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http://ptx.sagepub.com

Political Theory

DOI: 10.1177/0090591707310095 2008; 36; 152

Political Theory

Craig Borowiak

Press, 2007. 270 pp. $22.95 (paper)

(In Theory), by Roberto Dainotto. Durham, NC: Duke University

Manchester University Press, 2006. 206 pp. $74.95 (cloth). Europe

Beyond the Nation-State, by Patrizia Nanz. Manchester, UK:

2006. 224 pp. $19.95 (paper). Europolis: Constitutional Patriotism

and translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press,

Review Essay: The Divided West, by Jürgen Habermas, edited

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152

Volume 36 Number 1 February 2008 152-160 © 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/0090591707310095 http://ptx.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Author’s Note:I would like to thank Nilgün Uygun and Rachel Van Tosh for their helpful suggestions.

Theorizing Europe

and its Divisions

The Divided West,by Jürgen Habermas, edited and translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2006. 224 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Europolis: Constitutional Patriotism Beyond the Nation-State,by Patrizia Nanz. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006. 206 pp. $74.95 (cloth).

Europe (In Theory),by Roberto Dainotto. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 270 pp. $22.95 (paper).

The idea of a unified Europe evokes both anxiety and hope. For some, Europe signifies economic prosperity, postnational democracy, and interna-tional rule of law. For others more skeptical, Europe is deeply implicated in hegemonic agendas and forms of domination, past and present, internal and external. As depictions of “fortress Europe” play out against countervisions of “cosmopolitan Europe,” the significance of Europe’s divisions has become more pronounced. Questions loom about whether internal differ-ences will be an obstacle or a resource for Europe’s potential, and if the very project of unification doesn’t generate yet new divisions and margins. This essay reviews three recent books that address Europe, its divisions, and their role in the contemporary political imagination.

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Borowiak / Theorizing Europe 153

Iraq. Part Two addresses the challenges of European unification and the possibility of “core Europe” serving as a counterpower to the imperial poli-cies of the United States. Part Three consists of a single wide-ranging inter-view on war and peace. The book concludes with a long essay entitled “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” On Habermas’s own account, this final chapter formed the basis for draw-ing the other writdraw-ings together as a way “to throw light on” the relation between the constitutionalization of international law and the goal of European unification (p. xxiii).

Many of the book’s themes will be familiar to readers of Habermas, including his constitutional patriotism, his commitment to public law and deliberative procedures of democratic opinion and will formation, and his push for European unification as part of a postnational politics. At least six of the eight chapters have also been previously published, four of them in English. Even so, it is useful to read these chapters together in a single volume, especially given the way they tend to reference one another. And unlike Habermas’s other works, which tend to demand a lot of readers in terms of theoretical background and familiarity with his corpus, this book’s topical, political character, as well as its mixture of interview and essay for-mats, make it relatively accessible even for nonspecialists. What emerges from the book is a rich picture of Habermas as an engaged public intellec-tual whose philosophical positions thoroughly inform his interpretations of political events.

The most original contribution in this volume is Habermas’s conclud-ing essay in which he reconstructs Kant’s cosmopolitan project in terms of the constitutionalization of international law. Habermas accepts the nor-mative thrust of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, but instead of associating the “cosmopolitan condition” with a world federal republic, he advances a fairly conventional vision of multilevel governance. He differentiates between the

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Habermas takes the emergent European Union as themodel the rest of the

world should follow (pp. 109, 177). As the editor of The Divided West

suggests, for Habermas the EU represents the crucible within which the key experiments in cosmopolitanism are being conducted (p. xvii). This is particularly evident in the earlier chapters of The Divided West.

As in his previous writings, Habermas argues for European unification as a model way to deal with globalization and the “postnational constella-tion.”The Divided West adds to this the call for a unified Europe capable of “throwing its weight onto the scales” at the international level in order to counterbalance U.S. unilateralism. In this respect, this book is a sign of the times: it involves a shift from the globalization debates of the 1990s and early 2000s to the post 9/11 debates about U.S. imperialism and its ramifi-cations for international law and justice.

