This book is about how every age reinvented the ide a of Europe in the mirror of its own identity. I shall bring ‘Europe’ into focus as a cu ltural… [612544]

Inventing Europe
Idea, Identity, Reality

Gérard Delanty
Senior Lecturer in Sociology
University of Liverpool

1 The Ambivalence of Europe:
A Theoretical Introduction

This book is about how every age reinvented the ide a of Europe in the mirror of its own
identity. I shall bring 'Europe' into focus as a cu ltural construction and argue that it cannot be reg arded
as a self-evident entity: it is an idea as much as a reality. Europe, I shall be arguing, is a contest ed
concept and it was in adversity that it became a se lf-conscious idea. As the central and organising
metaphor of a complex civilisation, the European id ea expresses our culture's struggle with its
contradictions and conflicts.
Much discussed in recent times is the question of ' European unity', yet little thought is actually
given to the meaning of the term Europe and its rel ationship to problems in contemporary political
identity. The discourse of Europe is ambivalent in that it is not always about unity and inclusion, bu t is
also about exclusion and the construction of differ ence based on norms of exclusion. It embodies a
great complex of ideas and ideals. Take unity for i nstance. For many Europeans unity is a cherished
goal only so long as it is unattainable; or, indeed , as a strategy to enhance social exclusion or to
strengthen the power of the centre over the periphe ry. Lying at the core of the idea of Europe is a
fundamental ambivalence about the normative horizon s of collective identity in the modern polity.
This ambivalence is apparent in an unresolved tensi on between two models of collective identity: an
exclusivist and formal notion of the polity, on the one side, and on the other, one based more on
participation and solidarity. My concern in this bo ok is to dispel the mystique of Europe in order to
assess the extent to which the European idea can in fact be the basis of a collective identity
unencumbered by the narrow normative horizons of na tional identity and the chauvinism of the
'Fortress Europe' project. The question of whether a multi-cultural society can evolve a collective
identity that is not based on ethno-culturalism is as important as matters pertaining to economic and
political integration. The limits and possibility o f the European idea as a basis of collective identi ty is
what this book is about. My tentative answer is tha t the idea of Europe can be the normative basis of
collective identity only if it is focused on a new notion of citizenship.
My theme is that of Europe as an idea that has fore ver been in a process of invention and
reinvention as determined by the pressure of new co llective identities. What I wish to deconstruct is
the Platonic-like vision of an immutable European i deal, the notion that the idea of Europe has always
been linked to the pursuit of the values of freedom , democracy and autonomy. That there is such a
thing as, what Karl Jaspers (1947) once called, a ' European spirit' or – as other writers earlier in t he
twentieth century such as T. S. Eliot (1946), Edmun d Husserl and Paul Valery believed – the unity of
an essentially European tradition is a pervasive as sumption underlying contemporary visions of
Europe. While not all will agree with T. S. Eliot ( 1978, p. 160), when he wrote in 1947, 'that a new
unity can only grow on the old roots: the Christian faith, and the classical languages which Europeans
inherit in common', there appears to be widespread consensus today that the cultural foundation of
Europe is deeply rooted in Latin Christendom, human ist values and liberal democracy (Kundera,
1984). I hope to be able to show that these beliefs are ungrounded, or at best mystifying, and that if the
idea of Europe is to be used as a normative concept , it is necessary to subject it to critical reflect ion. It
is not possible to see European history as the prog ressive embodiment of a great unifying idea since
ideas are themselves products of history. No cohere nt idea runs through European history from the
earliest times to the present and the historical fr ontiers of Europe have themselves shifted several
times. Yet something can be discerned in the great flux of history and it is not the unity of history but
adversity: the European idea has been more the prod uct of conflict than of consensus.
