NOTES ON EUROPE. THE DOGMATIC SLEEP. Proc

The notion of "Europe" has been questioned since the last decades of the twentieth century, especially in the territory of the so-called European Studies. Since World War II, Europe has lost its visionary project of a privileged race of the human kind, thanks to the consequences of its policy of self-destruction, already present in the first half of the last century, to the effects of decolonization and the loss of ethnocentrism. The convulsions at the level of world politics and geopolitics definitely change the course of history. What Europe is left after the great historical controversies that have crossed and continue to cross it? What critical framework is possible to outline today so as to understand the various interactions and disseminations that make Europe fundamentally a kind of financial and commercial brand? What place can there still exist in the world for a Europe that does not yield to the imperialist tradition? As Sloterdijk critically questions, is this commonplace that tries to formulate Europe as a "unity of differences" or "a set of contradictions" a empty one? What is the possibility of a heterotopic becoming for Europe? How to wake it from the dogmatic sleep as did Kant in respect to Reason? Since the modern age, in which European cartography has practically reduced the terrestrial globe and the representation of the world to Europe, until today, the old continent loses its enchantment, its mystical character, being increasingly challenged as a paradigm. If it is true that it will continue to be privileged, this fact can not prevent us from thinking about what we are as history, from establishing a dialogue with ourselves, a kind of personal archeology. Similarly, in the territory of art, Europe has been the subject of complex debates, in the domain of which some artists have been called in to participate, questioning both the political reorganization of post-Second World War, recent political decisions, or artistic mapping based in geopolitical strategies in a global context. If European art was regarded as the world’s art, its protectorate seems to have been emptied. Will those who Sloterdijk calls "the second-rate artists" be the ones who continue to overestimate heterogeneity and otherness, making efforts to maintain the myth of the European dream? Proceedings of the international conference “NOTES ON EUROPE. The dogmatic sleep” (Porto: ESAP, October 29-31, 2019)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio