What Does Europe Want?: The Union and its Discontents
Language: English
Pages: 202
ISBN: 1908236167
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Despite the fact that the European Union faces the biggest crisis since its foundation, on July 1st, 2013, a new state joined the club. For the foreseeable future, Croatia will probably be the last to join; at the same time creating a barrier between the once connected states of the Balkans. Paraphrasing Freud's famous question - 'What does a woman want?' - one of the greatest European philosophers of our day, Slavoj iek, joins forces with the young Croatian philosopher, Srecko Horvat, to examine the burning question 'What does Europe want?'. Instead of a peace-project, the European Union is increasingly turning into a warzone: whether it be the expulsion of immigrants or riots in Paris and London, or European interventions to bring "more democracy" to Libya or Syria. Instead of leaving Europe to the enemies, iek and Horvat reflect on the fight for a different Idea of Europe; one that embraces all its peoples equally.
tradesmen developed from a small and despised group into a powerful force not only influencing social relations or even architecture, but first and foremost – social time. What is, according to Le Goff, the hypothesis of the trading activity? Exact timing: the accumulation of supplies in anticipation of famine – buying and selling at optimum moments. In other words, what Le Goff wants to show is that – before the emergence of usurers – in the Middle Ages, time still belonged to God (or to the 13
should do today is to repeat the famous slogan ‘Danke Deutschland’, but of course, in a cynical manner. When Germany recognised Croatia as an independent state in December 1991, a Croatian singer performed a song under the title ‘Danke Deutschland’ on national television. Although the kitschy song actually wasn’t very popular in Croatia, it clearly shows the prevailing atmosphere: this was the time when many villages and towns in Croatia had a Genscher Street or a Genscher Square, named after the
ongoing ‘war on terror’ presents itself as the defence of the democratic legacy, it courts the danger clearly perceived a century ago by G.K. Chesterton who, in his Orthodoxy, deployed the fundamental deadlock of the critics of religion: ‘Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church … The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any
(including his former lover) accused of letting 300 Jewish women die in a burning church. Common to all these films is that the roles become less and less clear as the story develops. The best example is The Night 62 in the l and of blood and money Porter, where thirteen years after the concentration camp, Lucia meets Maximilian again, who is now working at a Vienna hotel; instead of exposing him, she falls back into their sadomasochistic relationship. The relationship is what Primo Levi –
would take if it were to form the government? What to do about reaching agreements with the Troika, how to fight high unemployment, how to resolve the crisis? The explosion of unemployment and the demolition of the social state are something more than side effects of the crisis. They are the goals of a policy which is has being implemented in Greece, and is gradually being promoted to other ‘weak’ countries in order to deliver the most perverse neoliberal fantasies. The Left, which brings together