With respect to the notion of 'European unity' I sh all be arguing that the critical and self-
examining traditions in European culture have in fa ct rarely appealed to the idea of unity as their
normative standpoint – the exception here being ant i-fascist resistance. The idea of Europe has been
more connected to the state tradition and elite cul tures than with the politics of civil society. What is
therefore important is that it be disengaged from t he state tradition if it is to be used as a normati ve
idea and a basis for rational collective identities in the modern polity. Without a social dimension t he

European idea will fall into the hands of the natio nalists and bureaucrats. I am not then appealing to
some kind of abstract cultural essence, an 'autonom y of the spirit' (Finkielkraut, 1985) or what Jan
Patocka (1983, p. 23), following in the footsteps o f Husserl, calls 'a concern with the soul around
which the project of the life of Europe is crystall ised' with its roots in Platonic metaphysics. Nor d o I
find adequate the view, expressed by President Vacl av Havel of the Czech Republic in a speech to the
European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1994, that Eur ope needs 'a spiritual or moral dimension' which
would be capable of articulating an identity and th e recreation of charisma. Though broadly agreeing
with Havel's plea for a non-technocratic European i dentity, I wish to take issue with those who regard
the normative basis of collective identity as resid ing in the contents of culture or the project of
modernity as the unfolding of the great promises of the Enlightenment, a notion that has been
formulated by Gorbachev (1987, pp. 197/8): 'Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals" is a cultural
historical entity united by the common heritage of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, of the great
philosophical and social teachings of the nineteent h and twentieth centuries.'
To speak of Europe as an 'invention' is to stress t he ways in which it has been constructed in a
historical process; it is to emphasise that Europe is less the subject of history than its product and what
we call Europe is, in fact, a historically fabricat ed reality of ever-changing forms and dynamics. Mos t
of Europe is only retrospectively European and has been invented in the image of a distorted
modernity. Moreover, the history of Europe is the h istory not only of its unifying ideas, but also of its
divisions and frontiers, both internal and external . Since the idea of Europe is not a mysterious
substance floating above the real world of society and history, I shall attempt to show how it is
interpolated in concrete configurations of power an d their geo-political complexes.
Defining Europe is then fraught with problems, for Europe is a protean idea and not something
self-evident. It is erroneous to regard Europe as m erely a region for the simple reason that it means
different things to different people in different c ontexts. Europe does not exist any more naturally t han
do nations. It is like most of our political vocabu lary, constituted by history and, at the same time,
constitutive of that very history. European identit y did not exist prior to its definition and codific ation.
It is a doubtful construct anyway given the apparen t irresolvable conflict of national cultures and
oppo-sitional collective identities. Unifying myths of integration should be viewed with scepticism
unless they unambivalently accommodate diversity. I n the present context what I wish to emphasise is
that the idea of Europe was constructed with strate gic goals in mind and the 'reality' that it designa tes
is also used strategically. The sociological concep t of a 'discourse' can help to explain this: Europe
cannot be reduced to an idea, an identity or a real ity since it itself is a structuring force. What is real is
the discourse in which ideas and identities are for med and historical realities constituted.
In contextualising the idea of Europe, I intend to demonstrate that the idea of Europe is a
historical projection, a universalising idea under the perpetual threat of fragmentation from forces
within European society; it is essentially the unif ying theme in a cultural framework of values as
opposed to a mere political norm or the name for a geo-political region. It can be seen as the emblem
and central organising metaphor of a complex civili sation. But Europe is more than a region and
polity, it is also an idea and an identity. In the following chapters I shall outline the historical p rocess
in which the idea of Europe was constituted as a cu ltural frame of reference for the formation of
identities and new geo-political realities. My aim is to trace the process through which Europe became
first a cultural idea and then a self-conscious pol itical identity. The linchpin of my critique is tha t in
this transformation, and in the cultural shifts acc ompanying it, the idea of Europe always remained
tied to ethno-cultura! values which have had a reif ying effect on collective identities. It will also
become apparent that the idea of Europe failed to b ecome a cohesive collective identity, for instead o f
a European identity configurations of national iden tities formed. Most discussions on the European
idea fail to distinguish between the idea of Europe and European identity as a form of consciousness.
The idea of Europe existed long before people actua lly began to identify with it and to see themselves
as Europeans. What we need to know more about is ex actly how Europe became established as a
reality for knowledge – a cultural idea – and how i t subsequently lent itself to power.
Since the distinction between Europe as an idea, id entity and reality is crucial to my argument,
some further preliminary conceptual clarification i s required. It may be helpful to conceptualise this
with the help of the metaphor of the football game: the ball is Europe, the players the identity proje cts
and the pitch the geo-political reality on which th e game, in this instance the discourse, is played. This
analogy also underlines my contention that the idea of Europe is never totally controlled by any of th e

players in the field; it occupies the cultural-symb olic space which is competed for by collective iden ti-
ties. The European idea is quite simply a political football. But, to take the metaphor further, it is not
without its referees, for the social reproduction o f reality also involves a normative dimension; that is,
it can be linked to a moral dimension which has the power of critical self-reflection.
