Apr. 2 Jean Monnet Distinguished Lecture

Paradoxes and Paroxysms: Nationalism, Migration, and the Dream of Cultural Identity – Reflections from the Southern Fringe

Print

Prof. Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
2018 Jean Monnet Distinguished Lecture

Time: 5:00--6:30pm
Location: 509 O’Brian Hall, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy
Date: Monday, April 2, 2018

Professor Michael Herzfeld, who has done extensive fieldwork in Greece and Italy, will ask why, at a time when Grexit (Greece’s proposed exit from the European Union) never happened but Brexit may well take place, issues like the “Macedonian Question” and the autonomy of Catalonia and Scotland continue to render elusive the search for a common European identity.  He will argue that this search actually represents a political rhetoric that is inherently and demonstrably divisive.  Given the rapid erosion of clear geographical, cultural, and even genetic definitions of “Europe,” the “idea of Europe” looks increasingly parochial, a desperate attempt by countries formerly dominating the world to recreate their hegemony more locally, while the “fringe” countries that bear the brunt of this process are increasingly responding to such developments with populist versions of 19-century romantic nationalism and with attendant claims to magnificent histories as the bedrock of an idealized European identity.  By asking how these tensions play out in the intimate spaces studied by anthropologists, the speaker will argue that only by recognizing itself as fundamentally a bureaucratic rather than a “cultural” institution – and at the same time committing itself to the creation of a more inclusive, unrestrictive, and above all educationally activist politics – can the European Union realistically expect to avoid catastrophic implosion, repressive autocracy, or both.

More information about the lecturer may be found at the Jean Monnet Chair website.