Europe as/at the border: Trieste and the meaning of Europe

In this paper, I try to 'think Europe' through a cosmopolitan city like Trieste, and its recent and not so recent past. I develop my argument through the analysis of two powerful 'myths' that, I argue, limit understandings of Europe and the European project today: (1) the 'myth of diversity'; and (2) the 'myth of an identity in crisis'. In doing so, I rely in great part on the work of French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin and his conceptualisation of European identity as a permanent negotiation of difference; what Morin (1990) terms 'a permanent dialogical simmer'. Starting from Morin's critical genealogy of European identity, I try to consider some of the ways in which we can go beyond territorial understandings of identity and citizenship, using Trieste's experience as a mirror of the broader European condition.