West

Today I start upon a journey of some twenty days through the American Midwest and West: first Iowa and South Dakota, and afterwards, in a second stage, Nevada, Arizona and California. Even though I have traveled often to the United States, I have never been west of Chicago - with the exception of Seattle- and so it seems that this youngest part of the country is a new world to discover. We will follow the frontier that advanced from New England towards the Pacific.

In spite of the temptation, I have not taken along any related reading. I did have Steinbeck in my hands, in a moment of hesitation before departure. Others have enthusiastically suggested On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I am halfway through (have been for ages) American Vertigo, an exploration of the continent that Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote for Atlantic Monthly, originally published as essays in the magazine. But I have preferred to avoid the excesses of suggestion and decided to make the journey more like the trips that I make on the train, during which I find reading difficult: the fast succession of landscapes has too great an appeal.

Lévy's aim - I quote his work, instead of others, for practical reasons only - is to put the European (read French) perspective in
relation with today's American space, to see qu'est que ça donne. Is there a progressive separation of the two societies? This is the question mark behind all levels of their relationship today (except in that of large corporations).

I believe, however, that the question has to be properly situated: in Europe and in the United States there are many people capable of merging, quite naturally, some huge differences. For example, on the North American side, the visibility of religion, active optimism, or the public expression of feelings; on the European side, open treatment of sex, the complexity of political and economic structures, or the extensive range of ideological views. It is a question, however, of knowing whether the two societies are evolving towards systems incompatible with their mutual communication. Europe has discovered a vast "progressive" America with Obama. Where was it until now? Had we really even looked, scratching deeper than the surface? Or were we satisfied with a televised image? From the European Left, from its social movements, have people ever thought seriously of "disembarking" in the United States to explain their vision of the world? Have we truly tried to find interlocutors and allies in civil society, workers, women, minorities... to improve our relationships?

It is necessary, on the other hand, to get rid of the idea of a North America that is "basically" the same as us, because we are disappointed when it is not so. I suspect that this concept is an invention of the cold war, or was at least reinforced by it. The 50s and 60s might have been the only moment of convergence, which led us to believe it had always been this way. The point is that until that moment, European societies mistrusted the laisser-faire attitude of the United States, in the same way that North American society has mistrusted the European laisser-passer.

In short, like all societies in today's global world, Europe and North America have both similarities and differences. The idea, to put it one way, that we are included in their E pluribus unum (or its war version, "United We Stand"), will have been a quite successful illusion in the construction of another West, that of cold war politics. Is the American west the heart and soul of this global west, of this fabulous construction? We shall see. I tend to think that this is a country with many people who just now are beginning to hear their voice and that they definitely don't want a world of cowboys. These are the same people who, for example, gathered in Idaho at one of the largest demonstrations of support for Obama, defying all stereotypes.