Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics (Language and Globalization)

Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics Edited by

Richard C.M. Mole

Language and Globalization Series Editors: Sue Wright, University of Portsmouth, UK and Helen Kelly-Holmes, University of Limerick, Ireland. In the context of current political and social developments, where the national group is not so clearly defined and delineated, the state language not so clearly dominant in every domain, and cross-border flows and transfers affect more than a small elite, new patterns of language use will develop. The series aims to provide a framework for reporting on and analysing the linguistic outcomes of globalization and localization.

Titles include: David Block MULTILINGUAL IDENTITIES IN A GLOBAL CITY London Stories Julian Edge (editor) (RE)LOCATING TESOL IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE Roxy Harris NEW ETHNICITIES AND LANGUAGE USE Diarmait Mac Giolla Chrióst LANGUAGE AND THE CITY Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (editors) LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, POLICIES AND PRACTICES Language and the Future of Europe Clare Mar-Molinero and Miranda Stewart (editors) GLOBALIZATION AND LANGUAGE IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD Macro and Micro Perspectives Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasinski THE LANGUAGE OF BELONGING Richard C.M. Mole (editor) DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY IN EUROPEAN POLITICS Leigh Oakes and Jane Warren LANGUAGE, CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY IN QUEBEC

Forthcoming titles: John Edwards CHALLENGES IN THE SOCIAL LIFE OF LANGUAGE Alexandra Galasinska and Michael Krzyzanowski (editors) DISCOURSES OF TRANSFORMATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Jane Jackson INTERCULTURALITY IN STUDY AT HOME AND ABROAD Colin H. Williams LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN DEMOCRATIC CONTEXT

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Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics Edited by

Richard C.M. Mole University College London

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Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors 1

ix x xi

Discursive Identities/Identity Discourses and Political Power Richard Mole

1

Part I: Discourse and Identity 2

A Discourse Theory of Ethnic Identity Don Ellis

3

The Tale-End of History: Literary Form, Historiography and the Danish (Post)-National Imagination C. Claire Thomson

45

‘Doing Europe’: the Discursive Construction of European Identities Ruth Wodak

70

Shifting Discourses: Banal Nationalism and Cultural Intimacy in Greek Television News and Everyday Life Mirca Madianou

95

4

5

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Part II: Discourse, Identity and Politics 6

7

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The Power of Metaphor: Consent, Dissent and Revolution Erik Ringmar

119

Post-Liberal Anxieties and Discourses of Peoplehood in Europe: Nationalism, Xenophobia and Racism Gerard Delanty and Peter Millward

137

Talking Security? The Discourse of European Identity in the Baltic States Richard Mole

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viii Contents

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It’s About Time: is Europe Old or New? Jan Ifversen Narratives of Security: Strategy and Identity in the European Context Felix Ciuta˘ Conclusion: Revisiting Discourse, Identity and ‘Europe’ Richard Mole and Felix Ciuta˘

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190 208

Bibliography

213

Index

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List of Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3

The nexus of discourses on Europe Europa homepage A heuristic model of identity

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74 84 92

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the numerous people without whose support this book would not have seen the light of day. This volume grew out of a conference held at UCL in April 2005 on Discourse, Identity and Politics in Europe, which was made possible through the financial support of the UCL Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme on Identities and Cultures in Europe and of the Fulbright Commission in London. I would particularly like to thank Andrew Pink, Anne Marie Duffy and Michael Worton for their invaluable support on the day and in the run-up to the event. I would also like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and to the series editors, Sue Wright and Helen Kelly-Holmes, for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts of the manuscript and to Jill Lake and Melanie Blair at Palgrave Macmillan for their support, encouragement and patience. My special thanks go to Felix Ciuta˘ for his very incisive comments on my own contributions to the book and to Percy Ayos for keeping me sane throughout the entire process. Above all, I wish to thank my co-contributors to this volume for their co-operation, patience and efficiency in meeting the very tight deadlines. Richard Mole

x

Notes on the Contributors Felix Ciuta ˘ is Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Centre of European Politics, Security and Integration at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK. He is author of several articles on security theory, NATO enlargement and Romanian security policy. His current research draws on narrative theory, hermeneutics and constructivism to formulate a ‘contextualist’ framework for the analysis of international relations. He is currently completing a monograph entitled Contexts of Security. Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has written on various issues in social theory and general sociology. He is editor of the European Journal of Social Theory and the author of numerous publications, including Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (1995); Social Science: Beyond Realism and Constructivism (1997); Social Theory in a Changing World (1999); Modernity and Postmodernity: Knowledge, Power, Self (2000); Citizenship in a Global Age: Culture, Society and Politics (2000); Nationalism and Social Theory (2002 with Patrick O’Mahony); and Community (2003). He has also edited the Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory (2005) and The Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (2006 with Krishan Kumar). Don Ellis is Professor of Communication in the School of Communication at the University of Hartford, USA, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Israel from 2004 to 2005. His research focuses on communication issues related to ethnopolitical conflict, with particular reference to conflict resolution, intractable conflicts, intercultural communication and democracy. He is a past editor of the journal Communication Theory and the author of numerous books and articles, including Crafting Society: Ethnicity, Class and Communication Theory (1999) and the recent Transforming Conflict: Communication Approaches to Ethnopolitical Conflict (2006). Jan Ifversen is Associate Professor of European Studies and Head of the Institute of History and Area Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research focuses on theories of democracy, the history of European democracy, theories of conceptual history and discourse analysis and xi

xii Notes on the Contributors

the history of central concepts in European self-understanding (civilisation, culture, nation) and he has published widely in this field in both English and Danish. Mirca Madianou is Fellow, Lecturer and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of Mediating the Nation (2005) and several articles on nationalism, identities and the media. Until September 2004 she was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, UCL. She is currently involved in research on the relationship between television news, cultural citizenship and effect. Peter Millward is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has several forthcoming publications which examine the relationship between ‘Europe’ and football, xenophobia in English football culture (with a growing emphasis on ‘Islamophobia’) and the contemporary power structures within professional football. His Ph.D., which considers the relationship between football and European identities, will be shortly examined. Richard Mole is Lecturer in the Politics of Central Europe at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK, where until September 2005 he was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow. His research interests include nationalism and national identity, discourse theory, the psychology of national identification and foreign and security policy in Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Baltic States. He is author of The Baltic States. From the Soviet Union to the European Union (forthcoming 2008). Erik Ringmar is Professor at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Until 2006 he was Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. His research interests focus on European colonialism, the politics of transgression, metaphorical conceptualisations of politics and historical sociology. His most recent publications include Surviving Capitalism: How We Learned to Live with the Market and Remained Almost Human (2005) and The Mechanics of Modernity in Europe and East Asia: the Institutional Origins of Social Change and Stagnation (2005). C. Claire Thomson was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at UCL from 2004 to 2006. Her research focuses on the role of the visual arts and lit-

Notes on the Contributors xiii

erary genres in shaping and representing nationhood and sovereignty. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, is editor of Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (2006) and has published a number of articles on the construction of space, place and nationness in Danish and Scottish literature. She is currently completing a monograph on the fiction of Peter Høeg. Ruth Wodak holds the Chair in Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, was previously Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Vienna and has held visiting professorships at Stanford, Georgetown, Minneapolis, Uppsala and UEA. In 1996 she received the prestigious Wittgenstein Prize for elite researchers. She is co-editor of the Journal of Language and Politics and Critical Discourse Studies and her recent publications include The Construction of Politics in Action (forthcoming 2008), The Construction of History (forthcoming 2007 with Hannes Heer, Walter Manoschek and Alexander Pollak), Ist Österreich ein ‘deutsches’ Land? (2006 with Rudolf de Cillia) and A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis (2005 with Paul Chilton).

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1 Discursive Identities/Identity Discourses and Political Power Richard Mole

The conduct of European politics has undergone a major shift since the end of the Cold War. The end of the nuclear stand-off between the superpowers has prompted increased integration, institutionalisation and the reconceptualisation of security, all encapsulated in the enlargement of NATO and the European Union. Freed from the constraint of the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union, European states have become more vocal in defining their national interest as much in terms of identity and culture as in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity. As we saw in the run-up to the French and Dutch referenda on the EU Constitution, these developments have in turn provoked much debate on the relationship between Europe and the nation-state and on the potential emergence of an incipient European identity. The recognition of identity and discourse as key factors in the conduct of European politics has thus increased significantly over the past ten to fifteen years. However, traditional theories have struggled to make sense of this new social and political landscape, as the dominant role they ascribe to material forces – such as economic and military might – undermines their explicatory strength. In response to these changes and the increased interactions between actors at the sub-state, state and supra-state levels of action, social and political theorists have begun to pay much more attention to questions of identity and discourse. The international relations of states are thus now understood by analysts to rest on ‘a shared sense of national identity, of a nationstate’s “place in the world”, its friends and enemies, its interests and aspirations. These underlying assumptions are embedded in national history and myth, changing slowly over time’ as they are challenged, reinterpreted and re-presented, inter alia, in political speeches, the 1

2 Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics

media, literature, history books and various forms of popular culture (Hill & Wallace, 1996, p. 8). Prompted by this interest, this book aims to bring together specialists to examine the discursive construction of identities and analyse the impact of specific identity discourses on various socio-political issues in Europe. While most analyses of the relationship between discourse and identity have been conducted by linguists and communications scholars, this volume seeks also to show how other disciplines (literature, media, sociology, conceptual history, politics and International Relations in addition to critical discourse analysis and communications) examine the social construction of identity and meaning through discourse and their application to the study of European politics and society. This introductory chapter sets out some of the key debates informing this analysis, examining the nature of identity, the psychology of identification, the construction of national identities and the role of discourse in their production. With the aim of theorising the link between identity and politics, the latter part of the chapter focuses on the relationship between discourse and power, demonstrating how specific discourses can be employed by power-holders to create social reality for instrumental purposes and how discourse can exist independently of actors to condition and constrain their actions by legitimising and delegitimising particular policy options.

Identities and their construction Identity is a much-analysed concept in the social sciences and cultural studies. Since the late 1980s, rarely has an academic book or article been published in these fields without some reference to the term. Indeed, it is so often used that its meaning has now become somewhat confused. In a recent book, sociologist Rogers Brubaker identified five main uses of the concept in various academic disciplines. In the study of race, ethnicity and nationalism, for instance, identity is most often used to emphasise either objective or subjective ‘sameness’ among a collectivity, whereby this feeling ‘is expected to manifest itself in solidarity, in shared dispositions or consciousness, or in collective action’ (2004, p. 34). In psychology as well as in nationalism studies, the term is commonly understood as ‘a core aspect of (individual or collective) self-hood or as a fundamental condition of social being’, which ‘is invoked to point to something allegedly deep, basic, abiding, or foundational’ (ibid., original emphasis). In politics and the study of social

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movements, identity is called upon ‘to underscore the manner in which action – individual or collective – may be governed by particularistic self-understandings rather than by putative universal self-interest’ (ibid., p. 33, original emphasis). This use of identity – as in ‘identity politics’ – thus seeks to conceptualise and explain social and political action with reference to the social location of the agent, either in a specific social category, such as gender, ethnicity, race, etc., or in the social structure more generally (in the market, occupational structure, etc.). Similarly, identity is invoked ‘to highlight the processual, interactive development of the kind of collective self-understanding, solidarity, or “groupness” that can make collective action possible’ (ibid., p. 34, original emphasis). In this sense, identity is seen as ‘a contingent product of social or political action and as a ground or basis for further action’ (ibid., p. 35). And finally, in various strands of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought, identity conveys the ‘unstable, multiple, fluctuating, and fragmented nature of the contemporary self’, the product of ‘multiple and competing discourses’ (ibid., original emphasis). Identity is thus defined and used in different ways depending on context. But, at its simplest, identity seeks to convey who we are or are perceived to be and the way we, as individuals or groups, locate ourselves and others in the social world. This becomes clear if we examine the psychological processes of identity-formation. Psychologists argue that ascribing identities to ourselves and others is a natural function of the brain (Hogg and Abrams, 1998; Hogg et al., 1995; Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Turner, 1987). The world around us has few explicit lines of division and the boundaries between social entities are fluid and blurred, with the result that these ‘seemingly chaotic and unstructured stimuli’ threaten ‘to overwhelm our cognitive apparatus’ (Theiler, 2003, p. 260). Social Identity Theory argues that, faced with the task of processing this vast amount of data, human beings instinctively categorise the world around them in order to make life more predictable and understandable and, at the same time, make their ‘experience of the world subjectively meaningful’ (Hogg et al., 1995, p. 261). We categorise people into and identify ourselves and others as distinct races, nations, ethnicities, classes, character types, generations, sexualities, etc., to create order out of chaos and to help us behave in ways which are appropriate to the norms of the categories to which we or others belong. A gay, working-class Welshman will act in accordance with different norms in a gay bar, on the factory floor, on a day-trip to Oxford or at an Eisteddfod. While he may very well have colleagues who would be comfortable being kissed

4 Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics

‘good morning’ or meet Englishmen who are sympathetic to Welsh nationalism, it is easier for him to treat his workmates or the English as a single group with a single identity and set of group norms and align his behaviour accordingly. The processes of categorisation and identification are thus ‘fundamental and universal’ because they satisfy ‘a basic human need for cognitive parsimony’ (Hogg & Abrams, 1988, p. 72). To create boundaries between social categories, ‘like’ needs to be grouped with ‘like’. We thus perceive entities we have placed in a specific category to be more similar to each other and more different from entities in other categories than they actually are. Research has shown that we tend to perceive outgroups to be even more homogenous than in-groups (see Messick & Mackie, 1989, pp. 55–9). However, ‘the cognitive divisions we impose on the world do not seem arbitrary to us but instead a reflection of seemingly objective breaks and discontinuities’, facilitating the idea that the world naturally comprises bounded identity groups (Theiler, 2003, p. 260). Identity/identification thus helps us make sense of our environment by defining our location and that of others in the social world. However, psychological theories of identity make no assumptions about ‘the nature of groups, the signifiers used to demarcate group boundaries or the group norms that prevail at any given time. All these factors are socially constructed and therefore culturally specific and historically contingent’ (Theiler, 2003, p. 262). While the process of identity formation is instinctive, therefore, the boundaries and content of specific identities are not ‘given’ but ‘reflect the perceptions, priorities and aspirations of those people who have the power to both construct categories and promote them as natural or superior’ (Penrose and Mole, forthcoming). These ideas lie at the heart of the constructivist approach to identity, which generally informs the contributions of all the authors in this book. But why constructivism? Constructivism, the ontological position which posits that ‘all knowledge, and therefore all meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon human practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context’, emerged to counter various essentialist or primordial definitions of social actors as immutable and constant through time and space (Crotty, 2003, p. 42). National identity must not therefore be seen as something fixed but as something that is continually negotiated and renegotiated. To argue that the general notion of the British nation, for example, is the same now as it was under Queen Victoria is absurd. In the nineteenth century,

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Britishness was defined largely with reference to the Empire and in opposition to the African and Asian peoples it governed. Today, social and political leaders go to great lengths to emphasise the multiethnic nature of Britishness. What may be a key aspect of identity in one decade may be far less salient in another. For this reason, constructivism has become the dominant approach to the study of the social world and, in particular, to the study of nations and national identities. The following section will thus examine the main points of the constructivist approach to the study of nations and national identity, before then analysing its challengers and limits. Constructivists view nations and national identities as constructs, forged by elites to achieve various socio-political and economic objectives. To Ernest Gellner, for example, the nationalist project sought to usher in modernity and facilitate industrialisation. To achieve high levels of productivity, elites needed ‘a mobile, literate, culturally standardised, interchangeable population’, capable of following instructions, communicating with co-workers, understanding how to operate machinery, etc., without relying on context (1996b, p. 35). Mass, statewide education was used to produce a standardised form of language, history and culture, out of which this population was constructed. The construction of these standardised histories and cultures used to consolidate group membership would draw on pre-existing cultural ‘shreds and patches’ (dead languages, invented traditions, ethnicity, etc.), although Gellner argues that any ‘old shred and patch would have served as well’ (ibid., p. 56). The mass education project also sought to inculcate in the minds of inhabitants of a particular territory the idea that they were part of a single community with a single identity, so as to create loyal members of society whose ability to function as such would not be hampered by attachments to sub-groups within or beyond state boundaries. The success of the nationalising project is such that, where no shared identity exists, people question why those who ‘define themselves differently but live side by side with them and whose solidarities they cannot rely on should be politically or economically or culturally favoured’ (Schöpflin, 2000, p. 39). To Craig Calhoun the construction of national identity is thus ‘a self-conscious and manipulative project carried out by elites who seek to secure their power by mobilizing followers on the basis of nationalist ideology’ (1997, p. 30). This position is shared by Marxists, who argue that the feeling of commonality engendered by a shared national identity allows the bourgeoisie to project their economic interests onto those of society as a whole, suppressing class consciousness by obfuscating

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conflicting class interests (see Marx & Engels, 1985, pp. 84–5). The constructivist position is compelling. The shift in understandings of German identity from ‘blood and soil’ to a more multicultural conceptualisation, for example, can only be explained with reference to constructivism. However, it is not without its challengers. Primordialists dispute the very idea conceptualisation of national identities as constructions, ethno-symbolists query the extent to which they are constructed and post-modernists/post-structuralists criticise constructivism for not going far enough.

Challengers to constructivism For decades the debate over the essential versus the constructed nature of nations and national identities was the source of much tension in academic circles between primordialists and constructivists. The primordialist position is often the first we come across, as this is the approach taken by nationalists themselves. According to them, nations are organic communities, united by shared biology, culture and history stretching back centuries if not millennia. This approach dominated early scholarship on nationalism, which viewed nations as ‘the basic communities of history, at once ancient and immemorial’ and regarded ‘national sentiments and consciousness as fundamental elements of historical phenomena and their main explanatory principles’ (Smith, 1998, p. 18). Primordialists thus reify the nation, which they see as an essential object which can be analysed like any other scientific phenomenon (van den Berghe, 1978; Geertz, 1973). Pierre van den Berghe insists that nations must be understood as extended kin groups, the result of ‘institutionalised norms of nepotism and ethnocentrism,’ aimed at promoting cooperation and enhancing ‘inclusive fitness’ (1978, p. 405). Ethnicity can only arouse the passion needed to forge nations, he argues, if the concept of common descent is credible, and it is ‘only credible if it corresponds at least partly to reality’ (1988, p. 256). While, intellectually, this approach is now generally derided as a straw man by academics, we should not ignore the primordialist argument entirely, as social anthropologists demonstrate that most people do tend to perceive collectivities of flesh-and-blood human beings, such as nations, as essential categories (see Gil-White, 2001). Why is this? If there is general agreement among academics that nations are constructed, why do people still consider nations and national identities to be natural and ancient? To ethno-symbolists, such as Anthony Smith, the answer lies in ethnicity. While identities may be constructed, he argues, they are not

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constructed ex nihilo, but rather have stronger roots in pre-modern ethnic groups (what he calls ‘ethnies’) than many theorists today are prepared to admit. Ethnies provide the ‘myths, memories, values and symbols’ that invoke presumed kinship and without which the appeals of modern nationalists would fail to resonate (1986, p. 15). According to Smith, the transition from ethnie to nation could produce civic or ethnic nations depending upon the path taken. In the former case, kings and princes in pre-modern Western Europe, prompted by the need to tap the wealth of their middle classes (to fund wars, etc.), would draw the latter into ‘an increasingly accented, territorialised and politicised “national” culture,’ which would filter downwards and spread outwards from the ethnic core, carried by the state’s military, administrative, fiscal and judicial institutions, until the lower strata and the outlying regions had been encompassed (1998, p. 193). In Central and Eastern Europe, however, ‘the frontiers of an existing state and of a rising nationality rarely coincided’ (Kohn, 1967, p. 457). When nationalist ideals were taken up by local intelligentsias in the nineteenth century, the latter were often isolated from both the ethnically heterogeneous aristocracy and the illiterate peasantry and were thus unable to promote a civic, territorially inclusive idea of the nation, in which all sectors of society would have a stake. As a result, they had to appeal to abstract notions of ‘the people’, genealogy, shared culture, myths of common descent and common ancestry, i.e. ethnicity. While Smith does offer a sophisticated account of the formation of nations, it is unclear why we should consider ethnicity to be any less constructed than the political nation. More importantly, he does not address how specific national identities come about, i.e. how they end up in their current configuration. Why are specific aspects of ethnic cultures chosen over others in the creation of political nations? This takes us back to constructivists, for whom the answer is simple: ‘The leaders of ethnic movements invariably select from traditional cultures only those aspects that they think will serve to unite the group and that will be useful in promoting the interests of the group as they define them’ (Brass, 1979, p. 87). According to Eric Hobsbawm, these leaders go so far as to invent ‘national’ traditions so as ‘to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’ and thus provides legitimacy for the present (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1993, p. 1). Flags, anthems, ceremonies, monuments, symbols and statues are all invented for the national cause – in some cases quite recently – but are presented as

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elements of the nation’s distant past. A number of nations were forged so recently that ‘even historic continuity had to be invented, for example, by creating an ancient past beyond effective historic continuity, either by semi-fiction … or by forgery’ (ibid., p. 7). So does constructivism have all the answers? Yes and no. While the idea that nations and identities are constructed (or even invented) is now accepted as a self-evident truth, constructivism does nevertheless leave certain questions unanswered. Firstly, why do people allow themselves to be ‘manipulated’ into identifying with the symbols, culture and traditions crafted by elites? Moreover, if identities are constructed, why are the groups which they invoke reified and treated as real, bounded groups with the potential for political agency? In other words, how do ‘these constructs regularly elude the control of those who create them, to take on the appearance of objective, determined, facts’ (Day & Thompson, 2004, p. 85)? Let us examine each of these questions in turn.

Identification and self-esteem While the constructivist argument that elites construct national identities from above for specific instrumental purposes is persuasive, it does not explain why these identities would necessarily be accepted, indeed cherished, by society at large. As Hobsbawm reminds us, national identification ‘cannot be understood unless also analysed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people, which are not necessarily national and still less nationalist’ (1995, p. 10). All Gellner tells us is that, once industrialisation produces standardised and homogenous high cultures ‘pervading entire populations’, the situation arises whereby unified cultures are ‘very nearly the only kind of unit with which men willingly and often ardently identify’ (1996b, p. 55). However, he does not explain why. Smith’s claim that the identity and symbols of the nation resonate with society below because of their underlying roots in pre-modern cultures is unconvincing, as this does not explain why members of civic nations, such as Americans, also feel such a powerful identification with their national symbols. Were Smith correct, ItalianAmericans would identify more strongly with the tricolore than the Stars and Stripes. Yet, his view of national identification as an innate feeling does seem to chime more with the genuine emotions we feel when we hear our national anthem or see our national team win at the Olympics than the extreme constructivist standpoint of national iden-

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tity as ‘false consciousness’. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. While identities can be and are used by elites for instrumental purposes, they do also meet an inherent need for meaning and self-esteem in the population below. To explain this, we must return to social psychology. Henri Tajfel’s definition of social identity as ‘that part of an individual’s self concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’ illustrates the fact that people prefer to have a positive self-image and see their in-group in a positive light and positively distinct from other groups (1978, p. 63). In other words, identification with positively distinct, prestigious groups is a means of establishing high self-esteem. This idea is echoed in the work of Yael Tamir, who argues that ‘one of the distinctive features of membership in a constitutive community is that members view their self-esteem and well-being as affected by the success and failures of their individual fellow members and of the group as a whole’ (1993, p. 96). Classifying your group as prestigious entails the assignment of positive attributes, which in turn entails choosing to compare your group with other groups in ways that reflect positively on it and by extension on yourself. Of the various groups with which one can identify, it is the nation that has come to dominate all other possible bearers of identity, as it provides ‘optimal distinctiveness’ in a way that no other groups do (see Brewer, 1991). Given the importance of group membership for self-definition, humans categorise themselves as much as they do others and internalise their own categorisation. As the individual becomes part of the group, the group becomes part of the individual, with the result that the achievements of the group also become the achievements of the individual. This explains why the constitutive elements of national identity find resonance with members of the national group. Contra ethno-symbolists, it is not an innate response to ethnic ties but a psychological need to feel part of a prestigious, positively distinct social group. In the event that group membership does not contribute positively to one’s self-esteem, individuals can either dis-identify, seek downward rather than upward comparisons or use different axes of comparison. If your nation compares poorly with another in terms of territory but well in terms of literary heritage, you will emphasise literary heritage as the most important attribute a nation can have. Gellner’s argument that any ‘shreds and patches’ from the nation’s past would do in constructing a shared identity is thus incorrect. An identity must promote positive distinctiveness, not just distinctiveness.

