Anxiety, Dissonance and Imperial Amnesia of the European Union

Year 2022, , 49 - 64, 09.04.2022

Filip Ejdus

https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.1085564

Cited By: 1

Abstract

According to the master commemorative narrative of the EU, the European integration project represents a break with the violent European past characterised by fragmentation and nationalism, which culminated in World War Two and the crimes of Nazism and Stalinism. However, recent scholarship has criticised the omission of 19th and 20th-century European colonialism from the memory narratives advanced by the EU. In this article, I use the permanent exhibition in the House of European History (HEH) in Brussels to take this insight one step further and make two arguments. Firstly, I show that it is not only colonialism that is erased from official memory but, more broadly, empires and imperialism, although most European history over the past 2000 years was imperial. Secondly, I understand this “imperial amnesia” as an anxiety-controlling mechanism aimed at reducing the dissonance between the self-proclaimed image of a normative and civilian power on the one hand and imperial-like tendencies in its behaviour on the other.

Keywords

European Union, empire, memories, memory, history

Avrupa Birliği’nin Kaygı, Uyumsuzluk ve Emperyal Unutkanlığı

Abstract

Avrupa Birliği’nin hakim hatıra anlatısına göre; Avrupa entegrasyon projesi, İkinci Dünya Savaşı, Nazizim ve Stalinizmin suçlarıyla doruğa çıkan parçalanma ve milliyetçilikle şekillenen şiddetli Avrupa geçmişini geride bırakmayı temsil etmektedir. Fakat güncel çalışmalar; XIX. ve XX. yüzyıldaki Avrupa sömürgeciliğinin, AB tarafından geliştirilen bellek anlatılarından çıkarılmasını eleştirmektedir. Bu makalede, Brüksel’deki Avrupa Tarihi Evi’ndeki daimi sergiyi bu gözlemi bir adım daha ileri götürmek ve iki argüman daha oluşturmak için kullanıyorum. İlk olarak, son 2000 yıldaki Avrupa tarihinin çoğu emperyal olmasına rağmen, resmi bellekten silinenin sadece sömürgecilik değil, daha geniş anlamda imparatorluklar ve emperyalizm olduğunu gösteriyorum. İkinci olarak ise, “emperyal unutkanlığı”nı, kendi kendini ilan eden normatif ve sivil bir güç imajıyla davranışlarındaki emperyal benzeri eğilimler arasındaki uyumsuzluğu azaltmayı amaçlayan kaygı kontrol mekanizması olarak tasavvur ediyorum.

Keywords

Avrupa Birliği, imparatorluk, anılar, hafıza, tarih

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