during the 1950s, Estado Novo struggled to adjust the traditional image, conceived in late 1920s and consolidated during the following decade, to new standards, without meaningful loses. In this context, one of the main issues was consistent with the new role played by the terrestrial border. As (late) beneficiary of the Marshall Plan, Portugal confronted itself with the necessity of adopting a fresh set of measures with the aim of increasing the country’s tourist attractiveness, especially in the markets of other OEEC members. The national tourism modernization programme implied the reorganization of services, the increase in budget allocation, the creation of hotel credits, the reduction of bureaucracy, in the customs and tax domains, applicable to any foreign visitors, regardless of the means of travel used (private or collective). Extending the country’s hospitality naturally included simplifying the attribution of entry visas, even without reciprocity, with the aim of increasing the perimeter of those interested in enjoying national conditions for leisure, relaxation or cultural practices. Of course, bilateralism was not forgotten among Portuguese legislators who found in this logic an instrument for consolidating external relations and the desired flows. Those premises were widely argued by Paulo Cancela de Abreu (1885–1874) in National Assembly at the beginning of 1950. Conservative and known by his monarchist convictions, the representative of the constituency of Aveiro emphasized the mobilization of Portuguese diplomatic channels abroad to capture the appreciation and interest of so-called Marshall Tourists, even if this meant to ease border control and, consequently, reduce the control capacity exercised by public authorities in the metropolitan context.9 For Cancela de Abreu, as stated in March 1950, the executive’s priority on the subject has proven clearly insufficient and inadequate, demonstrated on the decrease of external demand, namely the reduction of foreign visitants. The fundamentals of the trend, antagonistic to that observed in the other European countries of the OEEC, resided in the weight of the Portuguese territorial border. Transposing the dividing line between Portugal and Spain proved to be as difficult as a deterrent to the intended external image, favourable to the warm welcome of visitors, especially those from more developed economies. According to Abreu, the tourist had an evident egoistic sense, conceived after the first impressions, determinant for a generous overview of the travel conditions and accommodations, hardly dismissed if the impact of border controls has proved to be unusual, inconvenient or entail inconvenience and waste of time.10 On the other hand, the speaker strangely observed the deadlines, considered short, associated with visas issued by national authorities. As he acknowledged, it was a question of the prevalence of the mechanisms adopted during the world conflict, a period during which there was a “great influx of foreigners” and a crisis of subsistence.11 However, it urged to established different status, adjusted to peaceful and financially needed times—“nowadays, whoever deserved sixty days of stay, 9

Diário das Sessões, nº 22, 28 January 1950, pp.298–299. Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, p. 416. 11 Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, p. 416. 10

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certainly deserves more. And if this rule has an exception, certainly the surveillance of the magnificent services of the International Police can act”.12 In this context, Cancela de Abreu reserved a particularly relevant role for tourists from Spain, to whom it called for the government’s attention. If the reciprocity basis could be considered as unnecessary for travellers from other origins, the Spanish case was characterized by a pattern of singularity, resulting from the Portuguese high demand for Spain. Accordingly, the speaker proposed a special status for visitors from the neighbouring country, based on more flexible rules regarding currencies and periods of stay, even assuming an unencumbered traffic of tight inspections in the movement of people, which was intended to be balanced between departures of Portuguese to Spain and the entries of Spanish in Portugal.13 In this regard, the decision of the Catholic Church to decree the current year of jubilee constituted, for Cancela de Abreu, an unrepeatable opportunity, appealing to the Italian example, in 1925. However, the sanctuary of Fátima, one of the agglutinating poles of devotion to the Virgin Mary, faced serious competition from other places of worship, long established in Europe. Thus, a drastic change in the procedures inherent to the entry of foreigners and, in this specific case of pilgrims, would be important as a way to encourage the arrival of more devotees. The speaker did not show any hesitation in revealing to the Assembly the disastrous international reputation achieved by the country due the options made to control the borders, widely publicized in the European and North American press, harmful to the country’s external image. To overcome the adversities and to establish a friendly environment to visitors, Cancela de Abreu suggested a heavy investment on hotels structures, on specialized labour force and on the external projection with the proliferation of “Houses of Portugal”, with the purpose of making the country known and presenting it as a pleasant destination to travel and live in.14 The traditional border system and control suffered other forms of endogenous contestation, as evidenced by Miguel Pádua Rodrigues Bastos (1912–1993) in National Assembly in March 1950. According to Bastos’s proposal, Portugal should attentively observe the free-zone model adopted in multiple maritime states and follow those examples, considered to be extremely beneficial to national economies. For the speaker, Portugal possessed a strategic geographical position, structurally underexplored, although object of intense debate since the nineteenth century. As argued, Estado Novo would act in accordance with its patriotic mission of magnifying the Portuguese nation through the installation of free zones. Given its geographical dimension, this initiative would contribute to asserting Portugal in the Atlantic space and simultaneously elevate itself to one of the privileged gateways for people and goods in the European context. Naturally, such designs induced a re-reading of the concept of boundary whose nature tended to assume a gradually more porous nature.

12

Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, p. 416. Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, pp. 418–419. 14 Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, pp. 416. 13

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Moreover, according to the purpose and scope of the proposal, the free-zone model implied substantive changes in terrestrial borders.15 Not strangely, the end of the war period and the economic patterns of recovery and normalization have re-emerged old topics related with Portuguese-Spanish border. In March 1950, Elísio de Oliveira Alves Pimenta (1909–2002) resurrected the quarrel on the closure of northern small border posts, a political decision assumed during the Spanish Civil War (or the Liberation War of Spain as defined by Pimenta). Specially attending to Minho, namely the Melgaço and S. Gregório, the speaker evoked the exchange dynamics between the two Iberian populations, mostly emphasized during the second half of the nineteenth century and interrupted in 1936, as the war began in Spain. Indeed, one of the observable characteristics of Portuguese and Spanish foreign policies at the end of the nineteenth century consisted in the growing proximity, from the economic point of view, a trend consummated with the conclusion of the 1893 commerce and navigation treaty. One of the consequences of that treaty was reflected in the complete delimitation of the border line, established in the region of Contenda, an area until then undefined. However, the application of the dividing marks in Alentejo forced the celebration of a specific framework for these populations, later adjusted to the entire land border, namely the absolute freedom of movement between people residing on both sides of the division, as well as the agricultural productions resulting from their work or even the possibility of those who were natives of Portugal and Spain to fully maintain their interests or properties which, after the partition operation, were located in the neighbouring state. Such provisions would be applied to all border societies after 1894.16 The porous border, brought up after 1893, which survived the non-renovation of the 1893 treaty, according to the new political strategy of Portuguese republican authorities, in 1913, played an eminent role on the objectives and activities of joint committees, actives until 1929. Naturally, this pattern created a pendular movement, daily or seasonal, with evident economic and social consequences for Portuguese evolution during the Great War and the Interwar period. For instance, the preference of Portuguese labour force for the Spanish market, well-paid, to national standards, and consequently, the concentration of Portuguese workers in Spain, at the expense of national countryside and national agricultural needs. This disturbance caused large impact on agricultural units in the south and motivated a wide political debate on migration policies and the framework applied to borderlands. The growing difficulties then observed in the 1920s did not represent a structural modification since both the status and the routine prevailed untouched until 1936. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) constituted a turning point on foreign relations between the Iberian States as Portugal embarked on a formal neutrality, contrary to the intentions of the nationalists (even if, unofficially, the Portuguese state pledged

15

Diário das Sessões, nº 28, 10 March 1950, pp. 431–434. Nunes, Teresa Nunes, A Espanha na Diplomacia Comercial Portuguesa na Segunda Metade do Séc. XIX e o Tratado de Comércio e Navegação de 1893, História (São Paulo), vol. 36, 2017, pp. 1–19.

16

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to help the nationalists).17 Therefore, crossing points were restricted, and the surveillance contingent was reinforced, in the face of endogenous needs—an attempt was made to prevent the formation of platforms of Spanish oppositionists in Portugal, threatening the authoritarian regime—but also to exogenous interests, especially from the Spanish nationalist forces, Portugal’s future formal allies. The formation of Francisco Franco’s regime coincided with the advent of the European belligerence, a new context which justified the maintenance of close attention to borders, so much sought after as an escape mechanism for all who sought to escape hell.18 As the Second World War ended, the scenario of peace in Western Europe and the environment of understanding between Iberian countries inspired Elísio Pimenta to ask for a permanent and satisfactory solution to all Portuguese citizens with properties in Spain, namely in Spanish bank of Trancoso River or in Orense municipality. As the speaker argued, fifty years ago, no obstacles were imposed to movements on the Portuguese-Spanish borders, allowing inhabitants from both states to have act freely.19 The solutions were also required by cattle producers, prevented from transiting animals between the two countries.20 Furthermore, Pimenta evoked Portuguese influence in certain Spanish provinces, Galiza for instance, while defining such impact as an essential part of national identity structure and the basis of community experiences in the Iberian Peninsula. The political and institutional environments in both countries were not compatible with the idea of restabilising the wide free movement applied to people or their products. On the opposite, during the following decades, the Portuguese-Spanish border remained heavily guarded and surveyed for different reasons—to prevent smuggling, to avoid political oppositionists’ actions or safeguard or even to dissuade emigration, a growing concern observed after the Second World War, attending the negative economic effects, also mentioned on the National Assembly. As Antunes Guimarães (1877–1951) expressed, in April 1950, the virtues associated with emigration, inducing the country’s financial consolidation in the nineteenth century (a trend also observed during the first decades of the twentieth century), was replaced by a new dynamic, consistent with the loss of labour force. According to Antunes Guimarães, “motherland’s best sons” were choosing to leave Portugal—an option from which any kind of benefit—financial or other—would occur.21 During the following decade, the same understanding regarding the emigration flows and its consequences persisted for political and economic reasons. As Portugal became member of European Free Trade Area—EFTA, internal modifications were registered with foreign investment in the domestic market, the loss of competitiveness

17

César de Oliveira, Salazar e a Guerra Civil de Espanha, Lisbon, O Jornal, 1987. Margarida Ramalho, Fios Vermelhos. Portugal, a última esperança. Histórias e memórias de refugiados judeus rumo à liberdade, Lisbon, Clube do Autor, 2021. 19 Diário das Sessões, nº 36, 23 March 1950, p. 596. 20 Diário das Sessões, nº 36, 23 March 1950, p. 596. 21 Diário das Sessões, nº 51, 26 April 1950, p. 943. 18

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of some companies and the consequent change in the Portuguese labour market.22 Gradually, the agricultural sector tended to lose human resources, whether due to internal migration, resulting from the demographic concentration in urban areas, or through the exodus in rural areas caused by the loss of income of farmers. For the demographic segments for which Portuguese agriculture no longer provided a source of survival, illegal emigration has become the affordable formula for escaping hunger.23 This motivation, often felt as an imposition, acquired a new dimension with the advent of the military conflict in the Portuguese colonial space. First in Angola, later in Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, this belligerence implied an additional pressure on national borders—in the various contexts associated with national sovereignty. In the case of the Portuguese-Spanish border, the reinforcement of surveillance resulted from the reorientation of Portuguese policy and the need to safeguard the interests of the regime, faced with growing opposition. Accordingly, border security represented the possibility of not allowing the expansion of opposition movements operating in the metropolis to the colonies, nor the interaction between groups with different motivations, united by the recognition of a common adversary—the Estado Novo regime. On the other hand, in the mid-1960s, the defence of land borders meant the possibility of reducing the scope for action for those who sought to escape military incorporation to fight in African scenarios.24 Both trends, especially the endless conflict, persisted until April 1974 and interacted closely as immediate causes for the political rupture operated by low-ranking military, backed by strong popular support which the termination of Estado Novo.

A New Regime, Different Borders, a Renew Understanding of the European Dimension (1974–2020) “Today, as at many crossroads in our history, the Portuguese people will reconcile themselves around a truly national project and build a new world within the old limits of its borders”.25 Those assumptions, expressed by the first elected president of republic António Ramalho Eanes (1935-), summarized the national dilemma of rebuilding institutional structures, adopting a democratic regime and, simultaneously, readjusting national perspectives to a reduced territory, after decolonization, concluded in 1976. Strangely or not, in 1976, Portugal resumed the matrix spatial dimension in the European context, added to the island territories, the archipelagos of

22

Elsa Santos Alípio, Salazar e a Europa. História da Adesão à EFTA (1956–1960), Lisbon, Livros Horizonte, 2006. 23 Maria Ioannis B. Baganha, “As correntes emigratórias portuguesas no séc. XX e o seu impacto na economia nacional”, Análise Social, nº 128, 1994, pp. 959–980. 24 Carlos de Matos Gomes e Aniceto Afonso, Guerra Colonial, Oporto, Porto Editora, 2022. 25 Diário da Assembleia da República, nº 6, 17 July 1976, p. 114.

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the Azores and Madeira, an exercise complemented by a redefinition of the priorities of national foreign policy. This corresponded to multiple realities: economic restructuring and financial support, as necessary as the country suffered from the generalized crisis from 1974 until 1976, exacerbated by internal revolutionary conditions. On the other hand, the contribution of the Western European powers represented a mainstay in the process of building the democratic regime, largely subsidiary to the political and ideological premises present in the national political structure at the time. To eliminate the remnants of authoritarianism, in a lasting way, to avoid radicalism and to escape from the perimeter of the ongoing dispute of the bipolar order, without losing the capacity for dialogue and negotiation with both parts, of special importance in the African framework and in the relationship with the new Lusophone states—those were the terms of an equation as arduous as it is based on a relatively fragile internal political balance. However, the political revolutionary dynamic, with a broad impact on the economy, and decolonization motivated the emergence of profound social changes, resulting from the mass return of the Portuguese, who had previously settled in the former colonies, now new states.26 Consequently, the territorial scale regressed while the Portuguese demographic expression increased exponentially, a factor for additional pressure on national borders. In this context, Portuguese accession to the Council of Europe, on 22 September 1976,27 became the prelude for the great challenge of the following decades, Portugal’s candidacy to the European Economic Community, since the terms of the 1972 agreement with the European institutions were exceeded by the events of 1974– 1976.28 The objectives, the expectations and the necessities were suddenly altered as Portugal regained an eminently European dimension, never forgotten, without disremembering the multicontinental perspective in the African, American and Asian contexts. Indeed, this aspect of the Portuguese extra-European legacy constituted one of the essential premises of the accession negotiation process, in which Portugal presented itself as a preferential interlocutor with African countries29 —one of the priorities of the European project, already present in Robert Schuman’s Declaration of 1950. Full member of the European Communities since January 1986, Portugal experienced a cycle of wide expansion and Europeanization to which the redefinition of the conception and role of land borders was not strange. To integrate the then European Economic Community and the European Union, after 1992, such as the

26

The Retornados from the Portuguese Colonies in Africa. Memory, Narrative and History, ed. By Elsa Peralta, Routledge, 2021. 27 António Martins da Silva, “A origem do Conselho da Europa, a unidade europeia e o posicionamento de Portugal”, Revista de História das Ideias, Coimbra, nº 22, 2001, pp. 552–603. 28 Maria Helena Gomes Martins, Portugal e a Aproximação à Europa: do acordo de 1972 ao pedido de adesão. Dissertação do mestrado, Lisbon, 2006. 29 João Carlos Espada, Portugal, a Europa e o Atlântico, Lisbon, Aletheia, 2014.

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Schengen Agreement, in 1991,30 meant the possibility of overcoming the area of national sovereignty, in the strict sense, observable on the economic development,31 until 2000, and the differentiated nature of the emigration flows, since then, also gradually associated with qualified labour. To that extent, the consolidation of the democratic rule of law in Portugal took place in a context of tending dilution of terrestrial borders, a period during which the collective memory was renewed in the light of the new canons of coexistence with the various European societies and, especially, with the Iberian neighbour. The participation in the European project induced internal dynamics of cosmopolitanism, inherent to the search for the labour market by workers of different origins from the traditional origins in the Portuguese context, a dynamic reinforced by the globalization logic of the 1990s. However, these trends, with significant repercussions in the infrastructural, social, economic and even political domains, proved to be fragile in the correction of structural characteristics of the Portuguese reality, evidenced in the absence of convergence in growth rates since 2000.32 Consequently, the 2008 financial crisis and the financial plan applied in May 2011, following the signing of the agreement between the Portuguese states, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank exposed the internal weaknesses and represented a reconfiguration of the Portuguese labour market. Strangely, or not, Portuguese society reacted according to the common canons in the national historical evolution and looked for the endogenous missing opportunities outside its borders. In this context, national borders regained a special importance, similar to what happened in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, the migratory parallelism was not reproduced in the destination options of the new Portuguese emigrants, who were not influenced by factors of geographic proximity or linguistic similarity.33 On the opposite, the European dimension stood out as the option for 54% of all permanent emigrants against the 46% who preferred an extra-European destination.34 In this sense, belonging to the European Union proved to be decisive for the reassessment of the national perception of the border, transposed to a new spatiality, that of the Old World transformed into a context of familiarity motivated by the proximity cultivated by the sharing of frameworks and institutions. Thus, the notion of border was maintained although reconverted in the broader geographic perimeter associated with the freedom of movement of the different age groups of the Portuguese population. 30

Maria Fernanda Rollo, João Ferreira do Amaral, José Maria Brandão de Brito, Portugal e a Europa. Cronologia, Lisbon, Tinta da China, 2011. 31 Fernando Alexandre, A Economia Portuguesa na União Europeia: 1986-2010, Lisbon, Actual, 2014. 32 Pedro Brinca, Como trabalham os portugueses. Trabalho, emprego, economia, Lisbon, Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, 2020. 33 Estatísticas Demográficas 2020, Lisbon, Instituto Nacional de Estatísticas, 2021. 34 Portuguese Emigration data: 2015, 39847; 2016, 37188; 2017, 37172; 2018, 29340; 2019, 27469; 2020, 23863. Estatísticas Demográficas 2020, Lisbon, Instituto Nacional de Estatísticas, 2021, p. 104.

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As COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Portugal, the urgent necessity of restrain the infection rate in Iberian Peninsula induced the bilateral decision of closing borders for tourism and leisure purposes, announced on 15 March 2020. Justified by sanitarian reasons, the restrictions were applied on the following day, after the meeting of Portuguese and Spanish Home Offices to articulate rules adjusted to the new status. Passage points between the two countries were limited to nine—Valença-Tuy; Vila Verde da Raia-Verín; Quintanilha-San Vitero; Vilar Formoso-Fuentes de Oñoro; Termas de Monfortinho-Cilleros; Marvão-Valencia de Alcântara; Caia-Badajoz; Vila Verde de Ficalho-Rosal de la Frontera; and Castro Marim-Ayamonte. Accordingly, the movement of cross-border workers as well as goods was placed under close surveillance and channelled to the previously listed locations. Suddenly, from March to 1 July 2020 (a second phase of restrictions was implemented from January to May 2021), the pandemic had resurrected the figure of the hard border with undisguised physical structures, accompanied by Portuguese and Spanish security forces, authorized, in certain circumstances, to obstruct freedom of movement, a right then suspended under the need to preserve threatened public health. Preliminary studies on the impact of the 2020 containment measures found the existence of estimated losses of 92 million euros in the northern region of the country. This pattern, easily applicable to the entire perimeter of the border, respects the informal dynamics of the border and motivated the heightened contestation observed in border regions, today characterized by low population density and the distance from the centres of national political and economic power.

Conclusions In short, the advent of pressure and tight controls on borders, applied in 2020, led to the emergence of opposition from the population of the borderland whose daily lives were abruptly interrupted by the imposition of controls and prohibition of movements. Rooted in different factors, the isolation applied in 2020 obtained a social replication not particularly different from the reactions emerged from the Estado Novo’s stance on borders in 1950, connoted with popular dissatisfaction, the economic crisis and the distance between the peripheral and central areas of Portugal. In both cases, in 1950 as in 2020, the closure of the terrestrial border raised an unmistakable parallelism visible in the feeling of multiple loss —economic, social, public care domains—and abandonment of the inhabitants of the affected areas.

References Alexandre F (2014) A Economia Portuguesa na União Europeia: 1986–2010, Coimbra, Actual Editora Alípio ES (2006) Salazar e a Europa. História da Adesão à EFTA (1956–1960), Lisboa, Livros Horizonte

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Baganha MIB (1994) As correntes emigratórias portuguesas no séc. XX e o seu impacto na economia nacional. Análise Social 128:959–980 Branco RM (2003) O Mapa de Portugal. Estado, Território e Poder no Portugal de Oitocentos, Lisboa, Livros Horizonte Brinca P (2020) Como trabalham os portugueses. Trabalho, emprego, economia, Lisboa, Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos Carou HC (2009) Portugal e Espanha: entre discursos de centro e práticas de fronteira, Lisboa, Colibri Carou HC (2018) Rayanos y Forasteros. Fronterización y Identidades en el limite hispano-portugués, Madrid, Plaza y Valdés Editores Clemente EF (sd) Las Relaciones Economicas Portugal.España (segunda mitad del s. XX). Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Porto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, pp 243–262 Diário da Assembleia da República, nº 6, 17 July 1976, p 114 Diário das Sessões, nº 22, 28 January 1950a, pp 298–299 Diário das Sessões, nº 27, 9 March 1950, pp 415–420 Diário das Sessões, nº 36, 23 March 1950b, p 596 Diário das Sessões, nº 51, 26 April 1950c, p 943 de Almeida MAP (2014) Dicionário Biográfico do Poder Local em Portugal (1936–2013), Lisboa, e.book de Matos Gomes C (2022) Afonso, Aniceto, Guerra Colonial, Porto, Porto Editora de Oliveira C (1987) Salazar e a Guerra Civil de Espanha, Lisboa, O Jornal Espada JC (2014) Portugal, a Europa e o Atlântico, Lisboa, Aletheia Herrero de la Fuente A (sd) La Cooperación Transfronteriza Hispano-Portuguesa. Nuevos Instrumentos Internacionales. Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Porto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, pp 263–282 Martins MHG (2006) Portugal e a Aproximação à Europa: do acordo de 1972 ao pedido de adesão. Dissertação do mestrado, Lisboa Mattoso J (1983) Identificação de um país. Ensaio sobre as origens de Portugal, Lisboa, Editorial Estampa Nunes TN (2017) A Espanha na Diplomacia Comercial Portuguesa na Segunda Metade do Séc. XIX e o Tratado de Comércio e Navegação de 1893, História (São Paulo) 36:1–19 Pereira MCM (sd) Relações entre Portugal e Espanha no 3ª Quartel do séc. XIX – os asp ectos cultural e económico. Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Porto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, pp 101–112 Ramalho M (2021) Fios Vermelhos. Portugal, a última esperança. Histórias e memórias de refugiados judeus rumo à liberdade, Lisboa, Clube do Autor Rocamora JA (sd) El Iberismo en el Contexto del Nacionalismo en la Peninsula Iberica. Relações Portugal-Espanha: Cooperação e Identidade. I Encontro Internacional, Porto, Fundação Rei Afonso Henriques, pp 113–123 Rollo MF (2011) Amaral, João Ferreira do, Brito, José Maria Brandão de, Portugal e a Europa. Cronologia, Lisboa, Tinta da China Silva, AM (2001) A origem do Conselho da Europa, a unidade europeia e o posicionamento de Portugal. Revista de História das Ideias 22:552–603 The Retornados from the Portuguese Colonies in Africa (2021) Memory, Narrative and History, edited by Elsa Peralta, Routledge

The Migrants, the ‘Stayers’, and the New Borderlands in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Brexit Katarzyna Anna Winiecka

and Małgorzata Dziekonska ´

Abstract Borderlands are not easy to define. They can be a physical territory, a territory where communities and cultures meet, or where their ideologies meet; they can also refer to microterritories of one’s identity, and more besides. In the article, we focus on the borderlands created as a result of two overlapping processes: the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit. These two processes have resulted in changes in the way of thinking about being a migrant as well as in their perception of the crossborder relationships with the people in Poland, who are of great importance to the migrants—the stayers. However, most of all we concentrate on the role and position of the migrants and the stayers in the new local (Brexit) and global (pandemic) social circumstances. Among the most important consequences are the creation of the new social and emotional borderlands in this complex reality and reformulating some of the preexisting social boundaries. The main goal of the text is to analyze the Polish migrants’ lives in the UK and the stayers’ in Poland on the eve of these complicated social circumstances. We base the analysis on the qualitative research with 13 Polish migrants in the UK and 12 stayers in Poland. We conclude that COVID-19 and Brexit, unprecedented processes of a different nature, at a certain point coincided in time, building their own boundaries and borderlands which now overlap, producing different ways and strategies of navigating these areas. Keywords Borderlands · Polish migrants · Stayers · COVID-19 · Brexit

Introduction With regard to the social reality of the last years, both global and local, the word that should be used to most adequately describe it is ‘uncertainty’. This covers the K. A. Winiecka (B) · M. Dzieko´nska Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland e-mail: [email protected] M. Dzieko´nska e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_13

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series of worrying events related to climate change and regional conflicts, the crisis concerning social inequalities, gender, center-periphery relations, or social classes (Hadjimichalis 2021). It seems that Urlich Beck’s book Risk Society (2002) has become highly prophetic. Global social, political, and economic interdependencies have led to the development of various risks in almost every corner of the world. At the same time, the accumulation of the aforementioned processes has built new social, economic, geopolitical, legal, and mental boundaries and borderlands. The recent events related to the SARS-Cov-2 virus pandemic have affected people around the globe; however, from the researchers’ point of view, but not only, the position of UK residents is interesting, especially in the context of the formation of new borderlands. The pandemic outbreak was preceded by the process of the UK leaving the European Union—Brexit. The migration crisis in Europe at that time also had an impact on anti-immigration sentiment, fueled during the Brexit referendum. The compilation of these events contributed, among others, to an increase in the feeling of insecurity and to drawing borders and borderlands. In this article, we concentrate on important social actors involved in this combination of events, namely the Polish migrants living in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) and people living in Poland (‘the stayers’) maintaining transnational contacts with the migrants. We focus on their perception and the experience of the new realities in the two worlds and at the meeting point of these worlds. We focus on the borderlands created by the double conjunction of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, and we aim to analyze how these processes help to establish new boundaries, how they situate the migrants and the stayers on the borderlands of participation in the two societies, and the role of these process in transcending different borders.

