ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses some of the themes of Jurgen Habermas's most recent and politically forceful work. He describes the main features of Habermas's social-theoretical contribution with regard to the contemporary political scene, paying especially close attention to the arguments he develops in The Postnational Constellation. The author examines arguments advanced by the French feminist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva on the psychic and political consequences of globalization. Both social theorists, in quite different ways, have wrestled with the question of globalization in transforming national and cultural identities; the author emphasizes those strands of Kristeva's theoretical orientation that, enhance and deepen the terms of the debate raging over global culture and European identity. He deals with the question of the cultural regeneration of the European subject but also with the dangers that cosmopolitan, globalized culture presents to other, nondiscursive forms of political identification.
