Cultural Borders of Europe Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past

The essays in this anthology address processes of defining European cultural borders, as well as their dependence on – and relation to – various kinds of European belonging and national identity. By proceeding from cultural borders as the object of investigation, we open the door to a range of cases that is both broader and more complex than the ambit of territorial borders. The fact that this anthology combines studies on a great variety of cultural borders, literary, linguistic, religious, historiographical and ideological among others, is also new. A closely related development is the growing complexity of identities and the multiplicity of border-making, including phenomena such as linguistic complexity, religious diversity and regional affinity. We define cultural borders broadly and consider them to be more than simply legal or political constructs. An historical, linguistic and cultural analysis suggests that people will always need borders to define themselves in relation to others but that borders operate in different ways and at different levels; moreover, the degree to which they influence society changes over time. We subscribe to the premise that there is a need for a “radical break with substantialist notions of Europe’s borders and identity” (Klaus Eder 2006) in favour of a focus on their cultural constructions.