Borderlands in the Time of COVID-19 and Brexit The movement of people has always contributed to the spread of diseases, and so measures were implemented to limit mobility in order to limit the spread of disease (Martin and Bergmann 2021). Different countries have applied social distancing measures of their own and thereby determined both people’s mobility within borders and their perceptions of the borders. The UK and Poland, representing the overwhelmed West and the resilient East in Europe (Paul 2020), approached the COVID19 pandemic in different fashions. As a result, the legal restrictions and safety measures implemented by the two governments introduced two different realities for their citizens, including different limitations on crossing the entry and exit borders of the countries. Moreover, the process of the UK leaving the EU was a source of much tension and social unrest (Browning 2018) related to the free movement between the Island and other countries, the entry of a new workforce, free movement of goods and services, and the concept of belonging to a wider community or a specific society (Knight 2017). Not only did political and geopolitical boundaries begin to emerge but also social and mental ones. The UK found itself, almost simultaneously, within

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the boundaries of influence of the two phenomena, which clearly began to delineate new borders and borderlands. The very word ‘borderland’ is ambiguous, referring to either a geographical area (Van Houtum 2000), or a life area of diverse communities (Brunet-Jailly 2005), crossing of ideologies, beliefs, and values (Espín et al. 2013), a type of identity (Prokkola 2009) or the borderland could be defined in the context of social, psychological, and emotional crossing points (Adesina 2019), and obviously many more. A theoretical construct of a term such as ‘borderland’, which unequivocally reflects all the above ways of operationalization, is difficult to build. Due to the field of our research (Poland, UK), in our understanding of the ‘borderland’, we are inspired by ´ (2014), who accentuate the geographical area, but Marek Szczepa´nski and Anna Sliz above all, the relations between two or more nations, ethnic groups, or cultural areas. These relations result in specific social, political, cultural, and economic spaces. New types of contacts and identities are created on the borderlands, and this is also where the symbolic and mental spheres coexist and conflict. The term ‘borderland’ is directly related to the term ‘border’; in our understanding of the ‘border’, we go beyond the traditional understanding of borders in the geographical sense. Borders are flexible lines “reflecting new territorial and aspatial patterns of human behavior” (Newman 2003: 13). Furthermore, in the age of technological development, the barrier function of borders in some areas of social life has become redundant, and this development of technology contributes to the creation of new sets of borders (see Newman 2003). We also agree with Bradley J. Parker that, “only through systematic comparisons of boundary situations at various times and locations can we hope to understand the processes that take place in borderlands” (Parker 2006: 77). The SARS-Cov-2 virus pandemic and Brexit are in some ways ‘borderline’ experiences at the social, economic, political, geographic, health, and psychological level. They determine the formation of new social relationships, dependencies, and interdependencies as well as influence the formation of borderlands and borders, which will be discussed further in the article.

The COVID-19 Case The already robust body of literature demonstrates that the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has brought changes to almost every sphere of human activity, giving saliency and new meaning to both internal and external borders. The virus itself, but also the steps taken by governments and health authorities to control it and stop it from spreading brought, aside from economic, political, and health system crises, the worst mental health crisis in our lifetime (Amorini-Woods 2021). The health concerns and psychological problems that are reported are distress, depression, anxiety, or panic (Alimoradi et al. 2021), prolonged grief disorder (Kumar 2021), and distress for the growing number of deaths announced daily (Vezzoli 2021). Pandemic and lockdowninstigated changes in everyday lives also resulted in relationship conflicts (Feeney and Fitzgerald 2021), avoidance of social activities, a need for self-isolation, observing

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the new regulations and policies (Alimoradi et al. 2021), and family distress (Walsh 2020) and family dysfunction (Brock and Laifer 2021). The loss of loved ones, often without the possibility of saying goodbye and with a disrupted process of mourning (Hernández-Fernández and Meneses-Falcón 2021), the loss of physical contact with family members and social networks (Walsh 2020), the loss of jobs and thus financial security (Długosz 2021), and general loss of the pre-crisis ways of life, all add up to a lost sense of normalcy and threatened hopes and plans. In the ‘new normal’ of collective panic and social disruption (Amorini-Woods 2021: 40), fear and phobia— ‘Coronaphobia’ (Lee et al. 2020) became the effective operating modes. Nonetheless, these also arose as a wake-up call and an opportunity to reformulate goals and life choices and redefine what matters and who matters most now in the world, whose borders are delineated by fear, travel restrictions, safety regulations, and lockdowns. The COVID-19 pandemic-related mobility policies brought out several borders between the ‘kinetic energy’ of those who can freely move and the ‘kinetic underclass’ of those who cannot (Miah and King 2021). International travel restrictions (IOM 2021) clearly show the groups of migrants most severely affected by lockdown measures, i.e., asylum seekers, refugees, irregular migrants, or low-wage and undocumented foreign workers (Abella 2020; Jauhiainen 2020). Their high vulnerability to the pandemic due to poor living conditions and lack of protective measures heightened COVID-19 transmission and, likewise, posed tensions between them and the host populations (O’Brien and Eger 2021; Bonnet and Rüegger 2021). The travel restrictions also resulted in shifting patterns of mobility such as reversal of internal migration flows (Le Nestour and Moscoviz 2020; Fielding and Ishikawa 2021) or increased cross-border returns (Martin and Bergmann 2021; Ratha 2021). The immediate impact of these policies is reflected in the labor markets of the sending and receiving countries. The remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries have already been affected (O’Brien and Eger 2021; Ratha 2021) as well as the position of immigrants in the labor markets of the host countries being weakened. Another boundary has thereby been formed for the migrants; they are wanted—they made an overnight transition into essential workers, making living possible in the host countries, but they are not welcome—still employed precariously, not qualified for public benefits and better health care (Reid et al. 2021).

The Brexit Case In terms of Brexit, we want to emphasize that it is still a lengthy process of leaving the EU by the UK, with no specific date. During the Brexit referendum campaign, there were clear anti-immigration messages, stressing the negative impact of migrants on the socioeconomic condition of the UK (Fischer 2016). The public mood preceding the Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016, was saturated with unrest and tensions of various types. However, these emotions escalated only after the announcement of the voting results (Winiecka 2020; Mazzilli and King 2019) revealing that almost 52% of voters were in favor of the UK leaving the EU (The Electoral Commission

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UK 2016). According to the Home Office (2016) data, in the post-referendum year, racist and xenophobic violence against immigrants increased by 42% compared to 2015. All these matters combined made migrants redefine their sense of belonging to the British nation as well as their title to it (Lulle et al. 2019). In the period between the referendum and the day when the UK officially left the EU, one of the most difficult Brexit-inspired discussions broke out regarding the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Wilson 2020), which might reawaken the old conflicts regarding Northern Ireland’s independence. The recent problems with food and fuel supplies to the British Isles also illustrate the negative consequences of leaving the EU, although, as will be discussed further in this article, it is still difficult to distinguish the consequence of the pandemic from those of Brexit. Assumptions have been made about the future of the UK and Europe in relation to the pandemic and Brexit, and the scientists ask whether the present situation is not a ‘good’ basis for the formulation of authoritarian circles and trends, or at least economic problems (Hadjimichalis 2021)? The campaign time, the referendum, the steps taken to leave the EU, and the time after the actual exit, easily defined with words such as ‘change’ and ‘tension’, have become the reasons why new areas of human functioning, in the context of social, geopolitical, or economic belonging, at the level of everyday social and individual life, or broader social structures (Harvey 2021) defined by new frontiers and boundaries have been created. The two overlapping processes: the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, make an extremely interesting research field. The article is based on empirical research; therefore, in the subsequent section, we present the research methodology and continue with the research results, then we discuss them and present our conclusions.

Research Methodology The research subject in our study is the creation of new borderlands and borders determined by two processes: the SARS-Cov-2 virus pandemic and Brexit, as well as the cross-border relationships between Polish migrants living in Great Britain and the people in Poland the migrants consider important in their lives—‘the stayers’. We define ‘the stayers’ as those people whom the migrants might have consulted on their decision to leave for abroad, and as those who have been regarded in migrants’ everyday lives and future plans; the stayers are the migrants’ link to their place of origin—Poland—while the latter migrants are away (Dzieko´nska 2022). The aim of the research was to analyze the migration experiences, i.e., the formation of new borderlands in the socio-emotional context and their impact on crossborder relations. Two main research problems were posed: (1) whether the two (temporally) overlapping processes of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic determine the creation of new borderlands and (2) what is the nature of cross-border relations between the migrants (UK) and ‘the stayers’ (PL) and how they have been affected by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. In this text, we concentrate our

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analysis on the first problem, with the second deserving separate attention in another article. We conducted the study using a qualitative approach with a structured, in-depth interview. We selected this research technique in order to obtain the data based on a strictly defined set of questions, thus resulting in similar sets of answers. The presented research subject has not been deeply explored so far, therefore, obtaining data based on a structured scenario contributed to the operationalization of the phenomena and the emergence of the cognitive categories. The interview questionnaire was in three parts: part I concerning Brexit, part II concerning the coronavirus pandemic, and part III concerning cross-border relations. We asked open-ended questions. As there were two different groups of respondents, two interview questionnaires were used based on the above-mentioned categories of questions, with some questions adjusted to better address the different realities of the two countries. We started the recruitment of the research sample with a group of migrants: We applied snowball sampling. We formed a purposive sample and used the migration duration criterion. We recruited migrants with at least 6 years of migration experience, who had lived in the UK a minimum of one year prior to the Brexit referendum. We asked the migrants to identify their most important people/person living in Poland and to invite this person to participate in our research. We helped the migrants who still had difficulties pointing to their ‘stayers’ by characterizing ‘the stayers’ in accordance with our definition. Our study was conducted between August and October 2021. The interviews were conducted in two locations: Northern Ireland and Poland. Due to pandemic restrictions and also the fact that the respondents live across different locations in Poland and the UK, the majority of the interviews were conducted on the phone or via mobile voice calls; however, two respondents in Poland and four in Northern Ireland agreed to meet in-person. The interviews lasted between 30 min and 2 h, and they were all recorded digitally and then transcribed. All participants were informed of the research objective and notified that their participation was voluntary. They all consented to take part in the study and accepted that the conversation was being recorded; their anonymity was guaranteed. All data were pseudonymized. The migrants were more willing and open to participate in the research than the ‘stayers’; however, they had difficulties with pointing to ‘the stayer’—oftentimes they had to choose among a few people, usually grandparents, parents, or friends; some of them had problems pointing to one at all. The interviews were arranged according to the respondents’ needs and schedules. They usually tried to find the best, quietest moment of the day, and an isolated place to be able to engage fully in the conversation. The interviews ran smoothly, and the respondents gladly opened up to share their experiences—especially the migrants eagerly referred to and commented on their observations. Emotions were also shared, especially a few of the elderly stayers who became sentimental at some point of the interview, even shedding the odd tears. No third parties participated in the interviews. The transcribed data were analyzed. Content coding was derived based on predetermined analytical categories: COVID-19, Brexit, and cross-border relations in the context of borderlands and borders’ formation. First, we made two preliminary,

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independent analyses and then compared and verified our results before drawing conclusions. There were 25 participants in the study: six men and 19 women; they were interviewed in migrant-stayer pairs, one stayer did not agree to participate in the study; six migrants lived in Northern Ireland, seven lived in England, and all stayers lived in Poland. In the migrants’ group, there were three men and ten women, all between the ages of 23 and 44; nine respondents had a university degree, three had secondary, and one had vocational education. Only two respondents lived in towns, the others lived in cities; their migration lasted between 6 and 18 years. In the stayers’ group, there were three men and nine women, all between the ages of 32 and 73; eight respondents had a university degree, three had secondary, and one had vocational education. Only four respondents lived in villages, three respondents lived in towns, and five lived in cities. There were six parent–child pairs, four sibling pairs, one friend pair, and one cousin pair. As researchers, we also found ourselves on the borderland when conducting research in two different countries, balancing between the well-known research methods and the pandemic-imposed restrictions concerning the application of these methods—these are also the limitations of our study. We constantly remembered to ensure we applied all the safety measures as well as taking care of the health and emotional safety of our respondents, hoping that the comfort and safety of one’s home will alleviate any stress connected with an in-person appointment with the researcher and the risk of becoming infected with the coronavirus.

The Borders and the Borderlands in the Time of Pandemic The last two years, accompanied by the pandemic in the background of our daily duties, have been perceived differently by Poles living in Poland (the stayers) and in the UK (migrants). However, what they have shared is the experience of fear and anxiety by which the pandemic delineates one of its most important borders. The migrants fear less. Most frequently, they are worried about their older parents in Poland, a few feel fearful when they think about their future. The stayers have more to worry about. Firstly, they are worried about the migrants’ health, the health of their relatives in Poland, as well as about their own health. Secondly, they are afraid of death. They more often notice fear in other people, and, just like the migrants, they are afraid of the unknown. For fear paralyzes, blocks, ‘cages’ (S_5), and places those who are afraid on the borderland of normal, and “the new normal” (Amorini-Woods 2021).

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COVID-19—The Borders The pandemic has created a whole set of tools to help manage the situation while simultaneously delineating pandemic-specific borders within the societies and between the societies and exposing the existing ones. Both in Poland and the UK, these are masks, disinfection, social distancing measures, vaccines, quarantine, restrictions regarding domestic and international mobility, financial boundaries, e.g., cost of treatment, tests, quarantine stops. These borders are supposed to physically separate the infected from the healthy, but also to indicate who is allowed and who is not allowed to participate in the social life of the healthy. In both countries, this is well illustrated by the vaccine, which clearly divides the society not only into the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, but above all, into those who are and those who are not privileged with regard to this participation. The social activity of the vaccinated is not so limited; they can cross different borders, whereas the unvaccinated remain on the borderland of the society which they are part of. The pandemic-specific borders are consolidated through daily media reports on new cases of COVID-19, new restrictions, and the sanctions one may face once they are broken. The migrants noticed that some borders have been shifted to a large extent or even destroyed by the pandemic. They have had to transfer some areas of their lives into the IT sphere, and thus, the border of physical distance in personal relationships as well as between their workplace and home is abolished. Depending on their position at work, this means more independence but also new limits to responsibility and a new scope of duties. Monika says: it feels as if I started doing a completely different job overnight (M_2). Some people consider this situation as an opportunity, an accelerated career path, but for others it became a burden or even the cause of a nervous breakdown.

COVID-19—The Borderlands Pandemic-specific borders have resulted in a number of new borderlands, a perfect example of which is the quarantine itself: When one’s health condition is unknown, one is suspended between the healthy and the sick, to be explained. The migrants paid particular attention to this phenomenon in reference to the labor market— some were on the verge of unemployment, others between personal development and retained opportunities. The stayers more often noticed the global borderlands of science, politics, and power which they identify as a transitional state before the world powers: set Europe and the world in a new order (S_3), Małgorzata even calls it: ‘plandemia’—an artificially created situation (S_9). Other borderlands are perceived similarly in both countries: Domestic and international mobility (IOM 2021) is suspended, which results in interpersonal relations being shifted to the borderland of physical and emotional contact—to the IT sphere; medical care, which is COVID-19 oriented, leaves non-COVID-19 patients (Santi et al. 2021) on the borderland of care from the healthcare systems; changing

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daily, often mutually exclusive restrictions and regulations leave people’s actions suspended, much like the lack of sound knowledge about the effects and side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. In this text, we only indicate these borderlands because our main goal is to focus on a specific type of borderland created by pandemic-specific borders. In each country, these borders follow different paths, and they change—either narrow down, or expand—the territory they define, thus creating a specific, fluctuating borderland. It is constantly adopting different shapes and dynamics, depending on fluctuating, pandemic-specific borders in different countries. Fluctuating borderland is clearly visible when changes between the old and the new pandemic restrictions in Poland and the UK occur and between these restrictions in both countries. In the first case, dismantling old restrictions and imposing new ones result in confusion and divergent attitudes even within one group. A self-employed beautician, whenever changes are announced, experiences different reactions among her customers because, as she says: one person is afraid. The other one is not (S_8). Therefore, respecting the restrictions, each time she adjusts her own boundaries to their boundaries, which enables her to survive in the labor market. The pandemic has also created a complex fluctuating structure of women’s professional and social roles (e.g., manager, mother, teacher). In one territory, at home, the boundaries of their old roles and new responsibilities intersect. This new borderland is changing shape whenever new pandemic rules and regulations are imposed and the old ones lifted. Fluctuating borderland between countries is particularly noticeable in the information sphere: when pandemic data do not match. Our respondents point out that: what was commonly known in Poland sometimes was not what it was like here [in the UK] (M_8), also regarding mobility regulations: in the beginning, flights were postponed or cancelled a week in advance. So, I kept on postponing my flight by one week (M_2). In both cases, lack of knowledge, contradictory information, or mutually exclusive regulations place people in a fluctuating borderland, where they wait for some borders to overlap and clearly define the allowed and the forbidden areas, or to open up, eliminating the borderland in a given area. This fluctuation is better seen in the big picture, when pandemic restrictions setting different lockdown start/end dates in different countries are incompatible, and when attitudes toward their perceptions are analyzed. It seems that only by finding one’s place in such a fluctuating borderland can one survive the difficult time and move on from suspension to a new form that is to come.

Navigating Borderlands During the pandemic, the respondents developed new behaviors and strategies to successfully navigate through the fluctuating borderland. Some adapt to this situation by questioning the usefulness of some of the pandemic regulations:

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You could feel it, you could see the queues at the stores, it was raining, and we were standing like idiots in front of this store, it was cold, I was queuing, my child was with me, but some people were simply coming inside ... What difference does it make? People are swarming inside anyway. It doesn’t make any sense. (M_8)

or they fully accept them and strictly adhere to them: what kind of bizarre things you have to do in order to be with other people (S_2). One of the strategies is to block the new information about the pandemic out: I cut myself off from all this Barbara admits (S_12), Sylwek says: until I turn on the radio and TV it is pretty OK (M_1). Another strategy is to anchor in familiar things, routine activities, delineate new private territories (e.g., taking up new hobbies), or give new meaning to the old ones. Some people choose suspension, staying on the borderland: I don’t feel strong enough to cross the border Weronika declares with resignation (S_2). A fairly common strategy is to create private borders and territories, just like Eliza did: the problem of this pandemic, it did not cover my entire life (M_3). In this private, pandemic-free part of life: we just do what we have to do (S_8). A number of processes take place here: some reformulate their own boundaries, priorities, and professed values, some develop new values, and some choose to stop and wait, or to slow down, reflect, and grow. This particular aspect of the pandemic is well appreciated by the respondents. Some of them realized that it was their pre-pandemic life that had been lived on various borderlands, and the new situation brought them back to their own territory. There is one more strategy—the lack of borderland. This is when people refuse to give meaning to the new situation, or when the pandemic has not disturbed their everyday lives because they had already led similar lives: no, because before the pandemic, I lived the same way I am living now (M_4), no, why would it change? (S_1) Also, the pandemic lost its prominence to significant personal events such as childbirth, divorce, or loss of job.

The Borders and the Borderlands in Times of Brexit The pandemic situation in the UK compared to that of other countries is slightly different. The UK has been simultaneously going through Brexit, and these two processes have resulted in a qualitatively new situation for its residents, and immigrants, who, due to their transnational relations with the stayers, found themselves in a new cross-border situation. Nobody expected that, apart from Brexit, another global risk would come (Beck 2002) and dominate life at almost all levels of the society’s functioning. Speaking about Brexit, our interlocutors emphasized that they felt anxious about the economic issues or about mobility, but they also saw new dependencies and phenomena such as changing wage conditions, or ‘new’ immigrants having difficulties entering the UK, resulting from changes in the law or in new symbolic situations defining the position of UK residents relative to that of EU citizens.

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Perception of Brexit Our study was launched in August 2021. At that moment, when asked about Brexit, the respondents did not perceive this process as important enough to have a profound or even slight impact on the quality of their lives. They admitted that: it does not matter. (…) Nobody paid much attention (M_1). However, as we progressed with our research, the changes in access to various goods on the British market, e.g., food or fuel, progressed as well. It was noted later in the study that Brexit did in fact have an impact on the quality of migrants’ lives. Kasia states: This is the main issue – that there is no fuel because there are no truck drivers. And People say that there are no butchers (...), that there will be no Christmas trees for Christmas, there will be no turkey... (…) This is indeed what is going on right now. (M_12)

Nevertheless, the respondents’ attention is still concentrated on the pandemic, but a border arises between knowledge and lack of knowledge about the causes of this situation. The reasons for this confusion might be in the political game: in politics they camouflage such things (…) it is better to blame it on COVID than on Brexit (M_12). When the Brexit referendum result was announced in 2016, none of the respondents identified with it, and more than a year after the UK left the EU, it is still difficult for them to comment on its real-life consequences. They admit: it is probably too early to talk about it. And there is too much of a mixture of the pandemic and the Brexit-caused economic collapse (M_2). From Poland’s perspective, Brexit does not exert any impact on the stayers’ quality of life, but they admit that it might turn out problematic with regard to their relations with the migrants: For me, as a Pole, Brexit does not matter at all, but as for a migrant’s sister—it does, e.g., technically, (…) if they issue these visas, I hope they do it at the border pass (S_2). Paradoxically, despite the lack of clear, positive, or negative declarations of Brexit’s general impact, the stayers mentioned many threads on concerns around the consequences of Brexit.

Brexit—The Borders The analysis of the collected research material provided a lot of information about the formation, the saliency, and the dismantling of borders in the context of Brexit. We can talk about the formation of a new geopolitical border between the UK and the EU. This in turn provokes, as a result of new legal regulations, customs related complications concerning the flow of goods for both and their availability and private shipments level. Both the migrants and the stayers have already noticed this. Another potential boundary related to the settlement of migrants’ family members in the UK

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has been drawn up. This is the major concern for those who wish to have their retired parents by their side one day. Anna says: Well, I expected that (...) they would introduce these passports, that the family would not be able to arrive. (...) Well, I already know (...) that I will not bring my mother here, because she has to get this visa (...). And all these parcels, the flights, that you cannot bring it here, and you have to fill customs duties, pay duty, for the transportation ... (M_10)

Additionally, the migrants point out that they have not received any information about their friends’ family members who would wish to come to work and study, which had been the case before. In this way, another boundary is clearly seen—the one blocking access to the labor market and higher education. They say: personally, I do not know anyone, or I have not heard of anyone I know or anyone from their family to come to work or study (M_12). The migrants also noticed the restriction in access to health care in Poland, previously ensured by the UK membership in the EU: Well, I am Polish, but I live here [in Northern Ireland], I do not pay contributions there, so what now? Will I have to pay for the doctor? (M_6) In addition, obtaining settled status as well as the Polish passport can also be troublesome (sometimes, e.g., in terms of organization) and can heighten the impression that one lives outside Europe. Also, when physically crossing the border, some situations appear, such as, e.g., questions about additional documents for Polish children born in the UK, which leave the travelers under the impression that there are borders built between Poland and the UK and the EU. Another emerging border is the one that divides migrants into EU and post-EU migrants, and one that separates the migrants from Europe and from other nonEuropean countries. From the perspective of people living in the UK, the newcomers will have problems finding a job and settling permanently; this is also conditioned by the origin-related factors: I have a friend from Hong Kong who did not get a job, because the British and people from the European Union are a priority (M_12). The boundary between legal and illegal migrants has also emerged: I have already obtained the status, well, I have an easy mind. The situation is worse if someone has not done it. I think such a person may be more stressed about this Brexit. (...) People who do not figure anywhere, that is, they work illegally all the time, do not have any bills, (...) they fear more. (M_9)

Some borders, however, fade away. The migrants’ salaries go up with regard to the positions that have, so far, been the least profitable and the UK native residents have been rather reluctant to take. Jowita assures: Poles actually worked for the lowest [wage rate] and the English did not. And now there is a lot of work on the market, and they are increasing the wage rates because there are not enough people to work (M_9). Sylwek believes that: my situation as an immigrant will improve. (…) it seems to me, and, I know for sure, that at the moment there is a lot of work and only a few people (M_1). Not only are the boundaries concerning work access fading away, but also, in the case of certain groups of workers, the boundaries created before to guard the access to higher economic status are now opening.

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Brexit—The Borderlands As in the case of the pandemic, Brexit has also created borderlands, which, in some cases, can be called fluctuating borderlands. There is a borderland of knowledge and non-knowledge, and a borderland of uncertainty, or redefining one’s social affiliation. They have been formed and they have changed over time since Brexit started, and along with people acquiring new Brexit experiences. New legal regulations are often unclear and do not provide the migrants with the information that would ensure a sense of security, especially with regard to traveling and settlement of their family members. The stayers notice that as well. The question of obtaining the British passport raises worries. How long is a passport valid? Is there an end of validity?— the migrants ask. However, to avoid being on the borderland of formal and informal affiliation to the British society, the migrants apply for the British documents: We have lived here for so many years, but we both obtained British passports (M_12). Moreover, according to the interviewees, some people—those just arriving in the UK—will actually be on the borderland. They will face many administrative barriers, but also challenges in terms of everyday functioning. This is just another example of being on the borderland of belonging, and not belonging, to the host society, which is also observed in other areas of daily life. The respondents feel—because of their Polish origin and Poland’s membership in the structures of the EU—that they belong to both the EU and the UK. They realize that they live on the borderland of two countries once they pass the passport control point, e.g., at the airport. They have to choose which of the two lines at check-in they stand—non-UE citizens or UE citizens. Depending on the documents they possess, their affiliation is negotiated accordingly, and their identity is redefined. Just like the pandemic, Brexit has also provoked new ways of moving across borders and borderlands in the constantly reformulated social reality. Most often, the migrants adopt a suspension strategy (see Winiecka 2020) to analyze and observe the situation and to better adjust their functioning. The interlocutors emphasized that for many people, returning to the home country became one such strategy: Here they were from Poland, and they worked to earn their families living and so on, but they couldn’t even speak a word of English and it made it very difficult for them (…) and this is why they left (M_8). Obtaining a passport is another strategy (Winiecka 2020). We both feel safe now (M_12), say the respondents after receiving the British documents. The stayers, because they live in Poland, only report on their relatives’ lives abroad. Personally, they do not feel that they are on some borderland because of Brexit, but they notice the migrants’ difficulties in this regard. All things considered, most of the respondents do not seem to even notice Brexit, but they are often confused by the Brexit reality, and even more by the difficulties in interpreting the overlapping processes of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic: these are the two extremes (M_7).

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Conclusions The borderlands that have emerged as a result of new processes and circumstances are a transitional form between the old and the new order (Amorini-Woods 2021). This is clearly demonstrated by both the pandemic situation, new for everyone, and the Brexit situation, new for the British and the inhabitants of the European Union. Already today we can see the changes introduced by the pandemic in some areas of life at the macro and micro-level. The rules introduced by Brexit, which define the functioning of the UK residents not only in the UK itself, but also in relation to the EU (Mazzilli and King 2019) are becoming clearer. The nature of these processes is gradually being revealed. When a new borderland emerges, determined by new and sudden or unexpected circumstances, it takes the form we define as a fluctuating borderland. We use this phrase to accentuate the changing nature of these circumstances. These borders, despite their fluctuating nature, are clearly noticeable by society. The COVID pandemic and Brexit are unprecedented processes of a different nature, the development of which at a certain stage coincided in time. Each of them creates their own tools, and these create their own borders and thus contribute to the formation of the borderlands. If such processes occur simultaneously, some of their borders will overlap, and different ways of moving across these spaces will be adopted. The borderland navigation strategies presented in the text require in-depth research and the development of an appropriate conceptual apparatus. The discussed examples of the emergence and formation of new borderlands, regardless of their cause, also show that fear (e.g., ‘Coronaphobia’, Lee et al. 2020) is an integral part of this process, especially at its initial stage. While on the level of understanding them, the pandemic and Brexit phenomena are already well recognized, on the emotional level they are still unknown, which is manifested by fear. From a scientific point of view, the key issues generated by the pandemic and Brexit are fluctuating borderlands and overlapping borders and borderlands. Today, however, it is too early to determine whether the borderlands remain fluctuating or static, or whether the borders and borderlands cease to overlap and remain separated.

