Imagining Europe: Introduction

2019

2007

The interrelated dimensions of social, national and supranational identity are closely connected to !he: consciousness of a social belonging, 10 the memory associated with this sense of belonging, and to the social representations of the groups and the physical and sociopolitical conlCxt in which they are and where they ~inter-act." Bcc.ause these dimensions innucncc expectations for the future and intervene in thc construction of the social reality both in the group and in the context, they are also closely connected to thcir transfonnations. This paper descri bes how the identity projections of subjects, anchored in a proximal! distal way to their own country and!or LO the EU, and the geopolitical tendencies of subjects, obtained by the polarity index in relation to North, South, East, West, organize the representations of Europe's territory into clusters and mosaic pieces of images of Europe. It discusses in a cross-cultural perspective some of the results we obtained from data collected on a sample of2 ,251 university students from 10 different cuilural backgrounds, using some of the instruments employed in the questionnaire created for the EuroSkyCompass research program (de Rosa, 2002-2(03). These also included an attitude scale towards European countries, the response to a semistructured question about countries that are considered close to becoming EU members and the EuroSkyCompass (de Rosa, O'Ambrosio, 2005a, 2005b) and the representational system in which the EU is inserted (Nation, Europe, World) (de Rosa, d'Ambrosio, Bocci, 2(05). The EuroSkyCompass is a projective tool of a graphical and associative nalUre , inspired by the MultidimensionalldentilY Model (de Rosa, 19%). It is designed to survey identity projections (the subjects "Selr) in dynamic relation to their own coun try, the EU, and their favourite country in a graphic space characterized by the geopolitical represemations evoked by the stimuli North, South, East and West.

​ Letter to Jane​ , Jean­Luc Godard and Jean­Pierre Gorin's project of 1972, offers an analysis of the relation between image and politics that was to be an important topic for the many forms of cultural and visual studies coming afterwards. The author revisits it in connection with contemporary theories on image and narrative, among which the works of Jacques Rancière. The project proves to still be of interest because it has something to say about the way in which our regimes of truth are constituted through changes in the image and its perception.

The conference's main focus is on ‘Otherness and the construction of identities’ (be they geographical, ethnic, political, religious, cultural, or social), while the underlying theme requested of the papers is ‘the perception and representation of the enemy’. Contact with the Other, as well as the fear of difference, are highly topical subjects of reflection: the distorting visions they express have, for too long, greatly affected peoples' civil life and their individual and collective imaginary. Three sessions are planned, in keeping with the conference’s multi-disciplinary approach: the first session encompasses the Histories of Art, Cinema and Photography; the second concerns History; the third Literature. The papers may be related to the Middle, Modern, or Contemporary ages. The aim of the conference is to investigate the origin, the circulation and the consolidation of cultural discourses that generated stereotypes and ideas concerning otherness – often aberrant and discriminatory ones – and thus we invite submissions of papers related to the analysis of figures who have been subjected to exclusion and depersonalisation, perceived as belonging to 'Other Worlds' to be denigrated, colonised, converted, and/or obliterated: Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Christians, Dissenters, Turks, Blacks, savages, foreigners, ‘enemies’, ‘infidels’. Papers that may shed light on the perception of Europeans in texts and images produced by non-European cultures will also be accepted. Satire and the various forms of violence perpetrated at the expense of other and different cultures, express - as the obverse sides of the same coin - the anxiety but also the fascination and myths created regarding places and peoples that were/are unfamiliar or ‘remote’. Particular consideration will be given to contributions focusing on mutual influences and on different forms of contamination and hybridization: appropriations of stylistic features and models of the other within the cultures of origin, as well as the diffusion (or imposition) of values, paradigms of knowledge, practices of representation from the hegemonic cultural centre outwards. The conference also intends to investigate and deconstruct what is hidden behind the labels of ‘enemy’ or the Other, and encourages the adoption of innovative and cross-cultural research perspectives, privileging, when possible, less explored areas and connections.

Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Cutlure, 1850-1930, 2021

Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe was increasingly conflated with race. The essays in this book document this reality but also seek to modify and qualify it by exploring anomalies, complexities, and contradictions, in line with recent postcolonial theory (co-presence and interaction as well as domination) that emerge when seen from the perspective of the fine and applied arts. Within this volume, the nineteenth-century terminology will be used defining ethnography as cultural and anthropology as physical or biological. The vocabulary of race, ethnicity, tribe, and nation is understood to be historically contingent and will be discussed in individual essays. These chapters evaluate artists who responded to ethnographic and anthropological information (from racial sorting to identity politics) by producing images or objects that adopted, altered, or critiqued that information. The artists discussed here had various interactions with the field: some were friends, colleagues, or partners of ethnographers, others illustrated ethnographic publications, and all were familiar with some of the literature. This book presents a range of different voices that resisted or facilitated practices of ethnic othering to which ethnography and anthropology contributed. In some cases, such as Christian Schad's portrait of Agosta and Rasha, both directions remain in tension. The Norwegian Carl Arbo and the Russian photographers of the Turkestan Album and the Types of Nationalities of Central Asia, however, produced constructions of physical and cultural racism, while the Austrian painter Leopold Carl Müller, the Hungarian designers of the Gödöllö colony, and the Russian illustrators Mikhail Yezuchevskii and Vasilii Vatagin created images projecting multicultural unity that reflected enlightened, albeit self-interested, government policies. Theories of Eastern linguistic origins and migration patterns inspired artists as diverse as Paul Gauguin and painters in Austro-Hungary to visualize the kinship of Occident and Orient in minority populations of, respectively, the Breton Celts and Roma. Indigenous perspectives are represented by the Sámi printmaker John Savio and the "hybrid" Danish-Greenland artist Pia Arke whose art challenges repressive colonial practices and restores lost narratives and identities. A similar agenda informs the work of Berlin filmmaker Philip Scheffner who enables self-representation by the marginalized through interviews with Roma citizens and archival voice recordings of Southeast Asian and African prisoners of war. Our authors seek, overall, to uncover instances of connections, variability, and the fluidity of ethnic identity, subject to geopolitical circumstances and the orientations of those formulating the constructions. They aim to unsettle and complicate monolithic fixed categories and binary structures of racial alterity and to undo the certainties of ethnic categorization. Affiliations and Networks There are many compelling historical reasons to consider these particular countries and ethnic groups collectively, apart from their exclusion by Said in his book Orientalism (1978). To begin with, their geopolitical identities from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries were frequently in flux, presenting an array of shifting alignments, interrelationships , and ethnic diversity. Norway had been a

2016

Common Ground Publishing LLC, Champaign, Illinois, USA, 2010

Europe as a Mental Project. A Question of Europe The session explores how Europe is a mental project with the basic of European mental tropes of preference to tradition; historical identity; role of subject; worth of science; elementary chains of continuity and instances of dislocation; systemic character of thinking and contingency of thought; and apotheosis of the whole and of disjointed fragment. There is an emphasis on essence or on the surface tissue of events. The authors address the problem of the evolution of relations obtaining between identity mechanisms and moral stances. Keywords: Europe, Identity, Character of Thinking

Collegium antropologicum, 2008

Questions of diversity and multiculturalism are at the heart of many discussions on European supranational identity within contemporary anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, linguistics and so on. Since we are living in a period marked by the economic and political changes which emerged after European unification, a call for a new analysis of heterogeneity, cultural difference and issues of belonging is not surprising. This call has been fuelled by the European Union's concern with »culture« as one of the main driving forces for constructing »European identity«. While the official European policy describes European culture as common to all Europeans, Europe is also seen as representing »unity in diversity«. By analysing contemporary European MEDIA policies and programs this article attempts to contribute to a small but growing body of work that explores what role »language« and »visual images« play in the process of constructing European culture and supranational European identity. More specifically, the article explores the complex articulation of language and culture in order to analyse supranational imaginary of European identity as it is expressed through the simple slogan »Europe: unity in diversity«. We initially grounded our interest in the politics of identity within the European Union within theoretical frameworks of »power and knowledge« and »identity and subjectivity«. We consider contemporary debates in social sciences and humanities over the concepts of »language«, »culture« and »identity« as insepaamong others) argue that concepts of »culture« and »identity« signify a historically variable nexus of social meanings. That is to say, »culture« and »identity« are discursive articulations. According to this view, »culture« and »identity« are not separate fields from economic, social and political issues, on the contrary »culture« and »identity« are constructed through social, economic and political relations. Issues of »language« and »images« are central to both of them. By questioning the role that »language« and »visual images« play in the construction of European identity and culture, we are considering »language« as well as »visual images« not just as representations, but also as forms of social action. In addition to that, inspired by discourse theory () we explore the libidinal dimension of identification processes. We focus on the European MEDIA Programme in order to analyse how different languages and images are being used to create a sense of »European unity in diversity«. Along with Stavrakakis we argue that due to the lack of libidinal investment into discourses of Europeanness, Europe is failing to create a strong supranational identity. However we also show that there have been recent attempts by European policy makers to try and fill this gap through various projects which focus entirely on emotions; which appears to reinforce new possibilities of identification with Europe.

Creativity Studies, 2018

To artists, border is not just a physical reality imposed on the landscape by political forces, but also a subject for imagination and creativity, representation and visualization. Presentation of migration, refugees and growing new ethnic and religious communities is important for visual arts. Our task is to discuss the correlativeness between the new form of city bordering and reterritorialization and their materialized visual image, to reflect the balance between claims of difference and sameness and the dynamics between dominant perceptions and refugees’ self-representations. Nowadays in the media, we deal with the Debordian spectacle which reduces reality to an endless fragmentation, while encouraging us to focus on appearances. Thomas Neil notes that the migrant has become the political figure of our time, and migrant phenomena invite us to rethink the fundamental political, cultural and art philosophy. It is important to reveal the interconnections between new discourses and ...