Sandra Ponzanesi
Utrecht University, Netherlands
Is Europe a dead political project, as political philosopher Étienne Balibar provocatively
wrote in the Guardian on 25 October 2010, addressing the Greek
crisis; or is it an unfinished adventure, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman more
utopically auspicated in his book Europe: An Unfinished Adventure (2004)?
What is the point of Europe?
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris on the satirical French magazine
Charlie Hebdo (7 January 2015), in which more than a dozen people
were killed and the Syrian refugee crisis, the question is whether Europe
still has any function in responding to global frictions. In the light of contending
regimes that operate transnationally, such as fundamentalism versus
democracy, religion versus secularism, solidarity versus xenophobia, Europe
would seem to be in search of a common ground that can realign its self-representations
with the reality of a rapidly changing society. This is a society in
which other traditions, lifestyles and crises ask for a revision of the very notion
of Europe as more accommodating and encompassing of differences as well as
offering new forms of solidarity