The Borders of Europe

Description

Just like national identities, European identity may be viewed as an imagined community, constituted by different levels of inclusion and exclusion along various border markers as those between included and excluded, between culturally dominating and dominated or between centre and periphery, natives and exiled. This book by researchers within the field of art and architecture, theatrical performance, literature and history, is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of the borders of Europe, especially where large scale cultural borders towards the East are concerned. The Borders of Europe offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the notion of Europe and its regions, its origins and transformations while highlighting the aesthetics of hegemony and conceptions of centre and periphery in Europe, constructions of national, regional and artistic identity and the aesthetics and poetics of borders in literature and art.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Aarhus University Press
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9788771247343
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Helge Vidar Holm, Sissel L greid, Torgeir Skorgen (eds.)
The Borders of Europe
Hegemony, Aesthetics and Border Poetics
Introduction: The Notion of Europe, its Origins and Imaginaries
Helge Vidar Holm, Sissel L greid Torgeir Skorgen

A pilgrim on a pilgrimage
Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge
His sneakers torn
In the hour when the homeless move their cardboard blankets
And the new day is born
Folded in his backpack pocket
The questions that he copied from his heart
Who am I in this lonely world?
And where will I make my bed tonight?
When twilight turns to dark
Who believes in angels?
Fools do
Fools and pilgrims all over the world
This song from Paul Simon s latest album, So Beautiful or So What (2011), may serve as an entrance to our book. Simon s lyrics illustrate what it is about: the aesthetics and poetics of borders, both interior and exterior, the time-spatiality of border zones and frontiers, the aesthetics of border crossing and the implications of being in transit, the aesthetics and experience of exile and of being excluded as opposed to being included. In short, the focus is on the strategies of identity rooted in the dynamics of identity and alterity (otherness), both related to the idea of Europe based on hegemonic power structures and strategies used throughout history in a continuous quest for the European identity. Today, in the post-national state of cultural and economic globalization with its multiplicities of disappearing old and emerging new identities both on a personal and collective level, this quest has proved increasingly challenging.
Much of this is foreshadowed in the quoted lyrics from Paul Simon, both from a historical perspective and metaphorically speaking. Being on a pilgrimage means being on a journey in search of a place of importance to a person s beliefs or faith, such as the place of birth or death of founders or saints. In other words, it implies both searching for a place of origin, or in the Christian sense of the word, where life is seen as a journey between birth and death on the way to paradise, searching for the promised land of life after death.
From the perspective of the pilgrim this means being in the time-spatial state of transition, on the move here and now, between what was in the past and what will be in the future, when or if he reaches his place of destination, something that requires moving across both cultural and geographical borders. At the same time the pilgrim, as a stranger, is conceived of as the Other, which implies moving like a migrant and exile through foreign territories after having left his home territory and cradle of origin, being on the way to the unknown and yet promised territory.
The time-spatial dimension of the kind of border-crossing practice described by Paul Simon is also metaphorically indicated by the image of the torn sneakers, which may be read as signs of time passing as well as of the pilgrim s journey through time and space. In view of the complexity of the aesthetics and poetics of borders, the torn sneakers, with their surface holes and miserable soles, may serve as potential points or spaces of contact and communication both in a concrete and symbolic sense. They are spots where the pilgrim s feet get in touch with the ground on which he walks, so they may be said to represent a border zone and border-crossing practices on different levels.
Furthermore, in a more concrete sense the torn sneakers may be seen as containing traces and reminders of the places the pilgrim has been. In this sense they are virtual ingredients of his personal memory, and as such they may help him compose the narrative of who he is, of his personal identity. In other words, on the surface they will most likely contain some fragments of the answer to the question Who am I in this lonely world? .
