Europe Faces Europe

Description

How is Europe identified in narratives from its eastern periphery? This is the core question of this volume. Its chapters map narratives of Europe rooted in East Europe, as they circulate in phenomenological philosophy, news journalism, social movements, literary texts, visual art and popular music. Whereas debate and research on European identity is normally conducted in self-congratulatory terms by core institutions in the centre, the focus here is on how Europeanness is narrated in one of its most dynamic regions: Eastern Europe. A closer scrutiny of how such East European narratives critically rework inherited conceptions reveals a range of strategies for interpreting European identity in this transitory phase of history.

Open Access PDF of this title is available from OAPEN, at this link Europe Faces Europe.

Europe Faces Europe: An Introduction

Johan Fornäs

 

Europe as Identity and Ideal: Reading Barroso's 'New Narrative' Heretically alongside Hegel, Husserl and Patočka

Carl Cederberg

 

Clashing Internationalisms: East European Narratives of West European Integration

Stefan Jonsson

 

Narratives at War: Representations of Europe in News Media of Ukraine, Russia and Poland during Euromaidan

Roman Horbyk

 

Narrating Protest: Silenced Stories of Europe in Occupy Stockholm and Occupy Latvia

Anna Kaun

 

The Resilience of the Periphery: Narrating Europe through the Curatorial Strategies

Katerina Wadstein MacLeod

 

Euro-Visions: East European Narratives in Televised Popular Music

Johan Fornäs

 

