(Photo: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice (1485-90), Wikipedia Commons) The cradle of nationalism, Europe can be a laboratory for rethinking cultural diversity in a global denationalized world: this is the challenge to intellectuals in Europe. Gisèle Sapiro is a sociologist. She's also editor of L’Espace intellectuel en Europe, XIXe-XXIe siècles : de la formation des Etats-nations à la mondialisation, Paris, La Découverte, 2009. The European Union is a political and economic construction, but despite insistent calls from the European commission or the European Science Foundation to scholars, or to creators, to reflect on the building of such an identity, there still seems to be a cultural void. The attempts to create a ‘collective imagination’, with anthologies, collections and series have had a limited impact. It is all the more paradoxical considering that an intellectual tradition in Europe existed long before the emergence of national identities. European culture: from homogeneity to diversity European culture was based on the humanist culture developed by secular men of letters during the Renaissance, a hybrid of Christian and Greco-Roman heritage, including some elements of other cultures like Arabic. This common culture was challenged first by the division of intellectual labour and by the rise of the scientific paradigm, which contested the authority of religion. The struggle between the two cultures, science and the humanities, started in the early 19th Century and has been continuing since then, as science was gaining more and more social recognition and authority. Born soon after, the human and social sciences are still torn between them. But more than the division of intellectual labour, the European culture was challenged by the building of national identities. In the following century this new principle of cohesion, which supplanted religion to form abstract territorially-based entities, led to the murderous consequences with which we are all too familiar, from colonialism to the two World Wars, and then to the ethnic wars. Because of the central role assigned to culture, the construction of national identities depended very strongly on intellectuals as producers of collective representations – men of letters, publicists and social thinkers. Whether announcing a radiant future or nostalgic for a lost past, these intellectuals endorsed the role of prophets of the modern world. This construction took place in the framework of an ever more intense international competition, with Europe as its centre, and the model circulated from one country to another in a mimetic process. The nationalization of culture was strongly related to the acculturation of the people and to the expanding of education. In contrast to the cultural elites, who frequently mastered more than one central language, the underprivileged classes spoke local languages. The development of the book market fostered this phenomenon of nationalization of culture. Thus the extension of the public of readers in Europe implied a linguistic segmentation. At the same time, colonialism extended the linguistic areas and the diffusion of European culture to other parts of the world, using humanist universalism as a justification. This brought about the third factor of disintegration of what had been a relatively united European culture. While it was splitting into national entities,it was fed not only with folk culture but also with that of the colonized countries. Romanticism imported elements from Asiatic and Arabic cultures, which were labelled “orientalism”. In the early 20th Century, the Modern artists discovered African art. Although it was defined as “primitive”, the recognition of other cultures began challenging the still prevailing representation of civilization as a unique historical process and opened a space for cultural relativism. Today, the intellectual space in Europe is characterized by diversity, be it linguistic, cultural or in terms of specialization. This diversity is considered as an obstacle to the construction of a European space, driven by economic and administrative logic, which tend both towards homogenisation. Moreover, most intellectuals find their audience mainly at the national level. This situation results in large part from linguistic and cultural reasons, but not only. The autonomy that the intellectual space gained with regard to the expectations of the economic and political powers, as well as the lesson drawn from the experience of a bloodstained past and the deconstruction of national ideologies, no doubt also explain why Europe has not found its army of prophets. Experts in law, economy and political science rather than philosophers or creators were involved in the construction of the European community, thus intensifying among the populations the sense of dispossession and exclusion from a process carried out over their heads. In addition to this intellectual division of labour between memory, ethics and public policy, the social recognition of cultural as well as epistemic pluralism induced a more relativistic stand, which confronts the paradigm of universalism. The role of intellectuals in Europe What then could or should be the role of intellectuals in the new European entity, other than expertise or collective identity building? There is one major function which is at the core of the European intellectual legacy: it is the critical function. This function was embodied by the figure of the public intellectual, claiming for his autonomy, as opposed to those who serve the political power, and for his responsibility in the democratic regime. Theorized by Sartre after the Second World War, this conception of the public intellectual was redefined, in France, by Foucault and later by Bourdieu. Besides the global fight against neo-liberalism or specific political issues, the role of intellectuals could be, rather than to build a new collective identity, to contribute to denationalize the categories of thinking while keeping alive cultural diversity. One way of doing it would be to teach how these categories where built, in the past, and how they still underlie our vision of history and of culture. Another one would be to modify the curricula in strategic disciplines such as history and literature, which have been the locus of national indoctrination. But there is also a risk in promoting a denationalized approach to culture, that intellectuals should be aware of. The risk is to ignore the power relation between cultures and, consequently, to reinforce cultural hegemonies. As a result of the unequal distribution of symbolic capital (i.e. prestige) among cultures, some of them have a higher chance to gain international or global recognition. This is the consequence of the concentration of the cultural industries around a few big cities. The chance for a creator to accede to them depends not only on his cultural assets but also on geographic and social distance. While in art the market has become global, the national framework still prevails in literature. This is also true, though to a lesser extent, of the human and social science, as illustrated by the existence of national journals as well as national associations. The unequal power relation between cultures might be illustrated by the translation flows: the more a culture is dominant, the more books are translated from it. This is not only the result of the economic balance of power within the global book market, but also of political and cultural factors, like the role States play in intercultural exchanges (supporting national culture), or the symbolic capital that older cultures like the French, the English and the German have accumulated. The risk in globalization, or even Europeanisation of these markets, is to increase rather to diminish this unequal distribution. This is what happened on the world book market in the past twenty years: the share of translations from English into other languages has increased from 45% in the 1980s to 59% in the 1990s (according to the number of translated titles), reducing the visibility of books written in other languages. How can culture be denationalized without curtailing cultural diversity? That might be the challenge European intellectuals should undertake. The cradle of nationalism, Europe can be a laboratory for rethinking cultural diversity in a global denationalized world. In parallel way, European intellectuals have to develop more equal exchanges with the former colonies. This implies concretely to support the development of alternative channels of cultural production and diffusion, and means of collaboration, like co-publishing. Thus the critical role of the intellectuals in Europe today implies the denationalisation of culture while unveiling the principles of domination not only on a social, economic and political level, but also on a cultural one. This is the only way to preserve cultural diversity without sticking to a nationalist frame.