Radical Equality and the Politics of the Anonym A Counterdiscourse toward Postcolonial Europe

This chapter will explore the contemporary figuration of postcolonial Europe by reading the discourse of the European activist network Movement X (MvX) through contemporary political theorizations of equality and anonymity. The denial of historical commonality in today’s Europe, I argue, is being combated by a counterdiscourse of equality that eschews the language of sameness and difference. Equality, in this sense, does not imply everyone in postcolonial Europe is the same. Instead, the differences within those in Europe are equalized by emphatically positing a denied common history as the basis of a politics for a common Europe. The existing cartography of a multicultural Europe based on reified notions of cultural difference is countered by a discourse of equality. I argue that a politics of the anonym can stage discursive figurations of Europe in which any and everyone can claim a voice to speak for a future for/in Europe that belongs to anyone irrespective of the identities ascribed to them. This counterdiscourse asserts a claim of radical equality, simultaneously refusing both the logic of Othering articulated
by xenophobic populists in European states as well as counterassertions of cultural difference as the basis for inclusion into a common Europe.