Nationalism without borders: Contradictory politics at a transborder European media organization

The French‐German and European television channel Arte was founded with a mandate to produce media that will encourage “the coming together of European peoples.” Yet, although the channel is ostensibly charged with promulgating a cosmopolitan, transborder Europe, daily life at Arte is saturated with national talk and stereotyping. This stereotyping, though understood by staff to be tongue‐in‐cheek and “ironic,” functions as a kind of “sticky mechanism” through which nationalism and cosmopolitanism are rendered compound and mutualistic. Scalar analyses and metaphors, which presume a tension between nation and world, are insufficient for understanding how political‐ideological commitments—whether institutional or individual—are today being depolarized and (re)combined. [ nationalism, cosmopolitanism, Europe, cultural production, stereotypes, media, television ]