Europe’s self-definition shifts its constitutive ‘other’ across historical periods

Evidence

This shows that “Europe’s others” were located primarily within Europe. The contemporary perspective of “others” as being located outside Europe, also retroactively, is a recent development of the last two hundred years, if only because the consciousness of Europeanness is recent. Second, otherness outside Europe was not necessarily as important as otherness within Europe, and was generally conceived along lines first developed in relation to Europe’s internal others. Third, “otherness” refers to a complex layer or web of differences that ramifies multidimensionally in many directions. If it is coded in cultural terms (in terms of religion, language, or ethnicity) it also signifies geographical, historical, political, class and status, urban and rural differences, all mingling within a fluid mosaic. Fourth, therefore it is not possible to produce a clear cognitive map of “others” because there is no stable or fixed notion of “self that could inform this. There is no fixed point or “view from nowhere” from which this can be conceptualized. The longer the period and the wider the geographical space taken into account the more difficult this becomes. Collective identities are stable enough to generate clear boundaries of difference only over brief periods. The mosaic of difference seems stable enough only in, say, 50-year segments. Some differences may seem to be of longer duration, but if we examine them closely it turns out that over time their meaning or function changes radically, so that continuity is a superficial impression only. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 184 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europe’s self-construction against an Other drew mainly on its own internal realities; Geographic expansion forced Europeans to reconceive their binary self-other worldview — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 308; Europe as a self-conscious identity boundary is surprisingly modern (nineteenth-twentieth century) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 175 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Europe’s others were internal and predate the external other #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 184