Scalar Con­t­a­m­i­na­tions - Map­ping out the Con­se­quences of „Europe“

Round table orga­nized by the RG „Europe”

Dif­fer­ent epis­te­molo­gies of impe­r­i­al dom­i­na­tion res­onate in con­tem­po­rary notions of Europe: the ‚colo­nial divide‘ between Europe and its ‚exter­nal oth­ers‘, the mar­gin­al­iza­tion of social­ist moder­ni­ty or the monop­o­liz­ing effects of EU-inte­gra­tion on visions about the continent’s shape, bor­ders and future are just three such epis­temic tra­di­tions that con­fig­ure Europe as a polit­i­cal project and object of knowl­edge. I would like to cen­ter my inter­ven­tion around the ques­tion of how we can do anthro­po­log­i­cal research on Europe and Euro­peaniza­tion with­out repro­duc­ing these epis­te­molo­gies and their hier­ar­chi­cal effects. For that pur­pose, I will pro­pose an ana­lyt­i­cal approach that aims at exam­in­ing Europe as a het­eroge­nous, mul­ti­ple and uncom­plet­ed for­ma­tion by apply­ing a twofold ana­lyt­i­cal move: fore­ground­ing Europe as an object of crit­i­cal study in order to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly decen­ter it through an explic­it focus on its glob­al entan­gle­ments and impe­r­i­al „world-mak­ing projects“, on its inter­nal fric­tions and margins.