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Lulle A et al (2019) Between disruptions and connections: “New” European Union migrants in the United Kingdom before and after the Brexit. Popul, Space Place 25(1):e2200. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/psp.2200 Martin S, Bergmann J (2021) (Im)mobility in the age of COVID-19. Int Migr Rev 55(3):660–687. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918320984104 Mazzilli C, King R (2019) “What have I done to deserve this?”. Young Italian migrants in Britain narrate their reaction to Brexit and plans to the future. Riv Geogr Ital 125(4):507–523 Miah MF, King R (2021) When migrants become hosts and nonmigrants become mobile: Bangladeshis visiting their friends and relatives in London. Popul Space Place 27:e2355. https:// doi.org/10.1002/psp.2355 Newman D (2003) On borders and power: a theoretical framework. J BordLands Stud 18(1):13–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2003.9695598 O’Brien ML, Eger MA (2021) Suppression, spikes, and stigma: how COVID-19 will shape international migration and hostilities toward it. Int Migr Rev 55(3):640–659. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0197918320968754 Parker BJ (2006) Toward an understanding of borderland processes. Am Antiq 71(1):77–100 Paul R (2020) Europe’s essential workers: migration and pandemic politics in Central and Eastern Europe during COVID-19. Eur Policy Anal 6:238–263. https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1105 Prokkola EK (2009) Unfixing borderland identity: border performances and narratives in the construction of self. J BordLands Stud 24(3):21–38 Ratha D (2021) Staying the course on global governance of migration through the COVID-19 and economic crises. Int Migr 59:285–288. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12822 Reid A, Ronda-Perez E, Schenker MB (2021) Migrant workers, essential work, and COVID-19. Am J Ind Med 64:73–77. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.23209 Santi L, Golinelli D, Tampieri A, Farina G, Greco M, Rosa S et al (2021) Non-COVID 19 patients in times of pandemic: emergency department visits, hospitalizations and cause specific mortality in Northern Italy. PLoS ONE 16(3):e0248995. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248995 ´ A (2014) Pogranicza w perspektywie socjologicznej. Pol BordLands Stud Szczepa´nski MS, Sliz 2(1):52–53 The Electoral Commission UK (2016) https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-areand-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/ results-and-turnout-eu-referendum. Accessed 11 Oct 2021 Van Houtum H (2000) III European Perspectives on Borderlands: an overview of European geographical research on borders and border regions. J BordLands Stud 15(1):56–83 Vezzoli C (2021) Art in support of life: Caravaggio and the plague. J Anal Psychol 66(3):583–604. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12694 Walsh F (2020) Loss and resilience in the time of COVID-19: meaning making, hope, and transcendence. Fam Process 59(3):898–911. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12588 Wilson TM (2020) Fearing Brexit: the changing face of Europeanization in the Borderlands of Northern Ireland. Ethnol Eur 50(2):32–48. https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.1048 Winiecka K (2020) Polscy migranci w Londynie w obliczu Brexitu – (re) adaptacja? Wyniki Bada´n Wst˛epnych. Stud Migracyjne-Przegl˛ad Pol 4(178):71–95. https://doi.org/10.4467/25444972S MPP.20.039.12776

Between Humanitarianism and Security—The Events at the Polish-Belarusian Border Małgorzata Bienkowska ´

Abstract This article presents the events that occurred on the Polish-Belarusian border in the second half of 2021 at the beginning of the refugee crisis on that border. The summer of that year saw an increase in attempts to cross the Polish border from the Belarusian side to seek refugee status in the EU (Since 2007, the border between Poland and Belarus has also served as the Schengen border). Public attention was first drawn to this situation by events in the village of Usnarz Gorny on the border with Belarus, where border guards detained a group of several dozen people who had crossed the border without Schengen visas. These people ended up sleeping out in the open for several days, caught between Polish and Belarusian Border Guards. They were citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq (Kurdish people)—men, women and children trying to reach Poland via Belarus. Subsequently, the border with Poland was crossed by citizens of different countries seeking refugee status. The situation at the border area became tense. The action of bringing refugees to the border with Poland turned out to be a Belarusian provocation, and the Polish government took radical steps to enforce a closed zone in the border area until 30 June 2022. Keywords Migration crisis · Refugees · Border · Polish-Belarusian borderland

The Border Between Poland and Belarus Since 2007, the 418-km border between Poland and Belarus has also served as the Schengen border. There are 14 border crossings: seven road crossings, five rail, one seasonal crossing for canoes and one pedestrian-bicycle crossing in Białowie˙za Forest which is only operative during the day. A significant portion of the border runs along rivers (the Bug, Narew rivers). Once someone has crossed Poland’s eastern border, they have free mobility across the entire European Union. From a historical perspective, this border was the border between Poland and the Soviet Union—equally difficult to traverse and subject to M. Bie´nkowska (B) Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Białystok, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_14

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Fig. 14.1 Old rail border crossing beyond Narejki (Poland), Photograph by Bartosz Gawrylczyk

strict control. Not far from the functioning border crossing in Bobrowniki, there is a now symbolic rail border control point, just beyond the tiny village Narejki (Fig. 14.1). Today this spot has been overgrown with bushes—a kind of relict of the past, a local curiosity, recalling the Cold War. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the 90s, a new geopolitical order took shape including new relations in the Polish-Belarusian borderlands. The border between Poland and Belarus is the former border between Poland and the Soviet Union. Initially, at the beginning of the 90s, the local market that developed was based on the borderland exchange and was the source of income for many. In Białystok, the largest town in the borderland region, 40 km from the border itself, a unique market developed named after the street where it was located. “Kawaleryjska” was the largest market in the north-east of Poland, mainly providing a venue for trade with Belarusians (see also: D˛abrowskaProkopowska, Pyłko, 2019). The accession terms that resulted from Poland’s desire to join the EU changed the situation here, visas for Belarusian citizens were introduced, which led to many difficulties in private trade and reduced its scale considerably. Poland’s entry to the Schengen zone shook the local business that had been based on cross-border trade. From that time until autumn 2021, the Polish-Belarusian border was a relatively safe border; its presence not particularly felt by local inhabitants. The border itself was only marked by posts. At the weekend, Belarusian citizens would come to shop local towns or to the shopping centres in Białystok. The only inconvenience facing borderland inhabitants was the long queues of lorries waiting for customs clearance in Bobrowniki or Ku´znica. Many local people found employment

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in the border patrol, providing economic support for local families. There were only occasional attempts to cross the border illegally. A section of the border between Poland and Belarus is covered by the Białowieska Forest, a popular tourist destination where visitors can easily cross the border which is only marked by border posts. These areas are patrolled by the Polish Border Guard which monitors the region, warning tourists about the risks involved with crossing the border—being held by the Belarusian Border Guards, fines, etc. Such was the situation until the summer of 2021.

August 2021—Usnarz Górny In the summer of 2021, the situation at the Polish-Belarusian border changed dramatically. News reached the media from Usnarz inhabitants raising the alarm at the situation they could see getting out of hand: in the zone between Poland and Belarus, a group of 50 people was being held. This news angered public opinion and journalists reported on the inhuman treatment of these people, and the use of so-called push back methods. This I show the Gazeta Wyborcza journalist Joanna Klimowicz described the situation: “This situation has been continuing for a week apparently. Trapped in the open air, in a strip of no-man’s land, these people have no way to move or seek shelter. They have set up a temporary camp, warming themselves by campfires at night. They are waiting for Polish permission to be able to apply for international protection. They still have food, provided by border guards. These refugees are terrified and desperate” (Klimowicz 2021). Various people came to the border to help the refugees—politicians, activists and priests. The journalists and activists who managed to communicate with the refugees started publicising their plight, their state of health and to demand respect for the law governing asylum seekers in Poland. There were reports of the use of pushback methods and information about malnourished refugees in various locations. This situation came as something of a surprise for this border area. In Usnarz, it was established that these are citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq (Kurdish people)—men, women and children trying to reach Poland via Belarus. The situation of these people changed suddenly when information reached social media that the Polish Border Guard was providing them with food, the guard was forbidden from providing this kind of support, followed by their being surrounded to block any contact between refugees and the media or social activists. The Polish Border Guard provided social media announcements, emphasising that the situation is an emergency: “In August of this year 2100 persons attempted to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally. Out of these, the Polish Border Guard prevented 1342 people from attempting to cross the border and 758 foreign nationals were detained and held in secure centres for refugees run by the Polish Border Guard. From July to 17 August 380 foreign nationals were transferred out of Poland (including those to their country of origin).”. By way of comparison, in the whole of

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2020 the border guard detained 13 groups attempting to cross the border—a total of 114 persons (Klimowicz 2021). The situation of the refugees in Usnarz provoked an emotional debate about where the refugees are exactly, in whose territory, what rules govern their treatment and who is responsible for the push pack used. The government-controlled media stressed that the refugees are located on the Belarusian side or are on “no-man’s land” between the borders. Activists, however, recorded that refugees are in Polish territory and that in accordance with international law Poland is obliged to receive them if they request asylum. Social activists, NGO members, organised translators, prepared the relevant forms and tried to inform the refugees via megaphones about their location and their rights. Over the subsequent days, the border guard began to hinder the activists in their attempts to communicate with the refugees, separating off the refugees with a cordon of guards and drowning out the messages of the activists by using the engines of large vehicles. The Polish authorities took the decision in August to erect the barbed-wire fencing to deter border crossing. A total of 180 km of barbed-wire fence was constructed at the border with the support of the army. Similar fencing on the Hungarian-Serbian border served as the model. On 2 September, the President of Poland issued a decree introducing a state of emergency along the borderland region, including 115 districts in Podlaskie Voivodeship and 68 in Lubelskie Voivodeship, in total 183 districts covered by the state of emergency (Fig. 14.2). In the region covered by the state of emergency, there are numerous limitations related to the organisation of mass events, assemblies, protests, cultural events and persons travelling to this region must always have identification with them. Many restrictions have been implemented—taking photographs or filming selected places and buildings is forbidden, journalists are banned from the state of the emergency zone, as well as anyone else except residents. Access to public information has been limited. The introduction of a state of emergency cut the public off from media communication—but not completely. Activists living in the region have shared detailed reports on their social media profiles, writing about what is happening, how many people are in Usnarz, how many refugees they encountered who managed to cross the border, where they are from and their state of health. Support campaigns have been undertaken across Poland—collections of useful items, money and food delivered to specific locations so that those who are able to move around the borderland region are able to react quickly and provide support to the needy. Public opinion was also concerned about the weather conditions. Poland enjoys a moderate climate—in August, the temperature during the day is warm but at night temperatures are already lower and in September there may be frost at night and rain is generally frequent in the autumn when the temperatures also drop week to week. By November, there are frequent snowfalls already, and this has worried public opinion. On 18 September, the first death of a young Syrian on Polish territory was reported, with the following days bringing news of further victims. This news moved many, groups of doctors were organised, emergency first-aid teams and nurses who united as part of the campaign “Medics at the Border”.

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Fig. 14.2 State of emergency at the eastern border. Author: Tomasz Bie´nkowski

Humanitarianism Alongside the narrative of “hybrid war” and the need to defend Polish borders, a section of Polish society involved itself in the campaign to support refugees. In the region subject to the state of emergency, some inhabitants fully support the Polish Border Guard in their actions, while others, seeing the use of “push back” methods, believe it is necessary to take care of the refugees who have managed to get through the border. Some have described their daily walks through the forests, fully ready to help anyone they encounter, to offer tea, to provide food, to offer medicine and warm and dry clothes that are suitable for the season and to charge a mobile phone or just talk. Of course, these “private” initiatives require financial and logistic support from others. Sometimes the support begins to involve entire networks of people from all over Poland—collections of food, clothes and transport to the border. Information and communication are developed in social media. The activists from the “Border Group” (“Grupa Granica”) describe themselves as follows: “The Border Group is a coalition of a dozen or more NGOs which have for many years been involved in supporting migrants also with documentary, research, and legal teams. The Group includes: The “Nomad” Association, the

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Legal Intervention Association, the Homo Faber Association, the Polish Migration Forum, the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation, Salam Lab, Dom Otwarty [“Open House”], the “Halina Nie´c” Centre for Legal Support, Chlebem i Sol˛a [“With Bread and Salt”], uchod´zcy.info [“refugees.info”], Kuchnia Konfliktu [“the Conflict Kitchen”], Strefa WolnoSłowa [The FreeSpeech Zone”], the RATS Agency as well as other independent activists, lawyers and researchers.” (Cited in: zrzutka.pl1 ). This coalition has organised fund-raising for its campaigns, using the popular donation site www.zrzutka.pl. The campaigns of this group have achieved wide renown and financial support. The leaders of these groups state their goal as follows: “to help refugees who are stuck in this nightmarish dead zone between two razor-wire fences. We often meet exhausted individuals with whom we share food, drink, and warm clothes. We listen to their stories. We document their fate and, as far as possible, we follow their onward journey, offering them legal help wherever possible. Sometimes our interventions save lives. And this is only the beginning of our work. Our Border Group organisations ensure legal and psychological support to the lucky ones who have been able to stay in Poland, as well as material support, helping their children handle new schools in a foreign place and in a foreign language.” (zrzutka.pl). The Border Group provides daily reports in social media on the people they encounter, since August they have helped 2000 people. The activists involved also write as individuals, describing their days and nights on the ground, and who they meet; some describe their encounters with border guards—some describing these encounters as neutral, others speaking of the negative attitude of guards or even enmity. Thanks to their collective work the public has been able to follow what is going on in the borderland of Poland and Belarus, even when journalism and media have been cut off from reporting. Another support group that has been active on the ground is the group behind the campaign “Medics at the Border”—doctors, nurses, guards and emergency staff who all offer their free time to provide medical support for refugees. As they themselves say, they operate by the zone which is covered by the state of emergency, so they gladly provide help without entering that zone itself. Medics at the Border have appealed to the Polish Ministry of the Interior for permission to provide support in the zone covered by the state of emergency but did not receive permission. They have provided support where possible, operating so far for 40 days using the free time of the members and using funds gathered from donations. They have documented every case and written about them in social media—to provide a public opinion with the opportunity to find out about what is going on, the circumstances of refugees. The group was set up with the intention of providing help until 15 November at which point another medical organisation is to take over “The Polish Centre for International Aid”. Medics at the border took many people to the Emergency Room

1

Who we are/ Kim jeste´smy—The website “zrzutka.pl” is used to raise funds for activities carried out by associations and individuals in the social sector. Here is a detailed description of who the Granica (Border Group) initiative is.

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in a nearby hospital in Hajnówka—the hospital provided care to many refugees and requested support. Another initiative worth noting is the nationwide campaign “Catering Le´sny” [“Woodland Catering”]—a movement to combine the efforts of people preparing meals for refugees lost in Polish forests. This group has many members who prepare soups, pasteurise them and deliver them to activists who are active in the zone where refugees are to be found. The meals are prepared according to definite rules and using agreed ingredients so as to be sensitive to the cuisine of the countries of origin of the refugees. Woodland Catering is one of many examples of grassroots, local initiatives to help people crossing the border and finding themselves lost in the forests of the area. The refugees arriving in Poland are undernourished. Of course, besides the activists from the Border Group, Medics at the border and others who are trying to provide useful items, clothes and money, there are also those who are full of fear for themselves and their near ones; the latter informs the border patrols as soon as they see a foreign person in the area. This kind of reaction should not be condemned as for the majority of such people this is a new situation, unfamiliar from their previous experience. We should also take into consideration the highly pejorative narrative delivered by the Polish government in 2015 in the face of the European migration crisis, a narrative of “bad refugees” against whom we need to defend Poland. In her 2016 article “Concern, fear, hostility. A discourse on refugees and migrants in Poland and Germany”, Klaudia Sydow analysed the narratives which were then created on the subject of Islamic migrants. “Narratives about refugees also evolved in Poland, but from the very beginning—and in contrast here to Germany—they were highly diversified and strongly connected to the subjects of Islam and terrorism. The results of the analysis undertaken by the Public Debate Observatory [3], lasting several months, indicate increasing harshness of the language concerning refugees, as well as the coexistence of two very different tendencies. The first—much more visible in the monitored media—is a narrative about the “clash of civilisations”, about the new culture war between Europe and the Islamic world. This narrative radicalized in 2015 and was predominant in right-wing news channels. The second kind of message concentrated on the moral obligation to take care of Others and on criticism of Polish resistance to foreigners and the lack of solidarity felt with victims of conflicts”. The author identifies the main elements of the narratives, language emphasising enmity, threat, attack, war and language associating Islam with terrorism (see Sydow 2016). At the time, though no refugees were being admitted, Polish society was brought into a state of anxiety and fear of them. This is clearly visible in the CBOS (Public Opinion Research Centre) research, undertaken regularly since 2015, on questions related to Poland’s receiving refugees from regions affected by military conflicts, especially refuges coming from the Middle East and Africa. “The general attitude to receiving refugees in December 2016 remained at a similar level to the preceding months. More than half the respondents (52%) expressed their opposition to receiving refugees. Two out of five (40%) agree to afford temporary refuge (until the time

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they are safe to return to their country of origin). Less than one in twenty (4%) state that we should allow refugees to permanently settle in Poland”.2

The same attitude is also present in the ethnographic research carried out by Sylwia Urba´nska and Przemysław Sadura in the zone covered by the state of emergency and during the course of a journey of several days for which they received permission from the Polish Border Guard and when they were able to listen to what local inhabitants had to say (see Urba´nska, Sadura 2021). The narrative they develop on the basis of the ethnographic material gathered shows that among the inhabitants of the zone included in the state of emergency, there is a predominance of fear and terror of foreigners together with high trust towards the border patrols. Their hometowns changed, from one day to the next, from peripheral villages and towns into locations where the army, police and border guard are visible at every step; military helicopters fly over their homes, and they receive announcements that they need to close their windows and doors at night. The atmosphere they are living in at present is rather peculiar and tense. Furthermore, the state of emergency is for many living in this region a considerable financial burden, especially for those making a living from tourism and adding to the overall frustration.

Hybrid War and Criticism of Government Actions The first reports about refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border provoked consternation and curiosity. How had refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan reached the Polish border? It is not, after all, a common migratory route. The answer was not long coming: the refugees had been artificially attracted by the Belarusian state to provoke ´ a crisis at the border of the European Union. The campaign had the cryptonym “Sluza” [“Lock” or “Sluice Gate”]. As journalists were able to discover, the elite Belarusian unit OSAM had coordinated the smuggling and direction of migrants to the borders with Lithuania and Poland. “OSAM officers had orders from Mi´nsk to coordinate the smuggling of migrants already in 2010. This is the claim of BYPOL, an organisation cooperating with the Belarusian opposition. BYPOL is made up of former ministerial officers who fled to Poland following last year’s fraudulent presidential elections. In their opinion, the authors of operation “Sluice Gate” were the brothers Iwan and Juri Tertel—the first was the head of the Belarusian KGB, the second the head of OSAM” (cited in Gazeta Wyborcza: https://wyborcza.pl/7,75399,27491606,skadsie-wzieli-imigranci-na-granicy-z-bialorusia-lukaszenka.html). Migrants are lured by the Belarusian state travel agency Centrkurort which attracts migrants with the ease of travel from Belarus to the EU—whether to Lithuania or to Poland. Immigrants come to Belarus initially as tourists, paying for the “trip” from 600 to 1000 USD. They are promised that for the next payment they will be transported to EU territory. In reality, these people in the tourist stage in Mi´nsk were transported near the 2

Report from CBOS research no. 1/2017, “Stosunek Polaków do przyjmowania uchod´zców” [“Attitude of Polish people to receiving refugees”]. CBOS—Public Opinion Polling Centres.

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border and then directed to the border itself with the promise that there is only a short distance to cross to the EU. After that point, the Belarusian Guard blocks them from returning and the Polish Guard blocks them from entering Polish territory. There is no doubt Lukashenko is treating migrants purely instrumentally, unconcerned with their suffering—or their lives. It has been established that in Iraqi Internet fora, there are presentations of the route to the EU via Belarus as a simple and easy one. This has tempted many. Iraqi airlines have increased the number of flights to Mi´nsk, and tickets were sold out until the end of October. These flights were at least partly suspended after the intervention of the EU, so an alternative route appeared—to reach Mi´nsk from Iraq it was possible to change flights in Istanbul. Turkey also suspended flights following the escalation in November to limit the number of migrants reaching Belarus. Aleksander Lukashenko does not hide the fact that his actions are premeditated and aimed at intensifying the crisis at the border. The actions of the Polish government—which from August to November insisted that it would manage without support from EU states or from FRONTEX or other international organisations—were criticised by a portion of Polish society engaged in various humanitarian support campaigns by journalists and activists but also by Germany, the ultimate destination for most of the refugees. Poland was also criticised for the use of pushback methods, as documented by activists from the Border Group and also reported directly in social media by refugees trapped between Poland and Belarus. Some were able to cross the border illegally, hiding in the forests, travelling at night and increasingly suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition. At the time of writing, the death toll is said to be 10; however, some emphasise that this may only be the number of victims who have actually been found. The government has also been criticised for barring access of journalists to the emergency zone limiting the information reaching public opinion about what is actually going on. Official information reaching public opinion at present comes from the Polish Border Guard and the army and the police stationed in border area. Beside this official information, there are also sources of information connected to the Border Group activists and local inhabitants.

Ku´znica Ku´znica is one of the official border crossings between Poland and Belarus. On Tuesday 9 November 2021, the Polish Border Guard announced that a large group of refugees had been camping outside since the previous Monday at the border crossing in Ku´znica. They had been led there by the Belarusian Border Guard who was blocking their return to Belarus and pushing them on to the Polish border. The information appeared that the number might be as high as thousands; however, the final figure provided by the Border Guard was around 800 people in the immediate vicinity—there may have been other groups of refugees further on in Belarusian territory. The main group attempted to force its way into Poland, photographs and

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films of refugees attempting, ultimately unsuccessfully, to force open barbed-wire fencing went viral on the Internet. The following days saw a few further such attempts, a portion of the refugees being successful in their attempt to reach Polish territory. On 9 November, Poland continued with its narrative of self-sufficiency, avoiding asking for international support with the Sejm’s Speaker, Prime Minister and President all emphasising that Poland can manage alone, that we are ready to resist provocations from Belarus. However, the situation in Ku´znica brought about a change in attitude, bending to the demands the opposition had spoken about before. Border traffic was blocked at the crossing in Ku´znica, talk of economic sanctions towards Belarus was initiated, etc.

Humanitarian Corridor The situation at the Polish-Belarusian border is tense. The Border Guard provides updates everyday about numerous attempts to cross the border, including the number of people detained after illegal attempts to cross the border. Iraq has committed to providing flights for its citizens to return to Iraq. Nevertheless, Lukashenko continues to take advantage of the migrants with the Belarusian Border Guard pushing the migrants towards the Polish border, provoking the Polish Border Guard. Activists from the Border Group have appealed for the opening of a humanitarian corridor. They wrote as follows: “In connection with the increasing risk of escalation of violence on the Polish-Belarusian border, the Border Group has formally appealed for support to national and international organisations, including the United Nations, the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights and the OSCE. We have requested monitoring from these bodies and the exertion of pressure on the Polish authorities for the latter to immediately provide humanitarian and medical support. We also appeal to the government to open a humanitarian corridor. In place of illegal deportations, violence and negligence of the humanitarian crisis, we demand protection of health and life, opposition to torture and respect for the rights of migrants. As a state, we have the obligation to provide aid to those suffering abuse by Lukashenko’s regime—international protection for those escaping violence, persecution or war and for others a safe return home. This is not only a moral imperative; it is a duty of international law. Facing the real threat of an escalation in the situation at the border, we appeal to the authorities and to the Border Guard, the Polish Interior Ministry, and the Polish Volunteer Army to respect the basic principles of humanitarianism, to undertake action necessary to save the lives and health of migrants—i.e., the women, children, elderly persons who have fled conflict, persecution and instability. It is unacceptable for there to be violence at the Polish border, nor for there to be the violations of human rights we have been witnessing for several weeks now. A secure border is one where migrants can count on protection. A secure border is one where no one dies” (cited in: https://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7,114883,27801360,w-poblizugranicy-znaleziono-zwloki-mlodego-syryjczyka-policja.html).

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Conclusions The state of emergency was initially introduced for a limited period of 30 days, after which it was extended for a further 60 days. It cannot lawfully be further extended. In this situation and with the border conflict unresolved—escalating, in fact—the government has begun work on a special act which is supposed to regulate the situation at the border. This special act is to govern the building of a wall at the border, regulate access to this area, regulate the rights of journalists to report as well as define the rules for providing medical aid and assistance to refugees. On the 15 November, a debate was planned for the EU concerning increasing sanctions towards Belarus. Poland has announced its expectation of an escalation of violence and forced movement of migrants towards Poland as a response from Belarus. The Border Group has reported that migrants are deliberately misinformed by the Belarusian agencies and are being provided with forms suggesting they will be able to settle in Poland or in Germany. The activists interpret this disinformation as a deliberate campaign to raise hopes among migrants that they will be able to settle in Western Europe. The situation is dynamic and is currently drawing international attention.3

References D˛abrowska—Prokopowska E, Pyłko M (2019) Analiza relacji społecznych sprzedawców na targowisku miejskim przy ul. Kawaleryjskiej w Białymstoku, in: (ed) Zemło M. Małe miasta: codzienno´sc´ , Białystok Głowacki A (2017) Stosunek Polaków do przyjmowania uchod´zców, Komunikat CBOS nr 1/2017 Grupa Granica—Who we are https://zrzutka.pl/petrsw?gclid=Cj0KCQjwhLKUBhDiARIsAMaT LnG7PV0Cbmcd-t89T1XUgjlui7-v6SOmggcTtTOAJaLglxmUs58FJZIaAtRPEALw_wcB Accessed on 10 Dec 2021 Klimowicz J (2021) Uchod´zcy z Afganistanu i Iraku uwi˛ezieni na granicy, Gazeta Wyborcza (https://bialystok.wyborcza.pl/bialystok/7,35241,27467602,uchodzcy-z-afganistanu-i-irakuuwiezieni-na-granicy-polska.html) Accessed on 10 Dec 2021 Kokot M (2021) Sk˛ad si˛e wzi˛eli imigranci na granicy z Białorusi˛a? Łukaszenka dał zgod˛e ´ na akcj˛e „Sluza (https://wyborcza.pl/7,75399,27491606,skad-sie-wzieli-imigranci-na-granicyz-bialorusia-lukaszenka.html) Accessed on 10 Nov 2021 M K IAR (2001) Another death on the border. Police: on the Polish side found the body of a young Syrian, (https://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7,114883,27801360,w-poblizu-granicy-zna leziono-zwloki-mlodego-syryjczyka-policja.html) Accessed on 10 Dec 2021 Sydow K (2016) Troska, strach, wrogo´sc´ . Dyskurs o uchod´zcach i migrantach w Polsce i Niemczech, https://pl.boell.org/pl/2016/07/25/troska-strach-wrogosc-dyskurs-o-uchodzcach-imigrantach-w-polsce-i-niemczech Accessed on 10 Dec 2021 Urba´nska S, Sadura P (2021) Obcy w naszym kraju. Gniew, z˙ al i strach polskiego pogranicza, Krytyka Polityczna, z dn. 17.09.2021 (https://krytykapolityczna.pl/kraj/obcy-w-naszym-krajupodlasie-uchodzcy-stan-wyjatkowy-reportaz-badanie) Accessed on 10 Dec 2021

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As I finish this text, it is November 2021 and international diplomatic talks have begun. There does not appear to be any shift in attitude from the Belarusian side—any indication that Belarus will be stepping back from its instrumental treatment of migrants.

