Goodness Is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference

Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950—at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union emerged in western Europe—Aimé Césaire wrote, “… Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible.”2 This idea is fairly commonplace in much of the post-colonial world and it has some purchase within certain academic and intellectual circles elsewhere. And yet, in the process of denouncing the widely noted3 presence of racism in Hungary, thirty-six leading Hungarian intellectuals have, in a recent public document, felt compelled to thank France, and through France, a generic, trans-historical notion of “Europe,” for what they saw as the latter's profound, longue-durée goodness.