Though I am principally concerned with Europe as an idea, it is important to see clearly the
three levels of analysis that are involved in the t heory of the 'invention of Europe'. As an idea Euro pe
is a kind of regulative idea for identity-building processes. The idea of Europe is a cultural model o f
society, a focus for collective identities. Castori adis (1987) has written about the function of the
'imaginary' in the constitution of society. 'Social imaginary significations' are part of every societ y and
in particular, in the present context, the 'central imaginary'. The point at issue is the manner in wh ich a
society imagines itself in time and space with refe rence to a cultural model. This is not unlike what
Anderson (1984) has called an 'imaginary community' to describe the national ideal. The idea of
Europe should, however, be seen as an even higher d egree of abstraction than the national ideal.
Following Durkheim, I believe it can be seen as a c ollective or social representation encompassing
within it a heterogeneity of cultural forms (Moscov ici, 1981, 1984). Social representations are not
merely reproductions of reality, they are also pres criptive and serve as regulative ideas for the
formation of collective identities.
However, when cultural ideas become part of politic al-identity building processes they can
become ideologies. By ideology I mean an all-embrac ing and comprehensive system of thought, a
programme for the future, and a political doctrine for the mobilisation of the masses. 'When a
particular definition of reality comes attached to a concrete power interest, it may be called an
ideology' (Bergerand Luckmann, 1984, p. 141). Ident ities become pathological once they take on the
character of a dominant ideology and the individual can no longer chose his or her identity. When this
happens identities become life-lies: identities sta bilise as objective forms of consciousness. In othe r
words identities become vehicles for the reproducti on of dominant ideologies. National identity,
sexism, sectarianism and racism are examples of reg ressive forms of identification with authority:
identities become reified and anchored in the state , gender, church and colour. Identities can also ta ke
on a pathological form when they are constructed ag ainst a category of otherness (Fabian, 1983;
Oilman, 1985). Instead of identity being defined by a sense of belongingness and solidarity arising ou t
of shared life-worlds, it becomes focused on opposi tion to an Other: the 'We' is defined not by
reference to a framework of shared experiences, com mon goals and a collective horizon, but by the
negation of the Other. Identification takes place t hrough the imposition of otherness in the formation
of a binary typology of 'Us' and Them'. The purity and stability of the 'We' is guaranteed first in th e
naming, then in the demonisation and, finally, in t he cleansing of otherness. This is frequently what
the pursuit of community really is about: the impos ition of otherness in the assertion 'we are differe nt
from them'. The defining characteristic of the grou p is not what its members have in common but in
what separates them from other groups. By this I do not mean to suggest that difference is somehow
bad. Identities are always relational and what matt ers is not the representation of the Other as such but
the actual nature of the difference that is constru cted. The issue then is one of diversity or divisio n:
self-identity by the recognition of otherness or by the negation of otherness; solidarity or exclusion .
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 (Keen, 1986; Hal l, 1992; Harle, 1990; Larrain, 1994; Neumann
and Welsh, 1991; Neumann, 1992; Said, 1979; Young, 1990).
The concept of identity must be further differentia ted into the levels at which identity is
possible. It is important to distinguish between pe rsonal and collective identities. While a collectiv e
European identity existed (at least as part of elit eculture) in some form since the sixteenth century,
European identity as part of personal identities di d not exist until the late nineteenth century thoug h it
had gradually evolved since the Enlightenment. In t his period the idea of Europe became reflected in
the personal life histories of individuals as well as movements.
Much of what is being called 'European' is in fact reconstructed, and in many cases thinly
disguised, nineteenth century imperialist ideas (Ne derveen Pieterse, 1991). One could even go so far
as to argue that there is a similarity between pres ent-day experiments with European identity and late
nineteenth century attempts at consciousness-raisin g by means of a social imperialism and jingoistic
nationalism. In both cases the result is the same: the postulates of political discourse are withdrawn

from critique and scrutiny by being reified into of ficial cultures. Oppositional currents, sub-culture s
and regional and social movements are alienated in the appeal to a meta-community: Tor a part of the
public the abstract symbols presented by the variou s administrative agencies may become a stereo-
typed substitute for rigorous thought about their o wn and others' social needs' (Edelman, 1964, p. 62) .
The idea of Europe was mostly derived from 'above' and not from 'below' in concrete forms of life and
political struggles. It has principally been the id eology of intellectuals and the political class. As such
it has tended to be a counter-revolutionary ideolog y of the elites, those groups who claim to be the
representatives of society. It is in their language that the idea of Europe has been codified. Intelle ctuals
generally play a leading role in the shaping and co dification of collective identities (Giesen, 1993).
