In significant contrast to Richard Gough’s seminar last week, Frank Schulze-Engler’s insights in to the postcolonial status of Europe have been marinated in an ongoing theoretical dialogue.
At base, postcolonial theory provides that the dominant discourse of a Westernised mindset is destabilised in favour of alternative discourses. For Europe, this notion serves not only as stimulation for movement away from Western influences, but also draws on the political arguments for finding postcolonial identity as European states under the banner of the European ‘nation.’
A hybridisation of identities becomes evident and in some ways problematic under this structure, which in turn stirs the irritations that have become associated with the term “Postcolonial Europe”. Schulze-Engler spoke of its ‘awkward’ nature as it pertains to identity, and the issue was further complicated when exploring the function of political institution and the pursuit of utopianism. He went on to explore Functionalism through Europe as a trading power, and although that integrated system complies with such structural and political cohesion necessary for transatlantic power, the drawbacks of Functionalist theory ultimately remain significant concerns for ‘Europeanisation.’
As Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande observe in Cosmopolitan Europe, however, “Europe is not a fixed condition. Europe is another word for variable geometry, variable national interests, variable involvement, variable internal-external relations, variable statehood and variable identity” (6). Perhaps this ambivalence and the ‘variables’ at play render the European condition politically conducive to the utopianism or social harmony that Beck and Grande speak of. According to Schulze-Engler, however, this attempt at pursuing utopianism in Europe is “one-dimensional” due to its disregard for the history, the barbarity, the process of decolonisation, integration of migration, and the unification of culture and space that has carved an ensemble of identities across the continent.
Postcolonialism has had a profound effect on European identity, having groomed individual cultures through the Barbarism and Modernity that have shaped Europe’s past. Paul Gilroy refers to these identities and culture as a “feral beauty,” a force of social progress sweeping through a ‘new’ Europe to establish fresh European cultures (142). Ashley Dawson also promotes the untamed façade of a nation recovering from violent struggle and displacement, through his identification of the postcolonial nation as a “Mongrel Nation.” As Schulze-Engler noted, this transition has seen “a largely realized dream of former enemies becoming neighbours,” and in doing so has promoted citizens towards an identification of oneself as European.
A consequence of Europe’s transition, however, has been the postcolonial ‘melancholia;’ challenging boundaries and offering Europe as a breeding ground for new, culture-based racisms. The status of refugee influx has also been conditioned in this way, bringing to question; who is acceptable to this new nation of nations? For Europe to achieve global recognition and maintain any sort of political cohesion, it must first be open to an acceptance of itself as a multicultural conglomeration of peoples, rich in a diversity of cultures, and retaining an innate desire to remain attached to Europe.
Schulze-Engler, however, poses the question that transcends theory by returning to the people's desire and their values of personal identity and community:
“What kind of Europe do we want to live in?”
References:
* Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity, 2007):2.
* Ashley Dawson, Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2007)
* Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (New York:Columbia UP, 2005): 142.
excellent response, detailed and critical - HD
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