The Emerging European Supernationalism

Abstract

In both senses of "conceiving"; laying the basis for its birth, and coming to terms with the idea in the double sense of explicating its meaning and getting used to the idea of supernationalism, not only nationalism and subnationalism. Nationalism is a state of the individual and collective mind, usually subconscious, retrievable on occasion by leaders and oth ers, calling for identification with say, Britain, France, or Spain (or, more precisely, with what elites of those countries may be up to). So is supernationalism, which differs from nationalism only by relating to a larger, supernational entity usually thought of as a federation or a superstate, such as the European Union that is now emerging from the confederal European Community. So is subnationalism, which identifies with subnational entities such as Wales, Corsica, or Catalonia. The object of identification is a national, a cultural entity, the sum total of language, religion, shared myths of traumas and glories; and the people who are the carriers of the culture in space and through time. The nation-state doctrine concretizes further, identifying with territory, demand ing coincidence between territorial and cultural borders. At the very center are institutions such as the state, and personifications: emperor, king, president, and so on. Above nationalism has been linked to culture. As such it em bodies assumptions about reality; some of them, heavily value loaded. As all nationalisms are cultures but not all cultures are