Cultural Identity: the Critique of the Cartographic Reason. A Transdisciplinary Approach

Although the concept of identity is a strategic and positional one, it is habitual for the common sense to think of European identity as unproblematic, and pointing to “essential” qualities. This calls for a contextual approach of the European identity building, tracking down the historical contingency and the plurality of the symbolic processes cloaked by it. My contribution draws on the interdisciplinary evaluation of several successive or simultaneous European projects such as: Mitteleuropa, Central Europe, also called East-Central Europe and the Balkans - as invented by Western politics, travelers and the popular press, after first world war. I will focus on the European identity building, seen as a discursive and a historical instance. This type of approach unravels the erratic meanings of the notion and the ways in which communities represent European identity especially in areas of cultural overlapping and hybridity.