European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

176 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYpossession of European culture and that constantly leads to the reconsiderationof acquired ideas, values or principles; the assertion of adifference that will consist precisely in not rejecting one´s own difference;a nucleus of general values or a second level cultural nucleus, or astructure of meaning capable of incorporating the cultural configurationswhich appeal to dynamics contrary to standardization. It is not a messagemade of Europe but the very fact of transmitting this message.Most of the analyses I have previously referred to threaten toconsider the content and unity of European culture as the result of anabstract intellectual process, and not as a comprehensible reality withinsight or within the perception of the owners of that culture. If the ideaof Europe remains abstract, the adhesion and identification ofindividuals is impossible. I believe that Europe cannot exist if it does notsubjectively exist for individuals and that Jean Monnet´s conceptualization(“Our union is not made of States but of people” 6 ) shouldbe made much more operative. I would like to go back to thedefinition with which I began this presentation, which comparesEuropean identity to a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, a kaleidoscopethat can be built in many ways, with one single flat lens or withnumerous pieces of glass, which allow other types of images.Authors such as Camilleri have written that in order to found Europeanidentity it is necessary to reverse the ordinary way of reasoningabout what matters in culture. This will only occur and produce results ifa subjective mutation leading individuals to foster their basic feeling ofbelonging to the “Europe” group and to reorganise their currentaffiliations is produced in such a way that it becomes an active trendcapable of consolidating the group and finally creating the “us”perception.This idea has compelled us to wonder how the feeling of belongingto Europe can actually emerge, beyond political co-operation,bureaucracy and language learning. This question has forced us toenter the realms of Social Psychology and Sociology and to search fortheir theoretical frameworks, their methodologies, etc. ... concerningthe primary and secondary types of belonging to Europe, the factorsthat facilitate or hinder the process of joining the “supranation” andthe mechanisms thanks to which the representations of the potentialreality called Europe or European Union determine specific behavioursand attitudes.6Speech. Washington, April 30, 1952.