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Old Europe, new Europe: for a geopolitics of translation
Author(s) -
Bialasiewicz Luiza,
Minca Claudio
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2005.00646.x
Subject(s) - geopolitics , futures contract , mediation , variety (cybernetics) , identity (music) , metaphor , battle , sociology , political science , political economy , history , aesthetics , politics , social science , law , linguistics , art , philosophy , ancient history , economics , computer science , artificial intelligence , financial economics
This paper looks to the role of geographical metaphors in the ‘battle of words’ to describe Europe and its presumed identity. The facile adoption of banal cartographies such as those of a ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Europe highlights two concerns: first, that despite the imperial and isolationistic temptations of the current American administration, its geopolitical imagination remains firmly wedded to – indeed, cannot but define itself by – its relationship with the ‘Old Continent’. Secondly, it reveals an astonishing distance between such cartographic abstractions and the variety of non‐territorial metaphors – in particular, those of mediation and translation – that are increasingly being invoked to inscribe possible futures for the European project.