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11 - A Guided Tour into the Question of Europe
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- By Jan Ifversen
- Edited by Matthijs Lok, Robin de Bruin, Marjet Brolsma
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- Book:
- Eurocentrism in European History and Memory
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 21 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 11 November 2019, pp 195-222
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Abstract
This chapter revisits the European question. Whenever ‘Europe’ is approached as something other than a continent, we ask this question. Europe might be a culture, a common feeling, an identity, a union, a memory and/or a history. To deal with Europe is to navigate between diversity, transnationalism and Eurocentrism. It is to investigate myth, memory, heritage and identity politics. It is to write histories of Europe or exhibit Europe in museums. This chapter takes the readers on a guided tour through two European museums, or rather two houses, La Maison de Robert Schuman and the House of European History. The first presents a mythical narrative of the founding father who saved Europe from chaos, while the second lays out a more complicated route between history, memory, heritage and identity.
Keywords: Europe, identity politics, Eurocentrism, memory, heritage, colonialism, diversity
More extraordinary, perhaps, is the almost unbelievable resurgence in the pride in the European model, in European civilization.
– Michael Wintle, ‘Visualizing Europe from 1900 to the 1950s’The Question of Europe
In this small chapter, I intend to investigate perceptions of Europe as they are presented to the public. The question of Europe is typically framed within a discourse on identity. To evaluate the impact of Europe is to search for a European identity. This European identity discourse derives from the template of the nation state that acquires its legitimacy through references to language, culture, tradition and history. Nationalism is the first and the most powerful form of identity politics in Europe. Due to the growing role of European integration, the question of Europe is, however, also framed within a trans- or supranational discourse. Even if European identity was only formulated as a necessary component of European integration in the Copenhagen Declaration of December 1973, the idea of European commonality as the driver of the project can be found all the way back to first post-war discussions on a united Europe. Contrary to what more functionalist and institutionalist approaches are claiming, the history of European integration cannot be explained without pointing to the role of identity politics.