Postcolonial Europe or understanding Europe in times of the postcolonial

Résumé du document

The text we have is a chapter written by Gurminder K. Bhambra, extracted from a book talking about European Studies. In this chapter, the author wants to deconstruct the idea we have of modern Europe and its history in order to reconstruct our understandings of Europe in a postcolonial context. Hence, she tries to discredit the narratives of the European construction and to show we cannot claim they are universal, because European colonialist history belies them. Actually, she dismantles the idea that Europe was built as a pattern in the world, against external entities (what she calls "non-Europe").

Bhambra's theory was never brought forward before; it puts a stop to eurocentrism, because historical approaches which integrate the important role of colonialism allow us to think Europe from a global perspective. Consequently, we may understand European particularities in a new perspective (as well as the ones of others) because we do not longer consider European construction as a model for the rest of the world. By this way, Europe will find its own identity, according to the author.

Extraits

[...] Her critics of unacknowledged horrors made by European are courageous, and the paradox she explains about Europe attitude towards colonies is brilliant. I even agree with some of her objections about Eurocentrism and the role played by Europe in the way to modernity. Actually, in spite of all these relevant contradictions, I think her analysis is too much exaggerated. By trying to be coherent, I think her explanations sometimes lose quality because all her demonstration is based on normative anti-European ideas. [...]

[...] She doesn't speak about historical men who really wanted a unified and peaceful Europe, open to others, such as V. Hugo, J. Monnet And she forgets that all European countries were not at the head of an Empire. In my opinion, by introducing this new dimension in the debate, she totally forgets that Europe really has an identity, born a long time ago (latin roots for example), forged through hardships (e.g. wars), and which continue to evolve in spite of the colonialist past. [...]

[...] In order to do it, she interrogates the conventional understanding of four key aspects of Europe and criticizes them from her new perspective. The four “misunderstood” aspects she states are: the typical representation of Europe, insisting the geographical boundaries, the self-claimed peaceful postwar project of construction, the so-called historical unity of its culture and civilization, the European search for modernity. All along the chapter, she stands against all these narratives of European construction because she considers them as erroneous. By taking into account the role of colonialism (and its consequences on the global world in the postcolonial era), she proposes something wholly new. [...]

[...] Postcolonial Europe or understanding Europe in times of the postcolonial The text we have is a chapter written by Gurminder K. Bhambra, extracted from a book talking about European Studies. In this chapter, the author wants to deconstruct the idea we have of modern Europe and its history in order to reconstruct our understandings of Europe in a postcolonial context. Hence, she tries to discredit the narratives of the European construction and to show we cannot claim they are universal, because European colonialist history belies them. [...]

[...] Indeed, she stands against the widespread idea that Europe was an impulsive center to modernity, but she cannot deny that Modern State was born in Europe (as it was studied by numerous scholars such as N. Elias, I. Wallerstein, S. Rokkan Likewise she has to admit that Democracy and the diffusion of civil rights were first established in Europe. Maybe she is right when she says that Europe has a pretention to superiority, and her analysis about eurocentrism underlines interesting aspects, but it seems simplistic to consider it Europe as a colonizer which did not care about the rest of the world, who wanted to dominate it, by spreading its culture on a global scale. [...]