Abstract
Sharing, exchanging, interacting : what we share is not what sets us apart.
The variety of European languages and cultures requires respect for diversity, without turning differences into borders. Ambivalent, as both a line and a space for negotiation, borders unify while separating. In contrast to borders, engaging features make interaction and dialogue captivating. It's integration rather than comparison that counts, without erasing differences, which we'd do better to appreciate as the basis of the cultural dream. Integrated languages, literatures and cultures : how to make it ? I will approach this question through analytical concepts, with the help of literary, visual and cinematographic works, in which I will highlight what demonstrates that works respond to each other, and to differences.
I propose a lecture on the issues that both distinguish European countries from one another and, for that very reason, encourage debate and the amalgam that follows, which is in fact what defines, what makes Europe. It is thanks to the common ground of the European " semiosphere " that discussions around these issues are possible, whatever language is spoken and whatever border connects and separates in a single performative act. In the opening lecture, I will present these issues as an intellectual wasteland where any stroll can lead to wandering, but also to that " European union " whose plurality defines and facilitates identification rather than identity. The latter is not an innate trait that we carry with us wherever we go, but the result of identification in the present, oriented towards the future. The ultimate challenge for Europe, then, is to choose which projects and ideas each country identifies with. Identity is not something we have, but something we must achieve.
