Lisbon: European and the making of 'the common'

by Alessandra Galerano

ETYMOLOGICAL THOUGHTS

I’ve always loved etymology. Let me try to use etymology to describe an experience I lived some time ago. This experience was:

CHALLENGING: from O.Fr. challenge, “fight”, meaning “calling to fight”

ENRICHING: “making wealthy”, from O.Fr. enrichir, from en- "make, put in" + riche "rich"

STIMULATING: 1526, "stirring to action," from L. stimulationem (nom. stimulatio), from stimulare "prick, goad, urge," from stimulus "spur, goad"

Believe me or not, it was neither a fight, nor a competition. Nor did it make me a millionaire, otherwise I doubt I would be sitting in Perpignan writing my dissertation.

It was a conference, an international conference called Europe and the making of ‘the common'.

It was challenging, because for the first time, it ‘made me enter the field’, not the battlefield but my research-field. Also, it served as test-bed for my research topic.

It was enriching because I felt personally and academically richer through it as the conference resulted in an extremely productive ‘synergic network’ (I love this expression!) of researchers.

Finally, it was stimulating, because it gave me the stimulus (the spur) to act, i.e. to write, to question, to investigate further.

Take up the challenge!

Alessandra

Special thanks go to the University of Perpignan for co-funding my participation in the conference, to the IFL of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and, of course, alla sfavillante Lisboa (grazie Tabucchi!) for making this possible.

European Identity in the Making?

Lisbon and Liverpool as ‘European Capitals of Culture’

Alessandra Gallerano*

University of St.Andrews (UK), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (PT), Université de Perpignan (FR)

alessandra.gallerano@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

In the current debate on the question of legitimacy in the EU, increasing attention is paid to the role culture and cultural policies play in the shaping of a so-called ‘European identity’. This largely depends on the growing sense that culture is a privileged medium for the articulation of citizenship, the latter extending beyond its legal status into the broader notion of participation as condition of empowerment. Within this theoretical framework, the present paper aims at analysing one of the EU’s emblematic cultural actions, i.e. the European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) programme, as concretization and example of the dynamic and evolving process of identity making in the EU. The ECOC programme is thought to lend itself very well for this type of analysis: not only is it a perfect example of efforts by the EU to promote unity through diversity, but it also shows how the very idea of Europe and European identity is constructed discursively, depending on the historical, social and economic context of interpretation. Following a brief assessment of the evolution of European cultural policy in recent years, the paper focuses on the case of Lisbon94 and Liverpool08 as ECOC. The two cities provide the basis for an interesting comparative and diachronic study, in that they both represent, at the level of rhetoric and practice, attempts to re-inscribe the periphery (not only in geographical but also in socio-cultural terms) into the centre (i.e. Europe), using Europe as resource. What emerges from the field research carried out in the two cities, is indeed the fact that Europe becomes a financial and symbolic source for regeneration, but also a frame, or better said, an arena for the debating, thus the making, of multi-level identity(ies). Rather than viewing Europe and its cultural identity as something given or artificially constructed, an analysis of cultural policies as identity policies therefore offers the possibility of (re)thinking European identity in post-national terms, and (re)thinking Europe as a dynamic and ongoing project of cultural democracy. The critical issue, however, is whether participation in a broader European polity can provide the basis for a truly inclusive social and communicative European space. The challenge, as proved and further problematized by the results of the present research, stays open.

Key Words: European identity • European citizenship • Cultural policy • European Capitals of Culture

* M.A. student within the Erasmus Mundus framework