The three faces of Europe or what culture and heritage can suggest for its future (original) (raw)

The paper was a contribution at the big conference at the International Cultural Centre in Krakow in 2006. The year after the publication was published with the present text poperly language edited: Cultural Heritage in the 21st Century. Opportunities and Challenges Collective work, Monika A. Murzyn-Kupisz, Jacek Purchla (ed.) Date of issue: 2007 Volume: 24 x 16,5 cm Cover: paperback Pages: 328 ISBN 978-83-89273-46-8 Ten years old by now, this paper is a strong and Utopian critique of misunderstood and manipulated union of Europe claiming that culture has been carelessly forgotten because, from the beginning, the project was just the case for politics and economy and their expansion. In that process, I argued, Eastern European countries suffered immensely, only incidentally experiencing the third, motherly face of Europe, - that of culture and common heritage. This relatively early critique though benevolent and wholeheartedly European by spirit was, alas, a cause to much rejection I have had experienced as author and lecturer. The Utopian project https://www.mnemosophy.com/links is one unsuccessful experiment in the spirit of that article. IF YOU HAVE PATIENCE FOR THE OLD HERESIES, THE FOLLOWING TEXT EXPLAINS WHY WAS I SO VERY UNPOPULAR AT THE TIME. THE YEAR WAS 2006. It is one of those conferences when one feels like saying the plain, simple truth in spite of expected highbrow mutual indulgence and atmosphere of consent (specially when it comes to the notorious, indisputable values like Europe). The year was 2006, Krakow International Cultural Centre, and the paper was later published in their conference publication. The paper is a conciliate version of a slide lecture that made me still less sympathetic with some of my skeptical interlocutors. For a long time I felt uneasy reading it and remembering the silence in the conference room. It was (though a moderated version of the lecture) quite prophetical: Europe of culture (The Mother, ceded to Europe of politics (The Aunt) and that of economy (The Stepmother). Instead of building upon common identity, that is upon culture, the sense of belonging and brotherhood of nations it treated its new members as part of resources, turning them (unprepared, transitional, embarrassed) in most of the cases into a sort of supply zone of its most developed members. Museums failed again. But, as new thinking suggests (www.mnemosophy.com), the entire sector of public memory fails to exercise its immense power. The processes have their inertia and it will be difficult to regain the same chances especially in times of permanent war and growing scarcity.