‘Europe’: What Kind of Idea?

Abstract Salman Rushdie posed the question, “What kind of idea are you?” We have borrowed his provoking question and held it up to ‘Europe.’ In this article, we suggest that ‘Europe’ cannot be primarily identified or located in terms of geographies, histories, religions, cultures or values, and that attempts to do so diminish the idea of ‘Europe.’ We also contest the vision of ‘Europe’ as a series of concentric circles emanating from Brussels and suggest that this conception indefensibly marginalizes vital portions of ‘Europe.’ We propose that, while the European Union (EU) is attempting to define core concepts of ‘Europe,’ ‘Europe's’ frontiers and borders (wherever or whatever they may be, inside or outside ‘Europe’) are actively constructing, contesting and resisting ‘Europe.’ The peripheries and perimeters are no less important than the core. On the contrary, they give substance to the idea of ‘Europe.’ Finally, we argue that ‘Europe’ can best be understood as a non-teleological construct, a narrative à la Roland Barthes. Inspired by Barthes, we propose a ‘Europe’ Theory of Classification operating at the levels of functions, actions and narration. Notes Notes 1. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan Europe (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926), 22. 2. Jean Monnet “Memorandum to Georges Bidault and Robert Schuman” (1950), in Building European Union, ed. Trevor C. Salmon and William Nicoll (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 41–44. 3. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), 420. 4. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “A European Civilization: Is There Any Such Thing?” European Review 10.1 (2002): 4. 5. Peter Burke, “Did Europe Exist before 1700?” History of European Ideas 1.1 (1980): 21. 6. Denys Hay, “Europe Revisited: 1979,” History of European Ideas 1.1 (1980): 2–4. 7. Fernández-Armesto, “A European Civilization: Is There Any Such Thing?” 5. 8. Federico Chabod, Storia dell’idea d’Europa, 4th ed. (Rome: Laterza, 2001) 23–28. 9. See Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 43–63. 10. See Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 73–75. 11. “Strauss-Kahn wants a ‘sustainable’ European project,” EurActiv, 14 June 2004, (10 August 2006). 12. Ibid. 13. Fernández-Armesto, “A European Civilization: Is There Any Such Thing?” 3–4, 12. 14. Olli Rehn, “Values Define Europe Not Borders,” Financial Times, 4 January 2005, 15. 15. Gonzague de Reynold, “Qu’est-ce que l’Europe?” La formation de l’Europe 1 (Fribourg, 1944). 16. José Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities, and European Integration,” Eurozine, 29 July 2004, (10 August 2006). 17. Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993): 22–49. 18. Ibid. 19. Richard Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Richard Rubenstein, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages (New York: Harcourt, 2003). 20. Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” New York Review of Books, 26 April 1994. 21. For further discussion, see Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe, 8–14. 22. Quoted in Lenard Cohen, Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 208. 23. Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and his Precursors,” (6 January 2008). 24. Fernández-Armesto, “A European Civilization: Is There Any Such Thing?” 4. 25. Richard Münch, “Between Nation-State, Regionalism and World Society: The European Integration Process,” Journal of Common Market Studies 34.3 (1996): 385. 26. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 212. 27. Hugh Seton-Watson, “What Is Europe? Where Is Europe? From Mystique to Politique,” Encounter 65.2 (1985). 28. Paul Coles, The Ottoman Impact on Europe (London: Thames all subsequent references to Barthes are cited in the text. 44. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this formulation. 45. Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.” 46. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (London: Routledge Classics, 2002), xvi. 47. For example, Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, “The Myth of European Unity,” in Myths and Nationhood, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin (New York: Routledge, 1997), 60. 48. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for helping us with this formulation. 49. Borges, “Afterword,” The Maker (1960), in Collected Fictions, 327.