Europe's Other: European Law Between Modernity and Postmodernity

European law is usually taken to embody an unstoppable dynamic of integration and progress. Such assumptions, claim the authors, are rooted firmly in modernist assumptions which avoid the impact of current critical, poststructural and postmodern thought. An encompassing idea of Europe inhabits EU law and its claims to a supreme, unified and transcendent legal order under the various treaties. It motivates judicial activism by the Court of Justice. One of the primary focuses of this text is on identity and alterity in relation to the constituting of Europe and its law. The concern is with the other that Europe rejects or disowns, yet against which it also assumes its identity.