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Politics
• Journalism
• History of Europe
• Anthropology
• Eastern
• General
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783207534
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Published with support from the Baltic Sea Foundation
(Östersjöstiftelsen) and the Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation.
First published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Lucy McArthur
Production manager: Matthew Floyd
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-751-0
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-752-7
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-753-4
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1: Europe Faces Europe: An Introduction
Johan Fornäs
Chapter 2: Europe as Identity and Ideal: Reading Barroso’s ‘New Narrative’ Heretically alongside Hegel, Husserl and Patocˇka
Carl Cederberg
Chapter 3: Clashing Internationalisms: East European Narratives of West European Integration
Stefan Jonsson
Chapter 4: Narratives at War: Representations of Europe in News Media of Ukraine, Russia and Poland during Euromaidan
Roman Horbyk
Chapter 5: Narrating Protest: Silenced Stories of Europe in Occupy Stockholm and Occupy Latvia
Anne Kaun
Chapter 6: The Resilience of the Periphery: Narrating Europe through Curatorial Strategies
Katarina Wadstein MacLeod
Chapter 7: Euro-Visions: East European Narratives in Televised Popular Music
Johan Fornäs
Index
List of Illustrations
Figure 4.1. Europe: Gradations of meaning.
Figure 4.2. Semantic map of the Russian media, February 2013–September 2014.
Figure 4.3. Semantic map of the Ukrainian media, February 2013–September 2014.
Figure 4.4. Semantic map of the Polish media, February 2013–September 2014.
Figure 4.5. Ukraine getting fit for Europe (courtesy of Ihor Lukyanchenko/the Institute of World Policy; http://youpicture.org/?v=2014-09-16_no3azejlp4h03qpc5e87t8b8p.jpg#.VgTiJsuvHIU).
Figure 4.6. ‘Police with the People’ (courtesy of the Institute of World Policy; http://iwp.org.ua/img/caricatures/prev/31.jpg).
Figure 4.7. ‘Affluent Old Age’ (courtesy of the Institute of World Policy; http://iwp.org.ua/img/caricatures/prev/15.jpg).
Figure 4.8. ‘Which Treatment is Better?’ (courtesy of the Institute of World Policy; http://iwp.org.ua/img/caricatures/prev/20.jpg).
Figure 4.9. ‘Clear Water!’ (courtesy of the Institute of World Policy; http://iwp.org.ua/img/caricatures/prev/23.jpg).
Figure 4.10. Ukraine facing choice between decadent West and traditional Russia, a.k.a. ‘I Choose Freedom’ (courtesy of Ruslan Smak; http://i.imgur.com/LDDGQeK.jpg).
Figure 4.11. ‘Berkut’ wallpapers (courtesy of Rammist/Look.com.ua; www.look.com.ua/98958-berkut-geroi-shhity-bogatyri.html).
Figure 7.1. ESC logos from the 1950s and the 1990s (logos.wikia.com/wiki/File:Eurovision_montage.jpg).
Figure 7.2. The logo and slogan of the ESC final in Baku 2012 (www.eurovision.tv/page/press/photo-downloads?gal=43373&type=Press).
Figure 7.3. Lithuania’s InCulto performing ‘Eastern European Funk’ in Oslo 2010 (photo Ane Charlotte Spilde; es.wikipedia.org/wiki/InCulto).
Figure 7.4. Montenegro’s Rambo Amadeus performing ‘Euro Neuro’ in Baku 2012 (photo Anton Mukhin, used with permission; www.ridus.ru/news/33769).
Chapter 1
Europe Faces Europe: An Introduction
Johan Fornäs
T he European Commission (EC) has campaigned for a ‘new narrative for Europe’ to breathe new life into the European spirit. In March 2014, its cultural committee report emphasized the ‘shared values of peace, freedom, democracy and rule of law’ but also the role of culture as ‘a major source of nourishment and supply for Europe’s social and political body’. Indeed, cultural aspects linked to symbols and narratives seem increasingly central to Europe’s future prospects, functioning as a means of identification and interaction between the severed halves of the continent.
Top European institutions, often in grand self-congratulatory terms, look for ways to use such aspects as strategic tools to secure popular support. This is done on several different levels, including, for instance, both the European Union (EU) and the much larger Council of Europe (CoE). However, redefining Europe is not just a top-down task for dominant institutions in Brussels. All over the continent, other actors have also for a long time been engaged in unfolding narrations that rework conventional traditions and thus redefine European identities, as critical movements and grass-roots debates either propel or challenge European interactions, adding new dimensions that serve to undermine or revitalize dominant discourses.
Since 1989, some of renegotiations of identity have particularly centred on the post-Communist borderlands of Eastern Europe. While this integration process has been a major concern for many on all levels and in all regions, little attention has so far been given to how East European voices themselves relate to Europe as a dynamic project. How is Europe identified in narratives from its eastern half? This is thus the core question asked in this volume based on the multidisciplinary research project ‘Narratives of Europe’. 1 The book chapters’ systematic in-depth studies of selected mediated discourses investigate how Europe faces Europe in a range of cultural fields, mapping, comparing and interpreting narratives circulating in phenomenological philosophy, international geopolitics, news journalism, social movements, visual art and popular music.
Narratives are powerful tools for shaping formations of identity, as they seek in various discourse fields to identify Europe’s past, present and future. Such narratives are sometimes echoed in European studies but rarely closely investigated in terms of their main constituents and forms, or of the meanings and identities they give to Europe. Many previous studies of Europe have dealt with the political or economic dimensions of its history. Here focusing on cultural and narrative dimensions casts new light on the intricate processes that indicate in which directions European mentalities and structures of feeling are moving, and thus what Europe may become tomorrow.
This introductory chapter will first situate the issue of European narratives in relation to a series of recent and current transitions and then problematize the often assumed East–West divide. Next, theories of narrative identification are presented, leading to the suggestion of a methodological model for studying such narratives from a critical-hermeneutic perspective. Finally, some results of the six case studies will be summarized, indicating possible comparisons across cultural genres and fields as well as between different regions within Eastern Europe. The reading of this final part of the introduction can therefore also be postponed until after reading the empirical chapters.
Narratives of Europe
People living in as well as outside Europe develop ways to identify it in thought and (inter-) action, giving it a range of meanings that link it to a variable set of characteristic traits or values. Europeanness is then always intertwined with other identities, including those involving nationality, ethnicity, class, age, generation, gender, sexuality, religion and political affiliation. Identities are relationally constructed through discourses that construct differences to ‘others’, in Europe’s case notably Islam, Asia, Africa and the US, even though they in some respects actually may also be regarded as integrated within that same Europe, for instance through Muslim immigrants or the strong US American influences on academia and popular culture.
Europe has no fixed essence or existence. It is always in a process of becoming: a Europe-in-process, always contested and always in a crisis. This process has – from varying positions and in shifting terms – been interpreted by a range of social theorists. Jürgen Habermas has, for instance, argued for new forms of interlinked public spheres that could serve as infrastructures for Europeans to communicate on shared issues and be ‘united in diversity’ (the European motto): with plurality not as a barrier but as a resource for unification. 2 Jacques Derrida has insisted on the acknowledgement of difference and alterity for a ‘Europe still to become’. 3 Zygmunt Bauman likewise regards Europe as an unfinished adventure, defined by its lack of fixed identity and yearning for transgression. 4 Europe’s rich history of superimposed differences has, Étienne Balibar argues, lent it a particular capacity to act ‘as the interpreter of the world, translating languages and cultures in all directions’. 5 ‘The future of Europe’ is seen by Paul Ricoeur ‘in terms of imagination’, outlining a series of models for a ‘post-national state’ to combine identity and alterity at different levels: asking for a ‘translation ethos’ of hospitality that could mediate between different cultures, and where people take responsibility for ‘the story of the other’ in mobile identifications through readings that constitute narrative identities. 6
Many have problematized the lack of sufficiently rich and successful narratives of a shared European identity. They have questioned the elitist and exclusivist nature of official conceptions of European identity, suggesting that they may obscure cultural complexity and diversity. 7 Policies devised and implemented by elites centrally and from the ‘top down’ are too unresponsive to the more organically emerging cultural practices and symbols of European identity. 8 Oppositional narratives implicitly presuppose a grand narrative, usually cen