The sense of connection between Paris and Europe is perhaps most obviously experienced in the quartier de l'Europe in the 8th arrondissement around the gare Saint-Lazare.Here twenty-four of the names of the most important European cities adorn the signs of the eponymous streets that surround the place de l'Europe. But how did the Parisian street connect to thinking about Europe in a more profound sense, in which its very definition and scope were interrogated? In this chapter the case is made that Europe emerged in the Paris street in this period in direct and indirect ways that derived from the weight of recent history, or the urgency of ongoing political concerns.

The chapter will proceed as follows. First, street names are examined in terms of their implications for thinking about Europe at this post-war conjuncture. Second, perceptions of the political affiliations of Paris streets are analysed with regard to their implications for thinking about the continent. The third section examines how the discourse of Europe was implicated in street demonstrations in the French capital, paying particular attention to those in Paris that followed the Soviet invasion of Budapest in 1956, and the march of 17 October 1961, which culminated in the killing by police of somewhere between thirty and 200 unarmed Algerian protesters. Finally, the street wall is examined as a space for discourse, with particular attention to denunciatory graffiti that were placed on the Paris street wall in the aftermath of October 17, and its connection to discourse about Europe.

Three core arguments are made. First, various explicit and implicit understandings of Europe were expressed and developed in the Paris street. But it was also a forum for its rejection as much as for its defence or reformulation. Paris streets were symbolically appropriated in political ideologies, and by the same token deliberately contested by their opponents. The street was thus a forum for ordering and transgressing the respective positions of actors, including opposing formulations of the meaning of Europe and Europeanness. The left–right political divide in large part dictated the terms of this contestation, though one cannot read off formulations of Europe according to this political spectrum in a completely transparent and direct way. Second, articulations of Europe in Paris were often seen to take on additional significance precisely because they were formulated in the French capital.