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Reification versus representation Psychological theories also help explain the second limit to constructivism that we identified above, regarding the reification of identities and identity groups. The tendency – even among certain constructivists – to treat identity groups as ‘homogenous, internally cohesive internal groupings’ can be traced back to the psychological processes of categorisation and identification (Day and Thompson, 2004, p. 198). As discussed above, to create boundaries between social categories, ‘like’ needs to be grouped with ‘like’, with the result that entities in a specific category are perceived to be more similar to each other and more different from entities in other categories than they actually are. These cognitive divisions do not, however, appear subjective and random but objective and organic, facilitating the idea that the world is naturally made up of delimited identity groups, groups defined in terms of a reified identity, thought of as an innate aspect of self-hood that is fixed and conveys a feeling of sameness. For the purposes of analysis, identity is better understood not as a thing but a process. As Richard Jenkins explains: ‘One’s identity – one’s identities, indeed, for who we are is always singular and plural – is never a final or settled matter’ (2004, p. 5; original emphasis). To argue that two Scotsmen, say, from different parts of the national homeland and different economic classes, with completely different interests and educational backgrounds, are ‘the same’ simply by virtue of the fact that they possess something called ‘Scottish identity’ is not credible. What they share is an identification with the symbols and collective memory of the Scottish nation. They have gone through the Scottish education system, learned of Scotland’s history and achievements and internalised its symbols. While their interpretations of Scotland’s symbols and history will certainly vary – individuals attach different meanings to symbols, while still recognising them as national – the processes of identification and internalisation enable them to ‘act as one psychological group when there is a threat to, or the possibility of enhancement of, these symbols of national identity’ (Bloom, 1993, p. 52). Thinking of ‘identity’ as ‘identification’ prevents the reification of identity in that it requires us to think not only of the identity object but also the agent making the identification and moreover ‘does not presuppose that such identifying (even by powerful agents, such as the state) will necessarily result in the internal sameness, the distinctiveness, the bounded groupness that political entrepreneurs may seek to achieve’ (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000, p. 14).

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However, in this regard, academics working on nations and national identities are lagging behind their colleagues in other fields of study. Most social and economic historians have long since stopped analysing the working class as a real entity but rather treat it as a ‘cultural and political idiom, as a mode of conflict, and as an underlying abstract dimension of economic structure’ (Brubaker, 1999, pp. 13–14). Scholars of national identity, by contrast, tend to adopt ‘categories of practice as categories of analysis. [This] takes a conception inherent in the practice of nationalism and in the workings of the modern state and statesystem – namely the realist, reifying conception of nations as real communities – and makes this conception central to the theory of nationalism’ (ibid, p. 15, original emphasis). Brubaker insists that this is a mistake. While not disputing the existence of nationhood, the nation must not, he argues, be treated as a real community but as ‘institutionalised form; not as collectivity but as practical category; not as entity but as contingent event’ (ibid., p. 16). To clarify this point, let us examine national identity in the USSR. While many commentators have argued that national identities survived despite Soviet nationality policy, it is more accurate to say that they survived because of Soviet nationality policy. Through the establishment of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR created quasi nationstates with their own territories, names, constitutions, administrations, legislatures, cultural and scientific institutions, etc. The role of the republics in crystallising and preserving nationality was not the result of the fiction of autonomy and sovereignty laid down in the Constitution but rather the institutional framework in which the centre cultivated and consolidated national administrative cadres, national intelligentsias and national languages and cultures. Furthermore, from the 1930s an individual’s ethnicity became a compulsory assigned status. This system of personal nationality (based on internal passports) meant that everyone had an official ethnicity. Individuals were unable to choose their own nationality (based on language, residence or identity) but had to take that of their parents. Everyone knew their ethnic identity. There were no grey areas; the boundaries were clear. As Ronald Suny explains, ‘alternative discourses of affiliation, like class or gender, were silenced’, which meant ‘the dominance of the national discourse defined its constituents almost exclusively as subjects of the nation, effacing the multiplicity of possible identities’ (1993, p. 160). While the Soviet regime did clamp down on manifestations of nationalism, its nationality policy ‘pervasively institutionalized … territorial nationhood and ethnic nationality as

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fundamental social categories. In so doing, it inadvertently created a political field supremely conducive to nationalism’ (Brubaker, 1999, p. 17, original emphasis). What Brubaker demonstrates here is that the relationship between national identity and the invoked ‘national group’ is not as deterministic as most theorists believe and that identity ‘can be pervasive and influential without being accomplished by discrete, specified persons or institutions’ (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p. 16). Brubaker’s criticism of the propensity of academics – even those working within a constructivist framework – to reify the nation can be seen as part of a more general critique of the constructivist approach, which he attacks for being ‘too obviously right, too familiar, to readily taken for granted, to generate the friction, force, and freshness needed to push arguments further and generate new insights’ (2004, p. 3). It is only in the past ten years or so that academic attention has shifted ‘from the characteristics of nations and nation-states towards a greater emphasis on national identity and identification – a move from the realm of the object to that of subjective consciousness and perception’, with a particular focus on discourses, representations and social practices (Day and Thompson, 2004, p. 86–7). The work that paved the way for the study of national identity as subjective consciousness and perception with a focus on discourses, representations and social practices was Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. In this path-breaking book, Anderson presents the nation as ‘an imagined political community’ (1991, p. 6). It is imagined as it is not possible for members of a nation, however small, to know all of their co-nationals. Nevertheless, the image of their nation lives in the mind of each of them. To Anderson, nations emerged as the result of the search for security following the Enlightenment and rationality. The possibility of imagining the nation only occurred following the decline of the pillars of pre-Enlightenment society. The first of these was the idea that ‘a particular script-language offered privileged access to ontological truth, precisely because it was an inseparable part of that truth’ (ibid., p. 36). The second pillar to fall was ‘the belief that society was naturally organised around and under high centres – monarchs who were persons apart from other human beings and who ruled by some form of cosmological (divine) dispensation’ (ibid.). The third was the ‘conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable’ (ibid., p. 36). Medieval consciousness understood history in terms of simultaneity and was kept local by the parish priest, who was the only link between the illiterate masses and God.

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Following the Enlightenment, the concept of time changed from Messianic to what Anderson describes (after Walter Benjamin) as ‘homogenous empty time’, where simultaneity is ‘marked not by prefiguring and fulfilment, but by temporal coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar’ (ibid.). The decline of these three pillars changed the way people perceived the world around them and precipitated the search for a new way to bind fellowship, power and time. Yet, it was not until the advent of the printed text that people were able to conceive of themselves as belonging to an ‘imagined community’. The development of printing in the fifteenth century resulted in 200,000,000 books being published by 1600 (ibid., p. 37). Booksellers were, of course, profit-driven and they had no qualms about publishing books in languages other than sacred Latin, a development that was intensified by the Reformation, which gave a further boost to vernacular languages. Print-capitalism established the foundations for national self-consciousness in three ways: it created unified fields of communication, standardised language and created languages of power. Most importantly, however, it enabled people ‘to think about themselves, and relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways’ (ibid., p. 36). As Claire Thomson discusses in her chapter, the rise of the novel and newspaper ‘provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation’ (ibid., p. 25). The simultaneous actions of fictional characters in novels or of real-life individuals in newspapers, who may be entirely unaware of each other’s existence, conjured up an imagined world in the minds of this new, large reading public, an imagined world that could be equated with that of the nation, ‘conceived as a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history’ (ibid., p 26). As Anderson explains: ‘An American will never meet or even know the names of more than a handful of his 240,000-odd [sic] fellow-Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. But he has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity’ (ibid.). While Anderson has been critiqued for falling into the trap of reification, however, his work has been an invaluable springboard for post-modern or post-structuralist approaches that focus on discourse. What post-modern and post-structuralist approaches reveal is that the relationship between national identity and the invoked ‘national group’ is not as deterministic as most theorists suggest. Identity or identification ‘invites specification of the agents that do the identifying. Yet identification does not require a specifiable “identifier”; it can be pervasive and influential without being accomplished by discrete,

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specified persons or institutions. Identification can be carried more or less anonymously by discourses or public narratives’ (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000, p. 16). This idea is the focus of Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism. By ‘banal nationalism’, Billig refers to the ‘the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced. … Daily, the nation is indicated, or “flagged”, in the lives of its citizenry. Nationalism, far from being an intermittent mood in established nations, is the endemic condition’ (1995, p. 6). With particular reference to established Western nations, which are not generally considered nationalist, he suggests that ‘nationhood provides a continual background for their political discourses, for cultural products, and even for the structuring of newspapers. In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’ (ibid., p. 8). Via the concept of deixis, ‘a form of rhetorical pointing’, he emphasises the role of language and discourse in creating a sense of we-ness (ibid., p. 106). In newspapers, as Mirca Madianou elaborates in her chapter, personal pronouns continually point to the ‘national homeland as the land of the reader’ (Billig, 1995, p. 11). In referring to ‘our country’, it is clear who ‘we’ are, with the result that the meaning of ‘we’ becomes ‘shared, taken-for-granted, common-sense’ (Craib, 1992, p. 100; Berger and Luckman, 1967). What this simple claim reveals is that, in constructing a sense of nationhood, discourse is not just ‘seen as describing a pre-existing social reality’ but is rather ‘a medium through which reality is created and the material world is given meaning’ (Wennerstein, 1999, p. 274, original emphasis). In their research on Austrian identity, for example, de Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak show how ‘reifying, figurative discourses continually launched by politicians, intellectuals and media people and disseminated through the systems of education, schooling, mass communication, militarization as well as through sports meetings’ construct both national differences and intra-national sameness so as to make the idea of the nation real (1999, p. 153). There is no a priori reason why one particular definition of identity should be chosen over another. However, discourse ‘constitutes and organises social relations around a particular structure of meanings’ which grant certain meanings a dominant position and exclude others so as to create legitimate moral leadership and social hierarchy (Doty, 1996, p. 239), while the ultimate

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success of these reifying discourses is measured by the invoked identity ‘being seen as an essence’ (Reicher and Hopkins, 2001, p. 222). These more post-modern or post-structuralist approaches successfully challenge the reification of nations and national identities and examine the processes by which and mechanisms through which this construction of reality is achieved. An equally if not more important task, however, is to examine the impact these reified constructions have on social and political action. As already discussed, the identity of the nation is internalised by the members of the perceived national group as part of the twin processes of categorisation and identification. As a result, this ‘internalized structuring impetus … more or less strongly influences social practices’ and, in this sense, discursively constructed national identity ‘can be understood both as structured result (“opus operatum”) and as forming force (“modus operandi”)’ (de Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak, 1999, p. 156).

Discourse, identity and power The ‘forming force’ of identity discourses with regard to social and political action derives from the establishment of rules and the fixing of meanings which condition and constrain political action by legitimising certain agents and policies and delegitimising certain others. What is important to stress here is that the articulation of meaning is always contingent. While discourse theorists agree with essentialists that external reality exists beyond language, they disagree that ‘real objects have a meaning independently of the discourses in which they are constituted as objects’ (Howarth, 2000, p. 112, original emphasis). The following example from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe will make this clear: An earthquake or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now, independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of ‘natural phenomena’ or ‘expressions of the wrath of God’, depends upon the structuring of a discursive field. (2001, p. 108) The contingency of the articulation of meaning was first identified by the Swiss structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics. Prior to Saussure, linguistics had focused on the diachronic aspects of language, i.e. how language had developed over time. In his Course in General Linguistics, however, Saussure privileges

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the synchronic features of language, whereby language is conceived as a system of related signs (1966). In this connection, each sign is made up of a signifier (a sound-image) and a signified (a concept). The word ‘son’ thus comprises a signifier which sounds like /sn/ and in written form is made up of the letters s-o-n. What was groundbreaking about Saussure’s approach was his assertion that there was no a priori relationship between the signifier and the signified. The choice of the sound-image to designate the concept is arbitrary. The meaning of a concept is thus not determined by the word used to name it. This is not to mean, however, that the function of language is simply to assign names to concepts. According to Saussure, the meaning of concepts is fixed within the language structure ‘in terms of relational and differential values’ (Torfing, 1999, p. 87). The concept ‘son’ thus derives its meaning not from its sound-image but from its relation to the concepts ‘mother’, ‘father’ and ‘daughter’. While Saussure’s approach to language was subsequently criticised for its rigid structuralism,1 his insights about the construction of meaning had a significant impact on the work of Michel Foucault, who was the first to apply an analysis of discourse to the study of society.2 Simply put, Foucault shows how discourses regulate what can be said, what can be thought and what is considered true or false, rational or irrational, legitimate or illegitimate, whereby the force of discourses ‘may depend not on any particular instantiation but on their anonymous, unnoticed permeation of our ways of thinking and talking and making sense of the social world’ (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000, p. 16). The particular/anonymous or subjective/non-subjective conceptualisations of discourse are evident in different stages of Foucault’s writing. His earlier work refers to discourse as ‘autonomous systems of rules that constitute objects, concepts, subjects and strategies, thereby governing the production of scientific statements’ (Howarth, 2000, pp. 48–9). In The Order of Things, he demonstrates how individuals in society are constrained to act in certain ways by discursive practices that are invisible to them. He is thus interested in discourse not ‘from the point of view of the individuals who are speaking, not from the point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying, but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the very existence of such discourse’ (Foucault, 2002, p. xiv). During a university lecture, both the students and the professor know how they should behave: the professor is the only one permitted to talk; students must silently take notes; the professor assigns readings, which the students must read. There is no prior discussion of their roles, no written contract between

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student and professor. The professor did not formulate these rules, nor did any higher authority at the university. The ‘discourse of the lecture’ exists independently of both the students and the professor but constrains the behaviour of both. In his later works – in particular, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality – Foucault’s understanding of discourse shifts to a more subjective and instrumental usage, whereby discourse relates to ‘tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations’, albeit constrained by historical conditions of possibility (1998, pp. 101–2). In this sense, power and knowledge are fused in discourse, whereby the latter can be seen as ‘an instrument as well as an effect of power’ (ibid., 101). The instrumental use of discourse lies at the heart of the chapters by Ringmar, Mole, Ifversen and Ciuaˇ. In Power/Knowledge (1980) Foucault examines the process through which knowledge is established and the role of power therein, demonstrating that ‘for something to be considered a fact, it must be subjected to a thorough process of ratification by those in positions of authority’ (Mills, 2003, p. 72). While Foucault himself was not interested in determining whether specific facts were true or false, preferring to analyse the processes through which these facts were established, his ideas have been used by others to demonstrate how the construction of knowledge in a particular way has serious implications for social and political action. Edward Said, for example, has shown that the representation of Indians as backward, primitive and lazy compared with the industrial West legitimised European colonisation and control of the East (1978). Foucault’s research was part of a broader academic initiative after May 1968 ‘to liberate subjugated knowledges from the repressive grip of the dominant ideology and challenged the traditional understanding of politics in terms of the activities of elected politicians and their administrative advisors’ (Howarth and Torfing, 2005, p. 5). From the 1970s onwards, academics studying discourse sought to combine insights from linguistics with ideas and concepts from the social sciences. The first generation of discourse scholars sought to understand how language was used and organised and analysed the strategies of speakers, but their socio-linguistic and social psychological background meant that their analysis focused on semantics and paid little attention to the role of power and ideology. Two approaches that do analyse the interplay between discourse and power and thereby theorise the link between identity and politics – albeit from different perspectives – are Critical Discourse Analysis and Discourse Theory.3 Critical Discourse Analysis, as a branch of socio-linguistics,

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focuses more on the content and structure of texts, while Discourse Theory is a branch of post-structuralist political theory which analyses the hegemonic discourses in any given society that condition social and political identities and meanings. Both approaches do, however, incorporate insights from the social sciences and linguistics, respectively. Critical Discourse Analysis is defined by Ruth Wodak as being ‘fundamentally concerned with analysing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language’ (2001a, p. 2). As we can see from Fairclough’s description of the three stages of the Critical Discourse Analysis process (the description of the text; the interpretation of the relationship between the text and the interaction between the producer and receiver of the text; and the explanation of the relationship between this interaction and the social context), it is the text that lies at the heart of Critical Discourse Analysis (1989, p. 109). As such, its conceptualisation of discourse can be understood as the linguistic mediation of social roles and power relations determined by social structures. Here the influence of Anderson and Billig is clear. Drawing more on the work of Foucault and Derrida, Discourse Theory is a tool for analysing the hegemonic discourses in any given society that condition social and political identities and meanings, which themselves establish the conditions of possibility for political action. It thus seeks to analyse and unpick the ‘givens’ in the social and political sciences with the aim of transcending ‘the objectivistic, reductionist and rationalistic bias of modern social science theory’ (Howarth and Torfing, 2005, pp. 3–4). Throughout history, many attempts have been made to explain ‘the course of history, the structure of society, and the identities of subjects and objects’ with reference to underlying essences or ‘transcendental determining centres’ (ibid., p. 13). For Enlightenment scholars it was Reason; for Marxists it was the economy, etc. Discourse Theory thus argues it is not enough to analyse actions and perceptions in vacuo but rather we must also analyse the historical conditions that allow specific actions and perceptions to be considered legitimate. Apart from their different foci on language and politics, respectively, the main distinction between Critical Discourse Analysis and Discourse Theory would appear to be that the latter rejects ‘the naturalist ontology implicit in the idea that discourse is somehow determined by extra-discursive powers at the level of the economy or the state’ (ibid., p. 9). In terms of the actual analysis of discourse, there is little separating the two.

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The aim of this introductory chapter has been to set out some of the key debates informing the discursive construction of ethnic, national and regional identities and to map out the epistemological, methodological but also political aspects of the analysis of the way specific identity discourses – either used instrumentally by actors or existing independently of actors – define what is true and false, rational and irrational, legitimate and illegitimate and thereby condition and constrain social and political action.

Structure of the book The aim of the book is to explore the theoretical reach and empirical pertinence of discourse and identity as a way of analysing politics and society in a number of European states, with applications ranging from the linguistic study of texts to the analysis of the impact of historical narratives and metaphors on the actions of states. As such, the book comprises two sections, which build upon one another. The first – ‘Discourse and Identity’ – presents the theoretical issues underlying the study of discourse and identity and examines the discursive mechanisms through which ethnic, national and regional identities are created and/or challenged. The second section – ‘Discourse, Identity and Politics’ – presents a range of case studies examining the impact of hegemonic identity discourses on social and political action, with specific reference to social order, xenophobia, domestic and international politics and security. Most analyses of the relationship between discourse and identity have been conducted by linguists and communications scholars. An explicit aim of this volume, however, is to show how other disciplines (literature, media, sociology, conceptual history, politics and International Relations in addition to critical discourse analysis and communications) examine the social construction of identity and meaning through discourse and their application to the study of European politics and society. For this reason the various contributors have been selected specifically because they draw their insights from different branches of learning, use different methodologies and apply differing definitions of discourse. Nevertheless, they are united by the fact that they share an anti-essentialist ontological and an anti-foundationalist epistemological position. In the Discourse and Identity section, the four contributors show how different forms of discourse (spoken language, literature, the Internet and the media) create, challenge and recast identities at various levels

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of analysis: the ethnic, national and regional. Don Ellis analyses the discursive construction of ethnic identities, looking, in particular, at the role of communicative practices in their construction. In the following chapter, C. Claire Thomson examines the role of fictional narratives in the consolidation of the modern national community, examining the way in which Danish literature invites readers to reflect on the ‘storyness’ of national history and what this means for the nation’s collective identity. Shifting the level of analysis from the ethnic and national to the regional, Ruth Wodak adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis approach to the process of European identity construction, examining diverse sources and forms of expression in various public and semi-public genres which interlink to form a ‘nexus’ of discourses on Europe. In the final contribution to the first section, Mirca Madianou investigates the extent to which television news influences everyday discourses about the nation and national identity. In two cases studies, she contrasts the media reporting of two events in recent Greek politics with their interpretation by viewers to determine the extent to which nationalism in the news affects viewers’ discourses. In the ‘Discourse, Identity and Politics’ section, the five contributions seek to challenge the dominant theories of political action – based on rational choice and the role of material forces – by demonstrating how specific discourses and discursively constructed identities are just as effective in conditioning the course of politics as economic and military might. In the first contribution Erik Ringmar examines the way in which political actors in Europe and Asia use metaphors as a means of creating social order and thus constraining ‘illegitimate’ action by the ruled against the ruler. In the following contribution, Gerard Delanty and Peter Millward examine what happens when such constraining discourses are dislocated, analysing the negative impact of the demise of the discourse of liberalism in contemporary European nation-states and the resultant increase in nationalism, xenophobia and racism. The final three chapters analyse the relationship between discourse, identity and security. Richard Mole examines the way in which political actors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania employed an identity discourse predicated on the basis of European culture and values and the otherness of Russian civilisation to enhance their external security, a discourse which subsequently escaped their control and had the unintended effect of undermining social cohesion and constraining their actions with regard to policies aimed at consolidating their identity and societal security. The chapter by Jan Ifversen examines the impact that the assignment of new meanings to concepts

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can have on social and political reality in general and to the political debates about ‘Old and New Europe’, more specifically. In the final chapter of the book Felix Ciutaˇ draws on narrative theory to examine the coexistence of two contradictory logics which have structured postCold War European security. He shows that a narrative reading of European security reveals the continuously reformulated relationship between security policy and national and European identity. This relationship, he argues, is essential for understanding the narrative production of the new visions of contemporary ‘Europe’ as well as the new visions of what ‘Europe’ has always been, which form the normative basis of European security.

Notes 1. For an in-depth critique of Saussurean linguistics, see Torfing, 1999, and Howarth, 2000. 2. This section can but scratch the surface of the work of Michel Foucault. In addition to the original works by Foucault (1980, 1998, 2002), see also Mills (2003) and Danaher, Schirato and Webb (2000). 3. For a more detailed discussion of Critical Discourse Analysis, see Wodak and Meyer (2001), Wodak and Weiss (2005) and Fairclough (1989). For a more detailed discussion of Discourse Theory, see Torfing (1999), Howarth (2000), Howarth and Torfing (2005) and Laclau and Mouffe (2001).

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Part I Discourse and Identity

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2 A Discourse Theory of Ethnic Identity Don Ellis

Language and communication are intimately tied to the ethnic structure of any society. When members of minority and majority groups speak, their language represents a taken-for-granted expression of knowledge and forms of interaction. All groups have characteristic patterns of communication that they use with members of the in-group and with members of the out-group, which can be understood only within the wider historical and cultural context of their respective societies. When interacting with out-groups, members of the in-group fashion discourses that reflect a degree of adaptation of their communication patterns, which is sometimes successful but often results in misunderstanding, conflict and prejudices. Although the problems caused by ethnic discourse throughout the world have their unique features and take on different emphases and expressions, the theoretical issues presented below can be seen as universal and thus useful for organising knowledge about ethnic discourse. Sociolinguistics and communication theory seek to orient the systematic study of talk and interaction which ‘connects’ itself to macro social structural issues. This connection is important and, of course, dialectic because it is impossible to adequately explain ethnic discourse only by focusing on texts with no broader socioeconomic explanatory base. In short, if there is an ethnic group reality and if they have different ways of communicating, then these differences should be apparent in the theoretical properties of the communication processes. This can involve highly specified grammatical structures as well as broader discourse features, such as topics, styles and communicative goals, and these discourse processes take place within contexts where power and institutions continuously shape interpretation. 25

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In this context, the aim of this chapter is to examine how knowledge and concept formation are implicated in the construction of ethnic identity. Moreover, this knowledge and concept formation cannot escape the influences of language, ideology and culture. The material conditions of life circulate in interaction and become symbolic representations that are part of the social repertoire one uses to understand the world. This is the essential nature of discourse and helps explain how ethnic identity is constructed. While my regional focus – Israel – appears to lie outside the geographical scope of this book, the chapter is theoretical and the examples can apply to any ethnic group or multi-ethnic society. Moreover, Israel makes for an interesting case study in that it allows us to examine the extent to which Jews of European descent have carried their ‘Western’ patterns of communication with them to Israel and the impact this has on interaction with the indigenous Arab population. I begin by drawing on some epistemological issues and a distinction made by Kreckel (1981) between ‘knowledge’ and ‘concept formation’. Concept formation is individual and highly specific to the material conditions of group life. It is group subjective. Knowledge, on the other hand, is experience that has become publicly communicable. Knowledge is established by regular contact with others and leads to predictable assumptions and conclusions about the world. Individuals acquire concepts through interaction of symbolic representations and meaningful events. Acquiring additional concepts adds to one’s cognitive and social repertoire and increases understanding about the environment. Moreover, these concepts can change because they are based on assimilating past experience with new knowledge. Since no two individuals will interact in the world in exactly the same way, no two individuals will be exactly the same. But this does not leave us in an impossible situation but only places certain limitations and constraints on communication. What follows is an exploration of these relationships. Below I will draw on a variety of theoretical works on discourse to elucidate the emergence and structure of ethnicity.

