Cosmopolitanism and (E)Urope: Translating the Other

Abstract

To what extent does today’s cultural, political and economic process of European integration differ from the ideals of those of ‘great Europeans’ like Romain Rolland or Stefan Zweig, members of the cosmopolitan intellectual elite of the beginning of this century? What is left of their seemingly naive idealism and humanism? Although the need for ‘European’ integration is felt ever more urgently, so many ‘European’ questions remain without answers. Instead it appears that the possibility of distinguishing between being inside and outside (the ‘one’ nation, ‘one’ culture, ‘one’ language etc.) on which the above quotation from Stefan Zweig relies has become extremely problematic, as has the fundamental dialectics involved in his aspiration towards (global, cosmopolitan, universal) unity. Instead, the humanist ideals connected with a cosmopolitan view of Universal History have been identified as political strategies that must be seen within a postmodern and multicultural context of difference and alterity. The question within any process of European integration is therefore: how are these two concepts, difference and alterity, related to the notion of stereotype and the construction of identity.

Not until we have learned to see our own country from without and to understand foreign countries from within as the natives of these countries understand them, can we acquire a European outlook, can we realize that these various countries are complementary parts of a single whole. … For this reason [one] must pursue the path by which the nationalist becomes a citizen of the world and acquires a ‘European soul’.¹

But while our pessimism is understandable, it is contradicted by the empirical flow of events in the second half of the century. … the appearance of democratic forces in parts of the world where they were never expected to exist, the instability of authoritarian forms of government, and the complete absence of coherent theoretical alternatives to liberal democracy force us to raise Kant’s old question anew: Is there such a thing as a Universal History of mankind, taken from a point of view far more cosmopolitan than was possible in Kant’s day?²

When the Other is recognised as such, difference is positive, but when the Other is represented as a threatening stranger, difference is negative. This dichotomy between Self and Other has been pivotal in the making of European identity.³