On Deconstructing the Idea of Europe

The essay considers the history of the idea of the deconstruction of Europe, dividing them into five categories and evaluating, briefly, the relative success and failure of each one. The whole question of the relationship of the etymological and the philological to deconstruction is one of the central themes of the essay. It considers the difficulties of trying to alter the histories of words, the possible futility of replacing those histories with new ones, the place empirical research has in such struggles and, ultimately, what possible consequences the successful deconstruction of the word “Europe” might be.