Ethnic codes and sub-codes An individual’s knowledge and reality are composed of concepts. This knowledge is shared and thus communicable; it has been established in contact with others and can be used reliably. It is composed of ‘sense’ meanings that are pragmatic and rooted in the empirical world. When one acquires a concept, he or she increases the complexity of their own

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cognitive structures and improves comprehension regarding the concept. They also increase their affective attachment or detachment to certain concepts. Codes are essentially systems of concepts. More precisely (see Ellis, 1992a, 1992b) a code is a predisposition to produce and interpret language and communication is a particular way. It is a collection of concepts organised according to pragmatic principles including context, appropriateness, feasibility, genres and other situational features. Codes are sensitive to language and are essentially responsible for regulating the flow of meaning in an interaction. Subcodes are when the interactional signs that mark social categories are extremely responsive to group experiences. So the highly specialised interaction among members of an ethnic group is a sub-code where only language users with certain group experiences can mobilise these features of language and communication. The distinction between a code and a sub-code cannot be drawn explicitly. But a code reflects a broader array of history with a language and its users, whereas sub-codes are more group specific. A code is developed by an individual who is a member of a larger society. Its principles and properties are more widely available in the culture such as when minority ethnic groups communicate with the larger majority culture. But the communication and ‘reality’ of groups such as AfricanAmericans in the USA, Asians in the UK, Arabs in Israel or various other ethnic groups are more sub-code specific. These groups express and interpret a more ‘subjective’ reality. The communication inside ethnic sub-codes is typically rich in linguistic and cognitive principles that are highly differentiated with respect to the groups’ primary subjective reality. This reality is not merely expressed but is constructed and maintained. For example, Hall (1976) explains how high context and collectivist cultures value indirect forms of discourse. Ambiguity and embellishment are valued in contrast to specificity. The presentational style of discourse explained by Johnstone (1989), which is characteristic of traditional Islamic theocracy, relies on moving individuals to belief based on repeated words and phrases thought to carry truth rather than persuasive ideas. Hence, all communication relationships have methods of persuading, but developing one’s cultural style of communication generates both individuality and community. Sub-codes carry rights and responsibilities. One must be a genuine member of an ethnic group and earn the right to adopt group-specific communication patterns. These communication patterns that are forged in tight ethnic enclaves take on the status of being truly representative of an ethnic group. To the extent

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that these interactions are devalued or seen as low status by the larger culture (e.g. European white culture in the USA or UK) is the extent to which they contribute to the structure of conflict. Understanding the organisation of ethnic reality depends on one additional distinction in sub-codes. This is the distinction between homodynamic sub-codes and heterodynamic sub-codes. Homodynamic ethnic sub-codes emerge from joint interactions. They are based on heavily shared knowledge and regular direct experience with others of the same group. ‘Homo-’ underscores that the acquisition of cognitive schemes and communication patterns has occurred under similar conditions for all interactants. It typically implies considerable face-toface interaction as it is the communicative condition where different individuals share the most context information. Heterodynamic subcodes are when language users acquire features of the sub-code under different conditions and less intense regular group interaction. ‘Hetero’ implies that two people may have knowledge in ‘common’ but it has not been acquired under the same conditions and it is not ‘shared’ in exactly the same way. Garfinkel’s (1967) famous case of Agnes is the research example that best illustrates the consequences of codes acquired homodynamically versus heterodynamically. Agnes had undergone a sex change operation from male to female and was confronted with the task of ‘living as a woman’. Agnes began to construct a female identity by reading and utilising public media sources with hints and observations about female language, behaviour and attitudes. But her attempts to ‘pass’ as a female were unsuccessful. Her female sub-code was being acquired heterodynamically; that is, through the use of common information but not shared information. Only when Agnes immersed herself in communication with other females, only when she shared an interactional identity with other women and acquired her cognitive and linguistic representations and skills in mutual interaction (homodynamically) did she pass as a female. Tightly connected and close neighbourhoods are the most typical way that ethnic groups develop their ethnic sub-code homodynamically. These conditions promote a strong sense of group identity where many verbal, nonverbal and attitudinal characteristics are shared. Ethnic neighbourhoods maintain loyalties and sentiments and socialise new generations. The neighbourhood houses businesses and institutions that cater to ethnic interests. Under these conditions minorities retain their sense of cultural specialty and psycholinguistic distinctiveness. There are many areas of cultural convergence that make for optimal communication. But there are also marginal areas of

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homodynamic sub-codes that make communication across the margins possible but difficult. This is the location of inter-ethnic and intercultural communication. As members of a group become more assimilated and have more in common with other groups or a larger culture, they typically lose some of their ethnic distinctiveness. But this is less the case when a group remains isolated and not integrated into the larger culture, as is the case with ethnoreligious neighbourhoods in some European countries. Still, modern media have altered and reorganised the boundaries between the public and private. Ethnic and cultural communication, like political communication, is not so bound to a common locale (Ellis, 2006). But this does not necessarily lessen the frequency and intensity of ethnic messages. Members of groups develop mediated quasi-relationships with others and still share an ethnic identity, albeit more heterodynamically.

Structuring ethnic identity How does the structuration process work? It involves various orders of structure including micro-communication phenomena and macroinstitutional and social phenomena. This is a question of how society is constituted. And the key to understanding how ethnic society is constituted lies in the shifting relations between the production and reproduction of social life (Giddens, 1984). Social life is produced by human language users but this social life becomes ‘ordered’ and recognisable when language users repeatedly reproduce actions and sequences. So the questions become ‘How is ethnic identity produced and reproduced?’ and ‘What are the main conditions relevant to the production of ethnic structure?’ The answers to these questions are provided by the following factors: the communication messages of social actors; the patterning and reality of these messages; and the institutional forms that permit such communication. Ethnicity is a category to which one is assigned on the basis of various phenotypical, group and cultural tokens (including but not always religion) that have pragmatic meaning. Meanings for these tokens achieve a degree of intersubjectivity and become interpretive frames by which we make sense of things. Borrowing bits and pieces from Goffman (1971) and Giddens (1984), we can talk about three conditions of social arrangement. Individual agents The individual agent is the world of the connected person, the one who lives in a system of messages that have consequences. It is the world of the individual psychobiography and socio-cognitive representations.

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This level of social arrangement has a large literature about how it is constituted but we will leave that for another time. What is more important for the micro–macro dialectic is that language users rationalise their action. This means that they maintain a continuing understanding of what they are doing. If you stopped any individual and asked him or her to explain their behaviour, they would have no trouble doing so. These would not, of course, be the question or the answers of social scientists or philosophers. The lay person’s explanations are a part of the self. They are part of Mead’s ‘me’ fashioned from the ‘generalised other’, which is the voice of the community (Mead, 1934). This self is formed significantly in certain ethnic communities and less so in others. This is also Bourdieu’s (1991) habitus or the set of dispositions that incline one to act in a certain way. These dispositions generate perceptions, attitudes, and orientations that are taken-forgranted and not under the conscious control of any rule or principle. The adolescent stage of individual identity development is particularly important because this is when ego and role stability are established. An individual adolescent will focus most on the adult culture that is worthy of his interest and respect, an adult culture that is accessible communicatively and composed of desirable role models (Erickson, 1969). If the significant events in a society that help distinguish between adolescents and adults are notably ethnically based – events such as daily politics, history, influence of collective memory and more ‘minor’ cultural qualities such as food and clothing – then the ego identity that forms around this ethnicity will be strong. It could be so strong as to be maladaptive, leaving no room for recognition, respect, pleasure or tolerance for other groups. This results in the ethnic fanatic who is likely to be rigid and violent. Aspects of this development process can be extended to the ethnopolitical context. Ethnicity is highly implicated in many political conflicts and is involved in an identity development that is conflictual as well as ethnic. In other words, it is during the developmental process when an ethnic conflict ethos can also become part of an individual’s fundamental ethnic identity. Not only do adolescents develop recognition of membership in a descent group but also an oppositional relationship with an outgroup is part of the definition of their descent group. Strongly ideologically based Israeli-Jews and West Bank and Gaza Arabs, for example, have grown up in a societal milieu where the attachment process to their ethnic group includes an ethos of conflict (Oren, Bar-Tal and David, 2004). This culture of conflict supplies a steady stream of messages about what it means to be a member of an

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ethnopolitical group. The significant events in the developmental life of young people include religious, political and cultural rites of passage that fuel ethnic distinctiveness. These are the conditions of intractability when identities are developed and defined in opposition to others. The identity is not one of simply a single implication of ethnic membership formulated normally with a customary amount of pride. Rather, it is a conflictual identity with double implications – the group membership is functional and allows for management in a difficult society but then continues the conflict. Consider the following structuring effect as an example of the relationship between a sociolinguistic choice (speaking style) and a culturally expected interpretation that continues to reproduce stereotypes and conflict configurations. An Arab speaker uses repetition and vivid imagery to make a point. An Israeli-Jew or an American interprets this ‘flowery’ language as manipulative, designed to avoid reason and evidence. Both sides engage stereotypes about the other and end the conversation irritated or angry. Neither speaker ‘intended’ to offend the other but each communicated within his own traditions. This is an effect from what people ‘do’ rather than what they ‘intend’. There are many complexities here but it remains true that numerous small events and decisions trigger consequences far removed from intentions. These still figure into patterns of social conduct and structural configurations. The interactional realm The interactional realm is the communicative world where various individual and public selves meet and interact. Individual identities are ‘presented’ and ‘performed’ and become interlocked with others. A sense of the ‘other’ is a crucial part of the interactional realm. This directs our attention to the co-ordination, or lack thereof, between how we see ourselves and how others see us, and the match between our self image and public image. These are very complex processes that can include much confusion and purposeful manipulation and prevarication. Moreover, there is always the epistemology problem of what we know about others and how we know it. But it remains impossible to completely escape who we are. There is always a connection between individuals and others that reveals selfhood and in turn forces an adjustment in the construction of identity. The interactional realm is the arena where social structures such as ethnicity are constructed. Participants in a culture interlock their communicative behaviours by knowing rules of interaction that include such things a selecting

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vocabulary items designed for particular interpretations. And just as individuals use social representations and interpretive schemes to make meaning, they also employ rules for context construction. These include components such as scene, participants, setting, purpose, message form, sequences and the like (cf. Brown & Yule, 1983; Watson & Seiler, 1992). Everything connected to the speakers in the interactional realm is a potential source of information. But not all information is of equal status or salience. Individuals monitor verbal and non-verbal behaviours, personal attributes (hair, clothes) of others, the physical and social environment. What is distinguishing about this monitoring is the impact of various sources of information on the monitoring capacity of the individuals. The less people know about each other, the more they select and attend to various sources of information. People who know each other well (good friends, family members) attend mostly to verbal and non-verbal behaviour and use these to index interpretive frames of meaning. The interesting and important question, of course, is how and why interactants take up some information and not others. What do they include and what do they omit? Members of all cultures work to align their self image with their public image. But they take up different information and have some different interaction goals that account for a sense of ethnic differences in communication at best and racism at worst. Griefat and Katriel (1989) explain how Israeli Arabs orient toward musayara or co-operation and mutuality rather than self-assertion. Signalling a concern with the face of the other and displaying conversational restraint are valued interactional routines. Israeli-Jews, on the other hand, value directness and remaining true to their own self-concept rather than the self-concept of the interlocutor. These all have implications for intercultural communication (cf. Ellis & Maoz, 2002). But these verbal and non-verbal differences have their origins in very different experiences. In Kreckel’s (1981) language described above, they are heterodynamic sub-codes acquired under quite different conditions of life and on the basis of little interaction between these groups. Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Arabs have this information in common but they do not ‘share’ knowledge of how to interact with others and the values of different styles. Each group attends to these verbal and non-verbal information channels in different ways and this promotes negative evaluations of the other. Each has an element of choice in their identity, but within limits; the responses of others play an important role in the validation or invalidation of identity. There is greater distance and tension between the

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groups when they have little and infrequent contact. As the amount of contact between these two groups increases, the decision to choose particular language and behaviours is based more on mutually acquired values and goals. In the process, there is a gradual convergence of aspirations, behaviours, and self and public images (Ellis, 2005). The group-specific attitudes and values of these sub-codes of communication styles construct a reality that becomes internalised. This reality carries labels and we know quite well from both communication theory (Ellis, 2006) and sociology (Mead, 1934) that labels establish identities and categorise individuals and groups. As a consequence of this interactional realm, individuals and groups establish sub-codes that are dialectically altered in the regular rhythm of internal and external definition that occurs within a communicative encounter. The reality created by terminology also carries a distribution of power and authority which will always work to the disadvantage of a minority group. The result of labelling and stigmatising the language and interaction of an ethnic group (e.g. Arab ‘style’), if unchallenged by any countervailing forces (e.g. education, affirmative action), is the development of emotional and cultural niches. The niches create ceilings that can have detrimental effects in numerous institutional orders, such as occupation and economic mobility. We can see, then, how micro processes interact with and produce the macro structures. We began with a Goffmanesque interactional realm that, among other things, recognised the development of sub-codes and the cognitive processes of information selection and interpretation in interaction. These interpretations lead to ethnic labels and a subsequent internal and external ‘reality’ that becomes constitutive of discrimination and various social limitations. At this point we have connected interactions to the next level of social arrangement, which is institutional order. The institutional order The level of routine, patterned and quasi-systematic interactions that compose the rules for accomplishing things is the institutional order. All cultures have patterns of social practices that ‘institutionalise’ attitudes and values. And all groups in cultures are institutions; there are ways to identify a person as a member of group by his or her social practices. What is interesting to us here is how ethnic identity becomes institutionalised. This forces an emphasis on a collective definition of distinctiveness defined discursively by such things as communication patterns, labels, groups, organisations, forms of discourse, power, moral

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orders, ideology and socialisation. The boundaries of ethnic distinctiveness – and one’s location with respect to them – must be recognisable because ethnic identity is ‘validated’ by others. It would make little sense to talk about ethnic identity if this were not possible. Institutions ranging from the most formal (e.g. organised public administration) to the least formal (e.g. everyday interactions) make up the contexts and processes of society. And none of these formality differences can be drawn too sharply since informal interaction can take place in formal contexts (hallway conversation at work) and typically informal communications can become formalised (some intergroup dialogue). The structure of ethnicity and its relationship to microaction are a matter of how one is categorised and interacts with social institutions, including group membership, communal relations and the societal regulation of processes such as marriage and family. Individual behaviours aggregate into more general social structures and these structures become constraining. It is important to note that micro-interactions and their interpenetration with macro-structures in society are active and dynamic. The strength of a duality of structure approach (Giddens, 1984) is that it preserves principles of structure – namely, pre-existing constraining forces – but draws attention to the rich details of interaction that influence structure. These details of interaction are the language-based symbolic exchanges that take place in real time.

Language and identity Language is the most elemental quality of the discourse of ethnic identity and group formation. All of the complexities of defining ethnicity notwithstanding, one’s ethnic identity is bound up in the subjective symbols and emblems of culture that people use to differentiate themselves from others. This differentiation is a powerful force. Most people psychologically identify with an ethnic ancestry even if they have qualities they consider atypical (Gil-White, 2001). So the display of ethnic identity is crucial, otherwise it is an ambiguous latent construct. Ethnic identity, like other social identities, is constructed and maintained in discourse. And while ethnic identity is the psychological condition that generates ethnic behaviour, it is the discursive world that represents the psychological condition called ‘ethnic identity’. Giles and Johnson (1987) refer to the psychological and social representations that language performs with respect to ethnicity as ‘ethnolinguistic identity’. How individuals use discursive practices to

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maintain distinctiveness is a central theme in ethnolinguistic identity theory and the markers of ethnolinguistic identity are important to the structuration dialectic because they both respond to and produce the ethnic structure in a culture. The more active and vigorous a group in the culture, the more it will demonstrate its linguistic distinctiveness. This distinctiveness declines to the extent that a group is less important and consequential even if the group is not very assimilated. If there is structural racism in a culture – such as between Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Arabs – and an ethnic group is maximally distanced from the dominant group in terms of neighbourhood geography, educational resources (separate schools) and places of employment, then there will be much discursive divergence. At one extreme groups will speak different languages, but even if they speak the same language there will be very few points of contact and opportunities for communicative convergence. With very little out-group contact, within-group solidarity becomes more important and this is maintained by linguistic distinctiveness. Language represents an ideology. For example, West European cultures emerge from an economic ideology that has its roots in Utilitarianism, the idea that humans are essentially rational and economic entities and that societies are the result of these economic interchanges. In this sense, ideology is burdensome to those who are outside the ideological circle and it stigmatises them. Such ideological systems encouraged and maintained the beliefs about Arab culture as inferior to white European culture. Colonialism maintained a sense of cultural inferiority with respect to Arabs by engaging in practices and rituals – including the loss of cultural traditions and political and economic control – that continued to promote a structure of inferiority for Arabs and superiority for European whites. Colonial society came to embody the values of science, technology and business and established a system of rewards and recognition commensurate with this ideology. This value system carried with it requirements for education and attitudes that promoted the utilitarian system of beliefs. Such opportunities for education and economic and social rewards were blocked from colonised groups. This utilitarian ideology developed into an economic and professional business oriented discourse (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, 1995). Such discourse is characteristic of West European-based cultures and valuesfocused communication that is clear and direct. It is a style of communication and a philosophy of discourse that values logic and argument, a clear organisational structure and an understandable communicative

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goal. It is considered the most effective and ‘normal’ form of communication. This way of speaking and writing has some codified principles listed in textbooks and taught in schools and some uncodified expectations that circulate in daily interactions. This is the type of communication used by the professional and educated classes and exemplified in books and official documents. It not only assumes that messages should be fashioned with clarity in mind but that rules of grammar should be observed, language should be used in particular ways and words pronounced according to dictionary prescriptions. Much misunderstanding, prejudice and conflict can be attributed to the differing discursive experiences and habits of the two groups

Ideology in ethnic discourse Scollon and Scollon (1995) call the model western discursive system – and the one associated with ‘power genres’ (Lemke, 1994) – the C-B-S model, which stands for clarity, brevity and sincerity. It is a way of presenting ideas that are unified, analytic and move forward with a purpose. This is a style of discourse that has its roots in literate traditions where semantic cohesion is constructed with internal textual relations, rather than relying on shared personal background and experiences as in oral cultures. This orientation toward the use and interpretation of language creates messages that are internally consistent, integrated, planned and characterised by a sense of detachment rather than personal involvement. Again, it is the style of language use taught in the schools and used in official capacities. It assumes a clear relationship between a specific claim and the data used to support that claim. The speaker in this tradition must be capable of producing the evidence and warrant for a claim if called for. It is a mode of communication that draws its ideological impetus from the Enlightenment, which arose out of the rethinking of authority away from the Church and toward science and ideas about intellectual progress and the possibility of discovering truth. These new ideas about the pursuit of happiness and the free exchange of goods articulated by Montesquieu laid the foundation for ideas about systems of laws upon which the US Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution were founded. There was a new interest in science and the specificity that accompanies it. People were considered rational and subject to ‘laws’ of behaviour and society. The individual was defined as logical and economic and his language use reflected this. Exaggerated class and group differences are justified within this

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ideology because rewards and benefits are thought to be a natural consequence of the most productive and deserving. Muslim Arabic discourse emerges from a very different ideology. It is an ideology of orality that is not highly integrated and composed of many logical connectives such as thus, hence and therefore. Johnstone (1986, 1989) explains how argument and analysis of argument go to ground or to the deepest and most basic presumption upon which all others rest. Thus, if Islam is the ultimate reason for everything, then it is the ground of every argument. This is a particularly religious form of argument for a true believer in any religion but it is particularly frequent in Muslim Arab discourse. Sayings such as ‘everything is Islam’ are far more acceptable and common than saying things such as ‘Western democracy is perfect’. In Johnstone’s (1986) analysis of an interview with Khomeini she explains how the reasoning and thinking processes are analogical rather than classically Aristotelian. There is a frequent and persistent use of parables and stories which serves to associate whatever point is under discussion with some other literary situation. And the relationship between the two is never explicit or ‘logical’ as in the C-B-S model. There is considerable cultural discourse that is not composed of the ‘simple’ structure of the C-B-S model. An ideology that fosters emotional responses and deep involvement with both the material and the religious world gives rise to discourse with more verbal elaboration and repetition. There is less need to maintain control and devise modes of expression that support controlled movement of ideas. Such communication codes are endowed with narrative structures, formulaic repetitions, imperatives, vocatives, figurative language and creative slang that constitute its deep structure.

Constructing identity through discourse All cultures learn their discourse systems through a process of socialisation that is generated by identity goals consistent with their history and ideology. The question is this: How does one develop this ideological identity and the communication system that accompanies it? The most important distinction to be made here is between formal and informal socialisation influences. The institutions of learning that are constituted, controlled and sanctioned by the dominant culture are the repositories for the formal principles of socialisation. The informal ways of participating in a society are associated mostly with the family network, friends and popular media. If American industrial society and the principles of free markets were going to be successful at generating

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wealth and opportunity, then it is imperative that citizens be subjected to an educational system controlled by appropriate cultural values. Historically, formal education was available only to a privileged few. Mass education of the citizenry is a strongly Western European tradition and a pretty recent one at that. For about the last 150 years public schools have been the standard contexts for teaching economic and political values consistent with mainstream American utilitarian ideology. Compulsory public education is almost completely preoccupied with teaching science, rationality, technology and ‘educated’ forms of language use. This is simply not true of all cultures as education is less socially or financially available because groups are discriminated against or education is reserved for the elite. There is a history of macro structures (laws forbidding education, segregation) that deny micro socialisation experiences (education) to certain groups. Mainstream European white society, for example, evolved a system of discourse that emerged from the public school experience. This system of discourse is consistent with Utilitarian ideology and has according to Scollon and Scollon (1995) the following characteristics: (1) oral and written language should not be too rhetorical; that is, facts should speak for themselves and style should be simple and unadorned; (2) there should be an emphasis on facts and proofs for what one says; (3) the relationship between an addresser and an addressee is less important than a text; it becomes a greater authority; (4) individuality is valued but for the sake of textual autonomy and integrity, not personal identity. Your speech or writing is ‘owned’ by you; (5) others who are part of the discourse system are treated as equals; and (6) your language has a ‘public’ quality which means it is sanctioned by some formal institution. These qualities have been relatively absent in Muslim Arab societies whose ties are most closely identified with family and religious institutions. Their identity is forged in different circumstances. This identity is difficult to change and quite distinct from the educational settings that prepare one in West European white cultures. Many of the editorials and analyses that describe contemporary cultural conflicts between the West and the Muslim world (‘the clash of civilisations’) make reference to these cultural identity differences. The three primary institutions that foster Muslim Arab identity and occasion their ethnic discursive system are educational institutions, discussed above, the mosque and the family. Unlike many other churches, membership of mosques has risen steadily. The mosque provides an organised experience that is morally and community based. It is a retreat from the realities of a

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harsh existence as well as the social and intellectual core of the Muslim community.

Forms of discourse We turn now to the preferred forms of discourse and patterns of communication within that discourse system that socialise an identity from an ideology. I use the word ‘discourse’ here to refer to broad functional uses of language in social contexts. The essential purpose of discourse is communication or the process of using language and various rhetorical devices to direct the meaning of a listener or reader. Discourse for an ethnic group doubles as both the reflection of a group’s values, structure, ideology and as a defining aspect of the group. Muslim Arabs typically refer to language (e.g. slang) and ‘styles’ of interaction as a defining factor of their culture. Interestingly, various white sub-cultures in the United States based on geography, education or class status would make the claim to distinctiveness but not name language-use differences very prominently. And American whites and the English use language more to divide and separate than to unify. They use linguistic markers to recognise differences rather than similarities. Below are some interesting examples of discourse functions. It is difficult to both represent and respect the ethnicity of another group and it takes skill to walk the line between accuracy and stereotype. Historically, social institutions (e.g. media) portrayed Arabs quite stereotypically and did so without recrimination. As Said (1978) argues, the West engaged in a persistent Eurocentric prejudice against AraboIslamic peoples and their culture. After protests and a period of time when consciences were raised about ethnic stereotypes, ethnicity is back. The melting pot is out; ethnic identity is in. Groups assert themselves, take pride in ethnic cultural expressions and demand that their language and communication be recognised and respected. Consider an example from a popular film. Walt Disney, who was known to be ideologically and politically conservative, spent years portraying Arabs and other ethnic groups as stereotyped ‘others’. In Disney’s Arabian Nights film the lead characters are light skinned and the evil characters are dark and swarthy with Arab accents and grotesque facial features. The Arab characters sing songs about barbarism and cutting off body parts, while they are portrayed as alien and exotic. Morning cartoons in the US typically depict Arab women as belly dancers and harem girls and the men as terrorists, oil sheiks or marauding tribesmen. These media portrayals are important

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because they are often the only experience some people have with members of various ethnic groups. There are, of course, equally as many offensive stereotypes of Jews and other groups. Given the various complexities and functions of language, there is easy agreement that all language in all cultures expresses both formal information and data about the subject matter of a message but also serves a relational function (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967). We communicate subject matter but we also communicate how interactants see one another in the relationship, including expectations about power, intimacy and control. The dugri code, for instance, is oriented more towards formal expression of ideas and information than relationships. Arab discourse is much more relationship oriented and concerned with relational solidarity and involvement (Griefat & Katriel, 1989; Feghali, 1997). All messages accomplish both information and relationship functions to some extent, but some are clearly more directed to one than the other. The difference between a discourse style that focuses on relationships rather than the more routine goal of information transmission can account for problems in communication including misunderstanding and personal offence. From a functional standpoint, an Israeli dugri user might want to speak directly to make a point and then move on. An Arab musayara speaker might try to make the same point with indirection that calls for a response from the other person and signals his or her identity, which acts as an interpretive frame for the relationship. This is contrary to dugri norms and may be the basis for discomfort, confusion and even hostility. McLaurin (1995) offers a powerful example of the real consequences of this mismatch in discursive systems. Although McLaurin was studying African Americans, his results seem generalisable to many intercultural contexts. He found that messages typically fail because they fail to account for the sense-making and interpretive frames of the youth in his study. The messages often do not appropriate the central cultural images. Moreover, McLaurin (1995) concluded that the design of these messages incorrectly assumes that the linear communication style used by one culture (e.g. dugri) with its accompanying syllogistic reasoning will be persuasive with an audience that communicates using a different mode of influence and relationship expectations. In other words, messages formulated according to the principles and ideology of one code will be ineffective with another code. The organisation of relationships and the discursive system that supports this organisation is important to the development of group and

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ethnic identity. There are some aspects of relationships in a culture that are most important. In some cultures family membership and kinship ties are powerful and of primary importance. Scollon and Scollon (1995), for example, explain how in Asian cultures the family is a powerful force that holds people together. The sense of self and belonging emerges from the kinship system. American culture by contrast often sees family as a barrier to individuality. Kinship is less important than individual expression. This aspect of Asian culture explains much of its respect for hierarchy and a resultant communication system rooted heavily in politeness and respect. I mentioned above that the family was often the prime context for identity formation but the Muslim Arab family is historically rooted in a strong community that respects differences in rank. Although we would not want to overgeneralise, it remains true that the contemporary Muslim Arab family maintains a system of kinship respect based on generational differences. This is different than the white Western attitude, which is one of individuality and egalitarianism. Changes in family structure can lead to generational communication problems. Some of the increasing efforts to be individual and resist authority are motivated by individual interests rather than the altruistic ones that are encouraged by generational respect. How you become a member of a group is also very important. Family and generational membership is organic and based on natural processes of learning and enculturation. This forms a solidarity based on the powerful influences of shared history, traditions and goals. Other groups are formed simply by mutual interest and the fact that the group can be of use to one. The second process of group development is more professionally oriented than family. It teaches the modes of communication and forms of discourse consistent with schooling and a West European communication code. In the first process meanings are directly ratified in interaction. One learns gender, individual identity and a sense of place primarily through the oral forms of the community. Intercultural communication problems between Arab-Muslims and European white cultures can result from differing assumptions that emerge from these processes.

Reproduction circuits and ethnic discourse I would like to finish this chapter with a more direct confrontation between theory and data. I have been drawing on the theoretical language of Giddens and structuration to try and explain how different ethnic structures might become visible in society. This requires us to

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move more toward models of interdependence to explain the development of society and its structures, in this case ethnicity. Typically, ethnicity has been seen as a natural characteristic of a group of people and the response of another culture. This ‘naturalisation’ has been so fundamental that it is difficult to imagine any other process, especially one that foregrounds interdependent relationships and the dialectic production of interaction and social structures. But such a question is central if we are to understand how members of a culture draw on structures to produce patterns of communication. Cohen (1989) suggests that it is what is in-between communication practices and social structures that is important. The first important term here is reproduction, because we must focus on repeated communication patterns since these are the ones that become prominent and most influential and are responsible for the creation of structures. As Giddens (1984) describes, elaborated by Cohen (1989), this reproduction produces processes that are considered reproduction circuits, or as Cohen (1989) writes, ‘a cycle of routinized activities and consequences which are reproduced across time-space within and between institutional locales’ (Cohen, 1989, p. 124). These reproduction circuits help explain how systems of interaction – for example, ethnic group discourse described above – are integrated, their position in relation to other systems as well as how the groups signify meanings. Questions such as how closely they are tied together, where interactions take place, frequency of contact and positional relations among members are of chief concern here. For instance, Israeli-Arabs are a group aimed at maximising their position in society and establishing a healthy ethnic identity. They do this through the communication forms discussed above. The same is true for groups in other cultures even though the characteristics that produce their discursive system (ideology, identity, forms of discourse and relationships) are different. As we know, communication in these groups is organised by geography, workplaces and group history. More specifically, within-group interaction practices are regionalised around the home and neighbourhood. Between-group interaction practices are marked more by workplace locale and public commercial enterprises. The type of communication that takes place in the home is fundamentally different from that which occurs in the workplace. These regionalised communication practices are how communication and social contact are ‘stretched’ across time and space. Individuals in these groups are parcelled across these regionalised spaces and possess the appropriate discourse forms and rights and

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responsibilities. These individuals are distributed in social space but maintain their differences with respect to class, income, education and related demographic factors. Consequently, there are spheres of interaction among different social classes such as upper middle class IsraeliArabs interacting with lower middle class Israeli-Arabs or poor Israeli-Jews with poor Israeli-Arabs, the privileged with the underprivileged and so on including all the possibilities in a matrix of subcultures. Thus, certain forms and types of communication (e.g. identity displays, mutual respect, racism, information giving, orders and directives, ad infinitum) take place between individuals in different regions. There are some deviations from patterns but these are idiosyncratic or, more interestingly, designed to alter social structures and disrupt accepted practices. These deviations play an important role in social change and conflict. When members of an ethnic group maintain contact and communication patterns over time and space – and the smaller the group the more likely it will be systematically integrated – then its level of integration is high. But when participants become increasingly geographically separated because of movement to new lands or neighbourhoods, migration for employment or pursuant to skills or economic opportunities, then integration is threatened. It can then be held together only through technological mechanisms of contact and control. These would be mechanisms such as computers, letter writing, telephones and other forms of media (Ellis, 2006). Use and skill with discursive systems such as C-B-S style of discourse also facilitates social integration. When an individual is skilled and comfortable with one system to the exclusion of the other, he or she is more integrated into that system but alienated from the other. When one system is preferred by a dominant culture, it becomes hegemonic and associated with power and the accepted standard of communication. The patterns of communication that constitute an ethnic structure are based on codes of signification, cultural principles of legitimation, and legal and psychological mechanisms of dominance. The power of one culture over another legitimises certain interests and discursive systems. It legitimises ways of speaking, behaving (understated behaviour as opposed to emotionality) and other cultural characteristics related to food, clothing and aesthetics. Each of these legitimised practices has ‘technologies’ with their own vocabulary and frameworks for interpretation and understanding. Writing, computers, finance, management information, etc., are the technologies of the dominant group and these require experience and training not easily

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available to the minority culture. As ways of speaking and behaving are de-legitimised, they go underground and establish different conditions for discourse by defining who can take part, what counts as valid communication, what issues are important and what attitudes, values and arguments are acceptable. This results in an ethnic discursive genre that involves standard and acceptable forms of signification, routines and interpretive guidelines. This ethnic discursive genre is a way of existing. It does, of course, constrain the culture and suppress ways of thinking and opportunities but it also performs a powerful and attractive identity function. In this chapter I have tried to encourage some appreciation for the relationship between communication and ethnic structure. I make little claim to dramatic innovation but do believe that directing attention to the micro-macro dialectic can be an important rethinking of scholarship in this area. The micro-macro dialectic emphasises the daily practices of communication, acknowledges changes as well as stability and recognises individual agency as well as collective identity and structure. There is no shortage of elasticity in the concept of ethnicity. It can be fixed and solid in the minds of some and responsible for rigid ideas; for others ethnicity is perpetually being fused and negotiated. In either case it is a social construction that will not fade into the background of consciousness but will remain an organising category for individuals and cultures.

3 The Tale-End of History: Literary Form, Historiography and the Danish (Post)-National Imagination1 C. Claire Thomson

Text, individual and collective In one of Isak Dinesen’s most famous tales, a discussion takes place between a cardinal and a woman in black about the respective merits of the modern novel and the classic story.2 The modern novel, thinks the cardinal, is too concerned with exploring the psychology of the individual and the story suffers as a result. The classic tale, on the other hand, keeps up the historical momentum and thereby achieves the elevation of the individual to the universal. Both genres approach the question ‘who am I?’ from different angles and both fail completely to answer it. This tale playfully circles the difficulty of categorising Dinesen’s own oeuvre (Selboe, 2002, p. 480) but it also encapsulates two inter-related problems in literary studies: how do we draw the lines between literary (and, indeed, non-literary) genres? And how do we conceive of the relations between literature and identity, between text, individual and community? These concerns are echoed in the debate surrounding a historiographical genre in Denmark which shares its name with Dinesen’s own signature genre: both her tales and a particular historical tradition in Denmark are known as fortællinger. The historian A.D. Jørgensen, himself a leading practitioner of the genre, thought that the historical fortælling’s great strength lay in its ability to ‘focus on the individual and the personal in history’; what a collection of tales lacked in terms of ‘coherence and overview’ was compensated for by their ‘clarity and power’ (in Mordhorst, 2001, p. 131). In contrast to the scientific, comprehensive and exhaustive historical narrative that was the holy grail 45

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of nineteenth-century historiography, the task of the fortælling was to isolate events, characters or themes and present them through the very audible and subjective organising voice of the historian (ibid., p. 132). It is the inherent ambivalence of this genre – the texts’ discursive construction of themselves as shared stories with an undecidable relationship to objective historical truth – that constitutes a space for the negotiation of national identities, both in late-nineteenth and in latetwentieth century Denmark, when Søren Mørch’s post-modern version of national fortællinger (1996) re-worked this genre for a new era. In each age, the fortællinger position themselves differently between national history and fiction, narrating not only the story of the nation, but also the story of how that narrative tells itself to itself, how fictional or subjective its history can admit itself to be. In their focus on the particular and the subjective, the fortællinger discursively construct a national textual community where the relationship of narrator to reader is that of engagement between storyteller and listener, rather than of historian to pupil. Put differently, although at least one set of historical fortællinger (Jørgensen’s) has achieved canonical status through its wide use in pedagogical contexts over several generations, the dynamic in this genre is one of dialogue between history and its subjects. In what follows, after outlining the putative role of fictional narratives in the consolidation of the modern national community, I will look more closely at two well-known works of Danish national historiography: Søren Mørch’s Den sidste Danmarkshistorie. 57 fortællinger af fædrelandets historie (1996; ‘The Last History of Denmark. 57 Tales of the History of the Fatherland’), and A.D. Jørgensen’s 40 fortællinger af fædrelandets historie (1882; ‘40 Tales of the History of the Fatherland’). As can easily be deduced from the titles of these books, Mørch’s work flags an intertextual, even parodic, relationship to Jørgensen’s. The hold of Jørgensen’s text on the Danish popular imagination is such that it constitutes the founding narrative against which the ‘post-historical’ historiography of the 1990s can kick. By this time, the audience is supposed to have developed a healthy scepticism for another kind of fortælling, the ‘store fortællinger’ – grand narratives – of postEnlightenment culture. However, as I will argue, although Mørch reworks Jørgensen’s narrative voice and structure for a self-consciously ‘postnational’ audience, the earlier text does not promulgate a straightforwardly monolithic, linear and objective national history. Neither text narrates unproblematically its nation as ‘a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 26). Rather, the pos-

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sibilities of narrative form and voice afforded by the fortælling engender two histories of Denmark which, each in their own way, invite their readers to reflect on the ‘storyness’ of national history, and what this means for the nation’s collective identity.

Nation, novel and historiography Discourse, as Fairclough and Wodak remind us, is Janus-faced; it is ‘socially constitutive’ in the same moment as it is ‘socially shaped’, constituting ‘situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people’ (1997, p. 258). In the literary context, these people and groups comprise what we might call a textual community – implied author, characters, implied reader – neither entirely inside nor outside the text, and engaged in the negotiation of an agreement about the limits of fact and fiction in a text. Indeed, as we shall see, the role of fiction and historical narrative in nation-building has been theorised according to just these parameters: novel and historiography are seen to constitute and be shaped by the competing truth-claims of national institutions and imaginings. The rise of the novel and the establishment of the academic discipline of history in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century are treated by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities (1991) as part and parcel of the overall development of the diachronic dimension of the nation in the popular imagination. The function of the novel in the process of nation-building constitutes only one flank of Anderson’s thesis but it brings together his arguments on the importance of, on the one hand, print capitalism and, on the other, the cognitive processes involved in the reception of culture. He thus points to the key role of texts as material objects circulating in the public sphere, a stance which finesses the respective approaches of Gellner (1996) and Smith (1986, 1999) to the passions aroused by the mother- or fatherland. (See also Richard Mole’s introductory chapter.) For Gellner (1996), nationalism is a function of the curious mix of educational standardisation and industrial specialisation of modern states; their provision of the possibility of social mobility and civic (if not class) equality within well-defined linguistic and cultural parameters (see McCrone, 1998, pp. 65–7). In other words, the conditions peculiar to the modern Western state are also the ideal conditions for a burgeoning awareness of a community much larger than the primordial village of face-to-face contact. Anderson’s narratively imagined community is

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also a manifestation of the trope of the rediscovery or ‘awakening’ of cultural heritage that found expression in the Europe-wide romantic craze for folk-tales, traditions, ancient history, mythology and especially ‘national’ languages in the nineteenth century. The tension between these rural practices and urban consumption of their bowdlerised expressions has been the subject of recent scholarship on nation-building, which tends to emphasise a ‘top-down’ dynamic whereby elite culture adapts existing practices, committing them to paper and disseminating them through developing channels of mass education in literacy, history and geography, thus forming a network of ‘invented traditions’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) and the routine flags of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995). Danish historians have found ample evidence for this kind of process in the nineteenth century.3 On the other hand, Smith (1999) argues that ethnic identity is rooted in local practices and material culture which obtained long before their transmutation into ‘national’ symbols. ‘Postmodernists’ such as Anderson are dismissed as purveyors of nihilistic play that reduces the nation to ‘a communion of imagery, nothing more nor less’ (Smith, 1999, p. 170), ignoring ‘the ways in which these conditions operate, not on some tabula rasa population, but on varying degrees and kinds of pre-formed populations’ (p. 171, my emphasis). This assessment seems drastically to underestimate the complexities of human participation in the consumption and circulation of the various media and text-types discussed throughout Imagined Communities. Indeed, Anderson dissects Gellner’s instrumentalist stance by insisting that nations may be imagined, but they are not ‘imaginary’ or entirely ‘fabricated’, no less ‘true’ than other types of community (Anderson, 1991, p. 6). Anderson’s interest, then, lies less in the earlier manifestations of community out of which modern nationalism grows, and more in the mirage thrown up by the latter: ‘[i]t is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 12). In particular, this mirage is concerned with continuity: it projects the nation into the past as well as into the future. It takes on, but does not necessarily supersede, the role of religion in turning ‘fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning’ (p. 11). Thus, what Anderson calls a ‘pedagogical industry’ of history writing (p. 201) produces history that is emplotted in a particular way and demands forgetting as well as remembering (pp. 199–201); the nation’s story, he says, is read ‘genealogically – as the expression of an historical tradition of serial continuity’ (p. 195). The Danish historian Uffe Østergaard is unambiguous in his attribu-

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tion of such an ideological origin to the discipline of history between 1859 and 1920: Historical research is a full-blood child of the era of the nation state. The discipline was developed to achieve three goals: 1) the maintenance of the state’s official memory in the form of the national archives, 2) the production of national propaganda in confrontations with neighbouring states, and 3) nationalist indoctrination of the entire school population, in other words the nationalization of first the rural classes, then the industrial classes. (1992, p. 32)4 For Anderson, though, it is the novel which is the literary form par excellence of the modern nation because its narrative logic conjures up ‘a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty time’ (1991, p. 26). The novel’s focus on the individual splices autobiographical time with historical and therefore national time; its characters move through the same spacetime simultaneously, a conception of the world which, says Anderson, can be summed up as ‘a complex gloss upon the word “meanwhile”’ (1991, p. 24, n. 34). The crucial role of the novel as a conduit for popular discourses of nationhood and history is thus well-established, although the amorphous nature of the novel and its shifting relationship to conventions and practices of historiography and other truth-bearing genres make the investigation of this relationship potentially an exercise of infinite scope and indeterminate focus. Given the porous boundaries and cultural specificity of the novel as a genre, I would argue that it is also important to investigate other influential and popularly accessible genres and the conceptions of national space and time that they entail in a particular culture. In the Danish context, the form of narrative known as the fortælling has played, it can be argued, a significant part in the dissemination of modern and post-modern assumptions about the shape of national history and community.

Constructing a national storyteller In his essay ‘The Storyteller’, Walter Benjamin muses that ‘[a] man listening to a story is in the company of the storyteller; even a man reading one shares his companionship. The reader of a novel is isolated, however, more so than any other reader’ (in Brooks, 1984, p. 290). This romantic idea, that the practice of storytelling is

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somehow imbued with community, whereas the reading of a novel is done in silence and individually, draws one possible, if whimsical, line between a novel and what we might call a ‘tale’ in English, or a fortælling in Danish. Benjamin’s words remind us that the kind of imagined community sketched by the novel may rest on the description of multiple members of a community, but that the imagining of the community grows out of the individual subjecthood of the reader. The ‘tale’, on the other hand, as a genre, rests on an inherent sense of company, be it the performance of reading around the campfire on a winter’s evening, or the reader’s imaginative (re)construction of the textual voice of the storyteller (which may or may not be identical with that of the narrator). In both cases, though, regardless of whether the narrative suggests a solitary or group experience, it is in large part the reader’s membership of the worldly community in which the text circulates that enables him or her to fulfil the role of the reader in a meaningful way. Jonathan Culler, in his essay ‘Anderson and the Novel’, explores how the participatory dynamic of the novel can be a fillip to the idea of community. In this, he moves away from Anderson’s emphasis on the movement of a social organism through time. In particular, Culler points to the type of reader which the novel conjures up in the imagination of the flesh-and-blood reader: ‘Novels construct a role for readers by positing a reader who knows some things but not everything, needs to have some things explained but not others’ (2003, pp. 37–8). The reader, then, shifts between the status of insider and outsider in the course of a novel, is invited to take on the mantle of insiderness by gaining access to local knowledge, and interprets the text according to the cultural knowledge in which s/he is steeped. Thus, says Culler, ‘the novel raises as a possibility the distinction between insider and outsider, friend and foe, which becomes the basis of historical developments’ (ibid., p. 50). By the end of Culler’s penetrating essay, we see the novel as a condition of possibility of imagining not only the temporal dimension of the modern Western nation – linearity, progress, simultaneity, homogeneous empty time – but also a spatial dimension, which has less to do with territory than with the boundaries of a community of persons, where the line between insider and outsider is not watertight but nevertheless definable based on cultural knowledge. In other words, the act of reading is an ongoing process of interpretation in a cultural context, a series of decisions about what is familiar and what is foreign to the reading subject – an exercise in the construction of identity.

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The dependence of the novel on extratextual knowledge is also important to the philosopher of history Hayden White. He argues that the nineteenth-century historical novel was born out of ‘the interference between an imaginary tale of romance and a set of real historical events’ (1999, p. 67), each category within the text endowing the other with its romance or reality. Fact and fiction are thereby considered to be mutually defining, within a given social orthodoxy. It is this orthodoxy that is important, the contract between text and reader; the reader, says White, is assumed by the text to have the capacity to distinguish between real and imaginary events, and thus between fact and fiction. White does not specify how this capacity is attained, but we must assume that historical pedagogy is its basis, as Fredric Jameson suggests when he writes that the historical novel requires ‘mobilization of previous historical knowledge generally acquired through the schoolbook history manuals devised for whatever legitimizing purpose by this or that national tradition’ (1991, p. 23). Robert Holton, on the other hand, writing on the representation of history in fiction, points to the double legitimation of historical truth and authority through the bestowal of legal or academic authority, and the communal agreement of the sensus communis, or common sense (1994, p. 40). It might not be inopportune to widen out the idea of nationalist ‘pedagogy’ by letting hang in the air at this point Homi K. Bhabha’s own development of the term, which encapsulates the processes by which the fabrications of everyday storytelling jostle with crystallised official narratives: the nation’s people must be thought in double-time; the people are the historical ‘objects’ of a nationalist pedagogy, giving the discourse an authority that is based on the pre-given or constituted historical origin in the past; the people are also the ‘subjects’ of a process of signification that must erase any prior or originary presence of the nation-people to demonstrate the prodigious, living principles of the people as contemporaneity: as that sign of the present through which national life is redeemed and iterated as a reproductive process. (1994, p. 145, emphasis in original) A people may be educated in the nationalist project through schoolbooks, distributed pamphlets, reading newspapers, listening to political speeches, and so on; but the centripetal pull of the national historical narrative thus constructed is constantly worried at by everyday life, material practices and contestatory narratives. Bhabha’s phrasing is

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replete with movement – no subject is centred or settled – but what is also important here is the idea of negotiation of identity, the tussle of petrified and nascent ideas about identity and community. Such theories about the connections made by readers between the fictive text and the ‘real’, historical world help us to conceptualise how, in textual representations of the community, in Anderson’s words, ‘fiction seeps quietly and continuously into reality’ (1991, p. 36), and vice versa. One final observation, by Umberto Eco, adds another layer to the sophisticated abilities of the implied national reader: ‘many texts aim at producing two model readers, a first level, or naïve one, supposed to understand semantically what the text says, and a second level, or critical one, supposed to appreciate the way in which the text says so’ (1990, p. 57). In addition to sorting through narrated events which are fictive, factual, or somewhere in between, the reader can also be constructed as someone who is aware of the rhetorical strategies and generic conventions used to present the message. The national reader is anything but a sponge, soaking up a nationalist pedagogy. S/he is genre-aware. This leads us back to the figure of the national storyteller. The storyteller is not, as Benjamin laments, present in the novel, because the unified point of view (Culler, 2003, p. 33) that characterised what Anderson terms the ‘classic’ novel (i.e. prior to the more fragmented point-of-view typical of modernism) tended to imply an omniscient neutrality. In the genre of the fortælling, however, a trope of companionship, to adopt Benjamin’s idea, can be observed, over and above the community of knowledge that the text constructs. While Mørch and Jørgensen – or the textual personae they project – enjoy authoritative status, bestowed on them by the sensus communis, as specialist historians, their voices make no claims to absolute objectivity or infallibility. In both cases, as we shall see, their historical discourse is infected with an awareness of the encroaching fictiveness and constructedness of the stories that proliferate about the life of the nation, though this tone of doubt manifests itself in different ways in the two texts. It is most clearly expressed in the historians’ admissions of uncertainty in the face of the respective ‘ends’ of national history, which they both confront, and to which we now turn.

