Too Little, Too Late

Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida lead a pack of intellectuals calling for a "core European identity" -- and are met with a pan-European yawn

It was clearly designed to cause a sensation. At least in certain circles. A pan-European initiative, led by some of the biggest names in the intellectual business, set off by a wave of articles in the weekend editions of top-drawer newspapers across the continent: Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida co-authored a piece that ran in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Libération, accompanied all but simultaneously by Adolf Muschg in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Umberto Eco in La Repubblica, Gianni Vattimo in La Stampa, Fernando Savater in El País and the lone American, Richard Rorty, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A little over a week later, little has come of it other than a mild grumbling that it was all too little, too late.

Habermas and Derrida set the tone with their "analysis," as Derrida called it, "which is also a call," entitled "Unsere Erneuerung," which could be translated in a couple of different ways: "Our Renewal"? "Return"? "Renaissance" would be a bit much, but you get the idea. They begin by conjuring up two dates to keep in mind: The day eight European leaders, led by Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, broke ranks with France and Germany and published an open letter in support of US President Bush's plans to invade Iraq; and February 15, 2003, "when masses demonstrated in London and Rome, Madrid and Barcelona, Berlin and Paris in reaction to this letter." What this leads to in essence is a call for a rediscovery of "core European identity" that would encompass the collective powers, both abstract and literal, of Europe's individual nations (albeit, most of them western, in the grand tradition of Rumsfeld's derisive "Old Europe" comment -- a point which in itself has drawn criticism for authors' surprising conservatism) to counter-balance the overly assertive US.

Perhaps the most entertaining critique has come from Joachim Güntner in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Recalling that this publishing blitz came at about the same time G8 leaders were meeting in Evian, where there were also no surprises -- Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder shook hands, Schröder called for letting bygones be bygones and looking ahead to the future and the US promptly slapped down French proposals for lending a helping hand to developing countries -- Güntner amuses himself and his readers with the far-fetched notion that these same leaders actually read the papers' feuilleton sections, that Bush would call Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac to task over Habermas and Derrida's essay, that Schröder would counter that the man who encouraged Europeans to resist the "humiliating paternalism Washington would like to force on them," was Rorty, the American, and...

Putin could note that, as a Russian, he felt passed over by Habermas's call for an "avant-garde core of Europe" which is supposed to be the "locomotive" of European union. And in the late hours, one would attempt to crack the harder philosophical nuts: How unselfconsciously Habermas, once a student of Adorno, speaks of a "European identity"; how strange it is that Derrida, who shares a love for the non-identity with Adorno, would assist Habermas in doing so as well...

But amusement aside, and for all the quibbles, and even for Goedart Palm's correct assertion in Telepolis that anyone looking for concrete political analysis and, above all, "deeds" in the essay by the two philosophers will be disappointed, there's nothing outright wrong in its gist. But there's also nothing particularly new. For months, for a year and longer, many commentators around the world have been barnstorming towards a similar goal (see What the World Needs Now, for example), and it isn't just brand name intellectuals. As New York Times columnist Thomas "globalization will solve everything" Friedman recently discovered, "Grandmothers and students, tourists and immigrants" are equally worried about the ways the Bush administration aims to remake the world.

Elsewhere

My own thoughts on the German Film Awards and the new rules about to change the way films are made in Germany.

Book reviews: Philip Hensher on Esteban Buch's Beethoven's Ninth: A Political History for the Spectator; Jim Knipfel on Clayton Patterson and Jochen Auer's Wildstyle: The History of a New Idea in the New York Press; Giles MacDonogh on Anna Funder's Stasiland in the Guardian; and Zulfikar Abbany on the general state of German literature in the Observer.

Art notes: Sanford Schwartz on Adolf Wölfi in the New York Review of Books; Valery Oisteanu on Kurt Schwitters in Artnet Magazine; and Jan Verwoert on Martin Kippenberger in Frieze.