signandsight

Sign & Sight

That is the name of a new website, devoted to European thinking. It is to be published in English, which Arts & Letters Daily describes as 'the only pan-European language.'

Curiously, S&S has an article on just that topic: Manifesto. It begins with the death of a famous French writer, who hated the French press, but loved the German one. So, he stipulated that his final work could only be published in France after it had been published in Germany:

What happened was nothing. Several months after Bourdieu's death, Suhrkamp published "Esquisse pour une auto-analyse" as a slim volume. Utter silence. The German media failed to understand this as a scoop, a text that was awaited elsewhere, a gift from Bourdieu to what he considered a qualified German public. Months later the press published a few obligatory reviews. The French didn't bat an eyelid. While a small excerpt had provoked a scandal only a few months before, the full text went unnoticed. No one in the French media reads the German papers thoroughly, and no scouts are keeping track of cultural trends in Germany. Only when the volume was published in France did the usual brouhaha begin.

The author of this piece asks, "Is there a Europe beyond milk quotas?" If the cultures are that disconnected and disinterested, to what degree is there a Europe at all? Not only are the cultures disconnected, but their understanding of core symbols is often reversed:

The Bourdieu effect is not uncommon. When Jürgen Habermas launched his "Core Europe" initiative, no one joined the debate. Who outside the Netherlands had heard of Theo van Gogh before he was murdered? And when everybody in Paris was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the city's liberation in August last year, no one was aware of what was happening in Warsaw at the same time. While a few streets in Paris were being named after members of the communist resistance, whose valour is indisputable, Warsaw was fixated on the enduring memory of Stalin's icy smile as he watched Hitler bomb the Polish resistance into the ground. The end of liberation.

The piece then turns to the case for, and against, English; and by extension, for and against America. It's an interesting read, but it finishes with this conclusion: "Let's talk European!"

By which they mean English.