ICR Romanian Cultural Institute London

Ins and Outs in Eastern Europe

Romanian sociologist Calin Cotoi will look at the European dialectic of rationality and identity and the way in which it structures the geo-cultural model of new Europe.

One of the most persistent assumption of modernity is that the "disenchanted" societies of the West are more rational and, therefore, less identity-centred than those of the rest of the world. Through the integration, the core of Western rationality is seen as expanding to the peripheries but also as losing some of its clarity, in the process. The European dialectic of rationality and ("thick") identity is inherently flawed and, in Eastern Europe, gives birth to a chronic essentialization and continuous redrawing of the symbolic borders of Europe in recurrent crises of "nested orientalism".

Older dichotomies tend to infiltrate and obliquely subvert any European identity construction. Is not the European rationality to European identity the same as "modern" to "traditional" or "contract" to "status", "organic solidarity" to "mechanic solidarity", the "West" to the "East" etc.? Where and how can we imagine the borders of a "thin" identity Europe?

Calin Cotoi is senior lecturer at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology. He is also editor of Sociologie Romaneasca review, secretary of the Romanian Sociological Association and a fellow of New Europe College. He studied sociology and has a PhD in cultural anthropology.

Calin Cotoi's participation in London Festival of Europe is supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London.

The London Festival of Europe 2007 is the first action of European Alterities, an independent cultural organisation dedicated to promoting artistic and philosophical engagement with and through Europe.

When: Sunday 25 March, 7.30 PM
Where: London School of Economics, Old Theatre, London

Free entrance.