Using his vision of constitutionalized international law, Habermas gives a biting and compelling critique of the “hegemonic liberalism” of the cur-rent U.S. administration. He fears that the moralizationof international pol-itics will supersede the juridification of international relations, with dangerous and illegitimate outcomes (p. 116). He argues that security in a complex world is better addressed through a “horizontally juridified inter-national community” that is legally obligated to cooperate, than through the unilateralism of a major power that disregards law (p. 184). He adds that even a “well-intentioned hegemon” can never be sure its policies are suffi-ciently impartial. To be legitimate, claims to impartiality need to be tested against discursive procedures of opinion and will formation (p. 184). For Habermas, this means there is no coherent alternative to a cosmopolitan order that ensures an equal and reciprocal hearing for the voices of all those affected (p. 36). He perceives the EU as a potential source of both cos-mopolitan energies and anti-imperial resistance.

Despite his high hopes, Habermas also recognizes that Europe is plagued by internal divisions. Mindful of these, he turns to “core Europe” as an answer to both the “smoldering internal conflict” over the unification process and the external U.S. effort to divide “Old” and “New” Europe (p. 91). He argues that core Europe must lead the way in developing a common foreign and defense policy as a counterpower to the United States. And if Europe won’t deepen its unification in unison, core Europe should lead the way with a Europe “at different speeds.”

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Borowiak / Theorizing Europe 155

cannot be imposed from above, his ostensible anti-imperial agenda, and his recognition of the dislocations and inequalities of globalization all poten-tially open into a critical cosmopolitan politics. It is not, however, a politics Habermas fully embraces. Like Kant himself, Habermas seems to project the European experience onto the canvas of the world. Rather than “provin-cializing Europe” within a cosmopolitan dialogue that reaches across regions, cultures, and histories, he re-centers Europe (a region that is an exception in so many ways) as the model to follow and as the hope for perpetual peace. He does so with scarcely a gesture at soliciting other perspectives.

It’s not simply Habermas’s Eurocentricism that I find troubling in this book. It is also his view of Europe. Habermas’s cosmopolitanism at times seems to resemble a hall of mirrors that all, eventually, point back to the very familiar “sources” of modernity: France and Germany. The meaning of “core Europe” fluctuates for Habermas, usually including the Benelux countries and only rarely including Italy and Great Britain. Core Europe, it seems, has its own core for Habermas, as evidenced in his suggestion that France and Germany are “the center” of Europe (p. 81). Habermas does show some sensitivity to Polish resistance to deeper unification. He also rightly points out that leadership does not necessarily entail exclusion. Others can join when they are ready. Nonetheless, while the door may be open, the terms of inclusion seem rather closed. It isn’t clear that the “loco-motive” for European unification isn’t a French and German train rather than a European one. This is to suggest that Habermas’s cosmopolitan and European vision at times seems a little less inclusive and a little less delib-erative than he lets on.

If divisions in Europe lead Habermas to solicit the leadership of “core Europe,” for Patrizia Nanz they motivate a call for mutual learning. In

Europolis: Constitutional Patriotism Beyond the Nation-State,Nanz tack-les the challenge of European integration through what she calls a “dialog-ical” theory of deliberative democracy.

Europolis is divided in three parts. The first part sets up the book with an introduction followed by a discussion of skeptical views on European integration. She reserves her major theorizing for Part Two, where in dis-tinct chapters she develops original positions on the public sphere, multi-culturalism, translation theory, and constitutional patriotism. Part Three involves a major methodological shift as Nanz seeks to illustrate and test her theorizing with case studies of immigrants living in Germany.

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claims that only a culturally homogenous demoscan generate the trust and solidarity necessary for democratic politics (p. 15). She also similarly embraces constitutionalism as a way to generate a democratically legiti-mate European polity (p. 3). However, rather than envisioning an overarch-ing set of constitutional principles rooted in a set of shared political orientations and historical experiences, Nanz imagines a decentered “trans-lational constitutionalism” that stresses the unshared sociocultural perspec-tives within a “pluricentric” Europe (p. 41). Rather than regarding ethical and cultural heterogeneity as an obstacle, Nanz regards it as an “epistemic resource” for solving shared problems.

