Europe and Its Others
In recent years we have been hearing European politicians say over and over that Europe is not just a community of economically defined interests but something more—namely, a champion of certain cultural values that should be asserted and defended. But we know of course that in the language of politics “something more” as a rule means “something less.” And, indeed, what European politicians really want to say is that Europe cannot and should not expand unlimitedly, but should end where its cultural values end. The concept of culture defines de facto the self-imposed borders of economic and political expansion, for the scope of the applicability of European culture is thus more narrowly defined as the area of European economic interests. Europe will thereby differentiate itself in relation to Russia, China, India, and Islamic countries, but also with respect to its ally the United States, and at the same time present itself as an internally homogeneous community of values that possesses a specific cultural identity to which those who come to Europe should conform, thank you very much. The question I would like to raise here is not whether such a differentiation, such a definition, of European cultural values is desirable or not. Rather, I would like to ask how exactly are European cultural values defined by European politicians today, and how successfully? Second, what interests me is what effect this demand for European cultural identity has on the arts in Europe. The desire to situate one’s own culture in an international comparison is surely completely legitimate. The question is simply how well this attempt succeeds in Europe’s case. Now, as a rule, European values are defined as humanistic values that have their origin in the Judeo-Christian legacy and in the tradition of the European Enlightenment. European values are generally thought to include respect for human rights, democracy, tolerance of the foreign, and openness to other cultures. To put it another way, the values that are proclaimed to be specifically European values are in fact universalistic, and one could rightly demand that non-Europeans respect them as well. Therein lies the entire difficulty that inevitably confronts those who would