Post-historical tales: Den sidste Danmarkshistorie. 57 fortællinger af Fædrelandets historie In the 1990s, a historical narrative that probes the status of the historian, the fictionality of historiography, and the heterogeneity of the

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nation is no rare beast. The implicit assumption of Søren Mørch’s Den sidste Danmarkshistorie: 57 fortællinger af Fædrelandets historie, from 1996 – in its double-edged title, as well as in its experimental form – is the prior existence of traditional, canonical histories against which it can be read. Mørch does not explicitly deal either with A.D. Jørgensen’s book, nor with Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992), to which its title also alludes.5 This is not simply a case of a text which constructs a model reader who has a knowledge of that ‘straight’ or pedagogical history of Denmark which is now being deconstructed; the knowledge assumed is not only of the content of popular, schoolbook- and newspaper-history, but also of the truth-claims of historiography. The reader is supposed to appreciate this historian’s play with his own writing persona, as well as the re-arrangement of the pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle of national history. This text demands, or assumes, a reader who is at once privy to the knowledge that makes him or her a national animal, but also anxious about the historical contingency of that same nationness. Den sidste Danmarkshistorie, consists, as its subtitle suggests, of fiftyseven short narratives (fortællinger) about Danish history. These cover the period from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, but they are arranged thematically, not chronologically. They are episodic in nature: each fortælling takes a particular incident or character as a starting point for a rumination on a theme central to the Danish nation’s conception of self. For example, the text ‘Et monument’ (a monument) considers the architecture of Odense University6 as emblematic of post-1968 ideas about education and landscape, while ‘Dansk mad’ (Danish food) allows for a discussion of changing patterns of wealth, consumption, gender identity, and farming. In some cases, the topics are treated from an unapologetically personal standpoint, the historian’s subjective experience as a Dane of a certain generation, who nevertheless has the authority to contextualise that experience into la longue durée. The tale-end of history Mørch’s stated aim – which, as we shall see, is an ambivalent and playful one – is to explain why the history of the nation-state has come to an end. To do this, he must construct that ‘other’ history of Denmark which his own history challenges, the conglomerate text of ‘traditional’ histories which wrote the nation through the lens of nationalism, over a definable period. Relying on his readers’ knowledge of events of national significance, he constructs certain oppositions

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between his own posthistorical, postnational approach, and that which it supersedes: between an illusory national cultural homogeneity and a prevailing heterogeneity, and between a naïve longing for a single, coherent history and a realistic acceptance of the fragmented, partial and subjective nature of historical narrative. What is interesting about the chronology that Mørch develops in his book is how it echoes the split between national pedagogy and national performance that Bhabha identifies.7 However, while Bhabha sees these processes as simultaneous and inter-related, the pedagogical is, for Mørch, characteristic of a particular period of ‘the national’, which he sets out to define as different from his present, in which it is no longer possible to write history in the same way. Mørch characterises the period 1864 to the 1960s in terms of an ongoing homogenisation of the population of Denmark and of its narratives about itself. The historiographical orthodoxy of that period is a belief in progress from the ground zero of 1864:8 Denmark’s defeat to the nascent German state at Dybbøl in Southern Jutland, a defeat which occasioned the loss of almost one-third of her territory. Two key memes of the period are often quoted by historians to explain how the ‘general political discourse’ (Bjørn, 2000, p. 128) of the time crystallised into an explicitly centripetal nationalism in the decades after 1864. On the one hand, the poet and priest N.F.S. Grundtvig envisioned in popular song an egalitarian Denmark where ‘few have too much and even fewer have too little’, thus sowing the seeds of a welfare state mentality (see Bjørn, 2000, p. 128 and Østergård, 1996). On the other hand, the aphorism ‘what is lost without shall be won within’, attributed to the poet and environmentalist Enrico Dalgas, is often pounced on by historians as a national statement of intent to establish ‘a Danish identity of a very saturate kind’ (Bjørn, 2000, p. 123).9 While 1920 saw a referendum resulting in the return of the ‘lost’ territory to Denmark, this remapping of the national border along the prevailing linguistic border merely validated what Mørch sees as the post hoc construction of the history of the Danish nation as a culturally homogeneous entity. The period since the 1960s, on the other hand, says Mørch, is a time of multiple narrative trajectories, lack of narrative authority, cultural heterogeneity and scepticism about progress. What is at stake is a difference in the relationship of the individual to the (national) collective, before and after the watershed of the 1960s. The transformation of the individual’s conception of his or her role in the narrative of

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Denmark is ‘performed’ by Mørch in his interaction, as historian/storyteller, with his projected (post)national reader. Looking first at the construction of the watershed – the break with national pedagogy – we see that Mørch’s own performance of the realisation that something was different involves different narrative personae on his part, and different assumptions about the knowledge of the reader. Mørch is concerned to remind his readers that stories (and therefore histories) come to an end – even the nation-state: Histories begin – and they stop again. So it is with the history of the Danish nation state. It begins – and it stops again. This history began slowly and it stopped slowly, too. When it stopped, its power seeped out of it like an old-fashioned grandfather clock when the mechanism is winding down: tick, tock, tick, tock…tick… tock…………..tick The history of the nation state has stopped. It stopped around the 1960s or ’70s, but we didn’t really notice. (Mørch, 1996, p. 542) The Danish word historie translates into English both as history and story, so the double significance of this passage is more apparent in Danish than in English. This is a key image in the book, for it confronts the idea of the history of the nation as an eternal tale of progress with the reader’s everyday experience, that every story does indeed have a beginning and an end. It compares the national narrative of a particular era to a timepiece which is both Danish and old-fashioned: a grandfather clock (Bornholmerur). While an actual performance of this tale in a collective situation is unlikely in the 1990s, the use of onomatopoeia (‘tick, tock’) obliges the reader to cross a line, from passively following the narrative, to noticing the sound and rhythm of the words, and thus reflecting on how these represent national time. And it presents the end of the history of the nation-state as a fait accompli, a historical fact which the audience may not consciously have noticed, but which they – ‘we’ – have lived through, been implicated in. The historian, too, admits he is coming late to this realisation. Den sidste Danmarkshistorie flags itself as coming after that era. This entails not only a change in the character of national life, but also a change in how national life can be interpreted. The book engages with the idea of the historical fortælling insofar as the reader is repeatedly warned that history cannot be told, or narrated, in the same way as it

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was in the past. For example, in his statement of intent in the first fortælling, Mørch explains why national history is now irrevocably different: The history of Denmark belongs to the ideological heritage that is now being packed away. Neither I nor any of my many thousand living fellow historians would be able to narrate it in the way one once could, because it no longer hangs together as an entity. On the other hand, we can narrate many different histories. This one is my version. What I aim to do is to find out how Denmark became a nation-state, and why things are different now. (ibid., p. 13) While there are many times more historians alive today than have ever lived in Denmark, says Mørch, children are being taught less and less history in school; this is because history cannot be narrated in the same way as it was before (ibid., p. 12). How was it narrated before? This question leads us into a hall of mirrors, for previous narrative practices are reinterpreted to suit the present’s contrasting of itself with the past, as we shall see when we move on to consider A.D. Jørgensen’s 40 fortællinger. For the moment, we can at least observe that the trope of abolishing contradictions internal to the nation characterises the task of the historian and poet during the period which Mørch explicitly identifies as that of the Danish nation-state; and that what comes after is, for him, characterised by something else, in which nationality is just one contradiction among many, and nothing coheres as one entity: The idea of the nation-state was to build bridges over contradictions in society. Despite the clashes of interest, we were all Danes … As the contradictions gradually evened out and disappeared, the nation-state itself was abolished. National feeling changed character. The Danes kept on being Danes, but they became at the same time many other things … The national in contemporary Denmark has the same status as religions. (ibid., pp. 542–5) A number of points are worthy of comment here, as we consider how Mørch discursively constructs the idea of a nation-state that began in 1864 and is now over. Firstly, the social contradictions he identifies as essential to the task of the nation have been replaced, in his narrative, with the ‘many other things’ that the Danes are in addition to being Danish. These, however, are differences of belief or practice, rather

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than social or class-based contradictions. Secondly, a periodisation of national history still obtains in Mørch’s narrative: the current period in the history of Denmark comes after the era of the nation-state, such that we can look back and ‘see’ where the previous era began. There is continuity in sequentiality. With all the authority of an eminent historian, Mørch can look back on his life and career, as he does at the beginning of the book, and declare that his generation of historians has seen one era end and the next begin; the lines of culture and practice that could be traced backwards from his parents’ generation to early in the nineteenth century dissipated in the 1960s when the transformation from agrarian to industrial Denmark kicked in (ibid., p. 9). Now, take my wife … When Mørch comments that ‘Neither I nor any of my many thousand living fellow historians would be able to narrate [Danish history] in the way one once could, because it no longer hangs together as an entity’ (1996, p. 13), there is a curious balance between his confident diagnosis of the pastness of a coherent nation, and his timorous appraisal of his own and his colleagues’ authority to narrate. This very postmodern caution in the face of the randomness or meaninglessness of history is perhaps most blatantly the case in fortælling 54, entitled ‘Sommerfugleffekten’ (The Butterfly Effect). In this tale, Mørch adopts the trope of the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes chaos on the other side of the world. The story he structures in this way straddles the domestic and the world-changing: it is the story of how his wife’s choice of apartment led to the ‘no’ vote in the Danish referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in June 1992. The informed Danish reader will recognise Mørch’s wife as the politician Ritt Bjerregaard, whose career has spanned posts as Danish MP, EU Commissioner and Mayor of Copenhagen. It was an administrative error in his wife’s office, says Mørch, that led, via a series of convoluted politicking and resignations, to the Danish government’s failure to ensure a ‘yes’ vote in the 1992 referendum on the Treaty of European Union (Treaty of Maastricht), and the consequent temporary derailment of progress towards ‘evercloser union’ amongst the then twelve EC member-states.10 Chaos theory, says Mørch, theorises what haunts historians: the unpredictability of cause and effect. He appeals to the reader’s own spiralling sense of social chaos, arguing that: ‘with the elimination of the belief that the world can be divided into those who govern and those who are governed, and as the goalposts shift and dissolve into thin air, the butterfly effect becomes clearer and clearer in our eyes’ (ibid, p. 521). New ways

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of structuring and narrating the (lack of) order that history teases out of chaos are thus linked to the fall of old ideologies and certainties. This is, perhaps, the most blatant example of personal history in the book, although Mørch’s wife is notorious in her own right as a renegade politician in Denmark. But the double role attributed to the unsuspecting national model reader here is dizzying: s/he must remember the cataclysmic referendum, an item in recent nationalist pedagogy, where little Denmark stopped the European juggernaut, an exercise in which s/he almost certainly participated or performed as a Danish citizen. But s/he is now asked to ‘forget’ the end result in order to take a trip through the family photograph album of a well-known politician and her academic husband, who were only trying to buy a new flat, and who, by the way, lost money on the extra expenses arising from the scandal – ‘as one who knows all about it asked me to mention, and she says to say hello’ (ibid., p. 526), concludes Mørch in a friendly fashion. Meaningful history descends into chaos, anecdote and greetings from the historian’s wife; the reader is undoubtedly in the company of the storyteller. Elsewhere, Mørch appeals to the reader’s own experience of trying to make sense of the labyrinthine legal judgements and investigations into certain political scandals of the 1980s and 1990s, concluding that this is not just symptomatic, but causative, of the end of history: ‘The chasm between the prevailing law and common sense and an ordinary sense of justice is so deep, that history can no longer be narrated’ (ibid., p. 490). In the case of Den sidste Danmarkshistorie, then, the overarching discourse, or perhaps, despite itself, the grand narrative, is of entropy, dissipation, and afterness – a tailing off of history into particularity, unreliability, and diffraction of points of view. However, the rhetorical culmination of this process still depends on a community of readers with local knowledge. A local story for local people It goes without saying that since Den sidste Danmarkshistorie is written in the Danish language about the history of Denmark, its target audience is Danish, with all that that assumption entails in terms of the model reader’s cultural knowledge. But it perhaps needs to be underlined to what extent the territorial boundaries of Denmark are contiguous with the nation’s linguistic and geopolitical boundaries, and on this subject Mørch can speak for himself: Just as the moon is the colour it ought to be, Denmark is the size it ought to be. The size was, as is well known, worked out in 1920, and

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is, in contrast to probably all the other countries in the world designed, even tailor-made, for The Ideal Nation-State. Practically all Danes live in Denmark, and all those who live in Denmark are Danes – practically. (ibid., p. 467) These circumstances mean that the fit between the political and cultural nation in Denmark is so tight that proponents of the contingency of ‘national’ history have to work all the harder. Throughout Den sidste Danmarkshistorie, the extant differences within what has come to be recognised as the Danish nation come into and out of focus in consecutive historical periods. But Mørch is not only concerned to establish the content of the fiction, or construction, as he describes it, of nationness; he also dwells on the textual and material practices that inculcated Danishness into the Danes: What Danishness actually was had to be explained, learnt by rote. That was what the histories of Denmark and the songs were about. … It was seen as right and unavoidable that some people would have to sacrifice their lives for Denmark. But the victims were hailed as heroes. Stories were told about them, poems were written, statues were raised. Their pictures were painted and children learnt to remember their names and deeds. (ibid., pp. 542–3) Now, when the nation-state is over, it’s easier to see when it began. It began after the war of 1864, when ordinary people realized they were Danes. Before that time, poets had known that one could be Danish, and they worked hard to spread the good news, but it took another war with a number of deaths for Denmark before it really got serious. (ibid., p. 545) Mørch does not have to detail the canonical songs, poems and statues he alludes to here, or the wars in which Danish lives were sacrificed. To be a post-historical or post-national Dane, it seems, one has to be told how the ‘story’ of Denmark was constructed, and how it papers over the cracks of a socially fragmented nation, but to grasp the story, one of course has to be privy to learned knowledge of the kinds of songs and narratives that circulated during that period. What is also interesting here is that within the vision of this past era, the concept of nation is seen not only to be in force but also, simultaneously, under construction. But the ordinary person is not painted, here, as the primus motor in this process: the citizens have songs, poems, statues and military service thrust upon them by an invisible elite. The ‘ordinary people’

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living between 1864 and the 1960s belong, apparently, to another tribe, and subject to homogenising cultural strategies which modern Danes see through. I was born in the old days … An important part of Mørch’s persona is his age. The very first line of the first fortælling is the title of this section: Mørch flags himself immediately as a bridge-builder, an interpreter of the transition from one era to the next. To be sure, his professional standing is thus augmented by his particular personal perspective, but positioning himself in this way also colours his persona as a kind of national storytelling granddad. The autobiographical, explicitly subjective point of view adopted entails a good deal of memory work. The reader is thus privy to a kind of prosthetic memory: if s/he belongs to the same generation as Mørch, s/he will share some of the memories and experiences he details. If the reader belongs to a younger generation, the picture of the era which is construed as having ended in the 1960s also takes on a homely, personal, and ultimately convincing tone. Such an anecdotal approach is an extraordinarily powerful way to construct a textual community of post-national consensus, one which is based on prosthetic memory and an assumption of the ‘pastness’ of this particular past (or ‘postness’ of the post). Adding an extra layer to Renan’s observation about a nation requiring to remember to forget, Mørch feels obliged to remind the readers about what they ought to remember they forgot to notice. Renan comments that ‘Tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIIIe siècle’ (in Anderson, 1991, p. 199, emphasis Anderson’s), prompting Benedict Anderson to muse that ‘Renan’s readers were being told to “have already forgotten” what Renan’s own words assumed that they naturally remembered’ (ibid., p. 200). What was (to be) forgotten was no less than internecine warfare which, because it took place on contemporary French territory, had been subsumed into the history of the French nation. The balance between remembering and forgetting is the essence of a national narrative; any narrative is just as much about what is left out as what is included. The old, wise Mørch has to ‘remind’ his readers to remember two things that national(ist) history required that they forgot: the heterogeneity that always bubbles under the surface of discourses of national homogenity, and the way (hi)stories work. However, a more bodily kind of memory, involved in the active, everyday nature of maintenance of national homogeneity, is also

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emphasised by Mørch, in various appeals to his readers’ own physical experience. A common language and history, he argues, are ideological constructions that only exist as long as one is willing to use money and effort to maintain them … When one no longer can or wishes to spend money on getting schoolteachers to beat – and I mean that quite literally: beat in the sense of boxing on the ears or hitting with a cane – into their charges the national language, history and unified culture, then the construction ‘Denmark, Our Fatherland’ is rescinded, as we’ve experienced since the 1960s. (Mørch, 1996, pp. 543–4) Elsewhere, Mørch’s function as a generational bridge who has seen the changes with his own eyes is emphasised. For instance, not only did people use horses and carriages for transport and a bucket as a toilet when he was a child, he also vividly remembers seeing a black man in his school (ibid., p. 9). The latter experience, he muses, would not surprise a Danish schoolchild today – but neither would the first two things shock an older generation. This kind of experiential contrast constructs the trope of a doubly authoritative ‘bridge’ between two eras. The reader can rely on Mørch’s assessment of the importance of the 1960s watershed not just on the basis of his professional eminence, but because he himself experienced, on a daily basis, the homogenising practices which now seem outlandish. He can, for example, vouch for the fact that standard Danish was not the native language of the majority of Danes in the first half of the twentieth century, because he himself as a dialect-speaker experienced the impossibility of communicating with middle-class Copenhageners, and the indignity of remedial language classes at university for provincial students. Such facts are interspersed with interjections such as ‘when I was a student’ and ‘I experienced that myself’ (ibid., p. 543). A national tour-guide One final function of Mørch’s narrator becomes apparent when the narrative undertakes what we might describe as national deixis; the book’s reliance on spatial metaphor and analogy turns the narrator into a kind of tour guide – a storyteller leading a flock of national subjects on a tour of buildings of national historical interest. As a post-historical narrative strategy, this corresponds to the ‘spatial turn’ in the human sciences which is allegedly characteristic of the post-modern era.11 But what is relevant to our discussion here is how, in one particular chapter,

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‘Et monument’ (A Monument), the spatial orientation provided by the narrative also implants the readers (or the tour group) in (post)national space. The experience of a tour in situ is simulated by the use of copious maps and photographs in the book. Here, too, Mørch emphasises his own involvement: he was employed at the new Odense University when its campus was being designed and built in the early 1970s. The relationship between the social and the material, he thinks, can be illustrated by the case of this university, which ‘stands there now as a monument to what many people thought about and cared about in Danish society in that very period’ (ibid., p. 25). This building compares only to Danish cathedrals and palaces in terms of size and ambition, says the guide. Addressing his charges directly, he comments: ‘we find ourselves in a very complicated and carefully thought-out building. We don’t have many architectural structures of equivalent size in this country’ (ibid., p. 26). The campus is built of concrete and therefore probably will be visible in this landscape for centuries, as a ‘monument for future generations and centuries of certain concerns at the time of its construction’ (ibid., p. 27). What were these concerns? First and foremost, that there would be room for a vastly increased student population in the subsequent decades, as part of the Social Democratic dream of social harmony (ibid., p. 30). That the building is designed not to dominate the landscape as cathedrals or castles do is an expression of the same homogenising dynamic that had characterised the era of Danish nation-building, before anyone noticed it was over: ‘to master, to direct, to point out differences, to argue – all of these apparently belong here only as anomalies that have been removed or at least carefully covered up’ (ibid., p. 31). In a last rhetorical flourish, the guide points out that such a building allows its monumentality to cancel out its function as a place of work – there is a lack of toilets and too much static electricity – and as a place of research, whose raison d’être is teasing out conflict and argument (ibid., p. 32). In his various incarnations, the national storyteller-historian of Den sidste Danmarkshistorie thus constructs his own version of the national narrative, one in which the age of nation-building through homogenisation is over. However, that particular tale can only be narrated by gathering his readers into a community whose members recognise themselves as sharing local knowledge, prosthetic memory, a common space, and an understanding of the impossibility of objective, linear history.

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National storytelling: 40 fortællinger af fædrelandets historie A canonical text of Danish historical pedagogy, which Mørch’s book parodies in its subtitle, is A.D. Jørgensen’s 40 fortællinger af fædrelandets historie, first published in 1882. In one sense, this is the intertext whose canonicity and homogenising, linear national narrative enables Mørch to subvert authority and teleology as the central principles of national history. On the other hand, neither the discourses employed by Jørgensen’s text to form a textual community of readers in a nascent Danish nation, nor the circumstances of this book’s genesis and use, are entirely characterised by ex cathedra historical pedagogy. The authority of the author himself was by no means a foregone conclusion, by dint of his social standing and geographical origins. The historian A.D. Jørgensen was born in Schleswig, a province in today’s Southern Jutland which found itself south of the Danish-German border after the territorial settlement ending Denmark’s war with Prussia in 1864. He came from a Danish-speaking family, but was essentially an exile in Copenhagen when he embarked upon the process of educating himself. His self-appointed task of writing a comprehensive history of Southern Jutland stalled when he was commissioned by a nationalist society to write a book on Danish history that would be distributed for free in the region ‘to support the Danish households … in their struggle against German influence in their schools’ (Rerup, 1981, p. 7). As it turned out, the resulting 40 fortællinger was published in 12 different editions, the first in 1882, the latest as recently as 1998, and has been used for generations as a popular introduction to national history. In borderlands As Mads Mordhorst has pointed out, the first edition makes a graphical distinction between the contradictory parts of the book’s title. The ‘40 Tales’ element is separate from ‘of the fatherland’s history’ (2001, pp. 125–6) – this is also true to a lesser extent in the 1981 edition, for example. What is at stake here, in the first edition, is the marriage of two established genres: historie (history) which corresponded to the presentation of scientific and scholarly historical research, and the fortælling (tale, narrative), a term which had been used in an earlier, influential work of popular history by Frederik Barfod in 1853, Fortællinger af fædrelandets historie (‘Tales of the History of the Fatherland’). Jørgensen saw himself as updating this work for the era after 1864. The problem for historians of the time was that the

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complexity and exactitude required by an academic field still establishing itself did not lend itself to the very coherent national narrative which their work was supposed to flesh out. On the other hand, the fortællinger genre was often criticised for a lack of academic rigour – but the verdict of the general reading public can be seen from the resounding and enduring popularity of the latter genre. The title, and, by extension, the structure, of Jørgensen’s work attempts to keep a foot in both camps, an ambiguity which reveals that Mørch does not so much subvert the genre as re-deploy its ambivalence in a post-modern context. The professional criticism which Jørgensen’s strategy attracted is commented on by Jørgensen himself in the preface to the second edition of 1886: ‘Although the book’s title was chosen with the aim of hindering the assumption that the book is a coherent and exhaustive presentation of our history … regular criticism has been directed at me for failing to cover this or that event … However, this has not convinced me that the chosen form was wrong or that a revised edition ought to be undertaken’ (in Mordhorst, 2001, p. 126). From the start, then, the book’s title flags the undecidability of the line between fact and fiction; in other words, the text assumes that the reader is able to negotiate the grey area between history and story that the genre exploits. One contemporary implied reader of the 1880s is a national subject living quite literally on a borderline – a Danish speaker stranded south of the border in the brand new, freshly-unified Germany. Against the imposition of German language and culture in formerly Danish schools, the form of 40 fortællinger lent itself to an informal and collective reading context; the tales constituted a ‘pocket school’ that could be ‘read aloud and discussed’ (Rerup, 1981, p. 8). The formal balance in the book between independent and interconnected tales, and the overall ‘higher unity’ (ibid.) they constitute, can also be seen as a textual and even material analogy for Southern Jutland’s historical (and future) participation in the history of the Danish fatherland. The tales, therefore, have to discursively construct the twin ideas of collective storytelling and e pluribus unum. Collective storytelling What I want to focus on at the textual level is not so much the discursive construction of the idea of ‘we’ as a national group in these texts. This has been analysed in some depth, in the case of Jørgensen’s book, by various Danish historians.12 For our present purposes, it is the promulgation of the idea of an interpersonal storytelling situation that is most ‘telling’. This is what constructs the textual companionship dis-