In the first of her major theoretical chapters, Nanz critiques Habermas’s notion of the public sphere for being too focused on critical-rational dis-course and consensus, and too inattentive to social identities and gender. She also critiques the idea of a singular all-encompassing public sphere. In contrast, she aims to reconstruct a more radical “interdiscursive model” of the public sphere characterized by a “criss-crossing and overlapping of publics.” Nanz contends that the very process of discursively negotiating and translating between different publics can build “dialogical solidarity” across ethical, cultural, and national boundaries without the need for a wider convergence. Her implication is that the “mutual exploration of dif-ferences” can itself provide a sufficient degree of solidarity to sustain European constitutionalism.

From a discussion of interdiscursive public spheres, Nanz moves to debates over multiculturalism. Critically engaging Charles Taylor, Habermas, Jeremy Waldron, and Will Kymlicka, she seeks to navigate between accounts that would essentialize cultural identity on the one hand and those that would trivialize or subordinate cultural politics on the other. In light of what she regards as the inescapably pluralist and dialogical character of identity, she promotes “multicultural literacy” and a “critical politics of multicultur-alism.” Such a politics, she maintains, would argue for the constant possi-bility of transforming identity even as it recognizes the interests that social groups have in sustaining boundaries (p. 42).

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describes how the destabilizing effects of radical pluralism can be counter-balanced by the centripetal pull of “interpretive charity.” Applying this to the European context, she suggests that while the heterogeneity of a polity might open constitutional dialogue to new, challenging perspectives, the effort at mutual translation can generate a common ground for shared con-stitutional identity.

The theoretical chapters of Europolis at times suffer from a lack of

examples and illustrations. Fortunately, Nanz partially compensates for this in the final, empirical section of the book. She chooses to focus qualitative case studies on the experiences of Italian and (to a lesser extent) Turkish immigrants in Germany. She takes such migrants as prototypical cases of decentered selves and as examples of how denationalization can lead to intercultural forms of solidarity and trust. This section of the book fits awk-wardly with the rest. And given the limited scope of her case studies—she conducted interviews with twelve immigrants and focuses on just four—her findings are impressionistic and provisional. It is a gesture more than a definitive statement. It is a welcome gesture nonetheless.

Europolis conveys a deep and admirable sense of the importance of engaging other perspectives and of how diversity can be a resource for democratic politics. The book does, however, suffer from some weaknesses. For Nanz, social life is saturated with plurality and translation. It goes “all the way through” and “all the way up.” While this gives her leverage against critics who regard heterogeneity per seas a reason to reject transnational democracy, it does not provide justification for why we should seek out spe-cific differences. Nanz does suggest that difference can be a source of inno-vation for problem solving, but she does not adequately explain why, how, and under what conditions. She also tends to diminish the agonistic dimen-sion of dialogue. For example, she describes the “emotional fulfillment and intellectual enjoyment of curiosity and learning” that arise from processes of mutual understanding, but she scarcely acknowledges the tensions and ani-mosities that make diversity difficult and commonality appealing.

While Europolis is sophisticated in its theoretical engagements, it tends to be weaker in its analysis of contemporary European politics. Although Nanz is clearly motivated by the politics of a heterogeneous Europe, most of the book’s discussions take place on a very general level, with little cussion of European institutions and little indication of what makes a dis-tinctly European form of transnational dialogical solidarity attractive. To be fair, Nanz’s objective in Europolis has less to do with proposing institu-tional solutions than with effecting a change in the European mindset. She wants to demonstrate the possibility for transnational solidarity where

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others see impossibility. She defends the value of diversity and marginal voices where others see danger and difficulty. It is in this mode that

Europolismakes a useful contribution.

The final book under review, Roberto Dainotto’s Europe (In Theory),

comes at the question of a divided Europe with greater historical depth and from a different discipline (Romance Studies) than the other two. If Habermas explores the progressive political possibilities of a unified Europe, Dainotto invites wariness about the imperial project internal to Europe. And if Nanz encourages European solidarity through an engage-ment with difference, Dainotto illuminates how the image of a unified Europe has been made possible through the differentiation and marginal-ization of the European south. He adopts the ambitious task of reconstruct-ing the history of the idea of “Europe” (and Eurocentrism) from the perspective of Europe’s own internal margins. With intellectual debts to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, he not only critiques common-place characterizations of southern Europe as backward in comparison to austere northerners, he also seeks to shift the geography through which Europe is understood. He challenges the self-assigned prerogative of north-ern Europe to define Europe’s borders and identities (p. 7).

