Ideas of Europe: Civilization and Constitution

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses two aspects of the representation of “Europe” as a historical subject that are bound to prove controversial: its relationship to universality, and the conditions of its becoming democratic as a polity. The paradox of “European identity” is that it conceived of itself as the particular site of the invention of the universal and its revelation to the world. A dialectics of recognition through the confrontation with the Other was always involved (above all in the colonial form), but it must pass now from projection to exposure to alterity. In that way a planetary construction of the universal can include a decisive contribution from Europe as one of its “provinces.” Democratizing democracy itself via the invention of a trans-national “co-citizenship” would be an element of this contribution. This is the object of a “material constitution” of Europe already on its way, but still lacking a clear representation of its “constituent power.” Debates on the absence of a European demos and the positive conditions for a federal government have shown that it will require a deconstruction of the notion of “sovereignty of the people,” separating its insurgent dimension from its function as a legitimation of the monopoly of violence, which was closely associated in nation-states with the legal guarantee of individual subjective rights.