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cussed above, in which certain conditions are emphasised: the continuity of a storytelling tradition over time and in the same territory, the reader’s active intellectual role in the coalescence of stories into history, or fiction, and the multiplicity of (hi)stories complementing the national pedagogy. This book does not paint quite such a homogenising and pedagogical picture of the national community as Mørch suggests canonical texts did between 1864 and 1960. Jørgensen’s first fortællinger are concerned with a time long before written history: the time of myth. The first paragraphs of the book telescope backwards through time from the present day, and what is especially interesting here is the slippage between the insistence on national continuity (through the line of Danish kings) and the acknowledgement that this continuity is constructed through various forms of narrative, not established fact: No other kingdom in our part of the world can measure up to Denmark in terms of age. Our line of kings runs in an unbroken procession back through a thousand years, and long before that time we hear tell of a cohesive and powerful kingdom in Denmark … At least from around the year 700 AD, then, we have reliable witness to the existence of the Danish kingdom. And where history slips into the darkness of the past, there legend/tale (sagn) takes hold and leads us from generation to generation up to the society of the gods themselves: it calls our kings Skjoldunger after Odin’s son Skjold, the kingdom’s first chieftain. (Jørgensen, 1981, p. 11, my emphasis) From the start, then, the idea of temporal continuity is emphasised alongside the idea of a continuity of storytelling. The idea of telling is more or less anthropomorphised – the tale has control, it can be ‘heard’, it leads us to where we need to be. The distinction between ‘reliable’ witness and ‘legend’ is recognised, but both forms are acceptable in maintaining the continuity of the national narrative. True, the nineteenth-century obsession with the Vikings and their gods had blurred the boundaries between the Christian and pagan tradition; but there is a simultaneous ‘remembering and forgetting’ movement here: there is a generic break between history (historie) and legend (sagn), a break which one is supposed to remember, because it legitimises the practices of history based on evidence and science, but it also marks a kinship between the current book and the myths of old. That the idea of ‘tale’ more or less takes on a life of its own is aided by a grammatical possibility peculiar to the Scandinavian languages, a

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kind of median voice between active and passive, corresponding roughly to ‘there is told’ in English: ‘der fortælles’ (Allan et al., 1995, pp. 310–13). This construction is liberally used by Jørgensen in the early chapters, arguably to muddy the waters between ‘story’ and ‘history’, and with much less frequency in later chapters, when the historical resources are less ambiguous. Appearing on the first page, just after the comments quoted above, the activity of telling then is thereby intimately related to what is currently being read, the fortællinger. The reader, it is assumed, knows the difference between oral and written narrative, between myth and tale, indeed is being told the difference, but is required to hold the distinction in suspension. And this, we might muse, is a powerful way to ‘learn’ to be a national subject, combining a kind of didacticism with the iterative, recursive performance of bite-sized stories, ideal to be read and shared at the fireside. The other end of this book is also marked by a narrative uncertainty unbecoming to a nationalistic and pedagogical teleology. Mads Mordhorst – arguing for an overall unity of this text, based on its chronology and scope – observes a kind of fractal relationship between the parts and the whole: ‘the most important thing is the insight into the historical process and not into the individual events and tales. Their relevance is that they are building blocks in understanding the complete course of events. That is the book’s actual narrative, which we can call the 41st tale, and which could have the title The History of the Fatherland’ (2001, p. 140). This reading corresponds to the general assessment by present-day historians of Jørgensen’s foundational status in the Danish national narrative. However, the end of this ‘forty-first’ fortælling is left astonishingly open. This is the last paragraph of the last tale: God’s ways are unknowable. The heavy misfortune he has sent the Danish people (folk) has had the effect for many of strengthening and awakening, of intensification of love for the fatherland, of strengthening the people’s soft and weak spirit and of developing its rich intellectual abilities. Times change and humankind’s mind is changed; we cannot let go of the hope that the unhappy fate of Danish Southern Jutland will one day be alleviated, that the settlement that was unsuccessful in 1864 shall yet be secured as a final end to this country’s shifting history. This should be a pledge of lasting peace and understanding between the related people north and south of the national border, which has been drawn by centuries of

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development and which it is not our task to take up now. (Jørgensen, 1981, p. 375, my emphasis) The Southern Jutlanders on the German side of the border are, geopolitically speaking, outsiders, but culturally speaking insiders; crucially, there are two possible endings, one happy, one ‘unhappy’. The end of this history is deferred, and so the national status of these model readers is also deferred. It is intimated that the reader looks forward to closure, a happy ending, yet juggles this desire with the general observation that ‘times change’ inexorably and the history is never over – before a reunification of the conquered lands. A homogenising process has strengthened and developed the national qualities, but the end of that history here dissipates into an unknowable future (steered by God). 1864 was often referred to as a national ‘scar’, and here the scar turns out not to have closed. It is curious that a revised edition of this much-reprinted text was never undertaken, following the hoped-for return of the borderlands to Denmark in 1920. The End of History, in this most canonical of Danish popular histories, is forever coloured by an event which the post-1920 reader must forget has happened in order to play the role of the implied reader; the reader’s understanding of the text rests on a sense that the project of integration of people into a political and cultural nation is incomplete. We might say that, in contrast to Mørch’s insistence that his history of Denmark comes after the end of history (as a discipline and as a national possibility), Jørgensen’s text can only be read as coming before the culmination of the nation’s history. The work of homogenisation of internal differences, which Mørch declares as over, is still underway for Jørgensen’s narrator.

At tale’s end The Danish genre of historical fortælling is an intriguing one as far as the role of canonical histories in the construction of the national narrative is concerned. The particular emphasis of the fortælling on community, its arguably ambivalent approach to historiographical time and national space, and its enduring hold on the popular imagination, temper the pre-eminent role of novelistic spacetime as the foundation of the national narrative. Bhabha’s description of the ongoing interplay between national pedagogy and everyday performance of the national is helpful in understanding this genre’s ability to appeal both to the national subject’s

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need for ‘hard facts’ (pedagogy) in constructing a reservoir of knowledge about group identity, and his or her need for imaginative participation in the ongoing negotiation of that identity (performance). Both Mørch’s and Jørgensen’s texts depend on the reader’s ability to walk the tightrope between history and story, and to understand the implications of the tension between the two categories. The reader’s role as a participant in the ongoing negotiation of the national narrative is therefore emphasised. A sense of companionship, the storytelling situation, and, indeed, the proliferation and dissemination of stories, is flagged in Mørch’s and Jørgensen’s history books, suggesting to the reader that s/he is part of a tradition of continuity, not only in historical spacetime, but also through this activity of verbal interaction, the sharing of relevant experience and knowledge amongst a defined group. In other words, the connections between citizens, which the novel, according to Anderson, posits as imagined in terms of remote spatio-temporal relations – because the groups at stake are ‘larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact’ (1991, p. 6) – can be envisioned in the fortælling as verbal exchanges. It is contact around a national campfire, rather than commonality across a national territory, that is suggested. National histories can only function in tandem with other national histories, because they build on or resist prevailing collective knowledge about events, characters and, indeed, the truth-claims of historiography. Mørch’s play with Jørgensen’s title and approach must avail itself of this intertextual principle, but in claiming subjectivity and fragmentation as the calling cards of a post-historical national history, it must also repackage Jørgensen’s own generic undecidability between the covers of a dusty tome in the national library.

Notes 1. I am grateful to Jan Ifversen for his helpful remarks on this paper and to Martin H. Brunsgaard for first drawing my attention to A.D. Jørgensen’s book (and for gifting me his copy of the 1981 edition). 2. Isak Dinesen: ‘The Cardinal’s First Tale’, in the collection Last Tales (1957). Dinesen wrote Danish versions of all her texts and published in Denmark under her own name, Karen Blixen. The word fortællinger features in the title of most of her Danish publications. For an English-language introduction to Dinesen’s work, see Brantley (2002). 3. For a discussion in English of these developments in the Danish context, see Østergård (1996) and Sørensen & Stråth (1997).

C. Claire Thomson 69 4. All English translations of Danish sources are mine. For reasons of space, the original Danish quotations have not been provided. 5. Each of these writers is mentioned just once, in passing, by Mørch. 6. Founded in 1966 as Denmark’s third university after Copenhagen and Aarhus and now known as the University of Southern Denmark. 7. There is no suggestion in Den sidste Danmarkshistorie of any direct influence from Bhabha’s writing. 8. For an English-language summary of this interpretation of history, see Bjørn (2000). 9. Dalgas’ project, and the context of his famous formulation, was to cultivate the Jutland heath for agricultural purposes – an aim which was achieved in large measure over the next century and now commemorated in the Kongenshus Memorial Park near the town of Viborg in Mid-Jutland. 10. The Danish rejection of the Treaty entailed a renegotiation of its terms at the EC summit in Edinburgh in December 1992, since the Treaty had to be ratified by every member state before coming into force. The so-called ‘optouts’ negotiated by the Danish government – on the single currency, EU citizenship, a common defence policy and common justice and home affairs policy – were calculated to reassure the Danish public that national sovereignty was not under threat, so that a second referendum the following year would produce a yes-vote. For a discussion of this episode, see, for example, Worre (1995) and Miles (1996). 11. A ‘certain spatial turn,’ as Jameson reluctantly admits, offers ‘one of the more productive ways of distinguishing postmodernism from modernism proper’ (1991, p. 154) 12. See Jørgensen and Nielsen (eds) (2001).

4 ‘Doing Europe’: the Discursive Construction of European Identities Ruth Wodak

Defining ‘EUrope’/Europe?1 The problem with founding a political construction called the ‘European Union’ was already present at the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty. As the former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales, who was decisively involved in these negotiations, remembers: Having completed the debate, we baptized the creature ‘European Union’. As federalists, confederalists, antifederalists, or simply supporters of a free exchange area, we did not quite understand that we were building something new, something different. The EU is not and probably never will be a federation as we understand it from the perspective of the power-sharing theories within the nation state. We were not – nor are we now – trying to create the ‘United States of Europe’. The EU is not a confederation. Nor does it even remotely resemble a ‘unitarian state’. However, it was not enough to say what the EU is not. We needed to define what it is, or no one would understand us. Hence, like curious children who question their parents, we asked ourselves, the forefathers of the invention: What is this? (1999, p. 31) For many citizens within as well as outside its shifting boundaries Europe today has become the kernel for the processes of identification and the redefinition of identities. ‘Constructing Europe’ may mean – for some – developing a new kind of transnational state which has its own currency, legal framework, values, social security system, and new institutions. For others, what is experienced as European or nonEuropean is the result of multiple activities, some consciously planned 70

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in the sense of political, economic or cultural interventions, others more hidden, indirect, in the background. It is to be expected that such developments are contradictory and conflicting (rather than harmonious), proceeding in ‘loops’ and partial regressions (rather than in a linear fashion). In this chapter, therefore, I seek to identify and analyse processes of identity construction within Europe and at its boundaries, examining diverse sources and forms of expression in various public and semipublic genres which interlink to form a ‘nexus’ of discourses on Europe:2 firstly, internal committee meetings in EU organisations; secondly, focus groups with migrants venturing into ‘Fortress Europe’; and, finally, cyberspace, the – recently closed down – Internet debate forum ‘Futurum’ (Wright, 2004). Although these genres are all characterised by precise linguistic features and also possess distinct textual functions, they are – and this is my central claim throughout this chapter – linked with each other through specific arguments, topics and topoi – the ‘parts of argumentation that belong to the obligatory premises and connect the argument with the conclusion’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, pp. 74–5) – which are recontextualised from one public sphere to the other, change and adopt meanings, lose functions and claim new ones, and together discursively construct a European space (or European spaces; Bärenreuter, 2006; Fraser, 2003).3 This is what is meant by ‘doing Europe’, the ongoing negotiation of meanings of Europe in many different public spaces in a whole range of genres, and in many languages. In the following, I analyse some of the ‘representations’ of ‘Europeanness’, the symbols of ‘doing Europe’, elaborating some thoughts of Michael Billig, presented in his seminal book Banal Nationalism (1995) and drawing on my own extensive studies in The Discursive Construction of National Identity (1999).4

Europe and its ‘four options’ In constructing the ‘New Europe’ we face many complex issues. Specifically after the negative outcome of the referendums in France and the Netherlands on the Draft Constitutional Treaty in May and June 2005, the notion of ‘Europe’ has become even vaguer. On 31 May, after the French referendum, the British daily The Independent presented an interesting diagram on its front page, showing Europe at the crossroads of four different options: Constitutional Europe; Free-Trade Europe; United States of Europe; and Multi-Speed Europe. These

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options relate to different dimensions, which are either fore- or backgrounded: economic theories; state theories; and organisational theories. In a nutshell, this diagram comprises the ‘ideological dilemmas’ of ‘doing Europe’ in presenting the different values that could be used to define it. Europe consists of different historical traditions, different nationstates with their own histories, different cultures, different languages, different political, national, regional and local interests and traditional ideologies, different interest groups, different economic concepts, different organisations, etc. Of the 25 member states, some belong to Schengen and the euro community,5 others do not; some have voted for certain treaties, others have not; some have colonial pasts, others do not; some have been on the side of the losers of both world wars, others have not; and so forth. The central questions for politicians who deal with these various aspects involve the re-organisation, legitimisation and representation of this even more enlarged and diverse Europe. Certain ‘values’ thus have to be found or newly created which provide cohesion and allow for specific and acknowledged legitimisation. As Claire Thomson also demonstrated in the preceding chapter, identities are defined and constructed mainly by their common pasts, presents and futures, by narratives and collective memories that are constantly reshaped and negotiated, as we have extensively shown elsewhere (Wodak et al., 1999; Wodak, 2002; Heer et al., 2003, 2007). The official ‘Europe’ thus has to find a new narrative, a new perspective, a vision, maybe some common ideologies, or a utopia in which European citizens could believe and with which they could identify (Wodak and Weiss, 2004a, b). Recently, however, the opposite has been true, with member-states witnessing an increase in Euroscepticism, fuelled by the perception of a democratic deficit in EU institutions (Rydgren, 2005). The latter was first noted in the 2001 White Paper on European Governance, which identified a ‘widening gulf between the European Union and the people it serves’, created by a perceived inability of the EU to act even when a clear case exists, by the fact that it is not given credit even when it does act it and that, when things go wrong, ‘Brussels is too easily blamed by Member States for difficult decisions that they themselves have agreed to or even requested’ (Commission, 2001, pp. 7–8). Taken together with the fact that many people simply do not understand the mechanisms of the institutions, these issues lead to disenchantment and a lack of trust. An analysis of the situation suggests

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that, while these problems are not entirely of the EU’s own making and are not always fair, they are the result primarily of insufficient knowledge and communication and a ‘closeness deficit’. The problems arising from the ‘closeness deficit’ between the EU and its citizens underline the fact that the Union can no longer derive legitimacy solely from its ability to improve trade and complete the internal market: ‘its legitimacy today depends on involvement and participation’ and thus ‘the linear model of dispensing policies from above must be replaced by a virtuous circle, based on feedback, networks and involvement from policy creation to implementation at all levels’ (ibid., p. 11). The proposals in the White Paper are thus underpinned by five principles of good governance: openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence, which are said to reinforce two further basic principles, proportionality and subsidiarity. In tackling the knowledge, communication and closeness deficits, new technologies are seen as central. Noting that ‘[d]emocracy depends on people being able to take part in public debate’ (ibid., p. 11), the White Paper states that the Union must: ‘communicate more actively with the general public on European issues’; that ‘[t]here needs to be a stronger interaction with regional and local governments and civil society’ (ibid., p. 4); and that there needs to be a ‘trans-national space where citizens from different countries can discuss what they perceive as being the important challenges for the Union’ (ibid., p. 12). Moreover, it is stated that ‘information and communication technologies have an important role’ to play in facilitating such communication and that ‘Europa’ will be redesigned as ‘an interactive platform for information, feedback and debate’ (ibid., p. 11).6 In response to these problems, a new kind of communication network is emerging in parallel with the multi-level structure of the European polity, comprising a multiplicity of communication spheres which mutually refer to each other and initiate topics as well as arguments and opinions from the respective other parts of the network. In this communicative process, topics and arguments are not only permanently exchanged but also altered in order to adapt them to new interlocutors/arguments/situations. This process of ‘recontextualisation’ (cf. Wodak, 2000 a, b; Iedema, 1999, 2003) is of central importance when social power is being negotiated. As illustrated in Figure 4.1, an argument (A) may appear in numerous variants (A1, A2, etc.). As long as there is discussion, this dialogic and heteroglossic process is open for different options.

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3

4

A5

COMMUNICATIVE SPACE III

A7

A

9

A

A

11

A6

12

COMMUNICATIVE SPACE I

A

A

A

A8

A

1

A

2

COMMUNICATIVE SPACE II

10

COMMUNICATIVE SPACE IV Figure 4.1

The nexus of discourses on Europe

Conceptual framework for the discursive construction of European identities: the discourse-historical approach My theoretical and methodological approach to the topic of ‘European identities’ is discourse-historical, which is elaborated extensively elsewhere (see Wodak, 2001a, b; Wodak, 2004). In the following, four claims serve to set out an interdisciplinary framework to investigate the discursive construction of European identities (see Wodak and Weiss, 2005, for more details). I claim, firstly, that a single unified identity for Europe should not and cannot be hypostasised in advance. On the contrary, the primary concern is to investigate the formation of different constructions, representations and images of Europe in particular political, historical and cultural contexts. We all live with many different regional, local, national and European identities, which are constantly renegotiated and co-constructed by different elites, social groups, and in everyday experiences. Secondly, a context-dependent negotiation of identities has to be assumed, which is discursively co-constructed in interactions. In the context of the European Union, shifting borders, new/old ideologies, languages/language conflicts and new laws determine and restrict the possibilities of participation and access of EU citizens.

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Thirdly, I claim that the relationship between discourse, politics, and identity/identities is characterised by new and frequently hybrid forms (see above). The processes of (economic) globalisation on the one hand, and (social) fragmentation, on the other hand, are calling into question the established identities or identity constructions of groups, institutions and states. New public spaces, media, and communication technologies have changed the basic rules for discourses. Along the same lines, we fourthly observe the standardisation of regulations, laws, scripts, pictograms and forms, curricula and medical protocols, and literature, while, at the same time, there is a growing awareness and appreciation within Europe of local cultures, languages and products. The focus on ‘diversity’ is an expression of a new ideology, of a ‘multicultural society’. Policy-making processes in Europe as such (for example, relating to asylum and citizenship policies) are increasingly dependent on the ‘central’ institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. However, the more the EU deregulates in certain areas (e.g. free market policies), the more requirements for regulation are given in other areas (e.g. financial, monetary policies), not to mention the fact that even deregulation processes have to be regulated (cf. De Cillia and Wodak, 2006, who describe the national Austrian policies for applying for citizenship according to new laws implemented in 2005/6). Furthermore, the present discourses on Europe are created, as a rule, through the interplay of three respective goals and dimensions: (1) making meaning (ideational dimension); (2) organising Europe (organisational dimension); (3) drawing borders (geographical dimension). It is the interplay of these three dimensions that determines the specific forms that debates on European identities and other policy processes take. The first dimension refers to the idea of Europe, its essence, substance or meaning. The second dimension reflects the question of how Europe is to be organised, which institutional forms of decision-making and which political frameworks are appropriate for the future. The third dimension concerns the question of border-construction: who is inside, who stays outside? These three dimensions and goals unite three forms of legitimisation for the political construction of the EU (and its enlargement), which relate to specific topics and argumentation strategies: (1) legitimisation through ideas (identity, history, culture);

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(2) legitimisation through procedure7 (participation, democracy, efficiency) and (3) legitimisation through ‘standardisation’ (of humanitarianism, social standards, economic standards, etc.). These legitimisation strategies touch on essential problems of political representation. In the following examples I will specifically focus on ‘drawing borders’ and ‘legitimisation through standardisation’; other aspects have been studied and published elsewhere.8 Defining Europe behind closed doors – the CAG The CAG (Competitiveness Advisory Group), a group of high-level experts, works and reaches decisions ‘behind closed doors’, beyond any public-democratic legitimacy or control. Invited by former Commission President Jacques Santer, it serves as a quasi ‘private’ consulting group, reporting directly to the European Council (EC). The members are not elected by official vote. Expertise and function are the main selection criteria, although a balance between member states is nevertheless important. (The 13 members consist of politicians, scholars and representatives from trade unions and employers.) The CAG is a typical example of what Ulrich Beck calls ‘epistemic communities’, i.e. ‘transnational knowledge and expertise communities’, which ‘process, possess and provide common definitions of problems, assumptions of causes and policy recommendations’ (Beck, 1998, p. 39). Typically, these committees produce policy papers. And, indeed, the aim of the CAG meetings analysed was to produce a policy paper on employment policies for the so-called ‘Job summit’ of the EC in Luxembourg in November 1997 (cf. Wodak, 2000a, b for the detailed analysis of the CAG). The debates in the CAG about new economic policies are constantly accompanied by proposals on how to relate these to traditional ‘European characteristics and features (the European model of society)’ which makes everybody proud to be European. Thus, economic policies are necessarily constitutive and fundamental for value discussions in the ‘Wertegemeinschaft’ – the community of values (see above). The problem which immediately poses itself in the meetings of the CAG is how to sustain important values, such as democracy, justice, diversity, social welfare and equality, while adapting to neo-liberal economies and to the models of Japan and the USA, which are always and throughout regarded as the main competitors, opponents and models – an excellent example of ambivalence. Thus, the CAG was very much concerned with issues of European identities.

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Extract 1 M3

Paye M9

Paye M9

M4 M9

Dans les points forts, Président, d’abord l’effort d’ajustement structurelle de beaucoup d’entreprises, avec la recherche d’économie d’échelle et les fusions, les regroupements, le redressement de la rentabilité de beaucoup de sociétés, un climat social finalement les dernières années quand même relativement stable, un peu de, de grandes grèves et des conflits sociaux, l’évolution favorable de la balance extérieur de l’Union Européenne, les effets favorables de l’ouverture du marchés des capitaux, et l’approximité de marché émergeant, je pense à l’Europe Central et l’Europe de l’Est, tout ça est positif. Et mon dernier point c’était, mais vous l’avez déjà mentionné, le niveau élevé de l’éducation et de la formation professionnelle dans la plupart des pays Européens. Ca sont des atouts.9 Merci, M9 I think, another strong point, em, which we’re just beginning to see, is in the context of a global market place. Em, Europe’s historical positioning around the world. And the fact that uniquely in terms of the main blocks of economic activity, the United States, Europe and Japan, em, we in Europe are best positioned to cover the world with cultural and commercial links. And if I can turn to my left, you take Spain, I mean, Spain has rediscovered a Hispanic market which extends not just throughout most of Latin America but also, of course, in the United States. Em, and we’re beginning to find in other parts of the world that we have links, which are old links, which have been dormant and which can come forth, and in terms of, you know Europe in a global market place, that inheritance is very, very strong. But we got to capitalise it, and use it. Just, a, a sentence adding to that point. European is more international than, than other ones, and … Exact, and it’s very much easier as a European to develop commercial partnerships outside your domestic country than it is for Americans, or Japanese. And that’s partly because of our inheritance and history. … maybe, our diversity … … that too …

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M3 M9

M3

F1 M6

M9

Paye

Diversity is a richness, not a weakness, to a large extent. There are two layers to it: I mean, the, the, there is the diversity and that in one sense or another we cover the globe, eh, but there is also the, the history and the way in which we have operated, w, we do have a more global view of the world than the Americans, far more so. Exact, it is the long-term favour of fall-out of our colonial past. Yeah, after 30 years of independence of all our former colonies we can say that now, today. Without being accused of neo-, neo-colonialism. Yeah. In a more friendly way, in our entrepreneurship. Our ancestors went out, sailing, to do business. Well, American multinationals have done well but, I mean you, I mean the, the, the, many sectors, I’m not saying your sector, but I mean, one cannot forget that … I, I, I’m not [unclear] the Americans, in that sense, and eh, all I’m saying is that, em, they do have a blind spot. And their blind spot is often their inability to make partnerships outside their domestic base. Em, and they have significant blind spots within Europe, in, Europe is Europe is Europe, except there is an English-speaking bit in the UK, and the, they ha, they have difficulty in sensing the differences between countries, and it, it’s much tougher for them. Where as we have something which we haven’t used for a long time, but is, is, is coming forward here, and, I, I, I do take the Hispanic point is very strong as you know and me too well, in eh, in all sorts of businesses, telecommunications, financial services, you name it, it’s eh, they’ve found a new market. All right, that, you, do, do you see any other eh, strong eh, points, or should we move to the next session?