Calling his project a “genealogy of Eurocentrism,” Dainotto describes how in the eighteenth century theorists began defining Europe not through an opposition to non-European others, but by differentiating between Europe’s core and its margins. He singles out features in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theorizations of Europe that have formed what he calls the “rhetorical unconscious” of Europe (p. 8). By this he means the way historical imaginations of Europe continue to exert themselves upon con-temporary European politics and society. For Dainotto, this “rhetorical unconscious” has a distinctly geographical character involving recurrent representations of a backward European south. Eurocentric theories of Europe, Dainotto argues, have entailed the denigration of Europe’s south.

In five rich chapters Europe (in Theory) moves between hegemonic

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Borowiak / Theorizing Europe 159

Readers will find good examples of how Orientalist and colonial dis-courses have been applied within Europe by northern European countries against the Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese south. Dainotto traces how this internal north-south dialectic, which first appears in Montesquieu, recurs first in the French-centered Republic of Letters, and then in German-centered depictions of nationalist Europe. Regardless of whether it is France or Germany that constitutes the core, the spirit of Europe continues to be perceived as located in the north, and the image of a culturally defi-cient and Orientalized European south continues to make the image of Europe, as progress, possible.

While Dainotto’s readings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Mme. de Staël, Hegel, and other canonical figures are informative, the most original and exciting contributions of Europe (in Theory)come out of his presentation of noncanonical voices from Europe’s south. The first such figure he stud-ies is Juan Andrés, an eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuit forced into exile in Italy. Dainotto paints a compelling picture of a remarkable intellectual figure whose ambition to write a history of world literature challenged the Francocentric logics inherent in the idea of a Republic of Letters. Andrés not only decentered the Parisian metropole, he provincialized French liter-ature (p. 108). Against the linear histories of progress—histories that invari-ably culminate in Paris—he produced what Dainotto suggests was a first attempt at comparative literature (p. 6). In his seven-volume history, Andrés credits Arabs as the source of modern literature and as a central influence in the rebirth of modern Europe (pp. 127–28). By implication, he argues that Europe’s south should be regarded as the origin of European modernity on account of its historical connection to the Arab world. While Dainotto recognizes that Andrés’s history was far from flawless, he persuasively uses Andrés to disrupt the hegemonic geographic narrative of European identity and history.

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Amari perceived the Orient as an integral part of European civilization and culture, as part of his own history rather than as a faraway object to be “known, colonized, exploited and administered” (p. 177). Dainotto seeks to recuperate this alternative, Mediterranean-style Orientalism for his own counter-hegemonic agenda. So doing, he not only critiques mainstream denigrations of Europe’s south; he also challenges the critics of Orientalism (in the tradition of Edward Said) who replicate the marginalization of the South by focusing almost entirely upon French and British Orientalist archives. However, in the spirit of subaltern studies, he uses the fact that the history of Sicily’s initial engagement with Islam is largely lost in obscurity to provocatively suggest the virtual impossibility of telling the history of Europe from the perspective of its own southern margins (p. 217).

Europe (in Theory) is a well-written, yet challenging read well worth the effort. Although Dainotto restricts his study to Europe’s southern margins, his approach invites similar studies from other marginal zones (e.g., the Balkans, the extreme north). It would be interesting to see if those other margins are as necessary to the concept of Europe as Dainotto believes the south is.

Aside from occasional brief allusions to contemporary European politics, Dainotto leaves it largely to the reader to identify how the “rhetorical

uncon-scious” manifests itself today. Having read Europe (in Theory) after

Habermas’s The Divided West,it is not difficult to draw some connections. Habermas’s unapologetic vision of a French and German core Europe lead-ing both European unification and a cosmopolitan project appears to be one more site where Europe’s rhetorical unconscious plays itself out. At the very least, one leaves these three books wondering if Habermas isn’t looking in the wrong place and in the wrong way for an inclusive cosmopolitanism.

Craig Borowiak

Haverford College, Pennsylvania

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