Today, more than ever before, the discourse of Euro pe is taking on a strongly ideological
character. In this transformation Europe becomes pa rt of a hegemonical cultural discourse. Elevated to
the status of a consensus, the idea of Europe, by v irtue of its own resonance, functions as a hegemon
which operates to produce an induced consensus – wh ich is less a compliance with power than
acquiescence and helplessness – with which a system of power can be mobilised. By a 'hegemon' I
mean, following Gramsci (1971), the manifold ways i n which consciousness is structured in the
soliciting of consent. In the battle of ideas, a si ngle system of thought becomes hegemonic. The rule of
the hegemon is rule by a form of consent that does not question its own presuppositions. A world is
created which is experienced as objective; it is so mething that is given, taken for granted, unalterab le
and self-evident. As a hegemon Europe is a self-enc losure, a coherent subject-matter, a system of
thought. It is not something that can easily be cho sen or rejected, for it itself structures the field of
choices and the epistemological framework in which it is articulated. Thinking, reading and writing
about Europe are the
The Ambivalence of Europe: A Theoretical Introducti on 7
intellectual modalities of power through which Euro pe is constituted as a strategic reality and a
subject of knowledge. Europe thus exists as a sub-t ext which sets the terms for the construction of a
field of representations. As a philosophy of histor y, the idea of Europe serves as a meta-norm of legi ti-
mation for the pursuit of a strategy of power. It s erves as a substitute for the complexity of modern
society, which is characterised by differentiation and abstractness (Luhmann, 1982; Zijderveld, 1972).
One of the tasks of a critical theory of Europe is to demonstrate that cultural and political diversit y and
the heterogeneity of social milieus lie beneath the dominant ideology. The task of the sociologist is to
inquire into the process by which realities are con structed out of ideas and to demystify the power of
symbolic names; to disentangle the complex web of i nterconnections by which identities become
linked to relations of power. It must also be recog nised that the dominant ideology, the hegemon, is
never entirely a monolith but is fraught with tensi ons and contradictions, for where there is consensu s
there is conflict. The dominant ideas are never con trolled by any single ruling elite and can be used to
subvert power. So the European idea is not just onl y a hegemonic idea; it should be seen as a totalisi ng
idea that collapses at the point of becoming hegemo nic.
Europe is more than an idea and identity; it is als o a geo-political reality. One of the central
characteristics of Europe as a geo-political entity is the process in which the core penetrated into t he
periphery to produce a powerful system of control a nd dependency. It was colonialism and conquest
that unified Europe and not peace and solidarity. E very model of Europe ever devised always
generated an anti-model. Europe has tended to be a divisive phenomenon; it is not inherently
connected with peace and unity. It has been a fact of European history that every attempt made to
unite the continent occurred after a period of majo r division. This presupposes a theory of the
historical regions of Europe. It will suffice here to remark that Europe is not a natural geo-politica l
framework but is composed of a core and a number of borderlands which are all closely related to the
eastern frontier. To a very significant extent, muc h of the 'unity' of Europe has been formed in relat ion
to the eastern frontier and it has been possible on ly by violent homogenisa-tion. Unlike the western
frontier, which has been a frontier of expansion, t he eastern one has been a frontier of defence and h as
played a central role in the formation of European identity.
There is another aspect to the discourse of Europe which bears on the present context. The idea
of Europe shares with the idea of the nation, or na tional identity, the characteristic of obscurantism .
Though the idea of Europe rarely evokes the same de gree of irrational reverence and deification that
the ideal of the national community can demand, it is also ultimately based on an obscurantist
interpretation of community: a fantasy homeland tha t goes hand in hand with a retrospective invention

of history as well as a moralisa-tion of geography. Underlying this are unifying narratives of origin
and destiny. The difference is that in the case of the idea of Europe it is the mystique of civilisati on
that is cultivated and reinforced by myths of high culture. Europe can be viewed as a discursive
strategy which is articulated by shifting signifier s in relational contexts. In other words, what must be
analysed are the reference points of the European i dea rather than its cultural content. This is becau se
there is no real tradition of Europeanism in the se nse that we can speak of a tradition of statehood o r
nationalism. Today such an 'invented tradition' is clearly in the process of invention with the
proliferation of a paraphernalia of emblems and slo gans of the new official culture. It must not be
forgotten that the nation-state is also not the uni fied and autonomous entity it is often portrayed to be,
but is characterised by the same divisions with whi ch Europe is often equated.
