>Europe, as it is conceived nowadays, is purely political and
>economical. Until "we" speak the same language from Madrid
>to Warsaw, it will remain that way. I don't think it's going
>to happen anytime soon...and call me reactionnary, but I'm
>not looking forward to that day.


no, but i don't know why "we" speaking the same language is the index of "we" belonging to the same culture. does that mean the swiss, the spanish, the belgians etc don't have a common culture?

the notion that a common language is what constitutes a nation is so 19th century, not to mention has proven deeply problematic. while i was searching around for info on le verlan, i found a with a list of a slew of minority languages, including ones i'd never heard of. now, you might say that some of them are pretty close to standard french, but are they closer than dutch is to german?

i mean, i don't know what you mean by common territory, but europe surely has geographical boundaries that have contained a shared cultural space. and as for history, France may have been existence for 400 years -- though i thought y'all harked back to Clovis, ha ha -- but was there a system to make everyone learn french before napoleon? and what about giving algerian jews french citizenship, i mean what is the idea of france there? or a person of pourtugese or arab descent in the banlieus?


>>beyond that, of course there are commonalities in europe
>>beyond their economic systems. i mean, there was a europe
>>culture before capitalism. for one example, there was a
>>time when through out europe, latin was the language of
>>learning.
>>
>
>...of the elite. More precisely, the political and
>economical elite. Just as English is the corporate language
>of choice nowadays.

yes, and no. more precisely the language of science, philosophical inquiry, high art etc. i mean, martial was from spain. but this ignores the enormous effect of latin on "vernacular" languages. and that's just one example. and btw, i know from anglophone colonies that english culture has indeed given me something in common with jamaicans and nigerians. i would not hesitate to speak of global english literature, and neither do most critics.



>>and i would even say that on one hand, you can say the
>>industrial revolution is an english invention -- though
>>isn't it a product of the scottish enlightenment? -- but you
>>could also say it's a child of the renaissance or the
>>protestant reformation (weber?). and the fact that it
>>spread like wildfire through europe but took a much longer
>>time to take root beyond says something about the common
>>european culture.
>
>...of the elite. I mean, yeah, the kings in Spain, Austria,
>France and wherever else were blood-brothers. Does it mean
>Kant is the product of the same culture as, say, Voltaire?
>
>But I'll be honest and admit I would lie if I said I've
>never wondered about it myself. There are indeed common
>traits after all, which can be summed up by saying that
>Western Europe as a whole did put the world in the fucked up
>state in which it is now. I just refuse to see that as the
>product of a common "culture". Or even worse, a common
>ethnical background. I like to think it's the result of a
>privileged geographical situation

well, you can't just refuse tho. i mean, culture matters. bc it wasn't just geography, or the experience of the adjacent lands under the eastern orthodox church wouldnt have been so different. and the adoption of ideas on technology or democracy in the non-western world would have also been different. the meiji reformation is unique. and think of protestantism spreading like wildfire or voltaire holing up all over europe and corresponding with catherine the greak and frederick, i mean the renaissance and the enlightenment were pan-european.

now, you may say that harold bloom is unpleasantly ideologically motivated when he makes a book called the western canon, but the thing is that unpleasant ideology is not new, it's pretty old, and it's amazing the extent to which what is considered canonical has been stable.

yo, i think that the eu should hire me to write advertising copy. ha ha