European identity

Within the framework of start-up funding by the Leibniz Association, a third-party project proposal was to be prepared, based on the following design: In the project, discursive references to Europe will be examined on the material of German and Polish history and geography books with the aim of making visible the outlines of a non-categorical European semantics, which is assumed to constitute the framework of a new kind of flexible-modern European identity formation.

It is postulated that while national semantics centers on membership in an (imagined) community and consequently on categorization phenomena according to the us-them scheme, contemporary European semantics must exhibit different patterns. Under the conditions of globalization, the construction and maintenance of large groups becomes more difficult. The plurality of one's own social affiliations is experienced more and more intensely to the point of shifting attention from belonging to the state of being of the self during the constant change and permanently occurring translation processes. It can be assumed that such discursive phenomena as a polycentric structuring of social reality, blurring or crossing of boundaries, cross-categorization, construction of social reality as dynamic and changeable, subject-centeredness instead of group-centeredness, change of perspective or multi-perspectivity constitute the cornerstones of a non-categorial semantics in which contemporary European identity is grounded.

Following on from the questions posed by the Leibniz Research Network "Historical Authenticity", particular attention will be paid to the extent to which the flexible-modern constructions of subjects in the European context come across as "authentic". "Authenticity" is understood in a first conceptualization as embeddedness in the lifeworld experience horizons of the subjects. In this sense, the abstinence with regard to a European "we" could be interpreted as meaning that "Europe" is an identity project that, compared to the "nation," grants the individual more autonomy in experiencing his/her social anchoring.