through europe

(Italian version of this article)

Europe will be the product of your mind

Spring 2011 : the European Union is on the brink of the catastrophe, as Neoliberal dogmatism is imposing the diktat of the financial class upon the interests of society.
Let’s look back, before we try to understand what has to be done.

In the year 1933 in his Discours à la nation européenne, Julien Benda wrote the following words :

Vous ferez l’Europe par ce que vous direz, non par ce que vous serez. L’Europe sera un produit de votre esprit, de la volonté de votre esprit, non un produit de votre être. Et si vous me répondez que vous ne croyez pas à l’autonomie de l’esprit, que votre esprit ne peut être autre chose qu’un aspect de votre être, alors je vous déclare que vous ne ferez jamais l’Europe. Car il n’y a pas d’Être européen.

do what you want. do not do what you do not want. you do what you want. you do want what you want. you do not want what you do not. do not do what you do want not. do what you do want not what you want not.

(Italian version)

In 1931 Mussolini asked the Italian academics to swear allegiance to the Fascist regime. Only a dozen of them – out of 1600 – refused to subdue. The best minds were already abroad: Piero Sraffa was teaching in Cambridge as an exile, and scholars like Enrico Fermi who were working on the most advanced frontiers of physics were already in the US.
Something similar is happening today in this country where twice in a century totalitarian barbarism has found its political shape. While Berlusconi government is destroying the public school and the University, the academic class is not less coward than it was in 1931.

“C'ést une révolte!” “Non, Sire, c'est une révolution”, rispose il duca de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt a Luigi XVI la notte del 14 luglio 1789, dopo la caduta della Bastiglia e la defezione delle truppe reali davanti all'insurrezione popolare. Si affermava in quel momento “la grandezza dell'uomo di fronte alla piccolezza dei grandi”, come disse Robespierre, ed arrivava al culmine il pathos che per decenni aveva acceso gli animi di fronte alla possibilità di liberazione del genere umano dalle carceri del buio medievale.

     6pm,  23rd February 2011 @ Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute, London

The transcript of the speech is avaible now in [english] and in [italian]