Lexington Books Europe and Its Boundaries: Words and Worlds, Within and Beyond

Is it possible to rearticulate the relationship between Europe and its others in non-colonizing ways? Europe and Its Boundaries reflects upon this question, first by exploring several philosophical approaches to Europe's relation to non-Europe, then by examining that relationship in specific intellectual and material contexts of European domination. The philosophical approaches are explored through the works of G. W. F. Hegel, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Departing from the routine recognition of Europe's hegemonic role in constituting global political modernity, the authors examine fundamental political and ethical questions of coloniality, anti-coloniality, post-coloniality, mutual recognition, hospitality, responsibility, justice, and democracy. Regarding the intellectual and material contexts, the book explores the production of Europe and its relation to others in highly significant moments and sites of meaning making in European history and politics, from battles and monuments on its western and eastern territorial boundaries to museum exhibitions and immigrant detention centers, that is, new forms of borders at its very core. Europe and Its Boundaries thus reconsiders historical and contempoarary understandings of Europe, border politics, and global encounters more broadly. This book will find an audience among scholars of political theory, international relations, geography, cultural studies, history, and post-colonial studies. Review Europe and Its Boundaries offers a timely caution as political and social theorists aim to produce global theory. If political and social theory is to be global (or at least comparative), it needs to slow down and cultivate the skills necessary for thinking beyond Europe's colonial relationship to others. These compelling essays are a wonderful place to begin, confronting us with the interpretive problems and possibilities of thinking "Europe" and "European thought" as a moment in a dialogical process.--David Blaney, Professor of Political Science, Macalester College, USA Pursuing Dipesh Chakrabarty's argument in Provincializing Europe, this volume explores the intrinsic ambivalence of Europe: its 'indispensable' status as a source of universal horizons and its simultaneous 'inadequacy' due to its hegemonic policies and agendas. Probing the continent's intimate connection with colonialism, anti-colonialism, post-colonialism, and cosmopolitanism, the authors show that Europe can only find itself by losing itself in robust dialogue with other cultures and traditions. An important contribution to cross-cultural and post-colonial studies.--Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame The essays in Europe and its Boundaries explore with great imagination and intelligence the project of provincializing Europe, illuminating the possibilities for a more ethical and more critical scholarly and pedagogical practice.--Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University This collection of original, thoughtful, and sometimes absolutely brilliant essays questions and extends the project of 'provincializing Europe' in novel and unanticipated ways. By discussing in depth both European ideas and identities and their entanglement in the histories of peoples once dominated by European empires, the essays assembled here manage to insert the question of colonialism right at the heart of today's discussions about the boundaries of Europe.--Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago About the Author Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi have been in conversation since their graduate school days at the University of Minnesota and are colleagues in the department of political science at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Professor Davison's works include The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology: Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, and Islamism, and Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration. Professor Muppidi's works include The Politics of the G