Goodness Is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference

Abstract

Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950—at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union emerged in western Europe—Aimé Césaire wrote, “… Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible.”² This idea is fairly commonplace in much of the post-colonial world and it has some purchase within certain academic and intellectual circles elsewhere. And yet, in the process of denouncing the widely noted³ presence of racism in Hungary, thirty-six leading Hungarian intellectuals have, in a recent public document, felt compelled to thank France, and through France, a generic, trans-historical notion of “Europe,” for what they saw as the latter's profound, longue-durée goodness.