Expanding Europe through Memory: The Shifting Content of the Ever-Salient Past

Abstract

Collective memories of war and suffering have been crucial to the development of European integration since 1945. My basic thesis is that remembrance has also played an important role in the accession of new states to the organization that has come to be known as the European Union (EU). As the EU has expanded into new regions of Europe, particularly the post-dictatorial south and the post-communist east, continental institutions and existing member-states have been confronted by conflicting understandings of the past. Although the past has continued to push states towards membership in the EU, the nature of these remembered experiences has changed through the various rounds of expansion. In addition to tracing the role that memory has played in the widening of Europe, I argue that these confrontations have sparked important debates about the meaning of the past for Europe today.

Memory, narrative, and rupture: The power of the past as a resource for political change

“…Regardless of these different interpretations of what needed to be done, all of these thinkers saw the events of the Second World War as constituting a historical rupture. Subsequent political developments, especially the widening and deepening of the European Union, have followed the prescriptions of Arendt more closely than those presented by Horkheimer and Adorno (Verovšek, 2015). The extent to which these changes in political life have addressed the social pathologies that led to the horrific events of Europe’s age of total war is an open question.…”

“…Subsequent political developments, especially the widening and deepening of the European Union, have followed the prescriptions of Arendt more closely than the wholesale rejection of modernity presented by Horkheimer and Adorno (Verovšek, 2015). The extent to which these changes in political life have addressed the social pathologies that led to the horrific events of emphasize the personal import of the latter over the mere occurrence of the former.…”

Integration after totalitarianism: Arendt and Habermas on the postwar imperatives of memory

“…Unfortunately, in making this argument, Habermas makes no mention of the gulag or the Soviet Union, focusing instead on the Holocaust and the actions of the National Socialist regime. Although this position makes sense from his position within the postwar Federal Republic, it weakens its appeal in the new, postcommunist member-states of East-Central Europe (see Verovšek, 2015: 542–546).…”

“…However, whereas Habermas focuses almost exclusively on the legacy of the Holocaust, Arendt tends to speak of the remembrance of totalitarianism more broadly. At a time when divisions between the “old” founding states and the “new,” postcommunist members from East-Central Europe is increasingly dividing the EU (see Verovšek, 2015: 542–546), I conclude by suggesting that Arendt’s more holistic vision, which allows for memories of both fascism and communism to drive the projet européen , may have certain advantages.…”

A history of post-communist remembrance: from memory politics to the emergence of a field of anticommunism

“…its past (Kattago 2009;Leggewie 2010;Verovšek 2015), which one observer described as a moment of "post-EU accession ideological decolonization" (Mälksoo 2009, p. 656). Such accounts have failed to address the region's penchant for political instrumentalization of the past (Enyedi 2005;Mark 2010;Nalepa 2010), providing sound reason to marvel at post-communist elites' seeming articulation of a consensual regional message.…”