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Defending European culture against the war on its inheritance, defending private and family life, and challenging LGBT and gender ideology
Europe’s cultural inheritance should not be treated as a source of shame or as raw material for permanent deconstruction. A confident culture can acknowledge its failures while still transmitting the history, achievements, institutions and traditions that give citizens a sense of belonging and a stake in the future.
01 / Reading list
Furedi’s central cultural argument is that the past is being delegitimised through the removal of monuments, the decolonisation of curricula and the replacement of historical understanding with inherited shame.
Furedi examines the conflict between EU institutions and Hungary through competing views of popular sovereignty, national identity, tradition and the past.
Reynolds uses Hockney’s life and work to make a positive case for artistic freedom, experimentation, beauty and a continuing relationship with the real world.
Reynolds argues that Europe’s post-historical self-image has left its political class unprepared for war, power politics and the demands of national self-preservation.
Deme analyses the House of European History as a politicised memory project and asks how institutions presenting a common European past can reshape historical consciousness in support of further integration.
Deme examines EU cultural funding and argues that political vocabulary around diversity, inclusion and sustainability increasingly displaces artistic excellence, heritage and cultural autonomy.