The European Empire
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, February 6, 2023
Miłosz once observed that the condition of the writers of the “other Europe” (that’s how he calls Mitteleuropa) was “barely imaginable” for the citizens of Western European states. Part of this heterogeneity came from the lack of nation-states and the presence in their place, for centuries until the end of the World War I, of the Hasburg Empire. For us who were born in a national state and do not distinguish being Italian from being an Italian citizen, it is not easy to imagine a situation in which being Italian, Hungarian, Czech or Ruthenian did not mean a state identity. The relationship with the place and language of the citizens was for the citizens of the empire certainly different and more intense, free as it was from any juridical implication and any national connotation. Only on such a basis could the existence of a reality like the Hasburg Empire be possible.
It is good not to forget that when we see today that Europe, which constituted itself as a pact between nation-states, not only has not, and has never had any reality outside of the currency and economy, but now it is reduced to a ghost, in fact integrally subject to the military interests of an extraneous power. Some time ago, taking up a suggestion from Alexandre Kojève, we proposed the consitution of a “Latin empire”, which would economically and politically unite the three great Latin nations (together with France, Spain and Italy) in accordance with the Catholic Church and open to Mediterranean countries. Regardless of the fact whether or not such a proposal is still topical now, we would like to bring to the attention of interested parties that if one wants something like Europe to acquire an autonomous political reality, this will be possible only through the creation of an European Empire similar to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or to the Imperium which Dante in De Monarchia (On Monarchy) conceived as the unitary principle that ought to order as “a last end” the particular kingdoms towards peace. It is possible, i.e., that, in the extreme situation in which we find ourselves, just political models that are regarded as completely obsolete may find an unexpected topicality. But this would require that the citizens of the European nation-states rediscovered a bond with their own places and cultural traditions strong enough to be able to lay down without reservation their state citizenships and replace them with a single European citizenship, which were embodied not in a parliament and committees, but in a symbolic power somehow similar to the Holy Roman Empire. It does not interest us, nor it corresponds to our ideals the problem of whether or not such an European Empire is possible: nevertheless it acquires a particular significance if one becomes aware that the present European community has today no real political substance and rather transformed itself, like all its member states, into a sick organism which runs, more or less consciously, towards its own self-destruction.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, February 6, 2023
Miłosz once observed that the condition of the writers of the “other Europe” (that’s how he calls Mitteleuropa) was “barely imaginable” for the citizens of Western European states. Part of this heterogeneity came from the lack of nation-states and the presence in their place, for centuries until the end of the World War I, of the Hasburg Empire. For us who were born in a national state and do not distinguish being Italian from being an Italian citizen, it is not easy to imagine a situation in which being Italian, Hungarian, Czech or Ruthenian did not mean a state identity. The relationship with the place and language of the citizens was for the citizens of the empire certainly different and more intense, free as it was from any juridical implication and any national connotation. Only on such a basis could the existence of a reality like the Hasburg Empire be possible.
It is good not to forget that when we see today that Europe, which constituted itself as a pact between nation-states, not only has not, and has never had any reality outside of the currency and economy, but now it is reduced to a ghost, in fact integrally subject to the military interests of an extraneous power. Some time ago, taking up a suggestion from Alexandre Kojève, we proposed the consitution of a “Latin empire”, which would economically and politically unite the three great Latin nations (together with France, Spain and Italy) in accordance with the Catholic Church and open to Mediterranean countries. Regardless of the fact whether or not such a proposal is still topical now, we would like to bring to the attention of interested parties that if one wants something like Europe to acquire an autonomous political reality, this will be possible only through the creation of an European Empire similar to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or to the Imperium which Dante in De Monarchia (On Monarchy) conceived as the unitary principle that ought to order as “a last end” the particular kingdoms towards peace. It is possible, i.e., that, in the extreme situation in which we find ourselves, just political models that are regarded as completely obsolete may find an unexpected topicality. But this would require that the citizens of the European nation-states rediscovered a bond with their own places and cultural traditions strong enough to be able to lay down without reservation their state citizenships and replace them with a single European citizenship, which were embodied not in a parliament and committees, but in a symbolic power somehow similar to the Holy Roman Empire. It does not interest us, nor it corresponds to our ideals the problem of whether or not such an European Empire is possible: nevertheless it acquires a particular significance if one becomes aware that the present European community has today no real political substance and rather transformed itself, like all its member states, into a sick organism which runs, more or less consciously, towards its own self-destruction.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Yinka Shonibare, End of Empire, 2016. Courtesy of WikiArt.