DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.24677.1 ISSN: 2732-5121

"Little Bees”: Difference, otherness, and exclusion in 21st-Century Europe

Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis
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The proposed paper discusses some works of the French philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy and Etienne Balibar on the ever so topical issues of difference, otherness and exclusion in the context of diverse, problem-ridden Europe in the 21 st century. The urgency of these issues is prompted by the existing wide gap in the treatment of vulnerable people across the continent in addition to and beyond the sex-class divide.It is a gap that delineates the break between “us” and the asylum seekers, between their human rights, and the politics of the Western democracies in relation to the foreigner or the undocumented Other. A common thread in the writings of Nancy and Balibar seems to be an urgent call for basic humanity and ethical responsibility in the face of thousands of refugees who legally or illegally try to reach dream destinations in Europe only to end up very often in the hell of make-shift camps or detention centers, if they are “lucky,” or else they end up washed off the shores of the Mediterranean Sea or the English Channel, or dead in refrigerator trucks and containers. To give a literary context for the work of the two philosophers, I propose also a reading of the novel The Other Hand/Little Bee (2008) by the English writer Chris Cleave. What has changed since the publication of this novel in the USA and the UK? What makes it a poignant narrative of hope, suffering, indifference, and shame? Sixteen years later, does Little Bee still speak to Western readers engulfed by the problems of climate change, globalization, right-wing threat, and emotional numbness from thousands of similar real life stories? What has happened with the “world’s fragile skin,” to use Nancy’s phrase, or with the fragile skin of Europe that we seem challenged to feel, think, and help?

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