A Europe of stories: Queer cartography and the grammar of hope

Abstract

In January 2019, 30 leading European intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Orhan Pamuk, pronounced that ‘the idea of Europe is in peril’. Their voices added to a general sense from all corners of the European continent that the liberal narratives that have sustained the European Union integration project are under attack. Is it true, as Pamuk suggested, that Europe no longer makes us dream? What would it take to reactivate Europe’s ability to inspire? Aligned with Sudeep Dasgupta and Mireille Rosello’s approach of queering European culture, I imagine the possibilities that might emerge if we reenergise Queer and Europe with their original radical potential. In my reading of Panos H. Koutras’ film Xenia, I ask the following: what happens if we imbue Queer Europe with a grammar of hope instead of a grammar of hopelessness? I posit that Xenia queers the space between the European centre and periphery in its celebration of ‘diva citizenship’ and in so doing, the film reconfigures a Europe in the present continuous rather than the past and future tenses. Such a reconfiguration widens the scope to imagine new cartographies that map European culture in alternative frameworks. A Europe of Stories, I suggest, emerges in the space that this new cartography opens up.