Taking Gellner's (1983) argument that nationalism c ame into being to serve society in the
process of industrialisation with a culturally unif orm mode of communication, it could be argued that
the idea of Europe is today fulfilling this role. T he new politics of Europeanism is very much a
product of the media and is exhibited in life style s – food, advertising, tourism, satellite TV – and
technocratic ideologies and not in the emotionalism of nationalism. The idea of Europe quite simply
does not have the same emotional attachment of the nation. To take an example from history. After the
Risorgimento, when Italy was united in 1861 (withou t the knowledge of most Italians) one of its
architects, Massimo d'Azeglio, in a famous phrase, said 'we have made Italy, now we have to make
Italians' (Hobsbawm, 1991b, p. 44). The situation i s not very different today: Europe has been united,
but those elusive citizens, the Europeans, have yet to be invented.
The idea of Europe has all too often been erroneous ly seen as a cosmopolitan ideal of unity and
an alternative to the chauvinism of the nation-stat e. My thesis, in contrast, is that it must be viewe d in
the global context of world-views and the nation-st ate, far from being its enemy, is in fact the
condition qf its possibility. The European idea has in fact reinforced rather than undermined the
ideology of nationality. As Karl Mannheim (1979) ar gued, many cultural ideas which embody Utopian
impulses do not always transcend the society with w hich they are ostensibly in conflict but become
ideologies.
When we contemplate the vast range of books, monogr aphs and political manifestos that all
bear the word Europe in their titles, it is difficu lt to deny that there is an element of mystificatio n in
the idea of Europe. It projects the language of the life-world and political struggles onto the macro-
dimension of a community of states by the invention of a mega-community. The result is not genuine
internationalism but a socio-technical framework fo r the exploitation of scarce resources and the
pursuit of unrestrained economic growth. We find th at the idea of Europe is becoming the driving
force of strategies of macro-political and economic engineering, and, above all, the substitution of a
new goal, closely linked to the neo-liberal politic al programme, for the traditional social democratic
programme. It is a unifying theme which links the m acro-level of economic and global frameworks to
the cultural reproduction of the life-world and enh ances the steering-capacity of the former. The most
important task for Europe today is the articulation of a new idea of Europe which would be capable of
providing an orientation for a post-national Europe an identity. Rather than being the leitmotif for 'd is-
organised capitalism' (Lash and Urry, 1987) the Eur opean idea should, if it is to be anything, be the
basis of a new politics of cultural pluralism.
At this point I should like to clarify a theoretica l presupposition implicit in what I have been
arguing. Essential to a sociological theory of the evolution of modern political culture is a vision o f the
structures underlying shifts in collective identity and their regulative ideas. By structures I mean,
essentially, the state, economy, culture and societ y. When we survey the history of the European idea
it can be seen how it was always articulated in ter ms of the first three. Europeanism generally signif ied
some notion of political unity, be it that of the H oly Leagues and alliances of Christendom, the
Concert of Europe or the European Union. This state -centred model was in modern times closely
linked to the pursuit of economic interests. It is also connected with militarism in the sense of Euro pe
as a security agenda. Europe has also been seen as a product of culture: be it that of scientific-
technological culture, bourgeois high culture, or t he present-day attempts to invent a European offici al
culture. Europeanism has rarely been associated wit h the politics of society in the sense of 'civil
society' or the 'public sphere' understood as a dom ain distinct from that of the state. If Europeanism is
to have any sense at all, this is the model that it should be based upon and not one that uses collect ive
identities as props for macro-institution-building. The discourses with which the idea of Europe has

been connected -Christendom, civilisation, the West , imperialism, racism, fascism, modernity – are
ones that are based on matters that have little to do with the real experiences of life. The official and
codified version of European culture has nothing to say to the silent Europe of minorities. Not
surprisingly the charisma and enchantment that it l acks is filled by nationalist and racist ideology a nd
the new politics of materialism. So exactly where t he space for identity formation is to be created is a
crucial question for the future. It is certain, how ever, that it is not to be found in the sphere of t he state
and its administrative and ideological apparatus. O f relevance here, and which I think will seriously
challenge the possibility of a European identity, i s the fact that in recent times post-national ident ity is
increasingly focused more on collectively mediated goals than on totalising visions of unity. Post-
national Europeans do not see themselves as bearers of the whole, be it the totality of the nation or
Europe, but as citizens whose identity is formed by their interests. If this is so, then a European
identity, unless it is to be a contradiction in ter ms, could only be formed on the basis of intractabl e
disunity and the democratic pluralism that this ent ails.