The Contours of a New (Post) Pandemic Reality

Self-Construction in the World Web and the Borders of Freedom in Pandemic Times Gábor Kovács

Abstract The paper investigates the epochal shift caused by the digital technology in the redrafting our mental map concerning the borders of inner psychic realities. There are different borders. The term ‘border’ has not only spatial connotations! It, undoubtedly, in colloquial sense, refers to geographical divisions of our physical environment. At the same time, there are different geographies: Mental-cultural geography coexists with outer geography referring to spatial realities. These two kinds of geographies are in a complementary relation: Mental-cultural borders and geographical borders are mirror images of each other. When you draw a border on a map around a given territory, this action presupposes borders already existing in your mind. Comparing old, premodern maps with new modern ones, the most conspicuous difference between them is the lack of state borders on old maps. This is not by chance: It proves that spatial-geographical borders of modernity are unimaginable without inner mental borders rooted in the special self-construction of Cartesian ego. A new kind of self-construction is accompanied by a change of spatial-geographical divisions. The term of fluid modernity coined by Zygmunt Baumann refers to an epochal shift: the dissolution of inner psychic and outer social realities. The question: Are we able to live in a fluid world without solid structures separated from each other by borders? There are different answers: Borders have different meanings! A world divided by state borders with barbed wire is a horrible place to live in. At the same time, we need a mental map with borders structuring our social realities. We cannot exist in an absolutely unstructured world without order. Fluid modernity This paper is based on my presentation held in the IX International Kant/Bakhtin Scientific Seminar entitled Human Rights, Legal Constraints, Redefined Borders in the Pandemic Era, organized by the Murmansk Arctic State University (MASU, Russia) and the Nord University (Bodø, Norway), in Murmansk, October 20–21, 2021. The paper was written within the framework of the Russian–Hungarian bilateral research project entitled The migration of ideas and the formation of national philosophical traditions: dialogues across the borders (MigpaciR ideu i fopmipovanie nacionalbnyx filocofckix tpadiciu: dialogi povepx gpanic), supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (No. 20–511-23002). G. Kovács (B) Institute of Philosophy, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_15

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needs a new restructuring activity of human being: We cannot establish our home in the world without it! Keywords Fluid modernity · Identity-constructions · Private realm · Public realm · Surveillance capitalism

Introduction: Fluid Modernity The train of thought of this paper needs a referential framework in which this complicated, many-layered topic extending different terrains from ontology to political philosophy can be explained. The main nodes of this framework are four thinkers: Hannah Arendt, Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman and Shosana Zuboff. The problem of self-construction involves the question concerning the nature of our age. There are many terms directing the attention to the novelty of our epoch. Late modernity and postmodern modernity are frequently used labels: These terms indicate that the elder constellations of modernity are approaching to the end or they are already behind us. Manuel Castells, in his books, writes on the advent of the age of information in which, according to him, information becomes the main structure-forming factor of the global societal and cultural networks. Networks built up for the distribution of information and created by electronic devices, according to Castells, are the referential frameworks of societies integrated into them. The approach of Castells is techno-deterministic. The flow of information, as the basic process of our age, determines the structures of the local societies in their every sphere. Networks, in his interpretation, have replaced the world of solid, self-closed entities separated from each other by rigid borders. The main consequence of it is a new social morphology in all fields of our societies determined by digital technologies (Castells 1996: 469–471). However, the most appropriate term for the topic of this paper seems to be the term of fluid modernity coined by Zygmunt Bauman more than twenty years ago. Modernity, according to him, has stepped into a new phase whose main peculiarity is the dissolution of rigid structures which dominated the earlier period. Baumann opposes rigidity to fluidity and announces the end of the old modernity based on solid borders: Solids are cast once and for all. Keeping fluids in shape requires a lot of attention, constant vigilance and perpetual effort—and even then the success of the effort is anything but a foregone conclusion. It would be imprudent to deny, or even to play down, the profound change which the advent of ’fluid modernity’ has brought to the human condition. (Bauman 2000: 8)

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Our Age: Moving Away from the Cartesian Self-Construction This new development described by Baumann is contrary to the earlier situation which dominated the first stages of modernity when it was the process of compartmentalization which drew sharp borderlines among the segments of reality. René Descartes, in the dual ontology of his philosophy, erects strict unpassable borders between the res cogitans and the res extensa. At the same time, there is another border between separate egos; self-identity of the ego can be based by the virtue of introspection. Self has to sink into the depth of his/her interior world to get a solid, unquestionable base for the creation of self-identity. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is a first step in the process of identity-building. This is the turning point in the Cartesian philosophy based on the resolutive–compositive method; the self finds a solid fundament on which he/she is able to rebuild his/her identity (On the Cartesian method: McKeon 1966:16). The maxim of the ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is a base on which, after the resolution of uncertain, false knowledge, the phase of composition can begin: But immediately afterward I noticed that, while I wanted thus to think that everything was false, it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something. And noticing that this truth—I think, therefore I am—was so firm and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. (Descartes 1998: 33)

The construction of self-identity, in the Cartesian model, comes from within. This ontology ensures the autonomy of the ego which, using the phrase of Kant, becomes of his/her own lawgiver. At the same time, the social reality, the world of emerging modernity, threatens this autonomy. There is an irreconcilable contradiction between the ego, as the autonomous constructor of his/her own self-identity, and social reality. This contradiction is illuminated by the famous metaphor of Max Weber on the iron cage of modernity. At the same time, compartmentalization serves as a protective shield for the egos. The separated individuals, according to the political philosophies of the early modernity, create society with its institutions by a fictive social contract; the core of this conception is a creation of rigid borderline between private and public spheres. The main innovation of modern civilization, according to Norbert Elias, is the separation of the private realm of intimate functions of body and individual psychological attitudes from the world of publicity (Elias 1994). However, there are different possible interpretations of the relation of modern ego and social institutions. Michel Foucault, in his theory, questions the fiction of autonomous individual; he asserts that individual is a construction of the disciplinary power which, by the help of its power technologies, creates the rational self-control by which the power is internalized (McGushin 2011).

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Private Realm Versus Public Realm Hannah Arendt describes, in her political phenomenology, the duality of private and public realms with a solid borderline between them as a main warranty for human freedom (Arendt 1958). Human beings, according to her, are complex entities. The base of the human existence is maintained by the animal laborans being in the state of metabolism with nature. Animal laborans—the Arendtian term for human person as a biological organism—consumes the materials and the energy of nature building them into his/her body. He/she transforms natural environment but does not produce anything lasting solid thing which survives the process of metabolism. This task is of the homo faber who erects the world of solidity and lastingness: He/she is who creates a home from the world where human being feels himself/herself in safety. The third and highest layer, in her theory, of human existence is the man of action vesting the home created by the homo faber with meaning. The main characteristic of the tripartite political ontology of Arendt is spatial essentialism. Meaningful human existence can be possible if these three layers with their special activity, labor, work and action are separated with rigid and strict borders from each other (Canovan 1992). This separateness is a warranty of identity-construction. The self, in her theory, is double layered: the what is the isolated self with his/her individual peculiarities; while the who appears in the public sphere; he/she is the result of human action and speech performed in the society of others (Arendt 1958: 10–11). The completion of identitybuilding is possible only in public sphere. The main problem of modernity, in the cultural criticism of Arendt, is the dissolution and elimination of the world of lasting things and with it the public sphere—it is the consequence of the amalgamation of the private and public realms leading to a hybrid sphere of social (To an overall analysis of social, see: Pitkin 1998). There is a startling theory of modernity behind her theory. Modern technology, contrary to the general interpretation, creates not an ever-growing world of artificiality but it re-naturalizes human existence. Modern world has been based on an ever-speeding cycle of production and consumption eliminating solidity from the world. Modernity, it is the conclusion of Arendt, brings the victory of animal laborans; human race falls back in the state of animal-biological existence (Kovács 2012). Richard Sennett, according to his own statement, is deeply inspired by the political ontology of Arendt. He gives, similarly to her, some kind of Verfallsgeschichte, a story of decline on the history of modernity. The peak of public existence is the beginning of the modern history: the publicity of emerging new metropolises, London, Paris, etc., in the eighteenth century. The following centuries bring with them the gradual erosion and shrinking of the field of publicity and the dissolution of the borders between the private and public realms. The end result, he wrote fifty years ago before the advent of the Internet, is an age dominated by intimacy: The expectation is that when relations are close, they are warm; it is an intense kind of sociability which people seek out in attempting to remove the barriers to intimate contact, but this expectation is defeated by the act. The closer people come, the less sociable, the more painful, the more fratricidal their relations. (Sennett 2002: 338)

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Of course, the blurring of the borders of private and public realms and the advent of a fluid world inspired not only negative interpretations; postmodern thought hailed it as a passage to a new free world which is not shackled any more by the legislative, lawgiver Cartesian ego; the fluidity of the brave new world gives a chance to escape from the iron cage of modernity. Michel Maffesoli, the French sociologist, prognosticated the advent of the epoch of neotribalism replacing the world of isolated Cartesian egos with their attachment to rigid borders between rationality and affectivity and to territorialism of physical places (Maffesoli 1996). Fragmentation and fractalization, in his interpretation, are leading to the dissolution of unified public space; it is replaced by separated public spaces which are the postmodern versions of premodern localities: in the postmodern megapolis emerges a plurality of pseudo-villages. The modern individual with his/her rational calculation based upon self-interest is replaced by a postmodern person with affectual-emotional attitude; it is who finds his/her identity as a member of postmodern urban tribes. The outmoded duality of rational–irrational disappears in the hybrid entity of affectual rationality (Maffesoli 1996: 144).

The Post-Cartesian Ego of the Social Media They give me likes therefore I exist! This post-Cartesian assertion is the starting point of our postmodern self-construction. The basic difference with the Cartesian ‘cogito ergo sum’ is that the source of psychic certainty is not any more in the inner mental world of the individual. Postmodern ego confirms his/her identity in digital world by the recognition of other disembodied egos manifesting themselves in their likes: The more likes you have the more your private existence is founded. The merging of inner and public realms described by Arendt and Sennett reaches a new phase. In the bubbles of social media emerges a hybrid sphere in which together circulate photos of nice children and pets with commercial and political ads in an inextricable confusion. The illusion of the web as the natural medium of freedom that dominated the enthusiastic public mood in the decade before the turn of the millennium is over: The emergence of surveillance capitalism and a new despotism based on digital control of the citizens overwrote this naïve, utopist illusion. What does freedom mean in this new situation? The phrase of ‘user’ concerning the inhabitants of digital world is telling. It suggests a passive-consumer position instead of the position of the acting man which, according to Arendt, is needed for freedom: The dwellers of the digital spaces are not ‘actors’ but ‘users’; it is they are who are the objects of the highly sophisticated manipulative technics extensively applied in digital reality. Shosana Zuboff, the American philosopher, gives an overall analysis of the current situation (Zuboff 2019). We are living, according to her, in the age of surveillance capitalism based on the Internet technology, more precisely on the new social media. The actors of this new capitalism are the giant corporations emerged after the Millennium; the Google was the pioneer followed by others: Facebook, Twitters, etc. The source of the exploitation and the profit, argues Shosana

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Zuboff, using and reshaping the Marxian intellectual toolbox, is no more the work but the individual behavior expressing itself in the social media controlled by the aforementioned giant corporations. The new source of the profit is the behavioral surplus originated from the prognostication of the future behavior of users; it comes from the personal data collected by the corporations that are able to monitor our activity in the digital world. Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied to product or service improvement, the rest are declared as proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence,” and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. (Zuboff 2019: 8)

The anthropological presupposition of surveillance capitalism is a new kind of identity-construction based on the dissolution of the borderline between private and public realms. The identity of the postmodern self is a digital identity acquired and maintained in digital reality. Its core is a voluntary self-transparency of the ego who in exchange of his/her self-revelation hopes in the confirmation of his/her existence by the likes of other virtual egos. So, the system logic of digital surveillance capitalism and the new kind of identity-construction are complementing each other in digital space created and maintained by hypermodern technology.

The Digital Existence, the COVID-19 and the Future of Freedom The growing predomination of digital life over our physical, offline existence got a new impetus by the COVID-19 pandemic. The question lends itself: What are the consequences of it from the perspective of human freedom? However, it is, undeniably, an ambivalent situation. Pandemic, on the one hand, erected new rigid borders in physical world. Stay home, keep distance from others!—these are the new maxims of human behavior. The possibilities of free mobility have been restricted in a significant amount: lockdowns, vaccination certificates, COVID tests, etc. The importance of digital existence, as a consequence of this new situation, has enormously increased: home office, online education, etc. It is necessary and unavoidable in short run. But what will be the long-run consequences of it? That is the question! We are unable to exist solely in digital spaces: We have physical bodies with physical needs and desires. Human being without his/her body ceases to be human being; the conception of technical posthumanism forgets about it when suggesting that we will be able to move to the digital world and liberate ourselves from the burden of physical body with its infirmities: illness, aging and death (Bostrom 2003). This problem would deserve a closer examination, but it led us astray from the topic of this paper! What we are interested here is the relation of freedom and digital surveillance in these pandemic times. There are definitely pessimist interpretations of this new situation characterized by the simultaneous reappearance of physical borders and the promise

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of free, unrestricted move in the digital world. One of the main representatives of these gloomy prognoses is the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. He warns us that not just the surveillance capitalism is benefited from these troubled times but the new kinds of political despotism appearing in different corners of the globe. China is an eminent example of the marriage of surveillance capitalism and surveillance despotism. Agamben uses the notion of biopower borrowed from Foucault; the main imminent threat, according to him, is the transformation of the state of exception caused by the epidemic to a lasting order of our world. His point of view generated a hot debate among the philosophers about the possible consequences of the COVID-19 to the human condition (Foucault–Agamben–Benvenuto 2020). However, the main problem we confront is the next: Is it possible to transform the separated opinion bubbles of the social media to a new public space of freedom? At the same time, we may risk: We need borders. The question: What kinds of borders? Certainly not closed state borders with barbed wire and armed guards but borders articulating the different fields of social reality; a structured, habitable world needs them.

References Arendt H (1958) The human condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Bauman Z (2000) Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Cambridge & Malden Bostrom N (2003) The Transhumanist FAQ. A General Introduction, Version 2.1 https://nickbo strom.com/views/transhumanist.pdf 5. (downloaded: Oct 31, 2021) Canovan M (1992) Hannah Arendt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Castells M (1996) The information age– economy, society and culture I. “The rise of the network society”, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford Descartes R (1998) Discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis /Cambridge Elias N (1994) The civilizing process. Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. Revised edition. Basil Blackwell, Oxford Foucault M, Agamben G, Benvenuto S (2020) Coronavirus and philosophers. Eur J Psychoanal (Special Issue). https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-andphilosophers/?clid= IwAR3vn9BkTRgTltb0IV7VXw6n8SxyzdDh6sDpMYDDVsk5v9ZpAwhf2KV6R08. (downloaded: Oct 31, 2021) Kovács G. (2012) Hannah Arendt’s Interpretation of natural and artificial in the political phenomenology of the Human Condition. Limes: BordLand Stud, 5(2): pp 93–102 Maffesoli M (1996) The time of the tribes. The decline of individualism in mass society (trans: by Don Smith). Sage Publications, London & Thousand Oaks CNew Delhi McGushin E (2011) Foucault’s theory and practice of subjectivity. In Taylor, D (ed) Michel Foucault: Key Concepts (pp. 127–142). Acumen Publishing Ltd, Durham McKeon R (1966) Philosophy and the development of scientific methods. J Hist Ideas, 27(1), (Jan–Mar., 1966), pp 3–22 Pitkin HF (1998) The attack of the blob. Hannah Arendt’s concept of the social. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London Sennett R (2002) The fall of public man. Penguin Books Ltd., London Zuboff S (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism. The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books, London

Public Realm, Privacy and the Scholars’ Lifeworld—Reloaded: An Unintentional Voyeur in a Russian Kitchen Béla Mester

Abstract In the second year of the pandemic, a lot of experiences accumulated in the field of the online academic life. They are not restricted to the technological skills and to a new wave of the sensibility towards the questions of safety, digital privacy and polities of the usage of big data and personal data. However, these new experiences seriously touch new-type problems of the scholars’ lifeworld; this aspect is usually hidden in the theoretical reflections. The publications in the discourse about the new digital environment of the academic life usually focus on technological problems and safety questions linked with them, the aspects of our right for privacy appear in another meaning, as well. In the online conferences and meetings, a whale of private visual information was published what was never available in this uncontrolled form before. The last word of the title refers to the kitchens of the Russian colleagues in Moscow and Murmansk what were not visible by me before the pandemic circumstances. In the time of the pandemic, we were witnesses and participants of a virtual border-crossing, in the same time, being on a new border-line between the private and public spheres. The aim of this chapter is to offer a description of this borderline situation from a special, but symptomatic aspect of the academic life that is the experience of the online conferences. Keywords Academic life · Lifeworld · Pandemic · Privacy · Public realm

Introduction The approach of this chapter has a strange and ambiguous connotation under circumstances of my online participation in a hybrid conference. Actually, it is a part of a bilateral Russian–Hungarian research project what was developed in a synchrony

B. Mester (B) Institute of Philosophy, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_16

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with the pandemic, via an enforced teleconnection.1 I will discuss here the limits of the capacity of the online conferences and all the teleconnections in the academic life in an online presentation, again, similarly to the previous events of the same project. (Actually, the Russian and Hungarian participants of the research group did not meet each other since the beginning of the project.) In the second year of the pandemic and of our project, as well, a lot of personal experiences accumulated in the field of the online academic life. They are not restricted to the technological skills and to a new wave of the sensibility towards the questions of safety, digital privacy and policies of the usage of big data, especially personal data; they seriously touch new-type problems of the scholars’ lifeworld. However, discourses about the new digital environment of the academic life usually focus on technological problems and safety questions linked with them, the aspects of our right for privacy appear in another meaning, as well. In the online conferences and meetings, many private visual information was published what was never available before in an uncontrolled form. The last word of the title of my paper refers to the kitchens of the Russian colleagues in Moscow and Murmansk what were not visible by me before the pandemic circumstances. In the following, at first, I will offer an overview of the result of the theoretical reflections of the development of the communication, separately in the beginning of the Internet epoch, circa twenty years ago, and today, focussed on the recent publications of two members of our project group, in connection with the pandemic. Later, in the next section, I will show the impacts of the online way of work for the academic sphere; with a separate analysis of the situation of the network of scholar conferences in the last period of the online communication enforced by the pandemic. In the very end of my presentation, I will formulate several aims about the future of the conferences. The experiences of the online conferences in the period of the pandemic can be described as a continuous virtual border-crossing between the public and private spheres; by other words, it is a new-type border-line situation what can be analysed by the methods of borderology.

1

My present writing is based on my lecture held in the IX International Kant/Bakhtin Scientific Seminar entitled Human Rights, Legal Constraints, Redefined Borders in the Pandemic Era, organized by the Murmansk Arctic State University (MASU, Russia) and the Nord University (Bodø, Norway), in Murmansk, 20–21 October 2021. The seminar was organized in a hybrid form, because of the pandemic, what was a main topic of the event, as well. My article was developed within the framework of the Russian–Hungarian bilateral research project entitled The migration of ideas and the formation of national philosophical traditions: dialogues across the borders (MigpaciR ideu i fopmipovanie nacionalbnyx filocofckix tpadiciu: dialogi povepx gpanic), supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (No. 20–511-23002).

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An Overview of the Experiences of the Philosophy of Communication Before the Pandemic In the last two years of the pandemic, numerous theoretical reflections appeared concerning the new situation of the societal communication. At first, I thought I should not involve in it, because I cannot realize any novelty in these analyses in comparison with the reflections published circa twenty years ago, well-known by me, because our institute was a centre of the philosophy of communication in Hungary, in this time. (For the details of the results of these researches, see the volumes of the series entitled Communications in the 21st Century: Nyíri 2003a; 2003b; 2003c; 2004; 2005a; and 2005b.) A central concept of this discourse was the computer mediated communication (CMC). (This term has a mere technical meaning and refers to the human factors, in the same time; works published with this keyword focussed more on the technological issues or, more on the social aspects. It seems to me that the usage of this term in human context was more widespread twenty years ago, and the technical meaning became stronger nowadays; however, one can find opposite examples. For a more human approach, see, e.g. Thurlow–Lengel–Tomic 2004; for the more technical one see, e.g. Kelly 2019.) In this time, the online communication was not as multitudinous as today. The technological background can be described as two symptomatic phenomena of these years. First of them is a pilot project for the online education in the form of a PhD course, in the late 1990s. What was called ‘online course’ in this time; it was just an Internet platform where the written lectures of the professor and the needed readings were available with a chat forum for the discussions. It was not possible to see each other or, meet in real time, and what is more, it was recommended to save the texts and formulate the remarks for the chat forum offline, because of the insecure, but expensive Internet access. My second example is a demonstration of the video conference as the technology of the future, in the framework of the same PhD course. The biggest Hungarian university and our research institute could not ensure the technical background for this demonstration, it needed the help of the biggest mobile phone company. Under circumstances of this embryonic form of the computer mediated communication, theoretical researches were focussed more on the psychic impacts than on the social or political ones; for the later one, the critical mass of the data was not available, yet. The economical dimension was restricted to the micro-level; how to save time and money by the assistance of video conferences, instead of long and expensive business trips. At least, as an additional point of view has appeared the ecology in the hope of the saved fuel in accordance with the restricted number of the needed business trips and how to save printing papers with the email correspondence, instead of the so-called snail-post. Today we know that the majority of these forecasts were not eventuated, but the empirical psychical result of the researches of the teleconnections remained valid. The first practical question was: What is the maximal lifetime of a communicational community, if it linked by teleconnection, solely? The answer based on practical experiments was that it is not longer than three

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months; consequently, the total substitution of the personal contacts by online meetings is impossible; however, they have important auxiliary functions in maintaining the cohesion of a group. It seems that a sufficient number of social experiences for a new level of a social and theoretical analysis are assumed in the eve of the pandemic. It means that a lot of their statements seem to be an effect of the pandemic, but they were actually formulated before and without the context of the pandemic, as well.

Cultural Criticism of the New Forms of Communication with the Pandemic Situation in the Background The transformation of the new forms of communication, particularly the social media and its new model usage in and by the politics, offered a whale of theoretical reflections. My present paper’s aim cannot be a complete overview of this literature, because my end here is to focus on the experiences of the enforced transition of the academic sphere into the online space, and a special phenomenon within it, the case of the international network of the conferences, seminars and workshops; the broader theoretical horizon of this issue is needed just as the intellectual background of this special topic. Based on these special experiences, I changed my previous opinion that there is not any novelty in this discourse. (See my first essay in this topic entitled A Russian Kitchen in Hungarian: Mester 2021.)2 In the following, this broader discourse will be exemplified by two authors of the intellectual circle of a Hungarian cultural and ecological periodical entitled Liget (Grove). However, the Liget is engaged to the green thinking and cultural criticism of the technology, it is not linked with any actual movement or, organization. Both the authors referred below are the members of the abovementioned Russian–Hungarian research group, their writings represent a segment of the researches in this project. A book of Lajos András Kiss, entitled The Power of Conception, was published in the present year (Kiss 2021), under conditions of the pandemic, but it clearly was formulated before the first information of the epidemic situation of the world; consequently, the book’s today reading and reception offer an opportunity to see how the previous theories are interpreted in the shadow of the pandemic situation. The root of the essays of political philosophy in this volume is the concept of fear as the basis both of the political rule and the theoretical analysis of the same rule. The difference between the concept of the authors of the early modernity, such as Machiavelli or, Hobbes and the fear in the politics nowadays is that the former one is an actual mortal fear caused by actual persons, outlaws or, ‘normal’ and civil war warriors; the latter one is an unfocussed angst as a basis of new-type political hysterias. There are three main sources of this angst, the fear of immigration, fear of the ecological crisis and the fear of technology, with a special subtype of the fear of the communication technology. The latter one is able to support new self-impulsive 2

In the following, I will offer the English equivalents of the Hungarian titles in the main text, for the original version see the list of references.

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forms of the fear. Filter bubbles supported by the modern communicational network make the society an aggregation of the fragmented and isolated identity groups. These groups are as more homogenous and having as more developed narratives of their identity, as more acceptant for an existential angst and for the political hysteria rooted in it. They are not afraid of that someone kills them; their fear is angst of the destruction of their identity, in a way; they cannot be the one whom they think and feel themselves. In this point, we can make a comparison with the analysis of a Hungarian– Australian philosopher, George Márkus, in the late 1990s, about the epistemological requirements of the modern fundamentalisms, formulated in his lecture held in the Collegium Budapest entitled The Unsystemacity of (Our) Beliefs (for the written version in Hungarian translation see Márkus 1999). Márkus here met a problem of the late modernity. The promise of the vision of the social modernization was that the social, cultural and religious antagonisms with the irrational taboos of food and everyday behaviour would be eliminated in the modern lifestyle. A good marker of this process is the maintenance or disappears of the religious and other taboos of food. By Márkus’s interpretation, modern technology can support not only the elimination, but the maintenance of these taboos, as well. Simply speaking, in the modern world, one can maintain any extreme rule of eating based on religious or unreligious principles, without the danger of starvation, in the first time of the human history. Márkus’s description well mirrors the ambivalent relationship of the modern technology and the formation and survive of the identity groups, but the role of the communication technology in the intellectual reproduction of the same groups was not clear for him, it is a novelty of our epoch, thirty years later.

