A European identity Crisis
For this discussion on the crisis of Europe, Michel Maffesoli has invited author Jean-François Mattéi, who recently published Le regard vide, essai sur l’épuisement de la culture européenne [« the empty look. an essay on the exhaustion of European culture »] (2007) and writer and journalist Paul-François Paoli.
The exchange will take as a starting point the acknowledgment that Europe has lost its preeminence in the world, with the consequences this entails. From the 17th to the 20th century, Europe was at the forefront of modernity, as its culture and values prevailed all over the world and became universal. In the early 21st century demands for relativism, multiculturalism, and mixing in many forms are increasingly gaining ground. The predominance of ethnic values, attitudes, clothing, musical forms, and cuisines thus prefigure a new cycle in which Europe will indeed still matter, yet not in the way it used to.