An important theoretical problem concerning the ide a of Europe is its relationship to the claims
of European culture to universal validity. In other words what is the normative status of the idea of
Europe? A book on the idea of Europe cannot escape this thorny philosophical issue. It must be said at
the outset that while I have heavily drawn on Fouca ult's (1980a; 1980b) notion of discourse and Said's
(1979) concept of cultural construction, I hope to avoid some of the well-known theoretical pitfalls o f
their works. My approach is also inspired by the so ciology of Max Weber who attempted to provide a
theory of 'Occidental rationalism' (Schluchter, 198 1). Rather than circumventing the issue of
universality by means of cultural relativism, I sha ll attempt to present a working hypothesis of a
concept of universality that does not open itself t o the Eurocentric fallacy. The idea of Europe, I ha ve
argued, is essentially a cultural value as opposed to a concrete form of identity. As a cultural value it is
not in itself a normative postulate. Values are not the same as norms. The latter are closer to ethica l
principles and can claim to be uni-versalisable in the sense that we can expect them to be of binding
force (Habermas, 1984, p. 89). Values, in contrast, are particularistic, they do not carry the same
claims to universal validity that we attach to norm s. The problem that this presents for the idea of
Europe is not whether universal ethical principles exist, but whether they are embodied in European
culture.
The equation of the idea of Europe with political i dentity-building projects has resulted in a
distorted idea of Europe. This is because the idea of Europe, since it became an institutionalised
discourse in early modern Europe, served as a kind of legitimation for the politics of the secular and
territorial state. Now, legitimation presupposes a normative standpoint by means of which power
becomes legitimate authority. In usurping the place held by Christendom, the idea of Europe came to
acquire the aura of a normative standard of civilis ation, but this ultimately was a reification of eth ical
postulates. The concept of a universal Church was t hus preserved in its heir, Europe, which espoused a
secular ideology of progress and a philosophy of hi story. As the geo-political name for a civilisation ,
Europe also signified its cultural value spheres. T his, as I shall argue in the following chapters, wa s
possible because of the tension between the two fun ctions of the idea of Europe: as a geo-political
name and as a cultural framework. As a result of th e enduring conflict between West and East,
Christendom and Islam, Europe failed to devise a ge o-political framework capable of uniting
European civilisation with a common set of values. Ever since the Muslim expansion of the eighth
century, much of Europe lay under non-European rule . After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 as
much as one quarter of European territory lay under Muslim rule and after the advance of the Red
Army in 1945 one third of Europe lay under the Russ ians, who have traditionally been perceived as
non-European. Europe, as a civilisation, perpetuall y under threat from outside forces, particularly on
its eastern frontier, evolved a cultural ethos whic h tended to attribute to its own structures of
consciousness a uni-versalistic dimension. With the opening of the western frontier after 1492 and its
subsequent path to world mastery, the idea of Europ e increasingly signified a universal culture and
European modernity was supposed to be the agent of universality. With the exception of China, the
only cultures that ever challenged this were eventu ally either defeated or assimilated.
It is a mistake, as Ernst Troeltsch (1977) argued, to conflate universal structures of
consciousness with any one particular culture. This is the essence of Eurocentricism as an ethno-
cultural project. Whether or not universalis-tic st ructures of consciousness have been more
institutionalised in western European culture – whi ch clearly transcends Europe as a geo-political

region – than in non-European cultures is not the i ssue. Habermas (1984, p. 180) has cogently argued
this point:
The uni versalist position does not have to deny th e pluralism and the incompatibility of
historical versions of 'civilized humanity', but it regards this multiplicity of forms of life as limi ted to
cultural contents, and it asserts that every cultur e must share certain formal properties of the moder n
understanding of the world, if it is at all to atta in a certain degree of 'consciousness awareness' or
'sublimation'. Thus the universalist assumption ref ers to a few necessary structural properties of
modern life forms as such.
