Performing Europe. Cultural pragmatics of a European festival.

By conducting the case study on the Festival of Europe in Florence, the article examines the meanings attributed to the idea of a 'Europe of culture', namely the processes involved in organizing, staging and receiving them within a local context. In particular, by adopting the theoretical perspective represented by Jeffrey Alexander's «cultural pragmatics», the article pursues two objectives. The first consists in revealing the usefulness of a cultural perspective on Europe based on a performative approach. The second objective is to highlight which performances and forms of involvement facilitate the creation of successful cultural repertoires centered on Europe. The main argument put forward is that the formation of such cultural repertoires requires the achievement of a «fusing effect» between actors' scripts and audience's background representations. The article analyses these themes using qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis.