Professional Documents
Culture Documents
com/
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for European Journal of Social Theory can be found at: Email Alerts: http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://est.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://est.sagepub.com/content/11/1/87.refs.html
Abstract In the wake of the Iraq war of 2003, and in response to the European reaction to the war, a number of prominent European intellectuals launched a new debate on Europes identity, and in particular the extent to which it differed from American identity. The debate was sparked by a newspaper article by Jrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, which was circulated to several other intellectuals for comment. The Europe-wide debate which ensued in which several Americans joined provides a revealing snap-shot of European opinion on the question of Europes identity. It illustrates in particular the dangers as well as the seductions of seeing that identity mainly in terms of a contrast with America, putatively to the advantage of the Europeans. This article argues that such a contrast fuels an anti-Americanism that is disabling to Europe and conceals many signicant and less selfattering aspects of the European inheritance. Key words anti-Americanism America Europe identity intellectuals
In the end Europe dwells in one house, America in another. (Georg Simmel, 2005 [1915]: 71) As we continue to reect upon why we feel European and not American, we are bound to encounter a different view of existence, a different notion of what constitutes a good life, a different existential plan. (Gianni Vattimo, 2005: 33) The renewal of Europe is necessary. But this will never be accomplished by an endeavored self-determination of Europe as un- or even anti-American. Each attempt to dene Europe vis--vis the United States will not unify Europe but divide it. (Timothy Garton Ash and Ralf Dahrendorf, 2005: 143)
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1368431007085289
Downloaded from est.sagepub.com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012
88
It is hardly necessary to point out that, despite the particular context of the Iraq war which gave it or so it seemed a particular urgency, this attempt to state the core values of European civilization was in many ways complementary to that being attempted, on a more formal level, by the statesmen of the European Union as they struggled to draw up a European Constitution. A necessary part of this task seemed to involve a preamble that would voice the common values and aspirations of all members of the Union. The disputes and difculties attending this effort raised a high degree of scepticism regarding the possibility or even the desirability of attempting such a codication of European values.3 What Habermas and Derrida were aiming at therefore carried with it the similar risk of rejection, and the sense that the exercise would be invidious not simply to Americans but to many fellow-Europeans. At all events it was likely to be highly controversial, and so it proved.
89
In any case, Habermas and Derrida insist, the variety of European experiences simply emphasizes that, as with all identities, European identity will have something constructed about it from the very beginning. It will be a matter of conscious choices, distinguishing between the legacy we appropriate, and the one we want to refuse. Historical experiences are only candidates for a selfconscious appropriation; without such a self-conscious they cannot attain the power to shape our identity (2005: 10). Let us leave aside for the moment the question, who decides? Who makes the choice between the legacy we want to appropriate, and the one we want to refuse? Can we be so blithely unencumbered in our choices? Is history so open? Are historical legacies things that we can accept or shrug off at will? Accepting that legacies are not all of one kind, not seamless or homogeneous, is it still open to us simply to choose the nice parts and reject the nasty ones? Does the effort to master our history not involve a more tortuous and painful process? The idea that we can construct our collective identity at will seems as problematic as the idea that we can, or do, construct our individual identities at will. We will return to this. Let us though rst consider what Habermas and Derrida following their own injunction to select choose as the values of core Europe (a troubling implication of this concept must be that there are European countries that, not being at the core, either share these values only imperfectly or not at all and if so, cannot really be considered fully European). Most of these, implicitly or explicitly, are contrasted with what are taken to be dominant American values. First is the privatization of faith : For us, a president who opens his daily business with public prayer, and associates his signicant political decisions with a divine mission, is hard to imagine (2005: 10). Next is the legacy of the French Revolution, and the experience of sharp class conicts in the development of
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
Mazowers view of the European legacy is clearly very different from Habermass and Derridas. It emphasizes what they might see as the dark side of Europe. It is ironic though that Habermas in particular, generally seen as the heir of the great Frankfurt School of the 1930s, should be so casual or dismissive of this
97
98
Europeans at different times, especially since the Second World War and the evident loss of European power in the world, have tended to retreat into Fortress Europe. They have set themselves up now against the Americans (the inheritors of their global power), now the Turks (continuing the anti-Christian threat previously offered by the Ottomans), now the East Europeans (as kidnapped members of the former European family who are now irremediably corrupted by their foreign sojourn). Some of them have occasionally wished to narrow the core even further, excluding especially the Anglo-Saxons with their over-close ties to America and their generally overseas rather than continental interests. And of course there has always been, ever since the eighteenth century at least, Russia, that half-European, half-Asiatic power that at various times looked likely to impose its alien character on the whole of Europe (see Kumar, 2001). Habermas and Derrida, for all their sophistication, seem to be repeating this self-defeating pattern.20 They look inwards when they should be looking outwards. They may not like what the Americans are doing, or what they think America stands for, and in this they may be joined by many Europeans. But the response to this cannot be an assertion of a narrowly-conceived European identity, least of all one conceived against a country like America that shares with Europe so much of the basic Western inheritance. This will, as many commentators have pointed out, divide rather than unite Europe, and in doing so it will weaken its voice in the world. Europe has undoubted strengths, as compared with many, perhaps most, regions of the world. Its globalizing ventures since the fteenth century, however complex and ambivalent their impact, have given it unique
99
100
7 8
9 10 11
12 13
101
14
15
16
17
18
19 20
102
References
AlSayyad, Nezar and Castells, Manuel, eds (2002) Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Ash, Timothy G. and Dahrendorf, Ralf (2005) The Renewal of Europe: Response to Habermas, in D. Levy, M. Pensky and J. Torpey (eds) (2005) Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War, pp. 1415. London and New York: Verso. Ashcroft, Bill, Grifths, Gareth and Tifn, Helen, eds (1995) The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Bauman, Zygmunt (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bernstein, Richard (2003) Continent Wrings Its Hands Over Proclaiming Its Faith, New York Times, 12 November: A4. Borradori, Giovanna, ed. (2003) Philosophy in a Time of Terrors: Dialogues with Jrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Casanova, Jos (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crouch, Colin (1999) Social Change in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davie, Grace (1996) Contrastes dans lheritage religieux de lEurope, in G. Davie and D. Hervieu-Lger (eds) Identits Religieuses en Europe, pp. 4565. Paris: La Dcouverte. (2000) Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2002) Europe, The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World. London: Darton Longman and Todd. (2006) Is Europe an Exceptional Case?, The Hedgehog Review 8(12): 2334. Davis, Mike (1986) Prisoners of the American Dream. London: Verso. Dawley, Alan (1991) Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Delanty, Gerard and Rumford, Chris (2005) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization. London and New York: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques (2002) Voyous: Deux Essais Sur La Raison. Paris: Galile. Diner, Dan (2005) Between Sovereignty and Human Rights: Juxtaposing American and European Tradition, in D. Levy, M. Pensky and J. Torpey (eds) (2005) Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War, pp. 914. London and New York: Verso. Eco, Umberto (2005) An Uncertain Europe Between Rebirth and Decline, in D. Levy, M. Pensky and J. Torpey (eds) (2005) Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War, pp. 1420. London and New York: Verso.
103
104
105