Documentality, or Europe

Europe represents the only case of a continent unified by documents: an organism quite different, for example, from the United State, where the Declaration of Independence was followed by wars against England. It also reflects a procedure completely different from the application of the Rule of Law in post-Communist countries, since the latter were already in possession of a national unity, and have simply received a new constitution from the outside. On the contrary, in Europe we started out from an ever more challenging series of documents until we have finally reached the highest document of all in the form of a common currency. This is an experience that is in itself significant. But it is even more so for me, as I intend to deduce how this process has clearly illustrated laws of construction of social reality, consisting of inscriptions and documents, as I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere,1 and which I will try to articulate here by elaborating upon the notion of ‘documentality’.