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In this article we carry out a geopolitical analysis of the turbulent breeze driving the EU into uncharted extremes. To do this we zoom in on three cases that we deem both a response to political extremism and a source of political extremism in themselves: France's state of emergency, Brexit and the pyrrhic victory over the far-right in the Dutch elections of 2017 . Our analysis suggests that even though the political forces behind these events have praised their policies or electoral victories as bulwarks to keep extremism in check, the sort of extremism that they try to keep at bay is not as worrying as the counter-productive realpolitik of the traditional establishment they represent. By surreptitiously adopting precisely the kind of extremist political preferences that they claim to set themselves against, these politics show how the establishment in the EU is normalising the extreme geopolitics of exclusion that are structurally undermining the very principles of rule of law, liberal democracy and overall openness on which the EU is based. The result: what used to be easily dismissed as irrational or evil has become the everyday normal. The extremism we so much fear has become the new normality. ; published version ; nonPeerReviewed

In Kafka's parable 'Before the Law' the man from the country waits his entire life before the border, represented as the Law. In this article, the act of waiting before the Law is analysed in the context of a geopolitical border. More particularly, the question of why we b/order ourselves is investigated. And when do we dare to enter/ open the gate? I discuss how this act of b/ordering can be understood as balancing the desire to flee, migrate, move, escape — in short, to be freed (psychoid desire) and the desire to be, to be-long, to home oneself, to be bordered (paranoid desire). The border then is a dynamic result of our desires and of the reverse, our fears. More than a line in space, therefore, b/ordering is a strategic socio-political practice that will vary over time and space. A border is not an answer, it is a constant interrogation, for ourselves as well as others.

This article explores the social processes of making & reproducing borders through economic activities. Why, from an economic perspective, is the economy not borderless? What exactly is protected when borders are produced? Economic bordering processes & practices of protection are induced by a desire for comfort, & protect against experienced uneasiness & uncertainty in society. In this theoretical attempt to reach a deeper understanding of economic bordering, it is concluded that the development of the European Union, & the commodification of bordered spaces -- urban & regional -- within it, are regarded as 'place-making' processes with major implications in terms of solidarity & exclusion. 1 Figure, 64 References. Adapted from the source document.

What we critically ascertain in this essay is how the modern university is increasingly drifting away from the key ambitions of its own mission statement, and largely by its own doing. Although the typical university in its mission statement claims to aspire outstanding quality, academic freedom, and to contribute to society, in its daily organization, the modern university has normalized and internalized a neoliberal metrical governmentality, in which quality, freedom, and societal benefit risk being exchanged for quantity, managerial control, and status benefit. In this essay, we stand up against this worrying self-harming protection strategy, what we term—following Jacques Derrida—the autoimmunity of the university. To structure our argument, we will discern the main worrying autoimmune paradoxes of this university policy in the hope to further the debate and potentially remedy the university of this self-inflicted harm.