Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

26 Bernhard Giesen
against strangers, even against alleged ‘enemies of the people’. Thus the a priori of
collective identity seems to be indispensable for the idea of democratic sovereignty.
If European politics is to be grounded on a democratic conception of sovereignty it
cannot escape the question as to what is demos (Eder and Giesen 2001).
Cultural heritage as the foundation of the European
demos
Referring to a past revolution is, however, not the only way of constructing the
pre-constitutional demos. It can also be grounded in culture and communication,
in language and religion. National identities have been successfully built on the
assumption of a pre-politically given cultural unity, on the assumption of a common
language and common folkways. And – despite its internal diversity of languages
and religious confessions, of regional folkways and national traditions – Europe,
too, can claim such a common cultural heritage carried by intellectuals, by monks
and artists, by philosophers and scholars, who, in periods of internal conflicts
and crisis, appealed to an embracing unity of Europe in contrast to the scattered
political map. This cultural construction of Europe was always a matter of relatively
small intellectual elites the members of which communicated in a non-vernacular
language – mostly Latin – across the boundaries of political territories. Since
Augustinus’ famous distinction between the two cities, the tension between the
mundane realm of politics and the otherworldly realm of religion and culture has
been a distinctive mark of European culture. The distinction between imperium
and sacerdocium, between earthly power and heavenly salvation, between mundane
reasoning and the transcendental order were among the core oppositions that
shaped and structured the European discourse about politics and history and were
embodied in the conflict between pope and emperor. Neither realm was conceived
as independent from the other. Instead the transcendental order claimed to
transform politics and history and the political order claimed to be grounded
in eternal and sacred foundations. The cultural construction of Europe, too, was
patterned by this axial age tension between history and transcendence: it was carried
by intellectuals and grounded in spheres that transcended mundane politics, but it
challenged the existing political order or justified claims to power (Eisenstadt 1986).
Thus, the cultural construction of Europe tended to exceed the range of political
authority and to reach out for a universal mission.
But the cultural idea of Europe did not only embrace the fractioned and divided
realm of politics. It also claimed the unity and continuity of a heritage that by itself
was based on ruptures and discontinuity. Historically, the power of the European
cultural movement emerged mainly from its ability to absorb and to include, to
assimilate and to merge seemingly inconsistent symbolic elements into an embracing
unity. While the intellectuals’ call to unity was rarely able to overcome political
feuds and cleavages, it was rather successful in blending cultural diversity and
ruptures into the unity and continuity of a tradition.