The fact that he has copied this question from his heart and carries it with him in his backpack pocket may be read as an indication implying that identity and place of belonging, on many levels, is what the song is about. This reading, supported by the fact that the constitution of identity as a strategy is based on the dynamics of exclusion and inclusion, also finds its expression in the image of the homeless, moving their cardboard blankets, in as much as they, as a group living on the outside of society, are conceived of as the social Other, excluded from the collective identity framework of society. And yet the pilgrim moves towards them in the hour when the new day is born . In other words, in the border zone between night and day, on the bridge connecting the two banks of the river, he performs a time-spatial border-crossing act. And as he asks where will I make my bed tonight? , he seems to seek their company, thus both identifying with them and looking upon them as an entity constituting a social outcast group of society.
From a perspective of the aesthetics and poetics of borders and border crossing as outlined above, the bridge, both as a border zone and as a threshold and possible entrance, represents a means of communication. It is both a passage way and a zone possibly bringing two opposites into dialogue. And last but not least, as is the case with the pilgrim, it symbolizes the state of being in transit.
In a more specific and concrete sense of the bridge image, the fact that Brooklyn Bridge crosses East River gives both the song and the image a historical and topographical dimension. Topographically it connects two boroughs of New York: Brooklyn, traditionally a part of the city with the biggest community of Norwegian immigrants, now taken over mostly by other ethnic minorities, and Manhattan, New York s oldest borough, originally called Mana hatta by the Delaware Indians, who lived there until the Europeans came and established their cultural and territorial hegemony.
Thus the historical dimension and dynamics of cultural hegemonic strategies indicated in the song may be said to be revealed. Furthermore, if we add to this reading some elements from the biography of Paul Simon, the passage back to Europe and to the question of origins, identity and transformation may be retraced. As the son of Hungarian Jews, who in order to survive had to leave Europe and emigrate to America in the 1930s, Paul Simon himself may be said to personify, by his family heritage, the complexity of some of the issues treated in this book.
Towards the end of this introduction, we shall come back to the individual treatment of these issues by the authors of the various chapters in the following three sections. However, first we shall be discussing the notion of Europe in general, its origins and its imaginaries.
Anyone trying to define the notion of Europe geographically will almost automatically be confronted with considerable difficulties. The notion of Europe does not seem to refer to a clearly limited continent, as one might think, but rather to an imagined cultural realm, or simply to an idea with a historically and semantically unstable content. From nature s hand, Europe is not a readily defined part of the world: it is not defined by oceans in every direction like other continents. When an Englishman says that he wants to go to Europe, he usually refers to the European mainland reaching eastwards to Asia or the Orient. And normally it is the question of the contested Eastern border which causes real challenges. As an example, the debates about Central Europe among exiled writers and intellectuals at the end of the Cold War were largely concerned with the question of whether Russia should be considered a part of Europe or not. And what about Azerbaijan - the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011? When did we start to think of the Caucasus as a part of Europe?
In his lecture Vilnius, Lithuania: An Ethnic Agglomerate , the Polish writer and emigrant Cslaw Milosz tried to launch the notion of Central Europe as an alternative to the division between Eastern and Western Europe. Milosz defined this realm as Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and the current Czechoslovakia. However, Milosz admitted that the existence of such a Central Europe was contested by colleagues like Josif Brodsky, who preferred the notion of Western Asia (cf. Swiderski 1988: 140). According to his Hungarian colleague, the sociologist Georgy Konrad, the border-crossing dissidents and exile writers represented the true Central Europeans, raising their voices against the officially established cultural and political hierarchies and divisions of the East and West. To Conrad, the notion of Central Europe does not refer to any geographical border, but rather to a certain cultural practice; namely border-crossing.
Being a Central European implies a border-crossing attitude or such a state of mind.
In other words, the notion of Central Europe appears to be an imagined historical and cultural realm, i.e. a mental map signified by flexible and permeable borders and a cultural attitude of crossing borders among its inhabitants. On the other hand, the pretension of being Central European implies, although unspokenly, that other Europeans are peripheral. From a French or German perspective, the Baltic peoples are themselves viewed as peripheral, in contrast with inhabitants of Berlin or Paris. This illustrates the perspectivist aspect of the notion of Europe: it tends to change focus and meaning according to the geographical situation of the speaker. To most people on the continent today, Europe means the European Union, whereas to most Norwegians it means a geographical area surrounded and divided by national borders.
During the Cold War, the notion of Europe could refer to a humanist and modernist Utopia contrasting with subjugation and oppression experienced by exiled writers like Konrad or Kunder