European Studies

L’ouvrage analyse les mécanismes de l’utilisation du passé dans les relations internationales. La réflexion se fonde sur l’étude de cas concrets. Elle étudie tout d’abord l’attitude des responsables français à l’égard de l’Allemagne et de l’Algérie. Le raisonnement débouche ensuite sur une description générale qui permet d’aborder avec un regard neuf des situations aussi variées que les cas yougoslave ou sud-africain. L’ouvrage repose en définitive sur une interpellation fondamentale : plutôt que d’être utilisée à des fins conflictuelles, la mémoire peut-elle contribuer à rapprocher d’anciens belligérants – et si oui comment ?

El próximo día 31 de octubre, coincidiendo con el anunciado final de la prórroga para alcanzar un acuerdo entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europea sobre el Brexit, Mario Draghi dirá arrivederci como Gobernador del Banco Central Europeo. Han sido ocho años intensos de gestión al frente de la autoridad bancaria comunitaria. Sin su inteligencia y capacidad profesional el euro, a buen seguro, habría desaparecido como moneda única continental y símbolo maestro del proceso de Europeización.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of capital structure for the Greek manufacturing SMEs (1-100 employees). Various theories on the determinants of capital structure of SMEs are discussed and findings of previous empirical studies are examined. This study is based on a panel data set consisted of a random sample of 142 manufacturing SMEs in Greece for the time span 1989-1996. A non-linear regression model was developed with total debt, short-term debt and long-term debt ratios used as dependent ...

This article considers how Shakespeare's King Lear has become a Brexit play across a range of discourses and media, from theatre productions and journalism to social media. With its themes of division and disbursement, of cliff edges and tragic self-immolation, Lear is the Shakespearean play that has been turned to as metaphor and analogy for the UK's decision following the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. Reading this presentist application of Shakespeare, the article attends to Shakespeare as itself a discourse through which cultural ideas, both real and imaginary, about Brexit and the EU are negotiated. It asks how can we might remap Lear in this present context-what other meanings and histories are to be derived from the play, especially in Lear's exile and search for refuge, or in Cordelia's departure for and return from France? Moving from a consideration of a Brexit Lear to an archipelagic and even European Lear, this article argues that Shakespeare is simultaneously a site of supranational connections and of a desire for values of empathy and refuge that reverberate with debates about migration in Europe.

La plupart de ceux qui critiquent mes travaux n'ont jamais rien lu de ceux-ci. Voici une présentation sommaire de cette théorie, dont certains disent qu'il s'agit de pseudo-histoire. Quand la pseudo-histoire est à ce point dérangeante qu'aucun universitaire n'a d'argument de fond pour la contester et refuse même d'en débattre, c'est un véritable problème pour l'institution. La seule manière de résoudre un problème, c'est de l'affronter, pas de l'esquiver. L'esquive est la défense des faibles.

Chapter 2, ‘Theorising Europe: Race, Gender and the Making of Modernity’, will theorise Europe as an epistemic archive that is product and productive of race. It will illustrate how modernity has produced race, gender and sexuality as relevant dimensions of rule in both the colonies and as part of European nation-building processes. The chapter discusses the role of eugenics alongside the temporal logics that have constructed the colonial world as failing to adhere to liberal Enlightenment principles. It thus illustrates that gender and sexual norms operate through what Goldberg (2002) calls naturalist and historicist racial rule—two important genealogical archives for contemporary racial politics.

This introduction starts with an exploration of the ambiguity of the idea of Europe. In particular, two tropes-Europe-as-theory and Europe-as-power-continue to haunt knowledge production and cultural studies in Asia. How to proceed? What should cultural studies do if it is to embrace this historical conjuncture of shifting modes of knowledge and power production, how to deal with its Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism? While this special issue allies itself with attempts to unsettle Eurocentrism in knowledge production, it is not making any plea for regionally-rooted practices or theories. It argues for better understanding, dialogue and cross-fertilisation between cultural studies and area studies. The former needs the latter's sensibility to spatial and cultural context as much as the latter needs the former's theorisations. This introduction is an opening. It opens up not only to the ensuing articles but, more importantly, an occasion for the inevitable encounter argued for in this special issue. Universalist arrogance serves only to keep new possibilities from emerging, since it allows only one set of accepted analytic language to enter the dialogue and is itself a product of a specific set of historical experiences. (Chen, 2010: 245)

BREXIT / boala lunga moarte sigura, ar fi cel mai potrivit motto al BREXIT-ului inceput cuma trei ani. Premierul Boris Johnson cunoaste intelepciunea multiseculara si a inceput discursul sau la ONU, NY, cu readucerea in actualitate a destinului lui Prometeu, care poate fi tradus ca vizionar, caruia oamenii ii sunt recunoscatori ca nimanui altul pentru ca le-a adus focul. Pentru asta sufera indelung incatusat in Caucaz si e torturat de un vultur care-i manaca din cand in cand ficatul, pana cand il iertat Zeus. O paralela a mitului grecesc cu situatia premierul UK si poporului sau implicat in Brexit e evidenta. Johnson este titanului Prometeu, care incearca sa faca bine poporul, dar este incatusat de parlament, justitie, de rauvoitorii de pe continent, care il chinuie permanent, dar in final binele invinge si Marea Britanie isi va lua din nou soarta in mainile sala la 31 octombrie a.c. pentru ca vizionarul Johnson a promis: "I'd rather be dead in a ditch" than ask Brussels for Brexit extension. * La Congresul de la Brighton, Partidului celor ce muncesc, labourist, se adreseaza unul altuia cu Tovarase / Comrade si vor sa nationalizeze utilitatile publice, sa inchida scolile particulare de elita, sa acorde asistenta gratuita la domiciliu celor peste 65 de ani, care costa 6 miliarde lire pe an. In era Blair labouristi erau inca moderni si capitalisti, acceptau o alianta cu economia libera si concurenta. Acum vor sa revina la vechea conceptie socialista, radicala. Lupta de clasa. * Stanga muncitoreasca inca mai nutreste iluzia ca UE are si o componenta sociala. Cu toate astea, nu dupa mesajul bancii se uita laburistii. Iar 5% inflatie e un moft! Limita de 3% e de la Schauble si Banca Europeana, pentru a tine economiile mai slabe in dependenta de Germania. Somajul?

Taking cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches to the volume’s subject, this exciting collection of essays offers a reassessment of Shakespeare’s erotic and Ovidian mythology within classical and continental aesthetic contexts. Through extensive examination of mythological visual and textual material, scholars explore the transmission and reinvention of Ovidian eroticism in Shakespeare’s plays to show how early modern artists and audiences collectively engaged in redefining ways of thinking pleasure. Within the collection’s broad-ranging investigation of erotic mythology in Renaissance culture, each chapter analyses specific instances of textual and pictorial transmission, reception, and adaptation. Through various critical strategies, contributors trace Shakespeare’s use of erotic material to map out the politics and aesthetics of pleasure, unravelling the ways in which mythology informs artistic creation. Received acceptions of neo-platonic love and the Petrarchan tensions of unattainable love are revisited, with a focus on parodic and darker strains of erotic desire, such as Priapic and Dionysian energies, lustful fantasy and violent eros. The dynamics of interacting tales is explored through their structural ability to adapt to the stage. Myth in Renaissance culture ultimately emerges not merely as near-inexhaustible source material for the Elizabethan and Jacobean arts, but as a creative process in and of itself.

Until the 1980s, many European social democratic parties had reservations about the project of European integration. But what exactly is the status of this kind of Euroscepticism within the broader ideology of social democracy? Does honouring social democratic core commitments require one to reject European integration and membership of the EU? This article investigates this question, using debates around Europe in the social democratic parties of Great Britain, Sweden and Denmark as primary cases. Employing Freeden's morphological approach to political ideology, the article argues that there is no necessary connection between social democracy's core commitments and opposition to European integration. Examining social democratic Euroscepticism still usefully unveils the indeterminacy of the concept of sovereignty in social democratic thinking, as well as how particular national imaginaries shaped centre-left opposition to European unity.