The current state of affairs in Europe, with its challenging amount of humanitarian, economic, social, and geopolitical crises, has become a central concern in current academic debates, and given renewed significance to the question of European cultural identity. In light of the recent “Brexit,” which took place just one day before the release of this new volume, this question seem to be of an even greater pertinence. “The State of Europe” considers how tensions between national and supranational, colonialist and colonizer, settler and nomad reveal themselves in the European mentality, and how they relate to differing ideas of memory, community, and identity. What does it mean to be “European” within such a complex framework?
“The State of Europe” thus delves into the tension-fraught spaces in which the question of “European-ness” is often problematic. This volume investigates how literature and literary practices can help rethink the idea of European community; what role literature and art can play in reconfiguring, critiquing, or subverting the narratives that shape them.
Main Articles
Iain Chambers | Europe, Where Are We Now?
Abstract and PDF
Christoph Parry | Rethinking Europe: Overcoming National Confines in Twentieth-Century Literature
Abstract and PDF
Susanne C. Knittel | The Ruins of Europe: Milo Rau’s Europe Trilogy and the (Re)Mediation of the Real
Abstract and PDF
Anouk Zuurmond | Shared Stories and Creative Dissonances: How Can Literature Contribute to Current Reflections on European Identity?
Abstract and PDF
Masterclass
Talitha Hunnik | Countering European Aphasia of the Porajmos: Dites-le avec des Pleurs as Autoethnography
Abstract and PDF
Niels Springveld | Europe Degree Zero: Community, Inoperativity, and Storytelling in Pieter de Buysser’s De keisnijders
Abstract and PDF