Using Culture in Europe’s Integration and Global Relations - 20-02-2007

A European Cultural Canon, 10 February 2007

Culture is increasingly cited as a means of continuing the process of European integration and social cohesion by other than political means. In this regard it is both a sign of maturity and of desperation on the part of the political class. It shows maturity by recognising that there has to be more to a concept of integration than technocratic and utilitarian functions. There has to be an emotional ribbon with which to bind diverse people together.

It shows desperation because, having resolutely resisted the idea of culture having a place in the European Union treaty until 1992, the thought has belatedly struck Euro enthusiasts in the wake of the failure of the referendum on the constitution that their passion is not shared much beyond the world of professional politics and academia.

Some of us have been trying to tell them that for thirty years. The cultural sector can demonstrate a universal application and a concern for humanity that goes well beyond the insecure labels of territory and material prosperity.

Before we become too rash in our promises, however, let’s be clear about what culture we are advocating and which values we want to identify with Europe’s future. Let’s not delude ourselves that all culture is helpful (or indeed of any great worth) or that all European cultural values will aid integration, peace and global understanding. Frankly, many will do precisely the opposite - and they tend to be the values with the greatest ability to inspire emotional loyalty.

It is important not to muddle a basket of assumptions under the blanket of culture. While the arts are part of culture, they are only part. And the contemporary arts are about questions, not answers. They are a means of challenging just the sort of comfortable assumptions on which the massaging of culture for political purposes are based.

The values that artists espouse are rarely those loved in the nice houses with a modest garden, two cars, two children and a dog. Even when they have exactly that, artists make uncomfortable neighbours, not the sort that can be predicted to fit in.

But which are the European cultural values: the values of challenge, social independence, individual exploration and licence advocated by the artist, or the values of conformity, good behaviour and social responsibility fostered in the golf clubs and coffee mornings of suburban life?

Equally the positive European cultural values of tolerance, humanism, moderate religion, free expression, social justice and qualified democracy are both very recent in their application and balanced by other values, just as indigenously European, that we are not quite so keen to parade. These are the values of aggressive nationalism, racial superiority, financial jealousy, environmental profligacy, social conformity, sexual repression and religious arrogance. Seven deadly values.

Much is made of the quality of our cultural heritage and indeed a lot of it is superb. But let us be clear what those wonderful artefacts meant in their own times. They were not tourist attractions that demonstrated the benign decorative sophistication of our modern nation states. In many cases the nations were very different entities from those that claim them now.
The castles and palaces were symbols of conquest and power. The beautiful houses represented the agglomeration of land through arranged, often forced, marriage and political favouritism. They were kept functioning through the sort of aristocratic slavery that the enlightenment undermined and which Beaumarchais, Da Ponte and Mozart poured scorn on in The Marriage of Figaro.

That opera constantly refreshes the radicalism of art. It paved the way for the role of the artist as licensed heretic and social critic. Many painters had used their church and patron’s commission to exhibit a message that went a long way further than flattery. Their allegories, though, were often hard to read and could be glossed over when convenient. There were political cartoons in mediaeval art but they were usually confined to the carved gargoyles of public buildings. The blatant ferocity of modern artistic social argument is as much a response to the collapse of aristocratic and religious certainty that resulted from the First World War as it is to the championship of freedom of expression.

If all this rhetoric about culture is based on national bombast and professional self-justification, what can culture really contribute to future integration and improved global relationships? Actually a great deal - as long as we are firm about our moderation and careful about the culture we promote.

First, there needs to be honesty about which aspect of culture is being used. If it is the arts, then they can be used in three ways. The first is to stimulate our ability to receive messages in the context of global humanism, not national validation. A poet is either good or bad because of the quality of the poem, not because of the language or place of birth.

The visual arts, music and dance can ignore national but not cultural context. They may be informed by their place of origin but they are not tied to it and they are open to people who neither know nor care about the nationality of their begetter.

This is of course what allows Europhiles to claim baroque music, renaissance painting and contemporary dance as European culture. And it is true that in the period from 1450-1800 artists travelled and practised their profession with less regard to national borders than anybody except churchmen and mercenary soldiers. Nonetheless, theirs was a Europeanness based on the market - for patrons, publishers and performance. There was nothing consciously united about it. They went where fame and fortune led. We can be a bit more single-minded.

The second way we can use the arts is in giving hope to those who have been let down by the traditional education and employment system. Sport and commercial music are already very good at this. Look at the background of most top football players and rock singers and you will find people who would have been failed badly by normal careers. The arts can do the same but only if the same sort of investment (whether by the state or media) and the same status in public excitement is given to them.

The third way is by using our arts as the motor of intercultural dialogue. We have to explain that interest in an artistic work is not created by a perfectly placid presentation. Harmony on its own is sterile and boring. Artistic excitement comes from counterpoint, the fusing of disparate streams of thought into a work that explores the complex patterns, allows for conflict and then resolves it.

We must use the arts to oppose the new apartheid; those champions of separate development, whether of religious, racial or nationalist orthodoxy. There are good reasons why fundamentalists of whatever creed fear artistic freedom. It is their bitterest rival for hearts and minds. If we are really to have intercultural dialogue that is more than tokenism and posturing, then it is through artistic argument that we shall give it meaning. This is not about tolerance - to tolerate somebody is condescending and shows that you don’t think they matter - it is about engagement and contribution.

There are other cultural routes on offer: linguistic flexibility, political reform that encourages non-national candidates at elections, education systems that encourage people to move cheaply from university to university wherever they want - not the grudging and surely discriminatory charging systems now in place.

I despair to see university students across Europe struggling to graduate because of the cost, the need to do almost full-time work to pay for essential study, the number of young people driven to the sex industry because their parents cannot pay fees or maintenance. It is surely immoral for the state to send people to school and then require them to pay for the level of education that will allow them to reach their full potential.

But most of all, if we are serious about integration, outreach, global emancipation and sustainable development, we will tell the truth about our history and heritage.

We will teach children that nationalism has been a disaster, that industry always leaves victims, that languages, buildings, countries and empires never last very long. We will show that religion always divides and that the dreams of the religious founders are never followed. We will separate local administration and interpretations of cosmology from autocratic power. We will argue that there is no such thing as security, no point in fixed identity and that, finally, only the enjoyment of each other’s ideas, bodies and souls makes our stay on earth worth enduring.

Speech spoken by Simon Mundy at the conference A European Cultural Canon.

© Simon Mundy 2007

A European Cultural Canon was organized in collaboration with EUNIC, the European National Institutions of Culture, The Netherlands.