Belief in and Fear of Technology Under Conditions of the Pandemic The idea of the communication technology as the source of the fear and the fragmentation of the society into small and isolated identity groups appeared suddenly in extreme forms under conditions of the pandemic. The strongest symbol of the fear of communication technology is the pictures of the burning 5G towers in England. Probably, the slogan ‘Burn it!’ appeared in the social media before the pandemic, as well, but no one took it seriously. The idea of the fragmentation of the society is worthy for a more detailed discussion. An essay written by Gábor Kovács, entitled The Angst of the Cyborg in the Time of Pandemic (Kovács 2021), is a reflection to the abovediscussed book of Lajos András Kiss; it is actually a new reading of this book from the point of view of the pandemic what was not known by the author in the time when he wrote these essays, but offers a special and sorrowful confirmation of his historical analysis. Kovács offers a systematic experiment; how the social-philosophical analysis of the book works in the new situation of the pandemic. Kovács’s opinions are in accordance with his previous essay written in the first wave of the pandemic

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in Hungary, entitled Facebook and Dance of Death (Kovács 2020). It is important that Kovács’s essay was written in the period of the first wave of the pandemic in Hungary what was characterized by an unfocussed angst; there were relatively strait restrictions, and there was palpable a general existential fear in the daily life, but the majority of the residents did not meet personally the disease. (Later it changed; coronavirus became the part of the daily life, but the people felt in an inert passivity, because we humans biologically cannot tolerate permanent fear in long duration.) By the analysis of Kovács, deprivation from the relationships of physical contact extremely enforced the people into the filter bubbles what existed before, as well. In this communicational situation, ambivalence towards technology was expressed in characteristic forms. On the one hand, the idea of the omnipotence of the science and technology appeared in believe of the advent of vaccine and, on the other, the experience of the end of the unlimited abundance; it will be not enough from everything for everyone in the needed time what was necessary for the survival. In the last two years, a whale of the theoretical reflections was published about the social consequences of the pandemic in the form of special issues of periodicals, volumes of essays and monographs. It is not a surprise that these theoretical analyses use several well-known concepts for the analysis of a phenomenon what is a radical novelty in their interpretation. Two concepts have a central role in the frames of the interpretation of the current analyses, Carl Schmitt’s term of ‘state of exception’ and Michel Foucault’s twin-term of biopower and biopolitics. (For a characteristic collection of newly published essays on the pandemic together with the relevant classics see, e.g. Foucault–Agamben–Benvenuto 2020.) A central topic described by these concepts is the continuity of the methods of the rule in the periods before and after the pandemic, with often references to the Chinese form of the total digital control of the society, expressed in an extreme form in the state of exception of the pandemic in the biopower in action. The solely novelty in this description of the present situation is that it is the first moment in the world history when all the humanity, in the same time, is in the state of exception, under the rule of a physically palpable biopower. Theoretically, it is more interesting to read the forecasts about the maintenance of the enlarged teleconnection in the time of pandemic after the ‘state of exception’, as well. It seems that just the more multitudinous usage of the before existing practices was the novelty of the pandemic and not any really new form of the communication. Nevertheless, the endeavour for the maintenance of a kind of ‘state of exception’ in the social communication is a really interesting phenomenon for the analysis of political philosophy. A contradiction of the communication in the time of pandemic is deeply connected with the root of the modern societies. It is the contradiction of the nature and main message of the global telecommunication about the thick network of communication and the social relationship via the instruments of the modern global communication and the isolation under the pandemic rules of the biopower in the state of exception. Paraphrasing the well-known slogan of an IT corporation, people met the following message in the time of closing, when they connected their home computers with the net: Welcome in the new world—stay home!

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This close link of the global communication and the physically closed public realms inspired several scholars to describe a special ethics of the pandemic. In this interpretation, physical distance is equal in this period with the moral consciousness and sociability. We are as far as physically from each other, we are as close as morally, by this opinion. This idea is often linked with the vision based on the dichotomy of the closed body in the physical realms of the closed cities and the free intellect who is wandering in the endless digital spaces. By the overview of Kovács, this symbolic liberty and this dichotomy are not sustainable for a long period; a virtually free mind cannot substitute perfectly the freedom of the body. By his words, it is an illusion “to substitute the physical closeness by the unlimited freedom of the wandering in the endless digital space”, because “our virtual self is not separable from our physical existence; however, we wish divide them” (Kovács 2020: 17). This dichotomy is not restricted to the situation of the pandemic; it mirrors the roots of the modern idea of the societies and the political rule. From this point of view, it is a surprise that a well-known formulation of Immanuel Kant does not appear more often in the theoretical reflections to the social consequences of the pandemic. I mean the concept of unsocial sociability (ungesellige Geselligkeit) in the Fourth Proposition of his Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. In here, Kant refers to a dichotomy or, in his term, antagonism in a more general meaning than the free global online communication of the intellects linked with physically closed bodies. He talks about the general dichotomy of every society, by his words: By antagonism I mean in this context the unsocial sociability of men, that is, their tendency to come together in society coupled, however, with a continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society (Kant 1970: 44).3

In spite of the historical distance and the different environment of the technology of the communication, we can realize that Kant’s dilemma appears in a concrete, actual and extreme form, in the situation of the online communication in the time of the pandemic. It offers an opportunity for rethinking of the meaning of the modern society on a Kantian basis; what is an almost missing colour on the spectrum of the contemporary analyses of the social aspects of the pandemic world situation. Using the patterns of the general social aspects discussed above, in the following I will offer an applied analysis, for the specialities of the academic life.

The Discomfort of the Academic Sphere in the Enforced Online Space of the Pandemic Situation In the academic sphere, we can observe a rationalized form of the average public discourse. In the beginning, there were highly rare theoretical reflections to the mental 3

The original German text of Kant’s Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: “Ich verstehen hier unter dem Antagonism die ungesellige Geselligkeit des Menschen, d.i. den Hang derselben in Gesellschaft zu treten, der doch mit einem durch gängigen Widerstande, welche diese Gesellschaft beständig zu trennen droht, verbunden ist”.

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conditions of the academic people in comparison with the reports about other social spheres. It had moral roots in the discourse of the intellectuals; it was regarded unethical to talking about the special mental conditions of the new enforced online environment of the academic work from a relatively comfortable situation when other people worked in a concrete health danger of the pandemic or, lost their jobs and incomes. The first topics of the academic domestic discourse were the classical problems of the data safety and the challenges of the management of the big data. When several academic communities had enthusiastic debates about the optimal platform of the online communication—I can refer just the opinions of the fellows of my institute, only—one could realize that it was a more important question for our communities than a practical, technical issue. It can be regarded as a special academic form of the ambivalent relationship between society and technology. We are depended on the technology, we need it, especially in the state of exception of the time of pandemic, but we are vulnerable by it, in the same time. The discussion was continued with the problem of the records made in the online events and the questions of the personal rights and copyrights concerning them. The practice of rationalization was detectable in here, again. The most common argument was against the unlimited records that in these seminars, several unpublished scientific results were mentioned; and their ‘grey publicity’ before their official publication is against the interests of the institute what the author is affiliated to. This problem made clear that the online workshop or seminar does not just substitute the previous physical form, but represents new-type publicity. By an example from the practice of our Research Centre, a talk about unpublished archaeological findings, what was usual in a domestic seminar of a research group, became suddenly a highly sensitive question in the case of the online seminar of the same research group, because of the possibility that the talk and the shown pictures will be recorded. However, the problem is real, in this case, as well, the enthusiastic, sometimes hysteric emotional background of the discourse offers a hidden reference; we should take seriously these emotions as the signs of the general mental condition of the academic people; signed by a solely expression, it is a social discomfort feeling. At last, but not least, in the end of the present writing, I should discuss a special subsystem of the academic life what is the network of the scholar conferences. At the beginning of the pandemic, it remained in the background, because at first, we were focussed on our primer tasks, to organize our university lectures, exams and official meetings in the online space. Later, when the industry of production of the series of the online conferences begun, we had ambiguous emotions towards them. At first, it was a pleasure to see the known colleagues, again, and it was the same emotion to see again the familiar lecture rooms of our partner institutions, as well. But in the case of the purely online, and not hybrid events, when everybody was at home, the usage of the web camera was connected with an ambiguous feeling of an unintentional voyeur who see others and others’ home, amongst other unintentional voyeurs who see me, and my home. This ambiguous feeling can be formulated by the hypothetical question that ‘what I am doing in the kitchen of a colleague in a strange city, where I have never been’. I do not mean a formal indiscretion, or unveiled personal secrets,

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just a discomfort because of the enforced and unintentional confusion of the private and public realms. Of course, this discomfort emotion can appear in any meetings of the online space, but it is the strongest in the case of the conference network, because this network is characterized in the terminology of the theory of systems as a network of the socalled weak links. The significance of the weak links is more and more recognized in the humanities, in opposition of the well-structured institutions. Using a musical metaphor, if a university lecture is a recital based on sheet music, a good meeting of the scholars is a jam session. (It is not occasional that we can call both of them with the same word ‘workshop’.) This network of the scholar meetings can offer an inspiration for the further researches, but it is highly vulnerable because it is based just on the network of the ‘weak links’. However, the exposure to any discomfort circumstances of these systems of weak links is constantly bigger than the wellestablished institutions with a stabilized number and fixed task of the contributors, and these networks have their special functions in the researches, especially in the philosophical thinking. We will not have exact, precise data about the necessary amount of the personal, physical connections for the philosophical thinking, in any time, but it must be more than zero. By my personal opinion, based partly on the experiences of the last two years, there is a part, may be, the core of the philosophical thinking connected to the concept of personal knowledge and nonverbal communication what is not transferable to the online space. To fulfil this function is, amongst others, an important task of the conferences with personal participation; we cannot save their costs because of rational and financial reasons. We should not forget Plato’s description of the birth of the philosophical knowledge in his Seventh Letter: For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself. (Plato’s Seventh Letter 341c–d; Plato 1966)

It is true that the metaphor of the ‘light within one’s soul’ can be interpreted in many varieties, and in different forms, and we cannot construct a contra-factual statement about Plato’s supposed opinion about the forms of the ‘communion of philosophers’ under conditions of the infrastructural, institutional and communicational circumstances of the late modernity. It is our task to apply Plato’s words for the present situation. In this thinking, a single element should be constant: ‘communion of philosophers’ refers here to living persons in a common physical space and not to a ghost in the machine.

References Foucault M, Agamben G, Benvenuto S (2020) Coronavirus and philosophers. Eur J Psychoanal (Special Issue). https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/?fbc lid=IwAR3vn9BkTRgTltb0IV7VXw6n8SxyzdDh6sDpMYDDVsk5v9ZpAwhf2KV6R08. Accessed 29 Oct 2021

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Kant I (1970) Idea for universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose (trans: Hugh Barr Nisbet). In: Kant I: Political Writings. (ed) intr. and notes by Hans Reiss. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 41–53 Kelly St K (ed) (2019) Computer-Mediated communication for business. Theory to practice, Scholar Publishing, Cambridge Kiss L A (2021) A képzel˝oer˝o hatalma. Liget M˝uhely Alapítvány, Budapest Kovács G (2020) Facebook És Haláltánc. Liget 33(4):4–23 Kovács G (2021) A kiborg szorongása járvány idején. Liget 34(2):154–174 Mester B (2021) Az orosz konyha. Köztér, magántér és értelmiségi életvilág—újratöltve. In: Bakó R K, Horváth G (eds) Vészhelyzet. Partium Kiadó—Debreceni Egyetemi Kiadó, Nagyvárad– Debrecen, pp 55–66 Márkus Gy (1999) Vélekedéseink rendszertelensége (trans: by Béla Mester). Világosság 40(10):3– 13 Nyíri Kr (ed) (2003a) Mobile communication. Passagen Verlag, Vienna Nyíri Kr (ed) (2003b) Mobile democracy. Passagen Verlag, Vienna Nyíri Kr (ed) (2003c) Mobile learning. Passagen Verlag, Vienna Nyíri Kr (ed) (2004) The global and the local in mobile communication. Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest Nyíri Kr (ed) (2005a) Seeing, understanding, learning in the mobil age. Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest Nyíri Kr (ed) (2005b) A sense of place. Passagen Verlag, Vienna Plato (1966) Plato in Twelve Volumes. Vol. 7. (trans: Bury RG). Harvard University Press—William Heinemann Ltd., Cambridge/MA–London Thurlow Cr, Lengel L, Tomic A (2004) Computer mediated communication. Social interaction and the internet. SAGE Publications, London—Tousand Oaks/CA—New Delhi

Pandemic, Borders and New Technology—Distance Breaking Media (DBM) Jan Selmer Methi

Abstract During the pandemic period, decision-makers were forced to quickly change the course of mobility in their society to avoid “dangerous situation” if the virus was able to spread itself all over the society. Closed borders, lockdown, social distance, anti-back, face mask and quarantine became concepts that a whole world became familiar with. This challenged a whole world. Most of the planned social, cultural and academic events were canceled for a period. The consequences of the different measures have not been figured out yet, but COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the affected countries economic activity, employment and healthcare system. Based on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, I will in this article discuss the positive and negative sides with extensive use of new information technology that were used to meet the challenges. I will show how the information technology broke down borders and created new and how this effected ordinary people, their daily life activities, and the relation between them. The article will also show how this had a great impact on and changed the formation of activities in organizations. Keywords Border · Pandemic · Distance Breaking Media (DBM) · New technology · Information exchange · Learning · Motive

Introduction In February–March 2020, the world had to face and adapt to a new global crisis. This time it was not an economic breakdown, but a global pandemic that resulted in social and economic lockdown. Workplaces, schools, universities, sport activities, transport systems and many other activities had to be closed in order to stop speeding the COVID-19 virus, corona. But the most intrusive measure against the spread of COVID-19 was a halt in international mobility, specially to stop people to cross national borders. By looking back at the impact of the pandemic over the last two years, many see the parallel to the Spanish flu. The Spanish flu was an influenza J. S. Methi (B) Center for Practical Knowledge, Nord University, Bodø, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_17

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epidemic that affected large parts of the world in the period 1918–1920. Between 50 and 100 million people died. The flu came in three to four waves and infected at least one-third of the world’s population. The Spanish flu is considered the worst flu epidemic in history, and the negative consequences have been noticeable right up to our time.1 Today, at the beginning for 2022 both John Hopkins Coronavirus Recourse Center and Worldometer report almost 6 million death cases. Even if there is a black hole in numbers of death, these two pandemics are not comparable. But in relation to economic and social consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a greater impact. The pandemic is still coming in new waves and in different forms. It is difficult to predict the end of this COVID-19 pandemic. The positive sign is that the last mutated form of the virus, Omicron, dose not cause the same serious illness as the Delta form. Together with high proportion of vaccinated people, the impact of Omicron is less dangerous and creates a hope that it is possible to see the end of the pandemic. The next waves will hopefully be like a mild flu. What we already can see, is that the human activity is coming back to normal. But what is normal? What has changed? In this article, I will look at some of the consequences related to closing of national border, building up new local borders, challenges regarding social activities like education, board meetings and how these challenges were met by using new technology. I will concentrate on how crisis speeds up inventions of new technology and how these inventions help to overcome the crisis. Focus will be on the use of technology that overcome borders and break down distance. In this article, this kind of technology will be called Distance Breaking Media (DBM). I will also show how the use of DBM created new problems and borders especially for young people under education. This will be the main point and based on my own experience with DBM which became the reason why we in the borderology project did not use DBM in full scale.

Crisis and New Inventions A general understanding of the concept crisis is the one we find in Wikipedia: “any event or period that will lead, or may lead, to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society”.2 It is not difficult to verify this statement looking back on the pandemic that hit the whole world in 2020 and is still going on. Even if there has been a common misperception the Chinese character for crisis saying that it consists of symbols for danger and opportunity, it is no doubt that whatever danger situation that affects individuals or groups, man has shown the capacity to overcome the danger. Professor in Chinese language and literature at University of Pennsylvania, Victor H. Mair, has written an informative essay concerning the Chinese symbol for crisis. According to Mair, the Chinese symbol 1 2

https://sml.snl.no/spanskesyken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crisis.

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for crisis consists of two characters. The first means danger. The second does not mean opportunity, but incipient moment; a “crucial point (when something begins or changes)”.3 If we stick to the two Chinese symbols for crisis (danger and incipient moment), the beginning of change can just as well, verified in all human crisis, indicates the change of human behavior. Change in behavior is the most common definition of the concept of learning. It also indicates that when changes occur outside man, man at the same time changes inside which can refer to Marx’s Thesis on Feuerbach. If we look at what kind of new invention that came out of World War I, we will find: zipper, sanitary napkin and paper handkerchiefs. World War II gave us the first computer, radar, jet engine, freeze-drying coffee and space technology. If we look at the development for the COVID-19 vaccine, we see the same pattern. From the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was shared with authorities and researchers worldwide, it took only nine weeks before the first test person receives the vaccine.4 In December 2020, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended a conditional (temporary) approval of the coronary vaccine from BioNTech and Pfizer.5 As we see, a development of a new vaccine that normally takes several years to be quality assured was approved within one year. All these examples show that, faced with a crisis or disaster, human beings are able to organize and invent necessary tools to solve the problem and carry on with life, even if this crisis is not solved yet. The difference between crisis and “normal” life is that the crisis accelerates investment and concentrates resources on solving challenges that may threaten humanity. In everyday life, man is also doomed to be creative. The enormous development of information technology (IT) since World War II shows this. The tools used to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic were also born during a kind of crisis; the Cold War. The reason why the world was able to react in such a collective way has to do with the level of IT. The COVID-19 pandemic would have been much more dangerous if the outbreak had been sixty years ago, when the level of IT only was in the beginning.

The History of IT In the following paragraphs, I will follow the history of IT and show how the technology became the material bases for the ability to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the way it up to now has been tackled. There are many concepts related to information technology. The most common are e-mail, Internet, World Wide Web, host, home page, web site, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, browser, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, finder, Skype, Click to Meet, Adobe Connect, Teams, Zoom and many more. I will here look at the main 3

http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html. https://www.tv2.no/a/11892000/. 5 https://legemiddelverket.no/nyheter/forste-koronavaksinegodkjent-I-europa. 4

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technological inventions that at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had reached the necessary level to be able to support vital activities during this crisis. In my opinion, the most revolutionary invention was the possibility to be able to send information between a network of computers. This functionality was named e-mail. Even if there were successful experiments in early 1960s, Ray Tomlinson is credited as the inventor of networked e-mail. In 1971, he developed the first system able to send information between users on different hosts across the Advanced Research Projects Network (ARPANET), using the @ sign to link the username with a destination server. Later, in the middle of 1970s, this became the common form, recognized as e-mail.6 By 1976, 75% of all ARPANET traffic was electronic mail. This was inside a network, which today would be called internal network or intranet. The question if it would be possible to send e-mails outside the network came quite fast. This became the impetus for building up a network of computers outside the internal network. The vision of a worldwide network of computers had been launched many years earlier by J. C. R. Licklider, a psychologist and engineer. His idea was to establish “The Intergalactic Computer Network”.7 Licklider was at that time the first director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at The Pentagon’s ARPA. The interesting point here is that the first steps in developing this technology, which now is an indispensable tool for everybody, started as a project during the coldest part of the Cold War. In 1962, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis which put the Cold War to its freezing point.8 The Pentagon’s concern was the need to be able to communicate from secure places if a war against Soviet Union broke out using nuclear power. The U.S. Department of Defense started a project called Advanced Research Project Agency (APRA), later called DARPA. This project was promoting the sharing of super-computers among military researchers in the United States.9 It did not take long time before research passed the military borders and became a civil joint project outside of the United States borders. From this stage on and up to our use of the information technology, it must be characterized as one of the greatest steps in human history. From 1970s with only a few users of e-mail within an internal network and to billions of active e-mail users all over the world today within a period of only 50 years, is a huge step in development. And to underline again, the use of e-mail through Internet is the most important part although a lot of other tools have been developed at the same time. We are helpless and dependent on e-mails. The Ukraine–Russian War has shown how important the invention of information technology was. It is not only a regular war going on. It is also a war on controlling the truth. The propaganda war is almost just as important as the physical war. In detail, we can follow how the atrocities of the war unfold and judge from different sides. Even if the states try to control the media, it is easy to get alternative information 6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/email. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/intergalactic_computer_network. 8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cuban_missile_crisis. 9 https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/computers-and-electrical-engineering/ computers-and-computing/internet. 7

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through Internet. President Volodymyr O. Zelenskyy in Ukraine regularly appears to the world with his views on the war. The technology also makes it possible for him to perform in real time at various events and arenas. President Zelenskyy has become a hero for many far beyond Ukraine’s borders. This way of using technology shows in clear text how physical distances are no longer a problem for information exchange, regardless of purpose.

Distance Breaking Media In 1995, I was invited to participate in a national project to support disability children who needed IT tools. The project was initiated by the Department of Work and Social Affairs and called NONITE (North Norwegian IT Unit). We used at that time the most advanced technology with e-mail (First Class), website and picture telephone. These tools were put into action in order to connect the highest competence within different fields for helping young children with their disabilities. Since different expertise was not located close to the customer, we established at virtual network to break down the distance. To describe this in our reports, we use the concept Distance Breaking Media (DBM).10 The concept refers in a good way to the experience the participants expressed. When they were connected to each other with either two-ways picture and sound telephones or video conference system, the feeling of being in the same room was awaked immediately. At that time, there were no software program, like Skype, Click & Meet or Adobe Connect we could use. Even though, we saw the potentiality in a network of computers using video to establish a system of expertise. In the beginning of 2000, different online web conference system had started to come. From 2003, I was enrolled in a distance learning project at Bodø University College (now Nord University). The project wanted to try out distribution of lectures from the campus to students outside campus. In the beginning, there were a lot of complication. The use of camera, low quality in both video and sound and the quite low capacity (bits and bytes) were the most problematic obstacles. As the project progressed and the quality of both software and the network capacity developed, we discovered that the pedagogical platform for this kind of educational activity became very advanced. Here I will describe a turning point why we organized our distance learning activity in a special way.

Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning Activity At that time, we were thrilled by technology that gave us the possibility to video record a lecture and upload the video file and different other files to instruct and help 10

Nordnorsk IT-enhet (NONITE). Utvikling av et samhandlingsnettverk. En underveisrapport. Øystein Ballo, Lars Krogh, Jan Selmer Methi. Notat 1997 – 101. Finnmarksforskning. 1997.

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students in the learning activities. We had the imagination that the video version of the lecture, recorded in a studio, could replace lectures held in auditorium and with students present. Even if the use of time, at that stage, was about 1:8, we thought it was well worth investment of time. It took in average two hours to record a15 minutes lecture. We also had a notion that the lecture had to be compressed and no longer than 15 min. Where this idea came from, is difficult to say today, but it was a common understanding in the IT environment that students would not be able to hold their concentration longer than 15 min!! The video should only function as a “trigger”, a motivation for more studies on their own. Was this imagination in line with the reality? Not in our project. What I discovered was that students had an interest and high motivation for the video the day it was published. But the motivation went to zero very soon and the resource was not used any more. This I could see by logging the activity for the dedicated video. The video did not motivate or became a learning recourse the way we hoped. This structure was used during the two first years. When I asked the students why the video was not used more, the responses were quite unanimous: They lost interest after the first watch. Afterward, the video lecture became uninteresting. To me, this was a disappointment. The teachers were all very good and in most of the cases got very good feedback from students during a regular lecture where all were physically present in the classroom. After dealing with this challenge, I decided to make an experiment. I asked the students to place themselves in different rooms at the campus or off campus. At that time, I could use a program called Click & Meet which had the opportunity to arrange a webinar with a limit of participants, but for me enough to value how students would react to an online live lecture. I then placed one of the teachers in a different room to let him deliver a live lecture. I also opened a channel for chatting between students and the teachers. Here they could comment and ask questions to the teacher. By sitting in the same room with some of the students, I could follow the lecture and see the students’ reaction. There were lots of technical problems during this 45-min lecture. The sound was not good, the video quality was nothing to boast about, and the lines broke down many times. Because of these problems, the lecture lasted more than one hour. When I later asked the students about their experience and judgment of the lecture, I was really surprised. I thought the technical problems would overshadow the content of the lecture, but they did not pay so much attention to the disturbance of technicality. They gave the teacher good feedback and enjoyed the lecture. The length of the lecture was no problem, even if they had been staring at the screen of their laptop much longer than we expected them to be able to before they would lose their concentration or interest. Immediately, this was not understandable for me. A five times longer synchronous or online live lecture with lots of technical disturbance was judged much better than a short asynchronous lecture with good sound, perfect video quality, well prepared and not too long lecture. How could this be understood? It took a while before I could give any reasonable explanation. By looking at the difference between the two different lectures in a meta-perspective, one asynchronous and one synchronous, I could see one crucial difference. When students relate to an

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asynchronous video file, the relationship can be characterized as a subject–object relation. The video behaves like an ordinary book, magazine or movie which the student can get information from and stop using when they wanted. They could rewind and go forward the same way one can with a book. When they were put in a position in front of a screen and had to relate to a living human being, the relationship changed. They could not stop, rewind or go forward as they pleased. The relation became a subject–subject relation even if they were looking into an object (a person on the screen). In a subject–subject relation, the attention to the task that is in focus is based on a communication between two subjects mediated by the technology that break down the distance (DBM). One of the subjects can be a collective subject, as in this case a group of students. Here the most genuine quality of being a human being emerges. You immediately understand that you can influence the outcome of the situation just by being a part of a live synchronous activity. This is what I saw. The senses are completely different tuned in for the information exchange that these two situations offer. An asynchronous activity is like reading a book or watching AV video/movie. A synchronous situation gives you the possibility to influence the activity. The two situations picture the difference between life and death, or the difference between a living human work activity and the objectified human work. After discovering this qualitative difference, I changed the whole concept for the project. I moved all equipment into the auditorium and asked the teacher to do what he/she normally do; teach or give a lecture. By using three different cameras, good sound (wireless microphone) and a chat room, we were able to catch all activity both in the auditorium and the virtual room. We trained students to manage the production of the lecture and immediately publish the stored video lecture on the intranet. This lowered the cost. It became much cheaper to produce a 45-min live lecture than 15-min asynchronous lecture. The cost went from 1:8 to 1:2. The feedback from the students that participated in this project was overwhelmingly positive after the change. Even if this was not a scientific collection of information about different behavior of students related to different information technology (DBM), I was able to see some very important points concerning distance learning. Here I will sum up the main points: – There is a qualitative difference between students’ relation to produced learning video (asynchronous) than to live streamed learning activity (synchronous). – Asynchronous activity is a subject–object relation. – Synchronous activity is a subject–subject relation. – The experience for the teachers also had the same qualitative difference. – In an asynchronous lecturing, the subject–object relation became disturbing as the teacher had to imagine the students behind the camera’s black eye. Even if the video lasted only 15 min, their self-criticism resulted in many re-recordings. Even small insignificant mistakes had to be corrected. – In synchronous live streamed activity, the teachers were in a normal and known activity. All problems during the activity could be tackled immediately without any notable disturbance.

