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On-line seminar report - Cultures and Identities in Europe - Part II

coopALER

ITALIAN VERSION

The event Cultures and Identities in Europe is an online course, available from 24 February 2020. It was realized thanks to the contribution of: Anna Triandafyllidou (Full Professor at EUI), Sabrina Marchetti (Associate Professor at Venice University) and Jeremie Molho (Research Associate at EUI). The course is divided into 3 weeks, this short report summarizes the second one.

The main topic of this week is how Europeans remember their past and construct their heritage.

The way Europeans remember the past has changed through time. After 1945, in the West, European history was understood as the sum of separate national histories. It was represented as a progressive and unitary march from antiquity to modernization. Social movements spread in the 60s and 70s, challenging this idea. They started rewriting it from the perspective of those repressed: women, the working class, colonized and black people.

Today, things have changed. Any understanding of European heritage has to balance unity with diversity. So, what kind of  past and heritage fit with this present?

The writing of history has become public and participatory. We can see history everywhere. In an interconnected world, people can become agents of their own history. But, what does public history mean? History is no longer a given told by some experts and archives in museums. The past is constructed through a process that involves people, communities and nations. European cultural heritage can be imagined as a house with many rooms inhabited by people residing in Europe. This house provides different ways to interpret the world around us and it allows us to communicate with other people living in it.

The following contribution is given by Dominique Poulot (Full Professor at Paris 1 – Sorbonne University) who discusses the distinction between memory and history. From his perspective, in the European history there was a development of critical history during the 18th century, focused on the analysis and on the archival material. However, around the beginning of the 19th century the art of memory was changed, and this new form had no longer direct relation with the past.

For example, historical national museums built in the 19th century show the birth of nations and, at the same time, the growing liberty of the people. Each country has its own history to tell, but we can say that this kind of museum is typical in Europe, such as the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Jasper Chalcraft (Research Fellow at Sussex University) explains why cultural heritage can be contested. There are two main ways: the first is when different groups take different views of the past and represent them in different ways. The second is contesting the very notion and the idea of cultural heritage itself.

One of the main problems is that the notion of heritage is often used by those in power to legitimate their vision of the past. In practical terms, this means that for the groups with less power it is very difficult to challenge those official views. Think about the Holocaust, and the way it is represented. For example, the memorial in Berlin commemorates only the Jews, the main group persecuted by the Nazis, but still not the only one. And this is a case in which a group – let’s say the roman – has been excluded from national histories.

Gerard Delanty (Full Professor at Sussex University) answers the question of whether we can speak of transnational heritage. He distinguishes the notion of transnational heritage from the notion of global or universal heritage and stresses its intercultural dimension.

Transnational conception of heritage does not refer to something that is necessarily universal in the sense of over and above other memories and heritages. The meaning of transnational is more cultural than global, it refers to something that arises from different cultures, different histories. The dimension of the culture is quite important. In his current work, he is trying to highlight that transnational heritage refers to entangled memories, entangled histories. It concerns those points of intersection where one culture intersects and becomes entangled with another.

UNESCO is a great example of intangible heritage. However, he does not fully agree with the conception of heritage embraced by UNESCO. In his view, it is mostly the result of competitions between nations, so it promotes mostly national landmarks.

Monica Sassatelli (Associate Professor at Bologna University) introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a spectrum ranging from political norms to cultural practices. She defines cosmopolitanism as a disposition to cultural diversity, the ability and willingness to experience diverse cultures. She argues that Europe needs to develop this disposition.

She gives the example of the Venice Biennale, which is important in this perspective because it is a cultural event that changed and grew over the decades. In the Biennale, the notion of cosmopolitanism can be seen, directly or indirectly. Thanks to this art event, a lot of artists had the opportunity to represent what was happening in their countries. In fact, every year, national pavillions are increasing and even if the system is aged, more and more countries want to be represented.

By Jasmine Faudone

Europe Direct Emilia Romagna Trainee

See more here on this partnership