It is important that these minimal conditions be se parated from the idea of Europe. To suppose
that the idea of Europe is itself a universal norma tive standard would be to relate it to a kind of
'cultural violence' (Galtung, 1990). By this I mean the violence that is contained in a cultural world –
view which claims to be in possession of a single u niversal truth. Pertinent to this issue is the thes is,
developed in Chapter 5, that European culture was n ever adequately secularised and that consequently
the idea of the universal survived as a cultural ab solute, an 'essentialism', in the Europe of the
territorial and secular nation-states. To invoke Eu rope often involves the illusion that there is a
privileged 'We' who are the subject of history and a corresponding belief in the universality of weste rn
norms. Europe becomes a mirror for the interpretati on of the world and European modernity is seen as
the culmination of history and the apotheosis of ci vilisation. The most common form in which this
exists today is an highly ambivalent 'anti-racism' which, in appealing to some allegedly self-evident set
of abstract rights, is selectively deployed as an p retext for western triumphalism and does not
recognise that there is a profound 'antinomy betwee n universalism as regards human beings and
universalism as regards human beings' "cultures'" ( Castoriadis, 1992).
The thesis I should like to propose, then, is that it is important that the idea of Europe be
separated from universal ethical validity claims di sguised as an essentialist ethno-culturalism. The i dea
of Europe, ostensibly a geo-political concept, is a cultural model, a cultural construct, and as such
cannot claim universal validity. It is an unreflect ive category of cultural reproduction. While it can be
connected to the moral dimension of society, it its elf is not a moral concept. Moreover, in so far as
battles for legitimation crystallise in the idea of Europe, the effect can only be one of distortion, a
reification of the moral space. The idea of Europe then inevitably becomes a basis of division and a
strategy for the construction of difference. The po liticisation of the idea of Europe in fact amounts to a
definition of Europe not as what its peoples have i n common but in what separates them from the non-
European world, and, indeed, very often amongst the mselves. It is this definition of Europe, which
inevitably results from its political hijacking, th at should be avoided.
At this point the notion of universality must be fu rther clarified. Universality does not mean
uniformity and the intolerance that this necessaril y implies, but can refer to plurality and differenc e.
As I have already argued, difference is not in itse lf bad so long as it is not a question of the negat ion of
otherness. Universality can refer to a notion of ot herness than includes rather than alienates the Oth er.
It is for this reason important that what I would c all the 'project of autonomy' be disengaged from th e
dominant social representations that have until now prevailed and be more firmly connected to
normatively grounded ideas. A model of citizenship based on participation and solidarity is crucial in
this respect. I shall be arguing that the notion of European post-national citizenship is a more
important ideal than that of 'European unity' and c ould offer a more normatively based reference point
for a European identity.
The idea of Europe is not, then, without ambivalenc e. It is Janus-faced: on the one hand, an
exclusivist notion of Europe has prevailed; yet, on the other the idea of Europe does appear to occupy
the normative space for a universalist project of a utonomy. By deconstructing the myth of the unity of
European culture, I hope to be able to open up a cr itical perspective for a theory of citizenship whic h
no longer appeals to atavistic myths and cultural c hauvinism. So what needs to be clarified is the
moral universalism that is implicitly connected to the idea of Europe. There is enough within
European history with which the idea of Europe can be associated, such as a strong tradition of civil
society and anti-authoritarianism. It must, however , be recognised that even these enlightened
traditions are not specifically European but transc end the specificity of cultural traditions.
The structure and argument of the book reflect this critique of the universalist claims of
European culture. It is written in the spirit of a radical intervention into the debate on a European
identity and the attempt to fashion an artificial i dentity out of what should perhaps be best left as a

cultural idea. The unifying theme in the book is th e deconstruction of the 'Eurocentric fallacy', the
implicit association of the idea of Europe with uni versally valid norms and the myth of unity. The cru x
of the problem is the relation of Europe as a cultu ral idea to concrete forms of collective identity-
building and its structuring in the geo-political f ramework which we call Europe. What is also at stak e
is the relationship of cultural identity to politic al identity: the historical process whereby Europe was
constituted as a cultural idea and transformed into a political identity. Above all the failure of thi s
identity to constitute a collective identity capabl e of challenging national identities is my theme.