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– The students online were able to stay in focus the whole day, sometime lasting as much as six hours.

DBM Influences Social Behavior In addition to these points, there was one experience which I did not give any special attention at that time, but now, with the experience from activity during the pandemic, I think is important and should be given more attention. This has to do with the participant’s social behavior. During the project, there were two things that draw my attention regarding the social participant’s behavior. One was the social activity during the live streaming. At that time, it was impossible to do live streaming with full duplex of sound synchronous to the picture. Because of the delay in the transmission, it would be very disturbing to have the students on distance to respond to the activity by using an audio channel. Equipment with full duplex would be too expensive. The alternative became a chat channel with written comments and questions. These would be presented to the teacher by the producer or on a screen in front of the teacher. To my surprise, all students experienced the writing activity to be in true time, even if the transmission had a delay with 25 s. The other thing I noticed was that the chat channel also became an arena for social activity among the students not being in the auditorium. When I logged the activity, I could see a lot of personal comments mixed with comments related to the educational activity. Among these comments, some of them were directed to the teacher’s way of giving the lecture. Most of them were positive. When these remarks were given to the teachers, one could see that the teacher became emotional. This may look like a very naïve reaction, but in my experience, it belongs to the exceptions that students after the lecture give comments to the teacher. Usually, they hurry on to their next activity. It also was only the online students that gave this kind of feedbacks. This detail opened a new perceptive for me to understand more deeply some of the behavior we can see being played out in today’s many social media. And they are certainly not only positive. What I saw at that time, I called a filter. The DBM filtered normal moral and ethical standards. I remember asking myself why students online expressed their opinion much more different than the present students and also different if they themselves had been in the auditorium. The only answer I could come up with was that the mediating technology literary broke down not only distance but also some of the moral and ethical standards that would have regulated the students´ behavior if present in the classroom. What people normally do in a situation where people are physically present is regulated by some formal and tacit ethical and moral rules. Even if you have slack or flexibility in what is acceptable or not, bad behavior will normally be corrected, or the activity will end. First time I saw this phenomenon, was in the project NONITE referred to above. Normally decent people, when using e-mail as a discussion forum, used very strong statements even on small diversities. And when the e-mail is sent, you cannot withdraw it. It is stored in some places without your control. Some of these statements became the breeding

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ground for conflicts. In a present situation, most of the statements would not be used, and also strong statement would be moderated by a fast information exchange face to face. Written arguments, used on different platforms on internet, tend to “live their own life” and are not so easy to moderate. So, when I saw this phenomenon again in education, although in a very positive way, I started to wonder about why we behave different when we use DBM and what causes the changes. These questions have followed me since, and I still think there are a lot to be clarified is this regard. When the pandemic recalculated much our way of “living our social life” by putting it into Internet, the phenomenon also became related to breaking down some borders and building up new. But we have all seen how Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook are used positively and misused very badly. Does advance use of DBM make us change as human beings? The answer is obvious yes, but the crucial point is: in which direction?

DBM and Learning In order to answer these questions, I will take a take a detour through the concepts of inner ontology and learning.11 To understand why we behave like we do in a specific culture, we need to understand how a culture becomes a part of us, and we a part of the culture. Since nobody participate in the same activities, then each individual differs from the other, even if they have a lot in common. What we bring with us from our ancestors because of genes and epigenetics, and what comes into us because of our upbringing, forms what I call the inner ontology. This concept can also be used to understand a collective inner ontology which we can see in families, groups, municipalities, nations and cultures. This means that inner ontology points at something inside of us which differs from what is outside.12 “In order to clarify the notion of inner ontology, one needs to enlighten the concept of learning. In my opinion, the concept has been overlooked, both in the philosophy of sciences and in practical knowledge, as it has been developed at the Center for Practical Knowledge, Nord University. If learning is to be a scientific concept, one has to exceed the everyday use and give it a more accurate definition. In his work, Enerstvedt defines learning in the broadest sense as “(…) a system’s own information activity which product is the change of the system’s activity that follows from its own information activity”, or only: “Learning is self-change as a result of the system-oriented information activity”.13 This definition is what he calls learning as a universal act, which means that we learn from/in everything we do. But learning can also be done deliberately, as we can want to change. This is what Enerstvedt calls motivated learning, with self-change being the goal. The activity, which 11

The next paragraphs about inner ontology and learning are with small changes the same as I wrote in Essay as a critical exploring method (Methi 2022, pp. 97–101). 12 Inner ontology is a concept I first used in 2015 (Methi 2015a). 13 Enerstvedt, 1986, p. 130.

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includes motivated learning, is what he later in his work calls learning activity. This leads to an understanding that teaching (education) can establish learning activity, though it does not have to. The primary activity does not have to contain a motivated self-changing activity for the participants. This depends on where the motive lays, and where the goal of the activity is. The main activity can be more a part of learning as a universal act. Enerstvedt strongly argues for the position that the way we act in the world in the relationship to objects and subject is basically learned, and the formation of our personality is the result. In his latest unpublished article, “Reflections over the formation of the psyche”,14 Enerstvedt (2015) presents the conflict between what he calls the Vygotskij tradition and Rubinstein tradition within the ISCAR15 community and shows how this conflict can be exceeded. Here, he formulates the dialectical relationship between internalization and externalization in the formation of the psyche. His main point is: My claim based on the Rubinstein tradition is to understand that internalization and externalization are two sides in a unified, interactive and simultaneous process, where it is impossible for one to precede the other. They are a fundamental component of the continuous, day-to-day mental processes of the human activity. Internalization, the process from external activities to internal processes and operations, always goes hand in hand with externalization, the process from internal processes and operations to external activities.16

What we can take from the article is his description of the process that is behind internalization–externalization, which he formulates like this: abduction, analysis, synthesis, abstraction and generalizing. On these grounds, the content of what learning is plays a double role in understanding human action in his or her lifeworld. One can decide not to make a selfchange, or one can consciously and/or unconsciously make a self-change. The result is then either a status quo of the activity (habits/constants), or the establishing of a new structure that either obstructs or promotes new change (learning). This is what lies behind the formation of perception, habits, feelings, understanding, experience, sets,17 different constants, personality, ethics and morals, as well as quite a few more aspects and abilities that shape both our self-view and our view of the world. This understanding is also behind when we deliberately exceed previously learned capacities and learn something new, new knowledge. This is also behind a deeper understanding of Polanyi’s well-known expression, tacit knowing. One aspect of inner ontology remains to be presented. In my article, Borderology and Practical Knowledge – Humanities Response to Epigenetics,18 I present a view on epigenetics that involves learning, not by the subject itself, but inherited as a result 14

A first version was published as the last chapter, “Reflections on the Theory of Activity”, in the book, Contemporary Approaches to Activity Theory: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Behavior (Hansson, Th. 2015). 15 ISCAR = International Society for Cultural-historical Activity Research. 16 Enerstvedt 2017: 22. My translation. 17 Norwegian: innstilthet. 18 Methi (2019).

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of the subject’s ancestors’ activities. This means that the concept of inner ontology must also include what we are born with, which we can only acknowledge is there. It will not be a part of this article to present the field of epigenetics. Instead, I will only refer to the scientific discovery within this field that shows that what we inherit from our ancestors is much more complex than previously thought. The concept of learning plays a role here.” When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the technological level and quality for full duplex of sound and video in real time, made it possible to arrange huge online conferences with hundreds of participants. International relation between nations was hold virtual on Teams or Zoom. It became normal to work on virtual platforms, and for many people this participation was done from home, not at schools or work places. Students at universities and pupils at schools were sent home, and virtual classrooms were created in a hurry. It was fascinating to see how rapidly the virtual world became a “normal” way of relating to each other. For my own case, I had to change to virtual classroom for both lecturing, mentoring, seminars, work meetings and conferences. There was no question of being trained for using these equipments, just “jump into the see and swim”. The learning curve for most of us was steep. Judging for what I saw in my own environment, even colleagues that had a resistance or did not want to learn to use new technology (DBM), but had to, manage to do so with in short time. Just by imagining the steep learning curve, both learning forms mention above were active. A lot of what was learned, was a result of a motivated self-changing activity. But even more was learned by learning as universal human act. And we seldom consciously recognize these changes. They just come to us. This learning is often referred to the concept tacit knowing and linked to Michael Polanyi.19 Here I am at the main point of this article. On one hand, we can learn and establish new knowledge by deliberately set a goal for what we want to learn. In this pandemic time, we had to solve the lockdown of education on all levels by deliberately learn how to use new technology in order exchange information and give education from distance. Teachers became advanced users of Teams and Zoom and were able to give brilliant lectures using the new DBM tools. This can be said to be the breakdown of borders that the measures taken under the pandemic created. And it worked. The learning form was motivated learning, forced on us by the pandemic and the lockdown. But the medal had a back side. On the other hand, the result of “learning as a universal act” was overlooked. Even if I mean that this part of learning is overlooked in general in education, it was very early noticeable that the tacit part of the learning process created obstacles for the quality of the learning goals. By tacit part I mean everything that influenced the learning process, but out of control for the teachers and very much by the participant too. Already in spring 2020, many schools and universities demanded that during an online live lecturing the camera had to be on.20 One argument for this is understandable. If all cameras were closed and the microphone muted, the teachers got the feeling of talking into a black hole similar to the experience mentioned above 19 20

Polanyi (1966). Utdanning.no.

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when the teachers produced an asynchronous learning recourse. Two typical remarks from teachers were: “The face is an important part of the informal communication, which creates security and good relationships between people”, and “Not seeing the faces of those you talk to from time to time can have the opposite effect, namely creating insecurity. Something that will hinder good learning.”21 In my opinion, they express the difference in feelings of something that can be judged as subject–object and subject–subject relation. I have experienced the same. It is obvious that talking to somebody you cannot see gives you a different feeling than if you can see the living face where you, while talking, can read some reactions to what is being said. It is an understandable argument, but, in my opinion, not the strongest. The other argument pointed at the loose of control. Teachers were not able to control and check out the learning conditions the students (pupils) had. In a classroom activity, the teacher can hear, see and meet disturbing conditions to have focus on the learning outcome. Using DBM this control mechanism is filtered away and gives the teacher much less tools to judge that what is meant to be learned is learned. If we look at what part of the body that is activated during an online live activity, only two senses are strongly activated: hearing and seeing. The rest of the body does not have to be tuned in for the same activity. According to activity theory, all senses are supposed to be activated in a classroom, where participants are physical present, even if the teachers think they only relate to the same two senses. All senses are also activated in an online live activity, but that can be a discrepancy in hearing and seeing and the rest of the senses. Only two are primary tuned in for the learning activity that is in focus. The rest may be directed toward the surroundings for each of the participants. These senses can go along or against the quality of the predicted learning outcome. The main point here is that the teachers were not in the position to control the learning environment. It took a while before the first reports came concerning the consequences of school lockdown. Here is a remark that came in February 2021: “Cutting off social contact, through the closure of schools and kindergartens, among other things, entails more “closed spaces” in society and probably increases the risk of violence and abuse. Furthermore, a closure of society means that vulnerable groups become even more vulnerable.”22 Other studies tell us that one in four young people reports that they have been exposed to violence during the pandemic. In the period Norway closed, many were trapped at home, they did not get respite and had poorer access to other arenas where they could meet safe adults.23 Norway has been one of the strongest regulated countries with public measures and by that has been able to avoid larger number of death cases. The slogan that strongly was followed was “line up for a national charity”. Now, we see that the medal has an ugly backside. All studies point 21

https://www.utdanningsnytt.no/korona-rodt-niva-videregaende-skole/digital-undervisning-kan-kreve-at-elevene-slar-pa-kameraet/264044 22 https://www.nhri.no/2021/vold-og-overgrep-under-pandemien/. 23 https://www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/innenriks/2021/12/01/en-av-fire-ungdommer-utsatt-forvold-under-pandemien/ referring to a study made by Norwegian center for violence and traumatic stress studies (nkvts.no).

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in one direction: The young people must be protected from the strain caused by the shutdown. In the beginning of 2022, schools and kindergartens are kept open even if the COVID-19 hits us hard with the mutated variant Omicron. The government has learned the lesson that prohibiting young people for their natural social activity will have a high price for the society later. It is not easy to see, but the hidden knowledge behind the results of many studies that points at the negative impact on especially young people during the pandemic lockdown is related to the learning aspect of the formation of personality. To understand the formation of personality, you must understand learning as a universal act, and the human activity is what causes this kind of learning. This is a learning process that synthesizes all senses in a whole, and it is within all kind of human activity. I have attended many conferences, workshops and seminars and delivered a lot of lectures using DBM. Even if the feedback of the mediation of content is good, most participants attending this kind of activity would prefer an ordinary physical present activity instead. Why? The answer is obvious. There is a human need to shake hands, give hugs, do small talk, have dinner, build network and do things where we can smell each other. These relations are underestimated in the understanding of learning and knowledge. During this kind of human activities, we learn things about each other and ourselves that cannot be learned in a different way; we learn to be human beings. This understanding of learning related to the formation of personality is philosophically based on Marx’s Thesis on Feuerbach. On the same ground, we can argue for that we are not only individual subjects. We are just as much collective subjects.24

Conclusion The text above shows that when the pandemic forced societies to reorganize most of their activities by advanced use DBM, we can see two results pointing different directions. The new use of DBM broke down borders and showed new and effective ways of do business, make important decisions, and opened for advanced information exchange. This is the positive side and is global. The other direction is the dark side. To overlook a deep understanding of the concept of learning had huge consequence. From pupils at grade schools and up to university students, the use of DBM did not give the expected results. When taken away from the normal learning environment, the DBM created new and destructive borders which for many of these human beings resulted in problems it will take a long time to solve. These results I more or less had as an intuition rather that solid knowledge when I started my joint work to implement the borderology project together with my colleagues at Nord University and Murmansk Arctic State University. One might say I had enough experience tacit knowing to make the decision that the Joint Master Program in borderology should not be a distance learning program. The temptation 24

Methi (2015a), s 132.

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was high to do so. After working with the concept of learning as a universal act and the experience we see coming out of the pandemic, I am now convinced that the quality of the program would not have been as good as it became if we had switched to DBM.25 When I wrote the article The Border Zone as an arena for Exceeding Oneself, I argue for the necessity of being present to be able to develop a new understanding of both the other and oneself.26 Too much of the necessity to exceed your own first understanding is filtered away during an online live activity using DBM. One might learn something new about your neighbor, but to internalize it fully one need to “shake hands” and be present in the border zone.

References Enerstvedt R Th (1986) Hva er læring? (What is learning?) AS Flken Forlag, Oslo, Norway Enerstvedt R Th (2015) Reflections on the theory of activity. I Hansson, Th. Contemporary approaches to activity theory: interdisciplinary perspectives on human behavior. Blekinge Institute of Technology, School of Management (MAM), Sweden (pp 353–363). Published in the United States of America by Information Science Reference (an imprint of ICI Global) Enerstvedt R Th ( 2017) Refleksjoner over dannelsen av psyken (Unpublished article following up Reflection on the Theory of Activity) Hansson Th (2015) Contemporary approaches to activity theory: interdisciplinary perspectives on human behavior. Blekinge Institute of Technology, School of Management Merleau-Ponty M (1968) The visible and the invisible. Northwestern University Press Methi JS (2022) Essay as a critical exploring method in Exploring Practical Knowledge Life-World Studies of Professionals in Education and Research. Carl Cederberg, Kåre Fuglseth, Edwin van der Zande (eds.). Utrecht 2022. Netherlands Methi JS (2015a) Fortelling som erkjennelses form (Narrative as a form of cognition) in Praktisk kunnskap som profesjonsforskning. James McGuirk and Jan Selmer Methi (ed). Fagbokforlaget. Bergen 2015. Norway Methi JS (2015b) The border zone as an arena for exceeding oneself in philosophy in the border zone. Orkana Akademisk, Norway Methi JS (2019) Borderology and Practical knowledge – Humanities response to epigenetics in borderology: cross-disciplinary Insights from the Border Zone – Along the Green Belt. Springer Geography 2019. Swizerland Nordnorsk IT-enhet (NONITE): (1997) Utvikling av et samhandlingsnettverk. En underveisrapport. Øystein Ballo, Lars Krogh, Jan Selmer Methi. Notat 1997—101. Finnmarksforskning Ryzhkova I, Methi JS (2019) Potential, problems, and challenges of joint international master programmes: case-Study of the Joint Norwegian-Russian Master Degree Programme in Borderology in Borderology: Cross-disciplinary Insights from the Border Zone – Along the Green Belt. Springer Geography 2019. Swizerland Polanyi M (1966) Tacit knowing in The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press (pp. 3–25)

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Ryzhkova/Methi 2019. Methi 2015a, b

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Internet references Datatilsynet: https://www.datatilsynet.no/personvern-pa-ulike-omrader/korona/kamera-og-digitalundervisning-i-koronasituasjonen/ Utdanningsnytt. No: https://www.utdanningsnytt.no/korona-rodt-niva-videregaende-skole/digitalundervisning--kan-kreve-at-elevene-slar-pa-kameraet/264044 Utdanningsdirektoratet: https://www.udir.no/tall-og-forskning/finn-forskning/tema/utdanningssp eilet-2020/del-2/digital-undervisning-under-koronastengte-skoler/ Store Norske Leksikon: https://sml.snl.no/spanskesyken Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_Computer_Network Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/computers-and-electr ical-engineering/computers-and-computing/internet http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html TV2 Norway: https://www.tv2.no/a/11892000/ Legemiddelverket: https://legemiddelverket.no/nyheter/forste-koronavaksinegodkjent-i-europa Norwegian National Human Rights Institution: https://www.nhri.no/2021/vold-og-overgrep-underpandemien/ Dagsavisen: https://www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/innenriks/2021/12/01/en-av-fire-ungdommer-uts att-for-vold-under-pandemien/ referring to a study made by Norwegian centre for violence and traumatic stress studies (nkvts.no).

Communication-Contacts-Dialogue: The Transformation of Education During the Pandemic Inna Ryzhkova

and Lada Sergeeva

Abstract This chapter analyzes the process of transformation of modern education against the background of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors distinguish between the concepts of “communication,” “contacts,” and “dialogue,” which define the core of education, and claim that meaning can be born only in dialogue. Online education is dangerous because it leads to the transmission of meanings being overshadowed. Meaning is replaced by information. Traditionally, dialogue was formed in direct contacts between people, when a person revealed himself/herself to another person, and only then such dialogue could be continued inside networks. A reasonable question arises: does the modern human need dialogue, within which meanings were traditionally established, on the basis of which, in turn, the meaningful relationships of people were built, or are communication and contacts built on its basis sufficient for a person of a network society? Due to pandemic, it has become possible to understand the significance of direct dialogue for everyone. It has sharpened the understanding of the difference between communication and dialogue, and the difference between sign- and meaning-oriented communication. The chapter suggests that the pandemic was a factor on the basis of which it became possible to understand the significance of direct dialogue for each and every person. It has sharpened the understanding of the difference between communication and dialogue, and the difference between sign and meaning communication. Keywords Communication · Contacts · Dialogue · Communicative relations · Network society

I. Ryzhkova Department of Social and Pedagogical Dimentions, Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, Saint Petersburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected] L. Sergeeva (B) Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_18

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Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a reassessment of humanity’s values, has become a phenomenon that both creates new limitations and pushes the limits of the old ones. The social institution of education turns out to be the most sensitive system forced to modify the form and ways of transmitting knowledge. The pandemic reveals the dominance of virtual and blended learning, and the transformation of academic mobility into its virtual form. In this context, the distinction between the concepts of “communication”, “contacts” and “dialogue”, which define the core of education, becomes relevant. The main challenge, according to the authors, lies in the gradual transition from dialogue to monologue, to a subject-object approach, entailing the loss of direct contact between teacher and student. It is significant that meaning appears and is affirmed precisely in dialogue: here, it is accentuated and asserted by the individual. Here, the person associates the meaning with himself/herself. With the dominance of online forms of education, the traditional form of education is being transformed and deformed. The transmission of meanings is overshadowed. Meaning is substituted for and replaced by information. The classical understanding of communication is associated with the development of a sphere of contacts, through which dialogue between one person and another has been defined. Communication itself was perceived in the traditional paradigm as a means by which a person entered into contacts and within which he found people significant to him. Such people were traditionally associated by the individual with certain areas of meaning that were important to him and were identified with the values of his inner world. A person found himself/herself precisely in dialogue with the meanings he/she revealed and those people who were connected with them. In our opinion, the most elaborated and multidimensional concept of dialogue is that of M. Bakhtin, who viewed dialogue as the basis of the structure of the classical novel. The philosopher based his concept on the material of F. Dostoevsky’s work, considering dialogue as the basis of man’s interaction with himself as another, emphasizing the essentially open character of man and singling out openness as its essential characteristic. According to Bakhtin, the being of man is revealed as dialogical communication, and “to be” means “to be dialogical,” when both the individual action of man and his life as a whole can be understood exactly through dialogue (Bakhtin 1984, 1981, 2004).1

1

Here, we deliberately refer only to the texts by M. Bakhtin that have been translated into English in relation to a diverse understanding of dialogue, leaving aside the entire corpus of his writings in Russian.

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The Network Society and Its Main Characteristics Modern society is precisely a network society, built on horizontal connections. It significantly transforms the values of traditional society associated with a hierarchical structure. A distinctive feature of a network is the formation and maintenance of flows which are able to absorb anything. In addition, the hallmark of network society is the speed of the flows being formed. The network person is a product of network society: such a person has no hierarchy of those closer to the “ground” and, typically, no “deep” attachments. A new tendency is revealed in network society, when a sign becomes more important than its meaning. Such a sign turns into an object of information and communication, which is perceived by the network person as an independent reality. Within a network, any hierarchical construction acquires the features of a sign. In this case, the meaning is “read” inside the network only as a sign, while the need for meanings does not disappear. According to tradition, dialogue was originally formed in direct contacts of people, when a person revealed himself/herself to another person. Only then could such a dialogue be continued within networks. A reasonable question arises: does modern man need dialogue, within which meanings were traditionally established, on the basis of which people’s sense-making relations with each other were built? Is communication and the contacts built on its basis enough for a person of a network society? It became possible due to the pandemic to understand the significance of direct dialogue for each and every person. It has sharpened the understanding of the difference between communication and dialogue, and the difference between sign and meaning communication. In order to discuss the metamorphoses of communication, contacts and dialogue more thoroughly, it is necessary to refer to the analysis of the specificity of network society. The concept of network society was first substantiated by the Norwegian researcher Stain Bråten in 1981 as “nettsamfunn” in his book “Modeller av menneske og samfunn: bro mellom teori og erfaring fra sosiologi og sosialpsykologi” (“Models of Man and Society: The Bridge between Theory and Experience from Sociology to Social Psychology”) (Bråten 1981). Barry Wellman was also one of the first to address the concept of “network society”. In 1973, together with Paul Craven, he published his first study (Craven, Wellman 1973). From that time to the 2020s, Wellman repeatedly addressed different aspects of the internal organization of the network society and its impact on different aspects of life. Wellman was one of the first who emphasized that any society can be seen precisely as a network, and not only and not so much as a hierarchical structure. He also claimed that due to the development of modern technology, we can speak about the spatial diversification of society. At the same time, the greatest contribution to the concept of network society, in our opinion, was made by Manuel Castells. According to his point of view, networks

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replace vertically integrated hierarchies and become dominant forms of social organization, and the metaphor of “network society” should replace the metaphor of the organization of society as a machine (mechanism) (Castells 1996, 2001). On the whole, it can be stated that society today is more and more compared to a network, and its main line of development is associated with various communications. Society realizes itself primarily through communication. Thus, network society is opposed to the traditional type of society organized on the basis of hierarchy and vertically constructed order. Thanks to this, constants are functioning in society. Network society has no such constants: it reveals itself exactly in dynamics, when everything is defined through a directed movement of the variables which define the content of communications.

Vertical and Horizontal Ways of Organizing Society: Hierarchy and Network J. Deleuze and F. Guattari present the difference between horizontal and vertical (hierarchical) ways of the organization of social order in the form of the antithesis of “tree-like” and “rhizome”. The notion of “rhizome,” borrowed from botany, denotes a structure of plant root systems in which there is no single root base, but which has a set of equally intertwined spines. The image of the “rhizome” is contrasted by Deleuze and Guattari with the image of the “tree,” which represents a hierarchical order stemming from a single root. The rhizome is always a set of equal beginnings. And if in the “tree-like” constructions everything is determined by the place of the element within the general hierarchical structure, in the “rhizome” all elements of the network are equal to each other and therefore interchangeable. The significance of any element is determined by its state, that is, by itself as part of the rhizomatic network. As Deleuze and Guattari point out, the image of the “rhizome” is actually identified with the movement of a “line” (or “bundle of lines”) that has neither beginning nor ending. In the process of growth, developing, the line transcends any boundary (any limit and any certainty). It is significant that a rhizome always acts through variation and without any center, unlike tree-like structures. The image of a “tree” is identified by Deleuze and Guattari with a vertically organized hierarchy. In rhizomatic networks, growth and development themselves are the most important things, but not the certainty in which such constant growth takes place (Deleuze, Guattari 1987). This raises the following question: to what extent can independent individuals or subjects be the foundations of modern society? What is their relationship to network formations? As Castells points out, in network society, the notion of the individual is a subject of fundamental mutation. According to Castells, the basic unit of economic organization in network society is not an entity—in the form of an individual entrepreneur or corporation or state—but a network made up of multiple

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entities and organizations which are being constantly modified as networks adapt to the economy and market structures (Castells 1996). It is important that, in network society, flows and the ways in which they are organized are of great importance. The contents of life are predominantly shaped within horizontal rather than vertical constructions. Communication is essential. In that regard, network society is already understood as a hyper social society, which is opposed to the traditional society, which existed until technological breakthroughs, which provided the formation of all kinds of social networks and, primarily, the Internet. According to the law of network structures, the distance and frequency of interaction between points are smaller when both such points act as nodes within a certain network structure (as opposed to the situation when they do not belong to the same network). It can be considered that such distance equals to zero. Inclusion in or exclusion from network structures, along with the configuration of relations between networks, determines the configuration of dominant processes and functions in contemporary societies (Castells 1996, 2001). If we understand this process as a process of social communication, it becomes clear that in this case communication—within a network—actually has no limits and no significant barriers. Networks have no center and operate on the basis of a binary logic: inclusions– exclusions. Everything that is included in a network turns out to be useful and necessary for its further development. What is not included in the network does not exist in terms of the network and therefore can be ignored and eliminated. If a node in the network ceases to perform a useful function, it is rejected by it and the network is reorganized. There is no systemic dominance of nodes. Nodes increase their importance by accumulating more information and using it more effectively. The importance of network nodes is determined solely from the perspective of their ability to distribute information. Linking the setup of the functioning of network nodes with the process of social communication allows us to understand that any vertical way of organizing social processes within a network will inevitably be corrected. Such correction can be associated with the straightening of the hierarchical vertical into a horizontal dimension. Thanks to new technologies based on microelectronics, networks have become a basic characteristic of people’s life activity, whereas earlier networks were only private phenomena, connected with some spheres of life. The notion of “networks” is rather an ancient formation. In this sense, it is possible to pay attention to the fact that already at the earliest stages of development humans used nets for catching fish and some animals. Later, the concept of “networks” was applied to characterize transport lines understood in the unity of their components (elements): a network of roads, a network of automobile and railway lines. It was also referred to electric, water, gas, sewerage networks and so on. Despite the fact that networks were essential factors of human activity, these factors were no more than particular characteristics of life activity, connected primarily with the life of the urban population. Here, it is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that a network is a definite structure of life which can be not

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only in the social structure, but also in the biological organization of living things in the form of neural or fascial networks, which determine the mental and physical organization of human life. This ancient origin of the network phenomenon, directly connected with the “structure” of the human and of living beings in general, makes us think about the influence of this phenomenon on the entire human life activity. The development of a network society and the organization of network clusters in all spheres of life can already be interpreted as one of the most important regularities of human existence. Initially, networks were much inferior to those structures and organizations of life which were built on the basis of hierarchy, due to which within such organizations resources were concentrated around goals and tasks determined by man and society. Networks initially could not compete with hierarchical organizations in concentrating resources. However, with the development of computer networks (primarily the Internet), this weakness of network organizations has been overcome. The modern scope of the concept of “networks”, which is an ancient formation, is connected precisely with the possibility of technological embodiment. Moreover, unlike hierarchic organizations, a network allows a person to be himself or herself beyond the rigid regulations and norms. The network society enables a person to retain a large number of his representations and creates an opportunity for him to stay within them without any significant corrections. Representations are corrected through the network by much gentler means than within a society organized on the basis of order; the integrity of the individual and his identity are preserved. Moreover, in a network, a person’s feeling can be almost identified with his or her notions. This identity allows the individual to experience not just satisfaction, but pleasure. It is this preservation of the integrity of the individual within networks, just as it is the preservation of the integrity of the fish caught by the net that proves to be a powerful factor in the human disposition to the network form of organization. In this sense, the network turns out to be a soft power. Hyper sociality turns out to be a new phenomenon, connected with the possibility of such forms and ways of revealing the person in his focus on other people as were absolutely impossible before. From the perspective of a network, all possible forms of regulation and normativity can also be perceived as forms of isolation of the individual, hindering the manifestation of his free action.

