|
|
in this issue
ESSAYS: Europe Re-Visioned
Europe as a utopia
Tuomas Nevanlinna. Photo: Heini Lehväslaiho
If no continent is defined simply by its geography, this is particularly true of Europe. Europe is not a "physical" entity but a "meta-physical" one. I am inclined to put this rather bluntly: Europe "is" whenever or where-ever a certain Ancient Athens is taken as a model or paradigm for culture, e.g., for philosophy and science, or arts and politics. According to this criterion, societies or civilisations as different as Ancient Rome, the Christian theology of the Middle Ages, the kingdom of Charlemagne, Renaissance city-states and the modern scientific community qualify as "European".
* * *
What is this model or paradigm? There is no clear-cut answer, nor can there be one, because "Europe" is but a general name for the quarrel over the very meaning of the model. But, to put it bluntly again, the model could well be characterised as universalism. To begin with, philosophy is universalism with regard to knowledge. With the birth of philosophy, truth becomes separated from tradition. From this it follows that all claims for a "European identity" become inherently questionable. The only constant of a European identity is that it is called into question. Indeed, it is constituted by this very questioning. The European inheritance consists of endless overturning of that
inheritance.
Secondly, there is a tendency towards universalism in politics: the utopia of a non-exclusive political order.
Thirdly, aesthetics is both the basic solution and the basic scandal (stumbling block) of the problem of universalism. It is the solution because the promise of a synthesis of the universal and the particular is what aesthetics is all about. It is the scandal because the particular as something necessarily local, concrete and exclusive is also the very ground of the dilemma of universalism. The Schillerian dream of an aesthetic state is a perfect example of this structure: reason as something universal and free should be the "head" of the state, but it is doomed to remain abstract and powerless without a "heart", i.e. without embodiment in the form of particular cultural sentiments. This aesthetics is duplicated in the relation between Germany and the rest of the world: the ideal Germany is posited as the privileged example of this cosmopolitan spirit.
* * *
Europe is a proper name. It names a continent, but the orientation in question is universalistic. How could this universalistic orientation be given a quasi-geographical proper name? This is the basic paradox of Europe - and its structural impossibility.
Europe is simultaneously a place (a continent or a "union") and a non-place (something universal) at the same time. Europe is a utopia: literally, an impossible non-place. Europe as a utopia has the structure of a utopia (in) itself: the utopia of becoming a "place without location", of becoming a place whose particularity would be
universality itself; to redeem this impossibility as a possibility. Europe cannot have a proper name and cannot but have one. In this respect it resembles "Jehovah" - the one who has no name and yet has a name. Europe is the utopia of utopia: to be, as a certain place (Europe), a bearer of universalistic truth and politics which by definition should not be "smeared" by any local roots or identities. This is clearly impossible. But Europe, and this is my claim, centres around this impossibility. These abstract considerations have bearings on both the present-day processes of the European Union and globalisation
as well. Is modernisation a form of cultural imperialism or is it a neutral means of creating rational, secular states? Is the demand that religion be made a private matter a specific "cultural" (for example, Protestant) demand or is it a reasonable request whose fulfillment would leave the basic cultural matrix of a society intact?
* * *
The question of European identity in the context of the European Union can be put thus: the EU has a head, but does it have a heart? Does it need one? Should or could this identity, this "heart", be quasi-nationalistic (ethnicity and/or religion being the identificatory basis)? Or should or could it be quasi-patriotic (adherence to a common Idea)?
The quasi-nationalistic Europe is neither possible nor desirable. Patriotic Europe may well be desirable in an abstract sense, but is it possible? And what would the common idea be? And how could it ever be "installed" into the minds of Europeans? Through the blue-yellow flag and by making schoolchildren sing the 'Ode to joy' once in a while?
If this "Schillerian-lite" vision does not seem plausible, it no longer seems that desirable either...
We are tempted to let out a cry for a total bastardisation of Europe: let's forget the whole thing! Whatever and whenever Europe "is", it is defined by its boundaries and limits. By its borders. And it is always a question of setting borders, even when they are redefined and enlarged. In this case, however, we run the risk of leaving the EU as it is: a techno-bureaucratic organisation aimed at optimising freedom of commerce. But the question of identity cannot be avoided this way, as it is also produced by this techno-bureaucratic solution, albeit negatively: the EU as a centralised monster which the citizens of Europe love to hate...
So it seems that Europe in the present politico-economical sense has a "heart", whether it wants one or not. But how are hearts woven and identities constituted? Not by sharing something rigid, fixed and substantial, but rather by a mutual hanging onto the relevance of some big, empty notion - like "France", "democracy" or "Europe", for example. It is not any collectively owned meaning of Europe which binds us together as Europeans, but common questions and quarrels over the meaning and possibilities of Europe.
The European Union should be a union of people agreeing to disagree about everything except the relevance of the (dis)agreement itself. This is the essence of every (European) politics.
© University of Wales, Aberystwyth 2002-2009
site by
CHL