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The Erasmus Lecture 2004 Identity in change – a European dilemma?

Whether there is or has ever been such a thing as a European identity of some real substance and what changes that identity, if found to exist, has undergone in the course of history; at what time and why it was lost, if it no longer exists, and why it cannot be said ever to have existed at all, are questions which are among the favourite subjects of a certain kind of after-dinner speech and the welcoming or concluding addresses at academic – and indeed, of late, also political – gatherings. The fact that these questions are thus frequently dealt with in a branch of oral literature that is not above suspicion does not mean that they are devoid of importance or should be avoided in serious contexts. It seems clear, on the other hand, that they can be treated with intellectual honesty only if formulated in such a way that the answers can be determined, in the first place, by a clear choice of criteria for establishing identity and difference, but also by an equally explicit and clear choice of the geographical and chronological perspectives in which the application of these criteria is to take place. It is obvious that the broader the chosen historical perspective, the narrower in range are those elements of European life and history that can be said to have retained a minimum of identity over time. If you adopt a truly multi-secular perspective, one which still has room for what a French thinker has aptly called les grands récits, ‘the great tales’, the myths of peoples and tribes engaged in founding, migration, conquest and defeat, it must be admitted that a very modest identifiable identity remains. Likewise, the observer who insists on referring to the whole area, which is today called Europe, and also on contemporaneousness, is likely to find a meagre catch in his nets, were it only because time and change travel – or at least, travelled, in a not too distant past – at very different speeds over that vast area.