Crisis of Europe, crisis of an imaginary?

Abstract

The construction of an European Union or European Community, which begun in the middle of the 20th century, knows today disappointments, drifts, which sometimes incite people to doubt about their realization and effectiveness. The debates question too technocratic ways, an absence of political identity, often near to utopia, forms of impotence, etc. which amplify political and diplomatic crises with the backdrop of poorly resolved economic and financial policies. Are these legal issues and arguments sufficiently relevant? Why such an innovative process, such a wide and collective project is lacking in faith, beliefs, dreams, symbols and myths, that in history has always accompanied great collective adventures, empires orrevolutions? What, then, is this imaginary of the European peoples? Isn 't Europe suffering from this maladjustment of the imaginary? Wouldn 't Europe need a minimal spatial imagery, precise representations of its borders, and the fact of an uncertain political geography in many respects? Historically, in addition, Europe is not marked and haunted by a myth of hypertrophied imperial sovereignty (the last emperor was Napoleon), which could serve as a new performative matrix, but whose traumatic memories in the democratic age lea ve people hesitant and fearful? Briefly, doesn 't Europe evo/ve among a few or too man y imaginary?