I can now state a central hypothesis. A theory of t he invention of Europe seeks to explain how
the idea of Europe becomes attached to processes of collective identity formation, which reinforce the
dominance of the centre over the periphery. By a 'E uropean identity' I mean essentially, by definition ,
a collective identity that is focused on the idea o f Europe, but which can also be the basis of person al
identity. I shall attempt to outline the historical constitution of the discourse of Europe in the fol lowing
chapters by reference to these three levels of anal ysis: Europe as an idea, identity and as a reality. The
variables in this are language, religion, conscious ness of history, nationality, the frontier, materia l and
aesthetic culture, and law/citizenship. The structu res to which these are linked are the economy, the
state, culture and society. From a normative-critic al point of view, I shall be arguing for a restruct uring
and re-imagining of the European idea, which should be located on the level of society, so that we can
speak of a 'Social Europe' as opposed to a state-ce ntred Europe and link it to citizenship as a normat ive
basis of collective identity. Very schematically, I shall link the idea of Europe to five discourses w hich
can be seen as its 'crystallisations': the discours e of Christendom, the Enlightenment discourse of
civilisation, the late nineteenth and early twentie th century discourse of culture, the Cold War
discourse after 1945 and the contemporary conflict between the discourses of Fortress Europe and that
of a Social or Citizens' Europe.
I begin, in Chapter 2, by tracing the genesis and e mergence of the idea of Europe in classical
antiquity and its gradual transformation in the cou rse of the Middle Ages from a geographical notion –
originally linked to the idea of the Hellenic Occid ent – into a cultural idea, but one which,
nevertheless, was subordinated to the idea of Chris tendom. With the consolidation of the idea of
Europe – which I place at the late fifteenth centur y -1 seek in Chapter 3 to relate this new cultural
model to the emerging forms of European identity an d their burgeoning geo-political realities. My aim
is to assess at exactly what stage European identit y became focused on the idea of Europe as opposed
to Christendom. Chapter 4 deals with the enclosure of the idea of Europe in western Europe. Its centra l
argument is that the division between Europe and th e Orient was reflected in an internal division
within Europe and that the eastern frontier – close d after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – was th e
determining factor in the shaping of the idea of Eu rope as the 'West'. It was not until the opening of the
western frontier following the reconquest of Spain and the colonisation of the Americas after 1492 tha t
the broader and more hegemonic notion of the 'West' provided the basis for European identity. Chapter
5 looks at the consolidation of the western system of nation-states and the formation of a political
concept of the idea of Europe as a debased normativ e standard in the Concert of Europe. A central
concern in this chapter, as well as in Chapter 6, i s an attempt to explain the manner in which the ide a
of Europe came to rest on a universalistic notion o f civilisation, constructed in opposition to the Orient
and the conquest of nature, while the idea of the n ation became more focused on the particularistic
concept of national culture. In Chapter 61 argue that European identity is very closely linked with
racial myths of civilisational superiority and the construction of otherness within an adversarial sys tem
of world-views. Chapter 7 proceeds with an argument about the collapse of the idea of Europe: the rise
of the idea of Mitteleuropa, as a competitor, the conditions of total war and th e rise of fascism, which
also competed for the idea of Europe. Chapter 8 con siders the rebuilding of the idea of Europe as part
of post-war reconstruction and its institutionalisa tion as a pseudo-norm in the European Union. In thi s
context the crucial issue is the wider scenario of the Cold War. Chapter 9 is addressed to the
implication of the collapse of the Cold War consens us for the idea of Europe. Its basic thesis is that the
idea of Europe has become part of a new state-seeki ng nationalism that has crystallised in 'Fortress
Europe' and far from being a successor to the natio n-state, Europe, in fact, is a function of it.
Finally, in Chapter 10, by way of a conclusion I ar gue that it is important that the ethno-cultural
idea of Europe be separated from normative consider ations such as the issue of citizenship. Political
and legal conceptions should not be made out of unr eflecti ve cultural identities. When such
unreconstructed cultural ideas are translated into institutional practices by political identity proje cts,

the polymorphous nature of reality will ensure thei r divisive application. The only way out of this
would be to replace the largely unreflective idea o f Europe based on self-identity through negation an d
exclusion with one based on autonomy and participat ion. Only by means of a commitment to a post-
national European citizenship can the idea of Europ e be divested of its cultural ambivalence. Since a
collective European identity cannot be built on lan guage, religion or nationality without major
divisions and conflicts emerging, citizenship may b e a possible option. Given the obsolescence of the
Cold War idea of Europe, there is now a greater nee d than ever before for a new definition of
Europeanism that does not exclude the stranger. A c ollective identity based on citizenship could be a
starting point for such a reappraisal of the Europe an idea. I am suggesting then that the politics of
Europeanism should be seen as an incomplete project in which there can be both regression and a
potential for social learning.