The Human Being Within Networks The revolution in the way people relate to one another, which is currently taking place before our eyes, is undoubtedly of great importance. All this makes us take a fresh look at the distinction between the following concepts: “communication,” “contacts” and “dialogue”. The identity of the modern human is defined precisely within his communication with other people, within various networks. An important factor of this identity is virtual reality, without which it is already impossible to imagine human life. Network communication is becoming (in fact, has already become) the norm for

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the majority of people, especially for the younger generation. The network allows a person to experience a repeated feeling of disclosure of oneself and one’s inner world to the outside, when the inner and the outer lose the clear outlines of their boundaries. In this sense, the net turns out to be a horizontal force of pleasure. This turns out to be particularly focused in the vein of social networks, the functioning of which—in turn—is impossible without the Internet and the network organization of society as a whole. Within the parameters of the Internet, interpersonal, collective and mass communication turns out to be a whole unit which is difficult to dissociate and distinguish even nominally. In a network society, everything is defined by the infrastructure of social networks and media networks. Networks become ways of organizing human life and society, being factors and places (points) of their “assemblage”, forming the basis of modern communities. All this impacts all spheres of life in traditional society. In a situation where the most important role is played by networks and flows, the emphasis on the place, including the place of residence, stay, and the place of work, territory, becomes insignificant. All people, who are integrated into the network, stay in the space of network flows, separating themselves from usual geographical and social space. In fact, there is a change in the traditional notions of space: the fixity of space is replaced by considering it in dynamics when the form of space understood in this way changes significantly. Everything becomes handy, taking the form of an instantaneous human entry into the network by pressing a computer key or a mouse. This “absorption” of any event into the network and its “placement” within it allows the individual to ignore its substantiality. The event becomes disembodied, i.e., an element of the human gaze, and enters human consciousness in the form of representation. The metamorphosis of the event that takes place—in the dimension of the network—is primarily related to the possibility of its representation. As a result, the event loses the power of its suddenness and spontaneity and is adapted in a certain way by the network. Such adaptation of an event is related to the fact that it receives a human-dimensional form and rather easily enters human consciousness. Thus, the event is placed (accommodated) in the form of “representation” and is now understood as a correlation with human consciousness. One can speak of the illusory nature of such constructions only from outside of them. It is impossible to see such an illusion in terms of the network, because there is no means by which it can be distinguished. This is why it may be unnecessary to speak of the illusory nature of such constructions: the network form of relation to an event is quite different from the traditional form of relation to it from the position of a vertically organized order. Everything becomes singular and temporal, including the traditional ways of understanding the person and the coordinates of his/her identity, connected with the traditional understanding developed before the network society. This refers to place and territory, attachment to soil and tradition, position and status, civil society and the state. Everything is determined by the circulation within the stream and the ability of the individual to fit into this circulation.

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The hierarchy of verticality associated with the belief in order, law, higher meaning and God goes away. Individuals and organizations are forced to embed themselves in the flows and depend on their direction. Personal communication is replaced by networked communication.

New Forms of Communication and a Radical Change of Ideas About Contacts and Dialogue The classical dialogue is constructed between two or more fully-fledged subjects; in the latter case, dialogue becomes a polylogue. The point is that in the traditional paradigm of understanding, dialogue can be realized just between subjects who by the moment of dialogue—unlike communication—already possess an individualpersonal consciousness. However, it is interesting to what extent the contacts that take place—in flows within network society—can be a dialogue. In our opinion, in terms of network society, for which it is the flow that matters, the indispensability of entering and staying in such a flow does not allow a person to express himself as a subject. Moreover, it is not only a question of man’s inability to be a subject within a stream, which can be compensated for over time, but also of the fact that a person who communicates in this network is not only unable to be a full subject of the network, but does not need to be a subject. Of course, from the perspective of traditional society, all of the mentioned above cannot but be perceived negatively. However, if this process is considered from within the network society, it is legitimate to speak not only about destruction and deformation, but also about new aspects of human perception within communication and formation of its new characteristics. It is possible to formulate this as follows: the traditional notion of the “subject” is linked to the fact that it is understood as “the master of the situation,” i.e., as the instance to which abilities to analyze, control and calculate the “object” are attributed. Moreover, the subject has the capacity to project, forecast and format everything that receives the status of an “object”. In traditional society, the subject proved to be the basis of various structures built on the basis of his own relationships with various subject domains. These relationships are generated precisely by the power of the subject: the power of knowledge, the power of possession and other forms of power that ensure the “existence” of objectness. In the classical sense, each subject entering into a dialogue with another subject builds a certain order and hierarchy of his relations with his objectness. Only in this case the exchange of one subject’s thingness with the other subject is built. Any resulting exchange of objectness between subjects becomes initially predetermined. It is set by the subjects of communication themselves, by their status and position and by each subject’s objectness and their position in the system of order and hierarchy of values for each of the subjects.

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From the perspective of the network, however, all these hierarchical constructions are leveled at once. All vertically organized chains of “objectness” are destroyed, since within the network the subject’s definiteness, expressed in the form of this or that object, is only a moment of communication. And if this “determinacy” of the subject contributes to communication here and now (Latin “hit et nunc”), then it is significant, but significant only here and now. If such “certainty” is singled out in order to emphasize such a subject’s power over “its” objects and values, then communication has collapsed. Moreover, the very action of “realization,” so meaningful to the subject, is perceived in the parameters of network exchange, if not as a fiction, then as merely nominal. Here, it means little to the other elements of network communication.

The Changing Notion of Order in a “Liquid Society” The culture of modernity becomes not so much a continuation of the development of traditional society as it resembles a certain hypertext. Hypertext is a mode of existence of information in which some information network of nests is implied, within which readers are able to freely make their way through reading in a nonlinear way. Since hypertext has no center, it can be read from anywhere. Moreover, hypertext allows the possibility of multiple reading paths, and hence a plurality of authors. The boundaries of such a text are determined by the reader himself, when it is allowed to connect any fragment of information with any other fragment of information in a non-linear way. The presence of hypertexts and their proliferation enshrine the refusal of the network society and network man from hierarchy. Order, as a certain normative and obligatory sequence of interaction of elements of the whole, distinguishable and detached from the content, steps aside. In the parameters of the network, it becomes possible to speak of order only in a private and secondary way. Every time a new order is defined. But then everything that was defined in the parameters of traditional scenarios and programs of culture before the network society, including language, norms of people’s interaction with each other, communication rules related to the allocation and maintenance of the social status of a person, is transformed. All this cannot help but be accompanied by negative evaluations on the part of people whose consciousness is connected with the values of traditional society and the culture characteristic of it. On the part of those who communicate within networks, only the experience related specifically to network interaction is significant. The gap between the value worlds of different generations, which is traditionally typical of society and constitutes the essence of the conflict, is acquiring a radical form today. It is clear that a complete rejection of order is impossible: a certain order within the network is also necessary, and it is determined by the direction of movement and its tendency. At the same time, order cannot exist in society without relations which are built on orders and their implementation. However, the network society radically changes the essence of man’s relations with other people and indirectly

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his relations with himself. One of the concepts that have been proposed to describe such time, along with the concept of “network society”, is the concept of “liquid modernity” (“liquid society”) proposed by Zygmunt Bauman. The modern world is seen by the scientist as a complexly organized structure, whose individual elements are united by a network of social ties and mutual obligations. In this world, there are no clear boundaries and hierarchies. The world turns into a space of continuous movement or flow. A certain point in the continuum is formed, continuing its movement in an unknown direction. Bauman emphasizes that modernity is characterized by a continuous adjustment of traditional social foundations, where uncertainty replaces the defined world and the abandonment of many previously immutable obligations. Overpowering communication technologies modify space and time, thereby transforming the essence of physical mobility (Bauman 2000). The liquid modernity that Bauman contrasts with the concept of postmodernity means that the continually occurring changes take people by surprise because they do not have a predetermined direction. In this context, dictated by the specifics of the “age of weak bonds,” the individual is faced with a difficult task, requiring an extreme effort of will and a rethinking of the set of values formed in the period of stability. The individual has to be ready for any change.

The Concept of Education: The Search for Internal Grounds—The Birth of Meanings In our opinion, everything described above is a challenge for the system of modern education, because its content, constant in its essence, has to be enclosed in certain forms that are constantly changing due to the introduction of modern educational technologies. One dynamic category, for Russian education, including higher and secondary education, is the federal state educational standard, which sets a basic goal for the entire education system and defines the specifics of a graduate model possessing a range of different competencies. The task of preparing the learner for life becomes synonymous with the task of preparing the individual for any changes implicitly given or arising spontaneously. To the changes that require the focus of the learner on his mobility both in the physical sense and in the aspect of setting his consciousness on a certain mobility or correction of the value range of his personality, determining the very direction of life movement and growth. The concept of life-long learning implies a continuous change of internal tasks underlying personal development, mirroring the transformation of various social processes. This interpretation of the inner essence of the basic goal of modern education implies the reliance on the meanings formed in the process of learning, which are refined in the process of dialogical or subject-subject interaction in the learning process. We believe that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a change that was completely unpredictable, but at the same time set by some inner impulse, when all the links in the social chain were taken out of their proverbial comfort zone.

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The pandemic becomes a kind of turning point, transforming habitual values against the backdrop of a global challenge. But at the same time, the human being, internally striving for stability, is faced with the need to develop internal foundations that ensure its self-preservation in the face of change. In this context, the educational system becomes central: the word “education” in the Russian language is etymologically linked to the phenomenon of the image.2 It is this task—the creation of the human image—that all methods and technologies that determine the very form of educational systems must be subordinated to. At least, they should be connected and conditioned by such a task. Against the backdrop of the pandemic crisis, all the problematic points of educational systems have been naturally exposed in the first place. In view of the pandemic, information and communication technologies are gaining a clear advantage as the primary, if not the only, way to connect teacher and student. During the pandemic, a number of skills used in communication technology are rapidly increasing. The form of “technology” becomes dominant over the content of the educational process. The content of education is forced to be transformed under the influence of the distance form, often deforming the meaning inherent in it. The principle of individualization, which was supposed to form the basis of education, in the situation of communication through the Internet and various networks is gradually leveled and significantly transformed. The form of communication between teacher and student is also changing: learning tends toward a unidirectional process in which the tendentiousness of the attitudes that precede knowledge is able to predetermine knowledge itself. A sense of proportion is becoming more and more important for education. As a separate element of the system, information and communication technologies can enhance the effectiveness of education. However, with the dominance of the Internet communications and the absence of a line of live dialogue of teacher and student, the goal of traditional education related to comprehension of the meaning and sense of a certain cultural text is not achieved. The cultural code runs the risk of not being solved. In higher education, a blended form of education associated with the use of traditional forms of learning in the classroom and online technology is possible. It is justified by the fact that students are already relying on a certain experience of communication in the form of direct dialogue, which they received at school before the pandemic. However, the situation is quite different for general and secondary education, when online education becomes a reality and replaces (in fact, cancels) direct dialogue. The apparent dominance of online technologies in school threatens to become a personal drama for the child, when maximum development of various communication skills is required. Communication with others within various networks is not enough. It is evident that practicing a number of skills can only take place in the process of live communication with a teacher, and there is no substitute for this. Internet technologies, fundamentally aimed at unification and primacy of the impersonal principle over the personal principle, do not create a situation of personal growth and 2

Education is synonymous with the symbolic act of God’s creation of man and the understanding of man as an image corresponding to the Creator.

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actualization of creative potential of the personality, inherent in the consciousness of the student. In addition, the period of apprenticeship, which begins at school and continues up to university, is associated with the student’s search for his Teacher, the person who will fascinate him with knowledge and is seized by an idea that is consonant with the inner impulse of the student. The first meeting with the Teacher has the power to change the life strategy of an adult and can help him or her to find purpose and meaning in his or her life. We think that these intensions are typical not only of Russian mentality, they are universal. The possibility of such a meeting of a teacher and a student in the Internet space remains questionable. As the pedagogical practice of the authors of the present paper shows, the method of using modern online technologies in the educational process requires from the teacher a sharpened mastery of material transmission, preserving the essence of the author’s idea inherent in a certain cultural text. In this aspect, a serious and thoughtful dialogue between people specializing in the humanities and in technologies is needed, the product of which should become pedagogical forms that allow to preserve the meaning-forming content. Otherwise, the student’s very need to seek the meaning is leveled in his mind. During the pandemic, the computer screen can be perceived not only as a mediator, but also as a barrier that interrupts both implicit and explicit dialogues between teacher and student. The content of the cultural field of the text underlying the lesson or lecture has to take a form acceptable for the Internet space. This leads to modification of the cultural field of the text itself. In the traditional system of educational communication, the learner focuses on the teacher’s interpretation of this text and it is on this basis that he or she builds his or her own vision and projection of personal growth. Within the network, the teacher’s interpretation passes through an additional barrier—the screen of the monitor, which creates another refraction of communication between the subjects of the educational process. The deficit of personal contacts between teacher and student, from our point of view, significantly destroys or, at least, deforms the process of personal growth associated with the acquisition of personally colored meanings by the student. The formation of the meaning dimension occurs on the basis of communication, but it is associated with the qualitative growth of contacts. Qualitative growth is revealed in dialogue which is the highest form of contact. It is thought that the meaning of education is revealed only in an authentic dialogue of personalities, which contributes to the formation of personal meanings. Communication, which is based on connections between people mainly on the basis of transmission of signals and signs, gravitates in principle toward a monologue. In the process of such communication, the person is only an element of an alienated function. Outside dialogue, the informational-instrumental plane of communication comes to the fore. In this case, the essence of culture and the cultural search of its representative cannot be explained exclusively through communication. Only in direct contacts, which are dialogic in their personal and intellectual nature, the individual begins to assert these or those meanings, treating them as his own.

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Conclusions It should be clear that first, the pandemic itself is an event that is significant not only in itself and in its economic and social consequences, many of which are still in their infancy. Second, the pandemic is the point and focus of a rupture between the traditional ways of learning associated with the predominance of the learner in school or university, on the one hand, and the dominance of online learning methods, on the other. Third, the pandemic itself can and, in our opinion, should be regarded as a kind of optics, which makes it possible to clarify the difference between the traditional and the network society, as well as the dominants characteristic of them. A significant characteristic of the networked person becomes the possibility and ability to reassemble in different points of the network and after such an “assemblage” to spread out again within the network until the next “assemblage”. The flip side of this becomes a relatively weak expression of the unity of the “I” associated with dispersion of self-consciousness. And then such a—scattered within himself—person is relatively easy to immerse in communications, but he becomes immersed in them only partially, only for his part. Other parts of him fall into other communication flows. The unity of self-consciousness is expressed in the assemblage of the psyche and the explicitness of the structure of the “I”, which is characteristic of traditional society and its members. The ideal goal to which a person should strive is not defined in every form of communication, but precisely in the form of contacts, which, at peak, forms the environment of dialogue. This is precisely what could be realized within the traditional educational system. In the parameters of the explicit dominance of learning practices of network society, the fixation of the individual’s self and his subjectivity becomes problematic. His “self” turns out to be different at different “assembly points” within networks, when everything is determined mainly not by the person himself, but by the tendencies and orientation of the flow of networks. It is not surprising that such a person wants to focus attention on himself, or at least to suspend such “wandering” and “scattering” of his “I”. In this context, it is important to refer to the phenomenon of selfies, which is associated with the growing desire of people to mark their position by fixing their image. At the moment of such fixation, the human image itself weakens and disintegrates and is no longer able to support itself. This is why it cannot be the foundation of man himself. In network society, man is confronted once again with the fact that openness is an irreducible condition for the maintenance of the human element in him and precisely because of openness, as its essential characteristic, a man, not knowing himself and discovering it, needs to pre-define himself. Openness, which was the basis of educational practices in traditional society, manifests itself differently in the parameters of network society. However, the need to open up and to be open is strongest in the openness to the other, in the understanding of the possibility of interaction with the other and the possibility of being the other. All this is directly related to the dimension of dialogue and develops within dialogue and the forms of education built on dialogue.

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From our point of view, the pandemic event must be seen not only as a point of rupture, but also as a place of linking different tendencies of education in traditional and online forms, and, more broadly, as a place of an interlinking of traditional and network society. Only the definiteness of man’s understanding of his attitude to network technologies, connected with the understanding of their status in the educational system, will allow him to understand the difference between the system of traditional education and the educational system of the network society, and will enable man to stay not only in the horizontal dimension of “communication - contacts”, but also in the vertical dimension of “contacts - dialogue”.

References Bakhtin MM (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Bakhtin MM (1981) The dialogic imagination: four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press, Austin and London Bakhtin MM (2004) Dialogic origin and dialogic pedagogy of grammar: stylistics in teaching Russian language in secondary school. Trans. Lydia Razran Stone J Russ East Eur Psychol 42(6):12–49 Bauman Z (2000) Liquid Modernity. Polity Press in Association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Cambridge Bråten S (1981) Modeller av menneske og samfunn: bro mellom teori og erfaring fra sosiologi og sosialpsykologi. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. V, 307s. ill Castells M (1996) The rise of the network society, the information age: economy, le Vol. I. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, Malden, MA Castells M (2001) The internet galaxy: reflections on the internet, business, and society. Oxford University Press, Oxford Craven P, Wellman B (1973) The network city. Sociological Inquiry. No 43(3–4):57–88 Deleuze G, Guattari F (1987) A thousand plateaus. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

Education in the Time of a Pandemic: Toward a Hermeneutics of Closed Borders and Travel Bans Andrei Kopylov

Abstract Some of the most obvious effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic have been on education and foreign travel. The chapter looks at the hermeneutical aspects of education in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The chapter first examines the hermeneutical dimension of education, drawing mostly on the work of H.-G. Gadamer, J.D. Caputo, H. Kogler, ¨ L. A. Mikeshina and R. Myhre. Viewed from a hermeneutical perspective, the figures of both student and teacher can appropriately be described as ‘situated agents’ whose roles cannot be confined to the technical functions of acquiring/transmitting knowledge and skills, but have rather to be seen as parts of a wide-ranging interaction within a historically and culturally specific educational context which creates a framework for unique (trans) formative experiences for everyone involved. The second part of the article adopts this perspective to focus on the challenges that education has to face due to the coronavirus restrictions. Closed borders and travel bans mean that the movement of students, teachers and scholars between countries may easily become impeded, creating a situation where their international contacts are curtailed or, when they do take place, have to be mediated technologically by the ‘distance-breaking media’ (DBM) (The concept of ‘distance-breaking media’, which I find particularly relevant to the subject discussed in this chapter, was first brought to my attention by the invitation document circulated among the prospective contributors to this Anthology. I would like to thank Jan Selmer Methi for introducing this useful concept and for kindly providing me with the following information about its origin: The English term is a translation of the Norwegian ‘avstandsoverbyggende media’ which could also be rendered, more literally, as ‘distance-covering media’ or ‘distance-bridging media’. The concept first appeared in the unpublished report Nordnorsk IT-enhet (NONITE). Utvikling av et samhandlingsnettverk. En underveisrapport [The North Norwegian IT-unit. Development of a collaboration network. A midterm report]. Øystein Ballo, Lars Krogh, Jan Selmer Methi. Notat 1997—101. Finnmarksforskning 1997). The chapter looks at the hermeneutical aspects of this new experience of borders and efforts to interact across them in education. A. Kopylov (B) Murmansk Arctic State University, Murmansk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5_19

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Keywords Education · Hermeneutics · COVID-19 · Borders · Pedagogy of the event

Introduction The current COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on education, particularly on those forms of education that involve foreign travel. With the closure of borders and the introduction of travel bans, the process of internationalization, one of the most important trends in higher education, has unexpectedly been placed in a new context that appears to be disadvantageous to it, making it difficult to maintain its natural emphasis on openness and widening contacts. While it is true that modern means of communication can do much to alleviate some of the worst effects that closed borders have on academic exchanges, their mediating function can hardly be expected to make up for the loss of genuine face-to-face contacts. In fact, the use of such distance-breaking media may create a number of new problems connected precisely with this mediating role. In order to explore some problems of this kind, it would appear expedient to address the hermeneutical dimension of education which is sometimes completely ignored in discussions of distance learning. In fact, many discussions on this subject tend to focus on the question of unequal access to digital technologies, which leaves many students in some parts of the world with little or no hope of continuing their studies online while the coronavirus restrictions remain in place. A UNESCO estimate puts the number of students out of school due to the pandemic at 1.5 billion in 165 countries. It is obvious that not all of them have equal access to the Internet and/or the gadgets that are necessary for them to be able to continue their education. The global academic community has found itself facing the challenge of using on a daily basis new ways of teaching and learning, notably distance education, with both teachers and students having to “deal with the emotional, physical and economic difficulties posed by the illness while doing their part to help curb the spread of the virus”. And “the future is uncertain for everyone”. (COVID-19 and Higher Education: Education and Science as a Vaccine for the Pandemic, web). These problems are both pressing and difficult to solve, so that it comes as no surprise that they seem to have eclipsed some of the less obvious problems inherent in the very nature of distance education. One such problem is the effect of distance learning on what might be described as the ‘situatedness’ of teachers and students in a particular educational context. Traditional in-person education brings teacher and student together, placing them in a situation where they share the time and place of their interaction, its cultural environment and the general ‘atmosphere’ of the institution. Taken together, these factors create a unique educational context common to everyone involved. In distance learning, these conditions can no longer be taken for granted: Teacher and student are physically separated, and modern technology even makes it possible for them to be in different countries and different time zones as their interaction takes place. They no longer need to share anything but an Internet

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connection and a common language to stay in touch with each other. At first glance, this distinction between in-person and distance education might seem trivial and generally unimportant, as in our discussions of education we are naturally concerned with things more obviously relevant to its expected outcomes, such as materials, tools and methods. However, this distinction is relevant to the way people experience education, which may, in turn, influence their capacity for experiencing many other aspects of culture and life. This experiential dimension of education can probably be best approached from the perspective of hermeneutics in which experience has long been a key concept.

