«Now We Are European!» How Does it Get That Way?

Abstract

«The European» is given as a kind of person and as an autonomous subject in con- temporary policy and research. The paper examines the role that the social and educational science technologies play in constructing this new type of person. We first briefly explore the human sciences as historical practices that link the individual to the community. These practices are reassembled and examined descriptively in the second section which explores the making of the European as a particular kind of person from which nation and daily life are to be ordered. In the third and fourth sections, we discuss the cultural technologies of science in fabricating the European. These technologies are forging the memory of a common history that simultaneously erases, forgets, and realigns Europe’s internal differences so that Europe may become the «world champions» of global competition. At a different level are technologies of numbers and statistics mobilized in making the unity given to the European and from which to understand diversity and differences.