Abstract

This volume explores the relationship between media and identity along the fault-lines and fissures of the ever-shifting collectivities that constitute Europe. At the centre of this dynamic are human beings, who, as makers and users of media, negotiate identities, affiliations and meanings. The collection explores how ethnicities, religions, tastes, generations and languages overlap one another, interact within individuals and define communities. Whether triggered by individual desires or shared fantasies, these dynamic collectivities make use of media in very different ways. Addressing topics such as films and television programmes, the Euro, photographs, postcards or public monuments, contributors reflect on this notion of ‘new collectivities’, not in an individualistic sense or collectively as nations but as multiple and shifting identities. With this as a starting point, the volume interrogates the processes that create and shape identity and characterize Europe as it physically expands and administratively consolidates. Essays explore media texts as sites of dreams and longed for identities, and articulate the fears and tensions surrounding the uses of transnational media, whether for purposes of cultural homogenization or isolation. Drawing on novels, films and the press, the volume demonstrates the intricate interactions of history and memory as they inform and give shape to the present. We Europeans? Media, Representation, Identities addresses a scholarly readership with an interest in textual analysis and policy issues regarding media, identity and the many vantage points of Europe.