European Culture in a Changing World Between Nationalism and Globalism

In the words of Ezra Talmor: To deal with European Culture in a Changing World is to deal, in fact, with the reciprocal relation between Politics and Economics on the one hand, and Culture on the other. In an era when economic forces are pushing towards European Economic Unity or towards the Globalisation of National Markets it is rather difficult to demarcate the role of Culture. While the European Narrative may have been written by Monnet, De Gaulle, and Adenauer, the Global Narrative is written by an unknown author or rather by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand. On the one hand the postmodernist claim that the Grand Narrative is dead is given the lie. A Grand Narrative is now being written not by Philosophers but by Managers of Multinationals. The Foucauldian "ça parle" (it speaks) is instantiated by the anonymous authors of the Global Narrative. The question to be asked is: What will happen to the rich mosaic of National European Cultures? The answer to this question is not only a matter of National Memory and National Identity, it is also a matter of the sources of cultural creativity. L'Europe de nations may have been the theatre of endless national wars but it was also the cradle of a very rich mosaic of national cultures. The point is: how will creative genius adapt to the two new trends - European Unification and Globalism? This volume brings together essays by leading scholars in a myriad of disciplines, all of which attempt to shed light on these issues.Contributions by:Nicholas Perdikis, Shari L. Boyd, William A Kerr, Sylvia MacPhee, Marcela Cristi, Anu Randveer, Martti Randveer, Viljar Jaamu, Vello Vensel, Anatoly Zotov, Warren Breckman, Douglas Moggach, Malgorzata Bogunia-Borowska, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Eric W. Ruckh, Avron Kulak, Kevin P. Spicer, Bernard Zelechow, Dorothy M. Betz, Robert Stanley, Rosemary Gray, Jean-François Thibault, John Danvers, Ewa Macura, William A. Everett, Armand Singer, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe