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Toomas Hendrik Ilves

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Martin M. Simecka

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Articles

Europe talks to Europe: Towards a European public sphere?

Introduction

The European integration project has made the discussion about transnational spaces for cultural and political debate acute. Can there at all be a common Europe without a pan-European public sphere, where potentially common values and ideas can be formed and transnational political institutions can find their legitimacy?

The public space or sphere, die Öffentlichkeit, is by no means constituted by media alone, but newspapers, journals, television, and radio (digital or not) are among its most important manifestations. In this context, the lack of a European public space is manifest. Not so long ago, Timothy Garton Ash confessed that if he wants to reach "the widest European intellectual audience, the best way is to write an essay in the New York Review of Books." Is this the only option?

Europe talks to Europe


The European integration project has made the discussion about transnational spaces for cultural and political debate acute. Can there at all be a common Europe without a pan-European public sphere, where potentially common values and ideas can be formed and transnational political institutions can find their legitimacy?

Introduction
Europe talks to Europe: Towards a European public sphere?
Geert Lovink
Blogging, the nihilist impulse
Bernhard Peters
"Ach Europa"
Carl Henrik Fredriksson
Energizing the European public space
Leonard Novy
The silence within the Union
Thierry Chervel
Europe loses ground
Marie-Luise Knott
"That was my Beresina"
Peter Preston
Dialogue of the deaf
Peter Preston
Tomorrow the world? Unlikely
Craig Calhoun
The democratic integration of Europe
Robert Darnton, Marek Tamm
Interview with Robert Darnton
Andreas Hepp
Networks of the media
This focal point draws heavily upon talks and lectures held at the 17th Meeting of Cultural Journals, which took place in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2004. The title of this conference was "The Republic of Letters? Cultural Journals in a European Public Space". The ideal of a "transgressive", intellectual media space is clearly visible in the everyday practice of today's cultural journals. Here, political, philosophical, and aesthetic ideas are spread from language to language, within and without transnational publicistic networks. However, their insight might be great and their outlook wide, yet cultural journals are small. They constitute an important (counter)part of the public sphere, but they are too limited in outreach to form the broad and solid basis of a discursive space in which a European identity can emerge or be constructed. Or are they not? Is there really an in-built conflict between main-stream media and cultural journals or are there opportunities for cooperation? How can transnational media contribute to the construction of a public space that crosses national borders, and more specifically, what role do the cultural journals have in this context? What role could or should they play? Do we need new forms of internationally launched media or is it rather the established national ones that are best suited to build the basis for a transnational space for aesthetic, cultural, and political debate? Finally, what can we learn from historic and contemporary attempts to create transnational cultural forums?

These are all questions that in one form or the other are touched upon in the contributions from the Eurozine conference as well as in the additional articles included in this section. No common language, no common history, no common experience, says the sceptic. How could anything common come out of that? On the other hand, asks the optimist, hasn't Europe always constituted a common space for communication and debate – at least since the Enlightenment? Problems and deficits, but also possibilities...


 



Published 2004-06-21


Original in English
© Eurozine
 

Focal points

European histories

http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/eurohistories.html
For solidarity to exist in the enlarged EU, an historical awareness must be developed that includes the experiences of new members. [more]

Media landscapes: Central and eastern Europe

http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/medialandscapes.html
How Media autonomy in Europe's "newer democracies" is being inhibited by market forces and continuing political intervention. [more]

The malady of infinite aspiration?

http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/financialcrisis.html
Sound in principle or sick at heart? Articles on the financial crisis, compiled under Durkheim's memorable phrase, "the malady of infinite aspiration". [more]

Editor's choice

Laurent Mauriac, Pascal Riché
Online journalism: Transposition or transformation?

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-05-22-mauriacriche-en.html
The editors of the pioneering French politics website explain their concept for bridging the gap between print and the Internet. [more]

Literature

Andrea Zlatar
Literary perspectives: Croatia
Post-traumatic stress disorder

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-03-31-zlatar-en.html
Common to new Croatian writing is the postwar experience, with marginal characters exploring tensions between individual and society. [more]

Katharina Raabe
The read expanse

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-04-16-raabe-de.html
In the twenty years since the fall of communism, literature has been lifting the fog settling over the historical expanses of eastern central Europe. [more]

Conferences

Eurozine emerged from an informal network dating back to 1983. Since that time, a variety of European cultural magazines have met once a year in European cities to exchange ideas and experiences. In the meantime, approximately 100 periodicals from almost every European country have become involved in these meetings.
European histories
The 22nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Vilnius, 8-11 May 2009

http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/vilnius_european_histories.html
The 22nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, 8 to 11 May 2009. Under the heading "European Histories", the Eurozine conference explored the role of history and memory in forming new identities in a Europe in change. [more]

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