°Holy dam
The above photograph is from Martin Krenn’s collection, “Fortress Heiligendamm”. Heiligendamm was, of course, the focus of the most recent event in the calendar of summit and anti-summit. Krenn notes: “For the Group of Eight summit, Heiligendamm was turned into a high-security fortress. 7.5 miles long and 8 feet tall, a fence was designed to protect the leaders of the world’s eight richest countries. The G8 summit in Heiligendamm costed a round 92 million euros just for security.”
But it is not only in the coincidence of the techiques of summit securitisation and the securitisation of the “West” - most notably given expression at the summit in disputes between Russia and the US over the siting and object of the US missile “defense shield” in Europe - that the question of the borders of the political makes itself felt here.
Heiligendamm takes its name – “holy dam” – from parables which seek to mark the victoriousness of Christianity and, it might be added, do so as the theological rendition of borders, specifically the borders of a Western, Christian Europe. Depending upon which legend one prefers, a shepherd triumphed over the devil in a wager, or the dam miraculously rose up against floods through the prayer of monks. Much more remains to be said here, not least about the theologisation of the political. But, in turning over these confluences and their significance, the most obvious question is of the continuing expression of an ostensibly ‘European’ politics in anti-summit discourses.
