The Self and the Other: Europe as a Provocation for Cultural Competence

 

International colloquium, Brussels, 21 March 2012

 

Time: 21 March 2012, 9 AM to 4 PM

Venue: European Parliament, Kleiner Delegationssaal, PHS 1C51

Languages: English, German

Contact: Marc Walenta, Email, Tel. 02-7387660

The Self and the Foreign within the cultural diversity of Europe is a common asset derived not from itself, but rather in the construction of similarity and difference. Similarity does not mean accordance or identity. If we assume similarity, we have at the same time characterized a specific difference – in other words, that which is foreign.

If such a thing as a pattern of European identity can be characterized, it would without doubtless emerge from the tension between similarity and difference. If such a thing as an educational task for Europe could be formulated, the development of European consciousness would have to position itself in the context of that tension. Classical examples are self-realization and self-distance as preconditions for being able to accept the foreign in ourselves and in others. This is indeed a not inconsiderable demand, since it refers to the independently thinking human being (Norbert Elias). Europe as a place of reference is especially suited to promote such a process of realization, which ultimately involves the simple realization that the other is not better or worse, but simply different. In this respect, European consciousness is unthinkable as something nationalistic or identity-specific.

The EU Commission, in its programmatic text for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue in 2008, identified emotional competency and intercultural sensitivity as the foundation for that event. Intercultural dialogue must however also include sensitization for dominance-controlled, asymmetrical communication. That refers not only to classical power relationships, but, especially in the European context, to the relationship of majorities and minorities. The question of equal rights, socio-economic integration and cultural autonomy is however generally determined in the national context. In most European societies, discrimination and social exclusion of certain minorities exists: an extreme form, even extending to open racism and persecution, is however particularly the situation of the Roma minority in central and eastern European countries.

In order to deconstruct dominance-controlled, asymmetrical communication, counter-images of free spaces are necessary, which can be described as “third places”, and which represent a common point of reference in communication. Such points of reference can include art (border transgression, spaces of freedom), education (knowledge as a subjective appropriation of the world), philosophy (world knowledge), religion (common experience), and human rights.

Let us examine two such points of reference in the discussion in the colloquium: art and human rights.

“Art in the sense of an intercultural dialogue is a medium of communication, and is at the same time communication per se. Its mediatory dimension emerges from the fact that it is both the result and the trigger of societal processes based on the production and reception of artistic works and concepts. Due to this necessary connection, it is more than ‘merely’ art. This ‘more’ is its ‘other’, which results from the fact that society does not reflect itself artistically in its entirety; were to do so, there would no longer be any such thing as art. The aesthetic modes and strategies of socialization – economic, political, institutional – are however the elements and structures of reality which art seizes upon in order to bring forth its own reality.

“As a ‘lingua franca’, art does not abide by any firmly established grammar. Rather, it refers a variety of grammars to one another, the rules of which, in their interconnection, also open up a large number of possibilities for exclusion of the intended ideas and concepts. Not all can be verified by all, nor can they, in every respect, even by their own. Nonetheless, for precisely that reason, continuities of the histories of art and of life are formed which can be experienced as agreement about commonalities and/or differences in manners of perceiving the world – i.e. communicatively. Such agreement promotes consciousness about limits and – connected with it – the horizons of validity of one’s own mind.” (Wolfgang Siano, Brussels 2010).

“Human rights are rights of resistance against forms of injustice and oppression … . Fighting for human rights means not losing sight of the fate of the individual human being, but at the same time, too, of the political structural framework in which the life of the community is carried out. There are no liberties unless those who are free fight for the freedom of those others who are being denied those liberties.” (Friedrich Schorlemmer, Brussels 2009).

Within the European Union, the human rights of that European minority known as the Roma are being massively violated in some countries. The annual reports of the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in Vienna regularly contain information about massive racist persecution and violence against the Roma. The expulsion of Roma from certain countries, such as France or Germany, is part of the permanent scandal of the violation of human rights within the EU. The point is not only to expose the issue of this scandalous reality, but also to take the initiative to realize cultural autonomy, respect and recognition, as a provocation against hypocrisy and victimization.

We would like to invite you to contribute to deepening this intercultural dialogue at our colloquium on March 21, in a free discussion, and certainly, too, with demonstrative action, with a view toward the two points of references stated here – art and human rights.

B. Daiber , L. Thorn, R. Kulke , M. Walenta

 

Please register with Marc Walenta: walenta@rosalux-europa.info

 

 

Sources:

Friedrich Schorlemmer: People are Central - Universal Human Rights and the European Left, Brussels 2009

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Wolfgang Siano: Considerations on art as a "third place," and as a "lingua franca" of intercultural dialogue, Brussels 2010

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