Transnationaliteit: Europese talen, literaturen en culturen in het perspectief van een postnationale horizon

Modern philologies are intrinsically bound to the ‘Nation Project’, a concept of substantial influence on language, literature, and culture from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries in Europe. As a consequence, philologies are basically national philologies. The situation of the twentyfirst century is of a post-national situation and is, thus, a challenge to the nation-bound concepts of language, literature, and culture. A major task for philologies is the development of new concepts that maintain the positive effects of the nation-bound concepts, and, at the same time, transform them into a post-national context. The term ‘transnational’ is meant to cover these transformation processes. Philologies can offer important contributions to a multilingual linguistic qualification on a par with the demands of knowledge based societies of the twentyfirst century.