The Hermeneutical Dimension of Education Hermeneutical experience is an essential part of all forms of education. It may even be argued that education as such is, among other things, a form of hermeneutics. It is interesting for our purposes that traditional pedagogy often discusses these aspects of education without recourse to the concept of hermeneutics. Writing on the fundamental philosophical assumptions of the modern theory of education, Ludmila Mikeshina takes issue with a somewhat Hegelian view, underlying much of the traditional thinking on the subject, according to which education is seen as a twofold process of the individual’s ‘ascension’ to the universal from the narrow particularity of their empirical self and of the concurrent internalization of the universal by their subjectivity (Mikeshina 2002, pp. 227–247). She concedes that there is much to be said in favor of this view. In fact, the very process whereby we acquire knowledge and skills in the traditional educational system may be described as ‘ascending’ to the level of what is universally recognized as a prerequisite for our successful functioning as members of our community. On the other hand, our education is not complete until we have made this knowledge and these skills truly our own by integrating them into our individual subjectivity. The problem with this view is that traditionally it was associated with a narrow conception of subjectivity. The latter was almost entirely identified with the subject of cognition as construed in classical epistemology, i.e., with the rational subject divested of the features of empirical individuals whose experience is never confined to cognition. If the complexity of human experience is to be fully taken into account, all aspects of the human personality must be addressed. Ludmila Mikeshina suggests that one way of doing this is by substituting the concept of what she calls the ‘interpreting subject’ for the classical subject of cognition. Unlike the latter, the interpreting subject relies not only on its intellect, but also on every other aspect of human nature, including emotional life, the experience of practical work and social interaction and all forms of non-scientific knowledge. This concept entails a hermeneutical view of education as a process whereby we acquire a general ability to interpret things, rather than mere knowledge and skills (Mikeshina 2002, p. 247ff). In this context, it is only natural that she turns to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of Bildung and the related concept of ‘edification’ developed by Richard Rorty. In

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L. Mikeshina’s discussion of the subject, the former is understandably given greater prominence than the latter. For our purposes, it may be useful to have a look at a broader interpretation of this concept, as suggested by Chris Lawn and Niall Keane in their The Gadamer Dictionary (Lawn and Keane 2011, pp. 17–18). They begin by remarking that Bildung is not a word which lends itself easily to translation into other languages. In its philosophically relevant German usage, it may mean ‘formation’, ‘culture’ and ‘education’. Gadamer’s use of this term is peculiar in that he seems to emphasize the hermeneutical dimension of these phenomena, pointing out the role that understanding plays in them. He opposes Bildung which ‘reaches back to premodern humanistic scholarship’ and is now associated with the humanities, to method which is associated with modern science and represents in it ‘the correct procedure for the accumulation of facts and knowledge’. The humanities, or human sciences, differ from natural sciences in that they are an ‘appreciation of organic development’ which may be viewed at two levels, that of the individual and that of society. For the individual, the acquisition of Bildung is almost synonymous with going through the process of socialization which gradually introduces him to the knowledge, customs, traditions and other elements of his community’s culture. At the level of society, Bildung can be equated with the process of the historical development of a culture characterized by a gradual transformation of its customs and traditions (Lawn and Keane 2011, pp. 17–18). In his brief overview of the term’s complex history, HansGeorg Gadamer remarks that after centuries of semantic development Bildung had finally got its modern definition of ‘rising up to humanity through culture’ in Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings. From that time on, Bildung began to function as an important cultural term in the German language. Now it is used to denote the way people develop their “natural talents and capacities” (Gadamer 2004, p. 9). It is an apt illustration of the specificity of this term that the highly influential English translation of Gadamer’s Truth and Method retains it in its original German form, providing the English culture in brackets by way of explanation (Gadamer 2004, p. 8). Not everyone, however, is prepared to interpret this term so broadly. The standard Russian translation of the book renders Bildung as obrazovaniye, a common Russian word for “education” (Gadamer 1988, p. 50). Gadamer, however, was not the first hermeneutical thinker to integrate pedagogy into hermeneutics. The pedagogical dimension of hermeneutics and the hermeneutical dimension of pedagogy have been explored by the hermeneutical philosophers since the times of Friedrich Schleiermacher who was himself an important figure in the history of education in Germany and, among other things, discussed in some of his writings the principles on which German universities ought to be founded (Schleiermacher 1991, 2018). His follower in the field of hermeneutics, Wilhelm Dilthey, made another important contribution to the theory of education. In the following brief overview of this contribution, I will largely rely on Reidar Myhre’s exposition of Dilthey’s thinking on education. In his book on the history of pedagogy, Reidar Myhre says that Wilhelm Dilthey’s work led to an understanding of pedagogy that is still viable today (Myhre 1996, p. 141). Dilthey created a humanities-based pedagogy proceeding from a conception of man as a historically conditioned and value-oriented being. Natural science was

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seen by him as generally irrelevant to man’s ‘situation as man’ (Myhre 1996, pp. 138– 140). Here we have a view somewhat similar to Gadamer’s opposition of Bildung as a practice rooted in the humanistic scholarship of the pre-modern period and method as a procedure in natural science whose usefulness is largely confined to the cognition of nature. Another important parallel is that education, or upbringing (oppdragelse), in the wider sense was treated by Dilthey as a by-product of the process of an individual’s introduction, through imitation and identification, to his or her people’s cultural and social life. In the narrower sense, it was conceived as a planned activity of directing this formative process (Myhre 1996, p. 141). This appears to come close enough to Gadamer’s Bildung at the individual level. It is even more significant for our purposes that Dilthey saw pedagogy as a ‘science of experience’ (erfaringsvitenskap). As one of the founding figures of the so-called philosophy of life, he posited that only life in its totality could serve as a basis for pedagogical reflection (Myhre 1996, p. 141). Experience is also one of the key concepts in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. These comparisons between Dilthey and Gadamer appear to suggest that the tradition of hermeneutical thought as a whole may be said to contain a number of concepts and ideas that are still relevant to theoretical reflection on the nature and practices of education. Among these, the idea of the ‘situatedness’ of the interpreter of texts and other cultural phenomena seems to be particularly important for the purposes of the present discussion. From a hermeneutical perspective, the figures of both student and teacher should 1999, pp. 3–4)1 whose roles cannot be be regarded as “situated agents” (cf. Kogler ¨ confined to the technical functions of acquiring/transmitting knowledge and skills, but have rather to be seen as parts of a wide-ranging interaction within a historically and culturally specific educational context which creates a framework for unique (trans)formative experiences for everyone involved. It would be too narrow to describe them as ‘subjects’ of the educational process, since they bring to this process their cultural, intellectual and emotional attitudes which all have an impact on the way it develops. Their experience of education is never limited to mere teaching or learning, as it inevitably involves various other aspects of their personalities, not only their capacity for cognition. Speaking of Heidegger’s hermeneutics, John D. Caputo employs an apt description of the human being as perceived by hermeneutical thought in contrast to the classical philosophical tradition of modernity: “the concretely situated living historical being”, adding that this being has “degenerated” into “consciousness”, a “thinking thing” and some other constructs of classical epistemology (Caputo 2018, p. 32). At least, this is how Heideggerian hermeneutics sees it. The concept of ‘situated agent’ is important in that it implies that neither teachers nor students should be treated as ‘blank slates’ on which anything whatsoever can be written at will. In the process of education, they rely on their own cultural, intellectual and even emotional experiences, making it necessary to take them into account in planning educational procedures and outcomes. The only way to attain this goal Hans Herbert Kogler ¨ discusses this concept with reference to hermeneutical experience in general. In considering education as a hermeneutical practice, it would appear natural to employ this concept to refer to those involved in a pedagogical situation.

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seems to be by means of dialogue in which understanding is achieved through a fusion of horizons, not unlike any other act involving interpretation. To be authentic, such dialogue must be based on the principles of equality and openness (Kopylov et al. 2020, pp. 17, 19). It is important to appreciate that the ‘situated agent’ in education is situated not only in his or her historical and cultural context, but also in a concrete pedagogical context which obviously has a direct bearing on the way the teaching/learning process unfolds. This kind of situatedness presupposes a complex and often subtle interplay of pedagogical, psychological, personal, cultural and linguistic factors which may sometimes prove difficult to balance, but can never be ignored. Pedagogical theory has often analyzed the more typical kinds of such situations, but it is probably impossible to provide the teacher with recommendations that could immediately be applied to any situation they may encounter in the classroom. A more promising approach in this respect might be for the teacher to develop a kind of hermeneutical sensitivity that would enable him or her to navigate such situations without causing damage to anyone involved. This hermeneutical aspect is inherent in any pedagogical situation, but it can be seen with particular clarity in the context of the internationalization of education. The very presence of linguistic and cultural differences among those involved in academic mobility programs makes it obvious that they may have to overcome problems of understanding even at these relatively simple levels. The hermeneutical problems that arise at higher levels may be even more serious, but they are sometimes less obvious. Hermeneutics permeates educational experience. Taking this side of education seriously implies, among other things, that the most important and far-reaching outcomes of educational experiences do not lend themselves easily to the standard procedures of assessment, such as tests and traditional examinations. In fact, such outcomes may result from unique events taking place in the educational process. J. Caputo’s concept of “pedagogy of the event” (Caputo 2018, pp. 238–239) appears to be designed partly to take account of this elusive quality of education. “When the event happens in education, it may be that no one knows it” (Caputo 2018, p. 238), but such an event may sometimes have an influence that lasts a lifetime. There is no procedure that could assess or measure this kind of outcomes: “[…] evaluating teaching is a delicate hermeneutic art, which requires rigor but does not submit to exact measurement” (Caputo 2018, p. 239). Such pedagogical events have important characteristics of hermeneutical experience in general, which enables philosophical hermeneutics to serve as a relevant theoretical perspective for discussions of education. In what follows, I will examine some of the hermeneutical implications for education of the increased use of digital technologies resulting from the coronavirus restrictions. Far from being mere intermediaries in the process of communication, such technologies are capable of affecting our patterns of perception and, even more worryingly, our ways of interpreting the things we perceive. In this sense, they may be said to establish new boundaries for our educational experiences that, in some respects, may prove to be more limiting than we are immediately prepared to recognize.

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The Borders Created by Digital Technologies The coronavirus restrictions have led to an unprecedented use in education of what was described above as ‘distance-breaking media’. They are often the only way to keep the educational process going, and in this capacity, their use is perfectly justified. Their benefits to the pandemic-battered educational systems seem so obvious that many current discussions of their use in education center on the problem of unequal access to such media. In some parts of the world, notably in Africa, a significant proportion of students have no access to computers or to the Internet, or both. This radically compromises their right to education during the pandemic. Not all problems of the technological mediation of education, however, are so straightforward. Among the many problems caused by the modern means of communication, there are some that are due to the hermeneutical nature of education. Since the hermeneutical dimension of education as such is often ignored, such problems are unlikely to become a subject for serious discussion. Among other things, education provides us with a set of models of interpretation that we normally continue using later in life, often without being aware of their origin. For the sake of brevity, such models may be described as ‘canons of interpretation’, albeit not, or not necessarily, in Emilio Betti’s sense. Some of them pertain to the higher realms of intellectual activity, such as interpreting serious literature and philosophy. These have traditionally been given the most constant and careful attention in hermeneutics, regardless of the ways in which they may have been referred to by various authors. Others are more modest in that they are responsible for the way we represent and perceive things. These have been seriously studied by psychologists but have generally been of less obvious interest to traditional hermeneutics, although it is undeniable that they are relevant to the way we interpret things. We are often unaware of the extent to which our representations and perceptions, as well as the way we interpret them, are conditioned by our education. A classic example of the mediated nature of our representations and perceptions is famously discussed in Marx W. Wartofsky’s Models: Representations and the Scientific Understanding (1979). Marx Wartofsky demonstrates that the way we represent objects has more to do with the way we understand things than with the way we see them: Tilted circles are customarily represented by artists as ellipses. This may be treated as little more than an innocuous convention of our visual culture, and, in a sense, it is. But such conventions are apt to become rooted so deeply in our minds that we no longer seem to realize that they are ultimately only conventions; consequently, we no longer stop to question them. More importantly, our perceptions, too, begin to be guided by such conventions: “we ‘read’ the elliptical representation as a tilted circle” (Wartofsky 1979, pp. 175–186). This seems to suggest that our understanding may take precedence even over such basic mental functions as perception. We interpret things even as we perceive them. Hermeneutics may well appear to be in-built in what we often take to be our biological capacities, if only we forget that these capacities were developed beyond their purely biological nature in the process of education. This suggests,

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in turn, that the hermeneutical ‘canons’ we acquire in the course of our education condition our intellectual activity at its most fundamental level. One might say that such ‘canons’ establish borders within which we can comfortably follow our intellectual pursuits. Crossing such a border may require an effort that many people are unable to make, simply because they do not realize that what they are dealing with is not quite as straightforward as it seems. This does not necessarily have detrimental consequences for our intellectual activities: In some situations, the subtle distinction between what we can ‘really’ see and what we ‘understand’ as something we can see becomes irrelevant, inasmuch it does not affect the matter at hand. In other situations, however, it is an advantage to be aware of this difference. One of the problems that information technology surreptitiously brings into education is that any technology influences representation. In an educational context, this may lead to the emergence of new ‘canons of interpretation’ affecting even such basic functions as perception. The gadgets we use as intermediaries in communication possess certain in-built technological limitations that place us in a position where we, as human beings, have to give up some of our natural freedom and ‘bend’ some of our inborn or culturally conditioned ways of interacting with the world. We have to adapt ourselves to the possibilities of representation they offer us. In this sense, they also re-draw the borders of our perception and transform our ‘canons of interpretation’ in ways that we cannot fully control and that may have consequences we cannot reasonably hope to predict with any accuracy. It is not clear at this very early stage how far they may take us and what price we may ultimately have to pay for this journey with an uncertain destination. To illustrate the way technology influences our perceptual experiences, I would like to refer to a curious episode I have been told about by an acquaintance of mine. Her toddler grandchild was given a children’s book with beautiful pictures in it. A few minutes later, the child was seen moving her fingers over one of the pictures in the way she had often done before to enlarge a picture on a smartphone. As the child grows older, she will, of course, learn the difference between smartphone pictures and those that can be found in books and will consequently start treating them differently, but the confusion she experienced on the occasion described clearly shows that every technological medium brings its own perceptual culture with it. Different perceptual cultures presuppose different models of interpretation, or what I described above as ‘hermeneutical canons’. Such canons are readily applicable within the borders of their respective cultures, but they may well happen not to be transferable across their borders. This seems to have a bearing on the way the ‘distance-breaking media’ transform the familiar patterns of teaching and learning. They draw new borders of representation within which appropriate hermeneutical canons emerge that may differ from those characteristic of in-person education. If students and teachers are to benefit from the use of such media, they must be fully aware of both their possibilities and limitations. In a sense, pedagogical (and hermeneutical) reflection should now become part of the teaching/learning processes. Another important consideration concerns the very way we are ‘situated’ in the digital educational environment. The modern ‘distance-breaking media’ change some of the crucial parameters of educational situations. To give only one example,

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their very function of ‘breaking’ distances destroys one of the most fundamental conditions of face-to-face interaction that is taken for granted in any form of inperson education—the unity of space and time. In a ‘Zoom’ meeting, distances seem to disappear, but sometimes at the cost of its participants, who share the same virtual ‘space’, not sharing the same time. If one participant lives in Moscow and another in Lisbon, the difference in time may be significant enough to cause at least one of them considerable discomfort. This may have a detrimental effect not only on the quality of education, but even on the participants’ health and well-being. Hermeneutics has traditionally been associated with upholding the importance of attention to human nature in an increasingly technological world: To give only two examples, Wilhelm Dilthey thought that the unity of human nature was a precondition of understanding, and Martin Heidegger maintained that understanding was a mode of being rather than an intellectual capacity or a method of cognition. In this sense, hermeneutics has been a citadel of humanity in a culture where science often sought to eliminate the human factor as far as possible. With the emergence of educational practices that so heavily depend on IT, we may be running the risk of letting technology into our ‘canons of interpretation’ and through them into this citadel of humanity. We may end up with a hermeneutics which is at best only partly human.

Conclusions Education has an inherent hermeneutical dimension which has been discussed from different angles by a number of hermeneutical thinkers and theorists of pedagogy, including Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, John D. Caputo, Ludmila Mikeshina and Reidar Myhre. Viewed from a hermeneutical perspective, both student and teacher can be regarded as ‘situated agents’ whose roles extend well beyond their technical functions of acquiring or transmitting knowledge and skills. They are involved in a wide-ranging interaction within a historically and culturally specific educational context which creates a framework for unique (trans)formative experiences for everyone involved. Such experiences often take the form of ‘events’ which may have a profound influence on learning outcomes and even on students’ later lives. These outcomes do not lend themselves easily to the standard procedures of assessment but significantly affect the way people’s capacity for interpretation is formed. Such events have important characteristics of hermeneutical experience in general, which makes it possible for philosophical hermeneutics to be adopted as a relevant theoretical perspective for discussions of education. The hermeneutical aspect of education, inherent as it is in any pedagogical situation, is particularly significant in the context of the internationalization of education. In this chapter, I have examined some of the challenges that education is facing due to the coronavirus restrictions which mean that the teaching/learning process has to be mediated technologically by ‘distance-breaking media’ (DBM). Among other things, education provides us with a set of models of interpretation that may

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be loosely described as hermeneutical ‘canons’. Our representations and perceptions, as well as the way we interpret them, are conditioned by our education. We interpret things even as we perceive them. The hermeneutical ‘canons’ we acquire in the course of our education condition our intellectual activity both at its most fundamental level and at the higher levels corresponding to the more complicated forms of culture. Such ‘canons’ establish borders within which we can comfortably follow our intellectual pursuits. One of the problems that the growing use of information technologies causes in the sphere of education is that any technology of this kind influences representation. In an educational context, this may lead to the emergence of new ‘canons of interpretation’ affecting even such basic functions as perception. The gadgets we use as intermediaries in communication possess certain in-built technological limitations that place us in a position where we have to ‘bend’ some of our inborn or culturally conditioned ways of interacting with the world. We have to adapt ourselves to the possibilities of representation and perception that they offer us. In this sense, they also re-draw the borders of our perception and transform our ‘canons of interpretation’ in ways that we are unable to fully control. Every technological medium brings its own perceptual culture with it. Different perceptual cultures presuppose different models of interpretation which are readily applicable within the borders of their respective cultures but may not be transferable across these borders. The ‘distance-breaking media’ draw new borders of representation within which appropriate hermeneutical canons emerge that may differ from those characteristic of in-person education. If students and teachers are to benefit from the use of such media, they must be fully aware of both their possibilities and limitations. Pedagogical (and hermeneutical) reflection should therefore now become part of the teaching/learning processes. The modern ‘distance-breaking media’ also change some of the crucial parameters of educational situations, such as the unity of space and time. This may have a detrimental effect not only on the quality of education, but even on the health and well-being of those involved. Hermeneutics has traditionally been credited with upholding the role of humanity, and the humanities, in an increasingly technological world. With the emergence of educational practices that are heavily dependent on information technology, we may end up with a hermeneutics which is only partly human.

References Caputo JD (2018) Hermeneutics. Facts and interpretation in the age of information. Penguin, Random House UK, s.l. COVID-19 and Higher Education: education and Science as a Vaccine for the Pandemic. https:// www.un.org/en/academic-impact/covid-19-and-higher-education-education-and-science-vac cine-pandemic. Accessed 29 October 2021. Gadamer H-G (1988) Istina i metod [Truth and method] (Russian trans: Zhurinskaya MA et al.). Progress Publishers, Moscow Gadamer H-G (2004) Truth and method. 2nd, rev. edn (trans: Weinsheimer J, Marshall DG). Continuum, London, New York

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Kogler ¨ H (1999) The power of dialogue. Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault (Trans: Hendrickson P). The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England Kopylov AV, Sergeev AM, Ryzhkova IV (2020) Nekotorye germenevticheskie aspekty internatsionalizatsii vysshego obrazovaniya [On hermeneutical aspects of the internationalisation of higher education] in Pedagogika 2020(5):16–23 Lawn C, Keane N (2011) The gadamer dictionary. Continuum, London, New York Mikeshina LA (2002) Filosofiya poznaniya. Polemicheskiye glavy [Philosophy of Cognition. Polemical Chapters]. Progress-Traditsiya, Moscow Myhre R (1996) Grunnlinjer i pedagogikkens historie. Ad Notam Gyldendal AS, Oslo Schleiermacher FDE (2018) Nechayannye mysli o dukhe nemetskikh universitetov (s prilozheniyem ob odnom iz nikh – nedavno uchrezhdennom) [Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense, with an Appendix Regarding a University Soon to be Established] (Russian trans: A. Yu. Antonovsky). Kanon+ ROOI “Reabilitatsiya”, Moscow Schleiermacher FDE (1991) Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense (Trans: Tice TN and Lawler E). Edwin Mellen, Lewiston Wartofsky MW (1979) Models: representations and the Scientific Understanding. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Boston, London

Index

A Academic life, 200, 205, 206 Alienation, 32, 34–40, 108 Appropriation, 22, 32–35, 38, 39 Assemblage, 46, 66, 71, 72, 90, 91, 231, 237 Attitude, 15, 18, 22, 25, 32, 33, 37, 38, 49, 64, 66, 67, 70, 73, 76, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 91, 169, 182–184, 186, 187, 193, 195, 235, 238, 243 Autonomy, 47, 50, 142, 193

B Biopolitics, 45, 47, 50, 88, 204 Borderlands, 4, 44, 54, 56, 117–122, 125–133, 136, 139, 149, 153, 158, 162, 163, 165–170, 173, 174, 178, 180, 182 Brexit, 136, 141, 162–166, 170–174

C Chicago School, 104 City definitions, 103, 104 Civilization, 6, 8, 12, 13, 37, 50, 88, 193 Closed border, 46, 121, 240 Communication, 5, 36, 51, 69, 76, 88, 90–92, 96, 129, 180, 181, 200–207, 215, 220, 226–238, 240, 244–246, 248 Communicative relations, 226 Conditional, 21, 24–26, 29, 46, 211 Contacts, 3, 7, 46, 63, 68, 108, 114, 118, 148, 162–164, 168, 179, 194, 202,

204, 220, 226, 227, 230, 232, 236, 238, 240 Cosmopolitan rights, 3, 7, 8 Covid-19, 14, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54–56, 66, 68, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 84, 136, 141, 148, 158, 162–166, 168, 169, 173, 196, 197, 209–212, 219, 221, 234, 240 Covid-alarmism, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85 Covid-dissidence, 76, 77, 85 Covid-loyalism, 76, 79, 82, 85 Covid-skepticism, 76, 79, 85 Crisis, 31, 44, 46, 49, 52, 55, 56, 62, 69, 72, 78, 148, 150, 151, 156, 157, 162–164, 184–186, 202, 209–212, 235 Cross-border cooperation (CBC), 5, 119, 122, 125, 130, 133, 136–142 Cultural boundaries, 85 Cultural gaps, 76, 79, 80, 85

D Dialogue, 20, 89, 121, 129, 156, 226, 227, 230, 232, 235–238, 244 Dichotomy, 66, 90, 205 Distinction, 10, 17, 19–21, 29, 36, 62, 65, 67, 83, 108, 118, 121, 226, 230, 241, 246 Distnace Breacing Media (DBM), 209, 210, 213, 215–217, 219–222, 247

E Economic, 33, 35, 38, 47, 69, 76, 77, 104, 105, 116–121, 124–127, 129–133,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. S. Methi and B. Nikiforova (eds.), Borderology, Key Challenges in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29720-5

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252 139, 141, 142, 147–150, 153, 154, 156–158, 162–165, 170, 172, 179, 186, 209, 210, 228, 237, 240 Economic crisis, 142, 148, 150, 158 Education, 4, 11, 12, 39, 49, 56, 69, 76, 106, 167, 172, 196, 201, 210, 217–219, 226, 234–238, 240–248 Enlightenment, 7, 11–13, 88 Evolution, 153 Exchange, 71, 132, 153, 178, 196, 219, 232, 233, 240

F Flat ontology, 65, 66, 69 Fluid modernity, 191, 192

H Heidegger, M., 18, 35, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 91, 92, 97, 243, 247 Hermeneutics, 68, 70, 240–248 Heterogeneity, 67, 72, 104, 106 Hierarchy, 87, 89–92, 96, 98, 227, 228, 230, 232, 233 Historical evolution, 157 Human, 6, 7, 10–12, 14–17, 19–21, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32–40, 44–47, 49–51, 53, 54, 57, 62–65, 67, 71–74, 83–85, 88, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 104–106, 109, 122, 125, 127, 129, 130, 155, 163, 165, 186, 192, 194, 196, 197, 201, 203, 210–212, 215, 217–219, 221, 229–232, 235, 237, 241–243, 246–248 Human nature, 31, 32, 37, 241, 247

I Identification, 17–19, 22, 29, 31, 68, 104, 180, 243 IdentityIIdentity-constructions, 194, 196 Information, 48, 78, 79, 125, 130, 137, 169–173, 179–181, 185, 187, 192, 200, 202, 211, 212, 215, 217, 219, 226, 227, 229, 233, 235, 239, 246, 248 Information exchange, 213, 215, 217, 221

L Learning, 6, 8, 142, 211, 213–215, 217–221, 226, 234, 235, 237, 240, 243, 244, 246–248

Index Learning as a universal act, 217–219, 221, 222 Leibniz monadology, 87 Life-world, 200

M Mass migration, 44, 46, 49, 56 Materiality, 44, 64, 68 Migrant, 37–40, 45, 55, 72, 118, 133, 150, 162, 164–168, 171–173, 181, 183–187 Migration, 37, 56, 70, 81, 118, 120–122, 125, 127, 129–132, 153, 155, 164–167, 200 Migration crisis, 44, 45, 70, 162, 183 Mobile universities, 4 Mood phenomenon, 79 Motivated learning, 217–219 Motive, 70, 218

N Necropolitics, 47, 50, 51 Network, 51, 61, 66, 67, 71, 72, 74, 89–92, 96–98, 120, 138, 181, 192, 200, 202–204, 206, 207, 212, 213, 221, 227–239 Network society, 227–234, 237, 238 New technology, 210, 219 Non-anthropocentric, 66, 69, 71 Non-human, 61–65, 67, 68, 70–74

O Object, 6, 11, 16, 37–39, 45, 62, 63, 65–69, 71, 72, 82, 91–93, 113, 131, 148, 152, 195, 215, 218, 227, 232, 233, 245 Ontology, 13, 26, 62, 65, 192–194, 217–219 Open border, 24, 81 Other, 6, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20, 23, 28, 74, 83, 148, 149, 168, 220, 237

P Pandemic, 4, 14–17, 25, 28, 29, 33, 44–56, 62, 63, 66–85, 87–89, 92, 97, 98, 105–108, 113, 114, 116, 131, 132, 136, 141, 148, 150, 158, 162–171, 173, 174, 196, 200–206, 209–212, 216, 217, 219–222, 226, 227, 234–238, 240, 245

Index Pandemic discourse(s), 72, 74 Pandemic reality, 70, 72 Past, 16, 20, 21, 28, 32, 34, 37, 40, 44, 45, 48, 51, 56, 93, 96, 109, 121, 124, 127, 138, 142, 178 Pedagogy, 241–243, 247 Pedagogy of the event, 244 Polish migrants, 162, 165 Portuguese-Spanish border, 149, 150, 153–155 Present, 13, 17, 20–23, 51, 54, 79, 81, 93, 96, 109, 136, 142, 150, 156, 165, 184, 185, 200, 202, 204, 206, 207, 214, 216–222, 228, 236, 243 Privacy, 200 Private realm, 193, 194 Public realm, 194–196, 205, 207 R Refugees, 46, 49, 51, 56, 118, 164, 179–187 Regional Common Planning, 136 S Self, 7, 27, 44, 97, 98, 193, 194, 196, 205, 237, 241 Social distance, 51, 106, 115 Society, 31–36, 38, 40, 44, 67, 72, 77–79, 84, 85, 88, 104, 107, 115, 148, 157, 162, 168, 170, 173, 174, 181, 183, 185, 193, 194, 203–206, 210, 220, 221, 227–233, 237, 242 Stayers, 162, 165–168, 170, 171, 173 Strategic planning, 119

253 Subject, 13, 16, 25, 43, 47, 50, 62, 63, 65, 68, 82–84, 88, 90–98, 111, 141, 149, 151, 165, 166, 177, 181, 183, 207, 215, 218, 219, 228, 232–234, 239–242, 245 Subject-object, 215, 220, 226 Subsidiarity, 7, 9 Sustainable development, 139

T Technology, 72, 81, 85, 163, 194–196, 201–206, 210–213, 215, 216, 227, 235, 240, 246–248 Tuning, 79, 81, 83–85

U Unconditional, 21, 24–26, 29

W Whole, 7, 10, 23–25, 29, 33, 36, 48, 49, 64, 65, 67, 70, 72, 73, 76, 90, 91, 95, 96, 118, 129, 168, 179, 210, 215, 216, 221, 226, 228, 231, 233, 243 World, 4, 6–8, 13, 15, 16, 18–22, 24–29, 34, 36, 38, 44, 46, 49, 51, 52, 54–56, 62–66, 68–70, 73, 78, 80–82, 84, 85, 87, 90, 92–98, 106–109, 113, 136, 142, 151, 155, 162, 164, 168, 183, 192–197, 202–205, 209–213, 218, 219, 226, 231, 233, 234, 240, 245–248