|
|
|
|
A quote of The Secret of the West, made by Olivier Béguin
in a paper presented at the "First Global Conference On Critical Issues In Interculturalism".
The conference was held in Milan, Italy, from
(Olivier Béguin, “L’Auberge Espagnole: Interculturalism in the European Melting Pot” in Critical Issues in Multiculturalism, conference proceedings, volume 8, p.71-82, Feb2004, edited by Diane Powell & Fiona Sze, with Dr.Robert Fischer as series editor, Interdisciplinary Press, Oxford, UK). Safety copy The conference was organized by Oxford-based Inter-Disciplinary.net, a network of people keen to “encourage, promote and sponsor inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conferences, seminars, forums, projects, and publishing” in the world. |
|
Olivier Béguin's paper is only available on the Internet as a PDF-document.
All of the Milan conference is merged in this PDF-document.
This does not make it very practical to look for the said quote. For the visitors unwilling to download and search the rather lengthy pdf-document, Béguin's paper might be briefly summarized as a plea stressing the value of European cultural diversity. Béguin reviews the French movie "L'Auberge Espagnole" realized in 2002 by Cédric Klapisch. He considers the movie as a metaphor for the gentle anarchy of the intra-European multicultural encounters taking place in Brussels during the negociations between member states aiming, in the long run, at the political unification of Europe. Béguin reasserts that the cultural diversity of Europe is an asset, even as it makes these negociations more complicated and more chaotic (for example the numerous European languages). Béguin quotes The Secret of the West as one more proof for the importance of having different cultures and centers within the continent:
"Today, when everybody mentions only the decline of old Europe in face
of an invasive America, an expanding China and India, we should
remember that the key to an European miracle lay in its melting pot (19)".
|