Orientalising America? Continental Intellectuals and the Search for Europe's Identity

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and rising scepticism about the prospects of the European Union, this article looks at recent attempts by prominent German intellectuals to turn the tide by endowing Europe with a new sense of mission. It is argued that while the crusading writings by Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck and Thomas Meyer on the political identity of Europe effectively criticise cultural essentialism, technocratic anti-politics and classical Eurocentrism, they are still caught in the trap of a binary moral geography. To varying degrees, their polarising ideological narratives seek to freeze authoritatively the meaning of `Europe' by expurgating its Other, which is now `America'. Partly motivated by fresh world-political ambitions, the new German ideology aims at a symbolic closure of `Europe' at a time when real-world borders have become increasingly flexible and negotiable.