This sequence is one of the few where spontaneous discussion occurs in the meetings of the CAG. It is similar to a brainstorming session where everybody contributes to and co-constructs the basic characteristics of a new European identity, one which stands in contrast to the USA and Japan, drawing on multiple topoi (i.e. argumentation frames)10 such as the ‘topoi of history, knowledge, justice and wisdom’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, p. 55ff.). Moreover, we notice that primarily the ideational dimension is covered, the substance of Europe, thus legit-

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imising employment policies with the first dimension of legitimisation strategies: ‘ideas’, not organisation or standardisation. Moreover, it is mainly constructive strategies and strategies of denying differences within, so as to be able to make a distinction towards the ‘other’ (US and Japan), that are detected. The membership category of ‘being European’ is discursively co-constructed and covers the member states of the EU; thus spatial borders are drawn and the meta-distinction of ‘inclusion/exclusion’ is operating. One might also have the impression that the members of the committee are trying to convince each other that specific European aspects are to be viewed as positive and not negative. This sequence thus functions to emphasise group solidarity, while using the multiple ‘inclusive we’. Without further analysing this sequence in a detailed way, I would like to emphasise the two main linguistic strategies employed here to co-construct a European identity: legitimisation and the construction of difference.11 The debate about ‘diversity’ is of specific interest here. Diversity is defined in a positive way, as a richness of cultures, traditions and languages, not as something negative, as it is perceived in the everyday experiences of migrants (see below). All the positive characteristics reassure the members of the committee that Europe has a chance in the world market even though taxes are higher and labour laws stricter. The other basic argumentative strategy discursively constructing group identity and identification consists of distinguishing oneself from others, the USA and Japan, and thus constructing uniqueness. Don Ellis’s chapter provided further evidence of this process. European everyday experiences – migrant voices The second example illustrates some of the major tensions which exist in all public and private spheres across Europe. An investigation into immigration policies in eight EU countries (Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, UK, Cyprus, Poland and Germany) identified language policies as one of the main ‘gate-keeping devices’ with regard to integration and the possible acquisition of citizenship (Krzyz˙anowski and Wodak, 2006). As Rudolf De Cillia suggests, ‘languages are far more than just media of communication … the mother tongue is the central symbol of individual and collective identity, a symbol which represents belonging to a certain ethnic group, to a certain language community’ (2002, p. 8). Thus, a monolingual approach, very much emphasised in Austria, less in Germany, France and the Netherlands, stands in stark contrast to the arguments apparent in the CAG meeting (Tricento, 2005).

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In our field research investigating the ‘Voices of Migrants’ (Delanty, Jones and Wodak, 2006), we organised a set of five focus groups with migrants in each of the eight EU countries which were part of the above-mentioned EU fifth framework project XENOPHOB. In Austria, Turks, people from Sudan and South Africa working in international organisations, Poles, and South Tyroleans were selected according to the country/region of their origin, gender as well as their educational status. Language (and its social importance) was brought into the discussions by migrants in all of the investigated groups. Extract 2 SCH-F6

One day here in school I went into this room because I had to do some ironing (.) and a girl who was standing vis-à-vis of us said ahm (.) I was talking to her [F2] (.) hey start speaking German (.) hey that’s none of your business what I am talking (.) I really wanted to kill her (.) it’s none of her business what I am talking.

As some of the migrants emphasised very emotionally with direct speech, without a proper knowledge of German it is almost impossible to acquire a decent job or get through the Austrian educational system (speak as we do and you will survive). The bilingualism of migrants is seen as a Janus-faced feature, which especially depends on the languages concerned. Furthermore, bilingualism is often reflected in an intermixed use of German and the mother tongue, which is generally judged in a negative way by Austrians (speak as we do and you will belong to us). On the other hand, many migrants described the importance of speaking and using their native language. Their native language was the crucial factor shaping their individual and collective identities as well as allowing them to keep various modes of belonging with other members of their ethnic, religious, cultural or national group. As one participant states: Extract 3 EE-F4

(2.0) I have a cultural heritage I have a long history I have a language (.) which I want to keep I want to (.) … (1.0) I want to HAVE them and this is my property (.)

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The following example illustrates the most heated discussion in the focus group of Turks: Extract 4 ENE-M3

ENE-M3 MK ENE-M3

yeah BUT what I know of – from people who have studied here who are living here I think they have they have a lot of difficulties in getting jobs in their fields I-I-I I know that many foreigners who studied here in the Austrian universities but they cannot get jobs in their fields although they speak German well they know ehm that language and you find that people doing completely different jobs from one who studied IT or medicine but he can be a taxi driver (unread 2.0) yeah I do not think that is easy for non-Austrians to get jobs even if they ARE qualified and even if they even if they have Austrian citizenship

The issues of language and citizenship are related to each other, the topos of definition is applied: who counts as ‘Austrian’? Not even somebody who has Austrian citizenship and speaks German, because s/he ‘looks differently’. Implied are other (racialised) membership categories, such as ‘looks’, ‘skin colour’, etc. This example illustrates how cultural definitions of identity are constructed in everyday life and determine access and ‘inclusion’ or ‘exclusion’ (cf. Essed, 1991; Wodak, 2006). Similar results were detected in the other seven countries, which I will not elaborate here. However, it is clear that the concepts of monolingualism and homogeneity are tied to certain nationalistic and even chauvinistic attitudes, to stereotypes and prejudices of ‘belonging’ and ‘non-belonging’ (Jones and Krzyz˙anowski, 2006). Aliens, foreigners, ‘others’ are not welcome, do not ‘belong’ and are excluded (even after having acquired citizenship) and even if the economy would benefit from their stay. Obviously a big gap exists between policies, official proposals, and statements of values, promises, and everyday experiences. This gap suggests an explanation for the EU’s widely discussed ‘democratisation dilemma’. The dimension of inclusion and exclusion thus touches on a

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central topos of all EU discourses and cuts across the nexus of EU identity discourses. (Wodak, 2005b) However, inclusion and exclusion are not to be considered static categories: the person who is excluded today may be included tomorrow, and vice versa. Although membership can always be redefined, important ‘gate-keepers’ decide who will have access: new laws, new ideologies, new languages and new borders. Therefore, Niklas Luhmann’s prediction (1997) that ‘inclusion/exclusion’ would form the ‘meta-distinction’ regulating our globalised societies seems to be valid (see below). The multilingual Internet Finally, I will now draw on research on EU Internet debate forums to illustrate another, new and hybrid public space, potentially open to many and promoted to bridge the democratic deficit by the European Union by bringing citizens closer together and also closer to the institutions themselves (see Wright, 2004; Wodak and Wright, 2006a, b). The European Union’s biggest attempt to create such dialogue through Internet communication is the ‘Futurum discussion forum’. Language policies play an important role within this, as they can help mitigate (language) barriers which may discourage users from participating. The EU’s language and communication policies are highly contested, with numerous policy papers covering the subject (De Cillia, 2003). Of particular concern in this short example here is their focus on:12 (1) The participation of European citizens, which is linked to the comprehensibility of EU texts and access to new communication channels (such as Internet discussion forums). (2) Specific language policies, moreover, have huge implications for integration as well as citizenship policies for migrants; both are major political issues inside the EU and discussed widely (see Busch & Krzyz˙anowski, 2006; Phillipson, 2003; De Cillia and Wodak, 2006). Hence, if the EU strives for more democracy and transparency, migrant languages will have to be taken into account (see above). Internet debate forums, which are accessible to everyone who knows how to use the Internet and has access to it, have a number of features that distinguish them from all other genres. Lemke (2001, 2003) labels communication and activities on the Internet ‘traversals’ – virtual genres – which transcend the traditional norms of time and space (see

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also Urry, 2003; Rusch, 2004). Discussion forum debates are usually conducted without writers knowing each other; people can take up identities, switch identities, and create identities: they can ‘perform’; certain topics are picked up and elaborated by chance, or also abruptly ended. Nobody can predict what will be relevant for whom and why (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). Moreover, there is normally either limited or no control over what is said (Wilhelm, 2001; Davis, 1999). Dimensions of emotions are apparent which are not explicitly present in our culture except in more informal conversations (for example, the use of ‘emoticons’). Rules for spelling, grammar and politeness are changed significantly, as well as norms for coherence and cohesion of texts (Gruber, 2004; Abdullah, 2004). The European Union, following the proposals for democratisation mentioned above, set up a dedicated area on its website for facilitating communication with citizens. Although this was by no means the first discussion forum on ‘Europa’, it did mark an attempt to systematise and co-ordinate online communications between the EU and its citizens. Of particular interest here is that people can post in all the official languages of the EU. This means that one person can start out in English, another might respond in French, a third one in German or Greek, and so forth. The ‘Europa’ website was launched in February 1995 to support the then G7 Ministerial Summit on the Information Society, and rapidly developed into an overarching communication resource. It is, in effect, a gateway to the online world of the European Union; a portal to all the information produced by the institutions of Europe online. The website received 6,183,955,138 hits in 2003, an average of 16.3 hits per EU citizen. The image (see Figure 4.2) is a freeze taken from the recently redesigned links page, which appears after the language is selected. 13 The page looks identical across each of the 20 languages, and interestingly after the redesign a link was added to the ‘discussion corner’. We were able to download a discussion on language policies, which was linked to EU enlargement.14 This thread is of particular interest: the topic is multilingualism and the choice of official and working languages for the EU, and the debate occurs in several languages and thus illustrates the debate on language policies itself. As will be shown, the choice of language seems to be dependent on complex factors, mostly on emotional attitudes towards specific languages rooted in nationalistic and historical ideologies (see Clyne, 2003; Wodak and Wright, 2006a, b for the extensive analysis of Futurum).

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Figure 4.2

Europa homepage

Source: www.europa.eu.int

On 17 June 2003, Marc Fettes15 from Luxembourg started a discussion on the ‘Future of Europe’ debate forum, focusing primarily on the issue of languages to be spoken in the ‘new Europe’. The subject line is ‘The next step’. The subject line effectively acts as a ‘title’ for the whole thread, and is similar to a headline in that it states the macro-topic for discussion. However, this ‘title’ is very vague. Fettes does not specify the ‘next step’ in the subject line. Hence, his statement contains several subtopics on European policies and the future of the EU; the relevance of the elaborated subtopics, however, is not justified. Fettes frames his statement with a general overview of the role of the European convention and discusses the role of power which – in his view – privileges the big states in the EU and suggests a concept which is more oriented towards a Europe of regions. In the following, I quote the part of his statement which concerns the language issue: Fettes: This Europe should speedily introduce the European citizenship as well as the single currency. One single working language, the French language, should be taken advantage of in addition to the regional languages. Trough this Europe gets bilingual everywhere.

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German as European working language would be an additional victory from Hitler and therefore has to be refused. The English language although far more common has only roots in England, Ireland and Scotland. This language has been successful only with the American army in Europe. English isn’t and never was the language of Europe and English shouldn’t becomes the language of Europe. Europe should be the over-structure, a Europe of all citizens. No armies of occupation or strange states, no religion states or religions should be allowed to exercise any power here. A state is sovereign only when the political organs must be able to take her decisions freely and give account to only her people. (Spelling and grammatical mistakes reproduced as in the original). The arguments proposed for the choice of French as the European working language do not rely on any statistics of the significance of the French language or on the number of speakers. The main argument is basically an ideological one, related to negative connotations and attitudes connected to German and English. Both arguments are also historically based: German is seen as ‘the’ language of the National Socialist regime whereas English is seen as the language of the American army in Europe after World War II. Arguing with the topos of history (i.e. using relatively stereotypical frames for justifying a certain issue) is a frequent characteristic of persuasive argumentation (see above). Then Fettes moves on to the present and the future – to a discourse of constructing a European identity, with a single currency, freedom, no foreign occupation and political accountability: a Europe for all citizens, regardless of language, religion, power and so on. This macrostrategy of constructing identity serves to legitimise the ideological argumentation of Fettes. This very emphatic statement contains some positively connoted flag-words: freedom, sovereignty, accountability, the citizens, and so forth. The logical inference suggested by Fettes, if we analyse the whole text, could be summarised as follows: after the terrible past (Nazi period, occupation), Europe has to – very quickly – be able to decide its future for itself. The next statement, by Jose M. of Spain, posted on 25 June 2003, with the subject line ‘Re: The next Step’ illustrates the adequacy of the Theory of Relevance Approach mentioned above. Jose M. picks out two topical points from the long statement of Marc Fettes and chooses a totally different style: Jose: French as the only working language? 100 regions more important than the national states? Come on! You must be kidding!

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Jose M. does reply, however, in a very informal, ironic (sarcastic) and impolite way. There is no formal mode of address in this statement; moreover, Jose M. explicitly rejects two proposals made by Fettes: the focus on regions and on the French language. These two topics proved to be relevant enough to be referred to and selected for the reply, ignoring all other sub-topics of the first statement. Instead of proposing arguments to justify the rejection, Jose M. makes fun of Fettes, in a sarcastic way, thus moving to a meta-level of communication and dialogue, thereby rejecting a content-oriented rational discussion. The short reply by Jose M. immediately triggers a short declarative statement by Marc Fettes in reply on the same day, emphasising his proposal and presenting more argumentative (quasi factual) evidence for his opinion. However, this time, only the topic of ‘regions’ is selected: Fettes: In my suggestion Europe is the state with 560 million peoples. The 100 regions areas the substructures. That is an important state. He also rejects the informal style and avoids any sarcastic and aggressive undertones in his reply. Slowly, we understand his proposed model for a multilingual Europe: Europe as superstructure, the regions as substructures. On 18 June, Daniel from Germany starts another sub-debate with Marc Fettes; not surprisingly, for Daniel the argumentation of Fettes against the use of the German language is the most relevant issue in the first posting, and he refers only to this aspect of Marc Fettes’ statement: Daniel: Although you have some really interesting ideas, I think that you probably haven’t thought through properly what you are writing about the german language. It is an unlegitim offence to the germans and the german-speaking population in Europe, to link our language exclusively to hitler, denying that german is de facto the most spoken native tongue in Europe, the language of some of Europeans best literature, philosophie. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think german is a ‘better’ language than another, but it has not the role in Europe, it fairly should have, just because of unjustified reservations in Europe of the german language of the kind you posted it. Daniel starts with a polite, face-keeping device, which should enable Marc Fettes to change his opinions about the German language. He

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praises the ideas of Fettes (‘really interesting’) and suggests strategically that Fettes might not have had enough time to think about his proposal (a face-saving move). This discursive strategic move allows Fettes to take up Daniel’s proposal, without losing face, and to change his opinion later on. After this introduction, he rejects the negative evaluation of the German language posted by Fettes who linked German exclusively with the Nazi regime and redefines the German language (‘our language’) as the language of literature and philosophy, as well as the language most spoken in Europe. Thus, he uses a frequently rhetorically employed, tri-partite argumentation structure drawing on different kinds of evidence. This statement also alludes to a broader problem of German post-war identity: the feelings of guilt that many Germans, including the young, have had and still have after the Nazi regime. This has made it very difficult for post-war generations to (re)construct a positive, democratic, post-war German identity and positive attitudes towards the German language. Statistics have illustrated that in many European countries, after World War II, the desire to learn German as a foreign language fell significantly (specifically in Scandinavian countries, Hungary and France) (see De Cillia, 2003). Marc Fettes replies to this posting on 19 June and changes his argumentation about the German language accordingly: Hello I don’t link our language exclusively to Hitler. I accept that German language is the most spoken native tongue in Europe, but it only part of them. The Europe which I have described has 560 million inhabitants. An acceptable agreement is needed there to bring all the languages and all people under a hat. Interestingly, Marc Fettes seems to be at least bi-lingual as many people from Luxembourg are (German and French). They still correspond in English best described as ELF (English as lingua franca), with the linguistic features accounted for by Seidlhofer (2004), who describes the potentially simplified semantic, lexical and syntactic register as well as the simplified grammar as a new variety of English, which fulfils all necessary communicative functions for trans-national communication in Europe and worldwide. Fettes now moves on, very politely, from the first declarative, potentially offensive and thus impolite, dogmatic statement to a position which allows negotiations and dialogue with Daniel. This discursive, almost deliberative dialogical move (in a

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Habermasian sense) to compromise is taken up by Daniel on the same day: Daniel: I agree with you now, but it sounds very different from what you posted before! A conflict evolved and is solved through the discussion and dialogue in the European virtual space; however, it has to be noted that specific linguistic and pragmatic devices allow for such negotiations and coconstructions to take place: politeness features, such as mitigation, praise, face-keeping devices, and forms of address, as well as a shift from a dogmatic mode to an argumentative deliberative mode. On 18 June, at the same time, a second sub-debate evolves between Shane O’Donnell from Ireland and Marc Fettes, again on the issues of language choice and a Europe of regions (I neglect the second topic here). These topics, which slowly evolve to relevant topoi, are thus referred to consistently over the whole thread and become obviously the most important and relevant ones for all contributors to this discussion. O’Donnell chooses a different style of writing, an argumentative, persuasive style full of rhetorical questions, comparisons, analogies, and irony, refuting Fettes’ ideological and historically based arguments and warrants step by step: Shane: ‘English is not and never was the language of Europe’. True The same is true of French. It is very arrogant to tacitly suggest that French is the language of Europe. ‘German would be a victory for Hitler’ ridiculous and insulting. Hitler did not ‘invent’ German. Incidentally, would a French language Europe be tantamount to a victory for Napoleon? Language has divided Europe for too long. Let us enjoy each others languages without politicizing them … Fettes answers this posting on the same day, apologising first for his ‘translation program’ and then justifying his argument about the rejection of the German language with new historical evidence and pointing to the fallacy of O’Donnell’s argument: Fettes: … The French language has been used many centuries in Europe. Napoleon was 200 years ago. Hitler was 60 years ago. Hitler

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forced all occupied peoples to learn and to use German. This will be forgotten in many generations, but not today … This answer implicitly rejects the proposal to ‘depoliticise’ language debates. For Fettes, languages presuppose socio-political knowledge and are necessarily historically connoted. Language debates seem to be inherently connected with the historical contexts of nation-states and their national identities. This might be different for O’Donnell (different horizons of relevance [Relevanzhorizonte]), whose country was not occupied by the Germans, and also for Daniel, who is a German citizen and native speaker of German. The common-sense knowledge connecting these three discussants and their presuppositions as well as their background knowledge thus differ significantly; however, the choice of the relevant arguments is constant. Dialogue could only succeed in parts when implicit knowledge and attitudes were made explicit and opened up for discussion. Dialogue thus necessarily implies (and depends on) specific linguistic and pragmatic elements in (virtual) conversations. Frederic, from France, posts a different opinion in French on 19 June 2003, and the three final replies follow his linguistic suit, switching to French: Cher Marc Je ne pense pas qu’on doive imposer aucune langue commune a l’interieur de l’Union Europeenne. Plutot, il faut ENCOURAGER L’APPRENTISSAGE des langues entrangeres, en augmentant par exemple le poids de la seconde langue vivante lors du passage de l’Abitur, du Maturo, ou du Baccalaureat. Il faut que les citoyens europeens puissant parler et comprendre 2 langues en plus de leur langue maternelle, alors qu’aujourd’hui, 1 langue etrangere est plus ou moins bien maitrisee par les eleves … 16 Frederic continues his posting, arguing for diversity, which was, he believes, achieved by learning from historical mistakes. Hence, Frederic also employs the topos of history in his argumentation. For him, the European Union transcends the concept of the nation-state; he proposes a ‘humanistic vision’ and emphasises the equality of all EU member-states and citizens. His focus on diversity also encompasses the ‘language problem’: in his opinion, there is no need for one language, everybody should actually know three. His language policy proposals are also founded in an ideological vision; in the ethical values of ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’, encompassed strongly in all principles and

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values of the European Union, for example in the Charter of Human Rights. The use of capital letters underlines the relevance of the statement for Frederic. On 19 June, Marc Fettes replies, posting in French this time. He presents further evidence and argumentative support for the choice of ‘ONE’ European language for general communicative goals. However, he takes up what he believes to be Frederic’s most relevant point, his emphasis on equality: Fettes: Le choix d’imposer une langue commune en plus de la langue maternelle sert a faciliter le dialogue entre tous les citoyens européens. Aucune richesse des cultures est en danger par ce choix. Si de plus en plus de pays rejoignent l’europe, quelles langues seront les langues supplementaires? Le but est, de parler n’importe ou avec n’importe qui dans l’europe et de reussir plus facilement tous dans l’europe.17 Thus, the ideological-political discussion is narrowed down to the pragmatic problem which is to be solved, namely how to ensure a maximum amount of successful communication among European citizens. Two opinions are put forward: first, one set language for all, on top of the respective mother tongue; or second, at least three languages for all citizens, and – most importantly and very different from Marc’s first argumentative position – no single privileged language. However, we do not get to know which languages other than English, French and German would or could be considered as such.

Conclusion: inclusion/exclusion – access/participation/legitimisation In a recent paper, the Danish historian and sociologist, Jan Ifversen, considers the move from a cultural definition to a sociological and political construction of a European identity to be one of the decisive conceptual changes, both before and after the turn of the new millennium (2002b, p. 3ff.). Following a semantic history of the concept ‘Europe’ in the sense of Koselleck (1972), Ifversen traces the development of the concept over the last few centuries from a cultural meaning to one of civilisation, and ultimately to a political construct. More particularly and in a similar vein, the Swedish historian Bo Stråth (2000) stresses, on the one hand, the multiplicity of historical meanings and traditions in Europe, and on the other, finds a range of different meanings and aspects in European identities: ‘Europe is a discourse’, ‘a normative center’, ‘a political program’ (2000, p. 14). Accordingly, we find contradictions juxtaposed and a variety of opinions

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about the meanings of Europe and ‘European citizens’ throughout the vast political science, historical, sociological, anthropological and discourseanalytic literature. ‘The challenge is to radically rethink the way we do Europe. To reshape Europe’ (Romani Prodi, then President of the European Commission, Speech in the European Parliament, January 9, 2000). ‘Doing Europe’ stresses in particular the constructive, discursive aspect as well as a new radical way of action (in the metaphorical sense). This kind of definition, using concrete material verbs, places the action, the ‘doing’, the conscious discursive and material construction in the foreground. This statement has to be viewed in contrast to many earlier European institutional documents that are characterised by mental processes, by ‘thinking, discussing, considering, suggesting, and believing’, which were salient in previous research (Muntigl et al., 2000). Summarising, I propose a heuristic model (Figure 4.3), which grasps the basic tensions and antinomies detected in all three examples above and which could thus serve as a general conceptual framework for research on European identities; most policies, ideas (visions) and debates are located on the scale from local to global, linking or juxtaposing these dimensions (see Wodak and Weiss, 2005). Many ideologies, policies or implementations on a national level contradict the official European, necessarily vaguely formulated proposals, or adapt them to national contexts (cf. Fairclough and Wodak, 2005; Falkner et al., 2005). Moreover, as mentioned above, the dimension of inclusion and exclusion cuts across all three examples analysed in this chapter. The general concept of insiders and outsiders is salient in all societies and between societies, in all public spaces, in cyberspace, in everyday conversations, and in organisational discourses. Niklas Luhmann (1997) claims that the social sciences do not have a precise description and analysis of the processes of social inclusion and social exclusion as yet. He defines inclusion and exclusion as the two vital meta-distinctions of our times: certain social groups lead ‘parallel lives’; the social problems thereby transcend the traditional values of justice and democracy. Only those who feel themselves to be included still adhere to democratic values: The variable of inclusion/exclusion in many parts of the globe is on the point of assuming the role of a meta-difference and mediating the codes of the systems of functions. Whether the difference between right and wrong will have a chance and whether it will be dealt with according to programmes proper to legal systems will depend in the first instance on a prior filtering by inclusion/exclusion … (ibid., p. 533).

