Transnational Europe

Abstract

Academics, journalists and trendsetters often search for new concepts to denote ongoing transformations. In the 1980s many people were busy conceptualizing a transgression of modernity. Heated intellectual debates on postmodernism and postmodernity took place throughout the Western world. Today, one of the core institutions of the modern era, the nation-state, is under fire. We are witnessing great semantic turbulence around the concept of the nation. Claims about the erosion of the nation-state abound. Often such claims are related to the effects of globalization, which has become a key term in the current conceptualizations of transformation. Globalization has become what Reinhard Koselleck calls a basic concept because it ‘combine [s] manifold experiences and expectations in such a way that [it] become [s] indispensable to any formulation of the most urgent issues of a given time’ (Koselleck, 1996: 64). Globalization is followed by a host of other terms that indicate change and transgression. Préfixes like post- and trans- are frequently found. This is certainly the case when the fate of the nation is being discussed. Terms like transnational — and to a lesser degree postnational — have forcefully entered public and academic debates. The former belongs to a spatial configuration; the latter outlines a temporal movement.