Nostalgia for the future: 1 the geoeconomics and geopolitics of the Euro Jane S Pollard* and James D Sidaway† * School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT email: j.s.pollard@bham.ac.uk † Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570 email: geojds@nus.edu.sg Visions of Europe We share much of Benito Giordano’s cheer in the smooth entrée of the Euro. Our Editorial calling for geographers to engage with the cultural, economic and political constructions of ‘Euroland’ and detailing some of its intriguing complexities was drafted, circulated amongst the Editorial board, revised and sent to the publishers of Transactions some months before the Euro currency was released. We were permitted to change some tenses from present to past when the proofs arrived after the New Year, but we were not allowed many amendments. So we hope that, like other readers, Giordano will appreciate why the largely trouble- free introduction of the currency (which we had no cause to doubt) was a theme that ‘was very conspicuous by its absence’ (Giordano 2002, 514). In general, Giordano seems to agree with many of the points raised in the Editorial, but highlights a number of areas where he would have preferred us to emphasize other things or to utilise different terms. For example, Giordano takes us to task for failing to focus on the ways that the bridges on the Euronotes are about more than connection (whose possibilities and limits we stressed). For Giordano (2002, 515): ‘They symbolize and evoke images of a common history and past, as viewed through the lens of architectural styles, which have a cultural significance that transgresses European boundaries’. This may be the case. 2 However, we prefer to envision Europe by reference to future possibilities, difference, heterogeneity and orienta- tion, rather than heritage (see Amin 2002). But since he raises this spectre, let us point out that when we enter such territory as historical defini- tions and ‘heritages’ of ‘Europe’, the bottom line is to contemplate their significance for who and how this is configured; as inclusive, or exclusive, homogenous or heterodox? Moreover, a great deal of European ‘heritage’ has been instituted in ‘far-away lands’ (of Asia, Africa and the Americas) or in corners of Europe (Stalingrad and Auschwitz-Birkenau spring to mind) of which many Europeans might today prefer to know little. More positively, some of what has gone into the making of European culture, science, arts and built environments is the legacy of ‘other’ cultures and societies (Arab and Turkish, for example). In these contexts, Francavilla (2001, 131) observes, Perhaps the fundamental problem lies in another issue: not ‘who’ feels European, but ‘where,’ and in what context. As everyone knows, identity functions by means of opposition. This gives rise to the immediate question: who is the ‘other’ for the European? How many Europes co-exist? In similar terms, for Derrida (1992, 29): It is necessary to make ourselves the guardians of an idea of Europe, of a difference of Europe, but of a Europe that consists precisely in not closing itself off in its own identity . . . On another theme, we would also want to con- sider where and who in Spain has benefited from the conversion of all those ‘pesetas negras’ 3 (and, since so many of the points raised in these ex- changes relate to language and meaning, we prefer the term Pesetas informales o sucias 4 ) in celebrating that: ‘The fact that the pesetas negras (black money) in Spain have (more or less) all been converted into Euros has clearly benefited the Spanish economy’ (Giordano 2002, 514). For us therefore – as we Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 27 518–521 2002 ISSN 0020-2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2002