92

Antinomies

Fragmentation

Globalisation

(Social Fractions Economical Unification)

Cu

(De)Regulation

(Norm, Law, Politics)

om

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(De)Regulation

Largest Unit (Global)

(e.g. Language Diversity Lingua Franca)

nc

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Me

ms ste

cie

sy

/S

ub

aw

/S

Homogenisation

/L re

ds

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iel lF iet a

Heterogenisation

Supranational

National

Ec

on

Decentralisation

Centralisation

(Political Power, Administration)

litic

s/

So c

Regional

dia

Smallest Unit (local)

Po

Particularisation

Universalisation

Smallest Unit Figure 4.3

A heuristic model of apparent tensions when constructing identities

(Debate on Values)

Largest Unit

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Inclusion and exclusion are not to be considered static categories: the person who is excluded today may be included tomorrow, and vice versa. Mostly it is not up to individuals to define or redefine their membership: this depends on structural phenomena of exclusion. The desired ‘opening-up’ of the European Union, the greater participation and democratisation therefore still has to overcome some essential obstacles if it is to reunite the so-called ‘parallel lives’.

Notes 1. I have chosen this subtitle because many debates centre on the question of which nation-states or which minorities are included or excluded in the European Union – or where does Europe start and end (see below). The debates surrounding the definition of the geographical/spatial/ideational entity seem symbolic for the complexity of the problems addressed in this chapter. 2. See Figure 4.2; for some important concepts and previous research on EU identities see Scollon and Scollon, 2004; Weiss, 2002, 2003; Oberhuber et al., 2005; Wodak & Weiss, 2004a, b, 2005; Muntigl et al., 2000; Stråth, 2005; Wodak & Puntscher-Riekmann, 2003; Musloff, 2004; Wodak, 2005a, b, c; Tricento, 2005; . Krzyzanowski & Oberhuber, 2007; Bärenreuter, 2005; Wodak and Wright, . 2006a; Oberhuber, 2005; Oberhuber et al. 2005; Krzyzanowski, 2005a, b. In this chapter I draw on this previous research to propose a theoretical framework to relate apparently fragmented results to each other. I would like to . thank Scott Wright, Gilbert Weiss and Michael Krzyzanowski for their stimulating contributions in this endeavour. 3. Due to space restrictions, it is impossible to discuss and elaborate on the important theoretical debate between different concepts of public space or the search for ‘a’ European public space. Main concepts have been put forward by Jürgen Habermas (1996, 2001, 2004), by Nancy Fraser (2003) and Jürgen Gerhards (2000, 2002). For an extensive overview see Bärenreuter (2006). Issues of legitimacy and representation are, of course, crucial to the definition of any public space, and the empirical examples throughout this chapter will illustrate possibilities and limitations of the status quo. 4. Symbols and rituals have long been recognised as essential parts of political communication (see for example the truly seminal book by Murray Edelman, 1967). 5. The 1985 Schengen Agreement is an agreement among European states which allows for common policy on the temporary entry of persons (including the Schengen visa) and the harmonisation of external border controls. A total of 26 countries – including all European Union states except the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, but including non-EU members Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland – have signed the agreement and 15 have implemented it so far. Border posts and checks have been removed between Schengen countries and a common ‘Schengen visa’ allows tourist or visitor access to the area.

94 Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics 6. Europa is the official website of the European Union, which allows downloading all relevant documents, establishing links to other web sites and discussion forums and so forth. Below, I will focus on the discussion forum ‘Futurum’, research which the political scientist Scott Wright and I have undertaken jointly (see Wodak and Wright, 2006a, b). 7. The formula ‘legitimation through procedure’ is taken from the sociologist Niklas Luhmann: ‘Legitimation durch Verfahren’; cf Luhmann, 1969. This model is extensively elaborated in Weiss, 2002 and Wodak & Weiss, 2004 a, b. 8. See note 2 and the extensive overviews in Krzyz˙anowski, 2005b; Bärenreuter, 2006. 9. ‘In the main points, Mr President, to start with, the effort put into the structural adjustment of numerous enterprises, with research into economies of scale and mergers, regroupings, sorting out the profitability of many societies, a social climate in recent years that is relatively stable, some, some major strikes and social conflicts, the favourable evolution of the external balance of the European union, the favourable effects of the opening of the capital markets, the proximity of the emerging markets, I’m thinking of Central and Eastern Europe, all that is positive. And my last point is that, but you have already mentioned it, the high level of education and professional training in most European countries. These are assets.’ The transcription of the recorded data in this chapter followed the HIAT conventions, proposed by Konrad Ehlich and Jochem Rohkein (http://www.daf.uni-muenchen.de/HIAT/ HIAT.HTM) 10. Within argumentation theory, ‘topoi’ or ‘loci’ can be described as parts of argumentation which belong to the obligatory, either explicit or inferable premises. They are the content-related warrants or ‘conclusion rules’ which connect the argument or arguments with the conclusion, the claim. As such, they justify the transition from the argument or arguments to the conclusion (Kienpointner, 1992, p. 194). 11. Legitimisation and legitimisation strategies are an essential part of political discourses; see Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, and Wodak and Van Leeuwen, 2002. See also Chilton, 2004. 12. The extensive analysis is published in Wodak and Wright, 2006a, b. 13. http://www.europa.eu.int/index_en.htm 14. http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/coreservices/forum/index.cfm? forum= Futurum&archive=1&fuseaction= search.detail&debate_id=-30&message_ id=-21206 15. Please note that these are their usernames, and not necessarily their real names. 16. ‘Dear Marc, I don’t think we need to impose any common language on the European Union. Rather, we must ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO LEARN foreign languages, for example, increasing the weighting given to a second modern language in the Abitur, Matura or Baccalaureat. European citizens must be able to speak and understand 2 languages in addition to their mother tongue, while at present students more or less successfully master one foreign language … ’. [Please note that the orthographical errors and idiosyncratic syntax of the original French have been maintained.] 17. ‘The choice of a common language in addition to one’s mother tongue serves to facilitate dialogue among all European citizens. This choice does not threaten the richness of individual cultures. If more and more countries join Europe, what will be the supplementary languages? The aim is to be able to speak to anyone, anywhere in Europe and to succeed more easily throughout Europe.’

5 Shifting Discourses: Banal Nationalism and Cultural Intimacy in Greek Television News and Everyday Life Mirca Madianou

This chapter investigates whether, and if so to what extent, television news influences everyday discourses about the nation and national identity. It does so by focusing on Greek television news and its reception during two case studies in 1998 and 1999. Greece witnessed a resurgence of nationalism in the 1990s, which was manifested in various occasions, most notably the so called ‘Macedonia issue’. A parallel development during the same time was the commercialisation of the broadcasting system that brought about sweeping changes in the style and format of news reporting. The research reported in this chapter was stimulated by these observations and in particular by the question as to whether the sensationalist manner of news reporting had an impact on the expressions of nationalist feelings. Most studies concerned with the role of the media in the symbolic construction of a common identity have focused on the analysis of the media as texts. Billig, in an influential book, has argued that in established nations, i.e. ‘states which have confidence in their own continuity, and that, particularly, are part of what is conventionally described as the West’, there is a continual flagging, or reminding, of nationhood (1995, p. 8). The reproduction of what Billig terms ‘banal nationalism’ takes place through small words such as pronouns. As Billig puts it ‘the reminding is so familiar and so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding’ (1995, p. 8). From a phenomenologically inspired perspective, Scannell (1989) has stressed the role of public service broadcasting in shaping national identity, while Dayan and Katz (1992) have demonstrated how the nation is brought together during ‘media events’. All these studies have been very insightful in recognising the 95

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potential of the media in bringing people together and amplifying collective identities. On the other hand, a shortcoming that these approaches share is that they do not explore empirically the ways in which the audiences interpret media texts and in turn experience and articulate their identities. Instead of extracting with certainty the meaning of the news in order to make assumptions about its effects on the audiences, this chapter describes some features of the news, which are then contrasted to the viewers’ interpretations in order to highlight an aspect of the dialectic nature of communication as mediation (Silverstone, 1999). Assumptions about the reproduction of nationalism need to be grounded empirically by focusing on both the news and its reception in an attempt to integrate two levels of analysis. Does the nationalism in the news affect viewers’ discourses and if so when? In order to answer this question I draw on the developments in audience studies and particularly on the concept of the critical viewer (Livingstone and Lunt, 1994; Liebes and Katz, 1993). Do critical or media literate viewers contest the ‘banal nationalism’ and essentialist projection of the nation in the news (Billig, 1995)? In which circumstances do people become more essentialist about their own identities and those of others? After a short theoretical introduction, this chapter will discuss two case studies of news content and reception: the first concerns the reporting of an incident involving Greek–Turkish relations (an airspace violation) and the other an international affair: the crisis in Kosovo in Spring 1999. We will observe that in their discussions of the news reports the audiences articulated two different types of discourses about the nation. While in the first case study most of the interviewees were critical of the news and reflexive about their identities, the reporting on Kosovo (albeit an international event) triggered an emotional discourse and a less reflexive discourse about the nation. It emerges that the news plays a role in shaping identity articulations in some contexts more than others. In the final section of the chapter we identify an interpretive framework in order to account for these discursive oscillations. The research reported in this chapter was based on a largely ethnographic perspective. This means that instead of making assumptions about people’s identities, I followed the different ways in which my informants defined and redefined themselves. In so doing, I drew on Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, in which he argued that ethnicity is a form of social organisation that results from the interaction

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between group and environment. This meant that ‘the critical focus for investigation [becomes] the ethnic boundary that defines the group rather than the cultural stuff that it encloses’ (1969, p. 15). Barth argued that ethnic group membership must depend on ascription and self-ascription, rather than on possessing a certain cultural inventory. In this context, identities are understood as relations rather than objects as it is in relation to something or someone else that the boundary is drawn. Thus, instead of focusing on identity in the singular, I examined discourses and practices about identity and belonging. Discourse in this context is understood in the broadest sense as any form of spoken interaction, formal and informal (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984; Potter and Wetherell, 1987, p. 7). A similar strategy was followed by Baumann in his ethnography of Southall, a multicultural London neighbourhood (1996). Baumann identified two discourses about culture and identity: a ‘dominant’ discourse that reifies culture and identity and a ‘demotic’ discourse that challenges and works against existing reifications. Although these are separate discourses, they co-exist as people fluctuate between the two according to context. Baumann describes how the same people who contest the rigid boundaries of the official discourse will revert to it when it suits their interests (1996). In this paper I will distinguish between these dominant and demotic or open and closed discourses in order to investigate whether television news has an impact on everyday life discourses.

The study The research reported in this chapter is part of a larger study (Madianou, 2005). This chapter focuses on two case studies of news reports and their subsequent decodings by Greek viewers. The first case study concerns the reporting and the reception of a routine incident between Greece and Turkey in October 1998. The incident took place in the third week of October 1998 and was reported as a ‘violation of Greek national airspace by Turkish planes’. I examined all reports on this topic, nine in total, from the two most popular private channels (ANTENNA and MEGA) and the public channel, ET-1. The second case study involved the reporting of the Kosovo conflict in Greek news. Even though this was an international affair, the reporting of the events in Kosovo and Serbia in Spring 1999 was quite nationalised in Greece. Moreover, Kosovo introduced a global dimension to the identity articulations as it is highlighted how Greece

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positions itself towards the rest of the world. Because of the duration of the conflict (79 days) the sample for the second case study was appropriately larger: it consisted of 464 reports from the two largest private channels and the public broadcaster. During both case studies I interviewed 33 Greek viewers in total while the events were current. Interviews took place in a natural setting and were either individual or in groups (in which case these were naturally occurring groups, usually the family and friends of the key informant with whom he or she would watch the news).1

Greek television news A couple of points about the development of television news in Greece merit our attention. The commercialisation of the broadcasting system in 1989 catalysed changes in programming and also in the format of news broadcasts which have been characterised by their length (routinely lasting between one and two hours at the time of the fieldwork in the case of private channels) and their emphasis on ‘live’ reporting and studio discussions.2 The second point concerns the popularity of news broadcasts reflected in their proportion of overall television programming, which reached 35.5 and 76.7 per cent, respectively, for the two public broadcasting channels (ET-1 and NET) and 43.5 and 40 per cent for the two leading private channels (ANTENNA, MEGA) at the time of the fieldwork (1998–2000) (AGB Hellas Yearbook, 1999, p. 37). Audience measurement studies have indicated that television is by far the dominant medium for information: 71 per cent of the Greek population watch the news every day compared to 17 per cent who listen to the radio news and 16 per cent who read the newspapers on a daily basis.3 Given that the Internet connection rates continue to be the lowest in the EU, it is not an exaggeration to talk about the dominance of television news and even the phenomenon of wall-to-wall news on Greek television.4

The analysis of the airspace incident reports This section investigates the construction of a common ‘we’ through the textual features of television news in Greece. The analysis is based on what was reported by all news bulletins sampled as a ‘violation of Greek airspace and Athens FIR in the area of the Aegean Sea by Turkish military planes, during a joint military exercise of Greece with Cyprus’ in the third week of October 1998. These reports will be referred to as

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the airspace incident for reasons of convenience. At first glance the airspace incident represents a relatively routine event. It should be seen in the context of the relations between Greece and Turkey, which are currently enjoying a period of rapprochement but have seen a number of eruptions in the 1990s (the most notable being the Imia crisis in 1996).5 Greece and Turkey have a set of ongoing disputes over a number of issues, the most notorious being the Cyprus issue and control over areas of the Aegean Sea (Rozakis, 1988). Incidents like the one described in this chapter are common, even today, especially during military exercises.6 Thus it could be argued that the airspace incident is routine, to the extent that such incidents take place regularly. By the standards of other Western European countries, however, it would be considered a serious crisis as such incidents involve a significant proportion of the countries’ armed forces and often involve casualties. Maybe a better way of describing these events is that they are routinely not routine. It is impossible to provide here the full background of Greek–Turkish relations and the Cyprus issue. For the purposes of this piece, it is worth mentioning that the Cyprus problem has dominated Greek–Turkish relations over five decades and is commonly referred to in Greece as one of the ‘national issues’, a view that is prevalent in the media.7 The history of the island is one of competing nationalisms (Greek and Turkish) and post-colonialism. A former British colony, Cyprus gained its independence in 1960. The military junta in Greece orchestrated a military coup in 1974, then Turkey invaded the north of the island and since then Cyprus has remained divided. The military exercise during which the airspace incident took place was part of the common defence dogma between Greece and Cyprus. The dominant theme in these reports was an ‘us and them’ frame, confirming the finding of a number of studies on news and news about conflict in particular (Gamson, 1992; Liebes, 1997; Neuman et al., 1992). As there are three main actors involved in the incident (Greece, Cyprus and Turkey), I shall apply discourse analysis to see how the ‘us and them’ binary scheme is constructed. In particular, I shall examine the uses of pronouns through a deictic analysis (Billig, 1995). Deixis The term ‘deixis’ (which comes from the Greek word for ‘pointing’ or ‘indicating’) is used in linguistics to refer to the function of personal or demonstrative pronouns, of tense and of a variety of other grammatical or lexical features which relate utterances to the spatiotemporal

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co-ordinates of the act of utterance (Lyons, 1977, pp. 636–7). Although the use of pronouns in the context of face-to-face conversation is usually straightforward as it is clear who is talking and who is being addressed, in the case of political or journalistic discourse, deixis is more complex (Billig, 1995). Deixis in media or political discourse may become the vehicle to imagining the nation. Billig, in his study of the national press in the UK shows how the newspapers employ a routine ‘deixis’, which continually points to the national homeland as the home of the readers (1995, p. 11). Of course, if nationalist discourse reminds us who ‘we’ are, it also tells us who we are not. As much as it is inclusive, this discourse is also exclusive, as Morley and Robins have noted (1995, p. 25). In the following paragraphs I will discuss how a common identity is projected through an ‘us and them’ frame sustained by deictic expressions. Deixis in the airspace incident Deictic words were commonly used in the reports to demarcate ‘us’ (in this context the Greeks and Greek Cypriots in the joint military exercise) and ‘them’, the Turks, who were reported to be obstructing the exercises. The following examples illustrate this: ‘Our aircraft managed to break through the Turkish air barrier after intense and dangerous air-fights’. (ANTENNA, 24/10/1999)8 ‘Dozens of Turkish aircraft attempted today to obstruct the flight of the aircraft of our airforce to Cyprus. The third wave of Greek planes passed the Turkish “wall”. The Turks responded swiftly. The provocations of the Turks did not prevent the Greek and Cypriot forces from continuing with the exercises. Ground forces and units of our navy managed to complete the exercises with live ammunition.’ (MEGA 24/10/1999) This quotation, typical of the discourse of these reports, points to ‘us’, the Greek nation, and ‘our’ aircraft, that are battling with the Turkish. This possessive pronoun, used in the reports of both private channels, but not on ET-1, makes the contrast between us and them even more salient. The ‘us’ implied in these reports embraces Cyprus as well. Another word in the reports that connotes the special relationship between Greece and Cyprus is Meghalonisos (literary meaning ‘Large Island’), used to refer to Cyprus. This word was mentioned in both ANTENNA and MEGA programmes, but not by ET-1. Its use, instead of

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the proper name Cyprus, implies a relationship of geographic continuity that evokes symbolic intimacy. This is enhanced by the fact that in some reports Cyprus is not referred to as a separate state. The following quote is indicative: ‘The Turkish aircraft attempted unsuccessfully to cut off Meghalonisos from the mainland’ (MEGA, 25/10/99 and ANTENNA, 24/10/99). Meghalonisos appears as an integral part of Greece that can be cut off only with the intervention of Turkish planes. The ‘us and them’ frame is also made salient through the visual material that accompanies the footage. Most of it contains images from air force exercises and air-combats (this is archival material, although it is not explicitly mentioned), creating a feeling of tension and threat. There are some shots where we see the pilot in the cockpit and in the background can hear him saying ‘I have locked them’ [tous egglovisa] to refer to him targeting the Turkish planes in a dogfight. The sense of tension is heightened with phrases such as ‘Turkey orchestrated a war scene over the Aegean again today … with 200 super-modern and armed aircraft’ (ANTENNA, 24/10/1999), and ‘Ankara’s audacity has no limits’ (ANTENNA 24/10/1999). Most importantly, none of the reports mentions the background to the dispute between Greece and Turkey over the Aegean. The reports do not even mention the background to the related issue of the Cyprus problem and the ‘common defence dogma’ with Greece in the context of which the military exercises take place. The lack of contextual or background information is common practice in news in general and does not apply to the Greek case solely (Philo, 1990). It needs to be noted, however, that there were significant differences among the channels, with ANTENNA being more vocal about the dangers of the incident and Turkey’s threat and MEGA and ET-1 being more restrained. I argue that the airspace incident reports contain elements both of overt and banal nationalism (Billig, 1995). Overt nationalism is present in the instances where there is explicit reference to conflict and tension. Banal nationalism is evident in the small words and pronouns which establish and naturalise the nation and its others: for example, the references to Cyprus as the ‘Big Island’ and natural extension of Greece. One might question whether Banal Nationalism is an appropriate framework in order to understand the airspace incident, as Billig’s theory refers to the cases where nationalism is reproduced despite the fact that there is no conflict. Two points can be made here: first, that since these incidents are routine there is an element of banality attached to them (and as Billig, drawing on Arendt (1963), remarked,

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banal should not be equated with harmless). Second, and this is a more general point, the boundary between peace and conflict is becoming increasingly blurred. The ‘established nations’ in relation to which Billig developed his theory (1995, p. 8) are increasingly involved in conflicts which take place during what is conventionally thought of as peacetime, the most recent of which is the Iraq war but also the socalled war on terror. The boundaries between war and peace have always been blurred, especially during conflicts such as the Cold War which also have an ideological dimension. It is possible to argue then that elements of banal and overt nationalism are part of the same continuum: every conflict contains elements of banal nationalism which, like a magnifying lens, it amplifies. By drawing on an ‘us and them’ binary scheme (common in both overt and banal nationalisms), the airspace incident represents a dominant discourse about the nation.

Interpreting the airspace incident: contesting banal nationalism In this section, the focus shifts to the viewers’ reactions and interpretations of the news broadcasts. The aim is to analyse the types of discourses that the news generates at a local level and compare them to the discourse in the news. For the purposes of this chapter I will primarily be examining whether people’s interpretations of the news content were open or closed in relation to how the nation was discussed. Thus viewers who accept the dominant discourse about the nation are making ‘dominant’ decodings. Conversely, interviewees who contest this dominant discourse make ‘demotic’ decodings. These interpretations will also be examined in relation to audiences’ reactions to the aesthetic and formal aspect of the news reports (distinct from content) as this is the other aspect of a critical interpretation (for an application of a similar typology, see Liebes and Katz, 1993). Finally, the analysis also takes into account the viewers’ discursive shifts between the news and their own experiences. These shifts are significant as people relate to the news through their personal experiences and it is during these moments that identity discourses and experiences are articulated. The first observation in the airspace interviews is that most interviewees described the incident as routine. This contrasts with the tone of the news reports where words such as ‘provocative’, ‘dangerous’, ‘worrying’ and ‘intense’ were used. Christos, a male interviewee in his late twenties said that ‘it was simply a report on some plane interceptions;

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ordinary sensationalist reporting’. Irini, a high school student, remarked ‘OK, people are used to this … every week they watch the same reports’. Although most interviewees agreed that these incidents are routine, some voiced concern about the dangers involved. There is a degree of gender differentiation in the reactions to these reports. Women were more concerned than men about the dangers involved in such incidents. Men draw on their experience in the army,9 which they contrast to what they watch on television, thus challenging the reports. Christos: ‘As a specialist, I did my service in the air force, I can say this: this situation is just a game … The same way they violate our airspace, we violate theirs. It is part of the game, a rehearsal … I’ve heard from some [Greek pilots] that they know the Turkish pilots by name. They talk on the radio. They’re playing a game.’ Thodoris: ‘When I was doing my service, I was in the navy, and we were patrolling off the shores of Turkey, between Samos, Chios10 and Turkey, and the Turkish ships would approach us, we would approach them, they would then threaten to ram us. It was like a game, without any substance.’ The interpretation of the news is firmly grounded in personal experiences. Contextual knowledge affects comprehension and interpretation and explains the gender differentiation mentioned above. This finding connects with Philo’s empirical study (1990) on the reception of the reporting of the British miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985. Philo found that people with first-hand knowledge of the strike remembered the picketing as peaceful, while those who depended on television had perceived it as violent (1990). Viewers critical towards journalists and generic conventions All interviewees expressed criticisms towards the journalists and the media and were largely aware of the generic conventions of the news. Most interviewees described the news reports as sensationalist. Other interviewees said that the report used images and perhaps even text that was taken from the Ministry of Defence, pointing to a close relationship between media and the government. Some of the interviewees expressed a social constructionist perspective on the news and the reporting of such incidents. Some argued that the issues themselves would not exist if television did not emphasise them. Moreover, people were aware of the economic conditions of

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television production and how they affect the content and the agenda of news programmes, as the following excerpt reveals: Haris: ‘They show incidents like these to fill up the duration of the programme. When they have one and a half-hour of news, they have to find some issues to fill it up.’ Lena: ‘They have to make up something. That’s what it comes to. But we should not fool ourselves, we should not think that those working in the media are socially altruistic.’ Spyros: ‘They are companies.’ Lena: ‘Exactly. And companies have to have profits. Otherwise what’s the point? They’ll shut down. This is what we need to remember. In order to make profits they will do anything, even illegal things.’ Analytic viewers One of the dominant patterns in the interviews was the identification of the reasons why the reports were seen to be presented in a sensationalist manner. Another dominant theme was the identification of the deeper causes of the air-fights themselves, something that the news reports did not address, pointing to the fact that viewers were more analytical than the news. In accounting for the reasons behind the airspace incident, informants said that it was related to the politics between Greece and Turkey and their governments’ attempt to divert attention from social and economic issues. Giota, a middle-aged housewife, said that ‘this is some form of terrorism so that we do not speak up’. Other informants argued that such incidents are the result of Turkey’s opportunistic foreign policy. Interestingly, most interviewees implied a synergy between the Greek government and the media. This is often expressed through the use of the pronoun ‘they’, that includes journalists, media owners and politicians. ‘They show these incidents because they want to distract our attention from other matters’, Dafne said. ‘They want us to be in constant tension with Turkey’, Fotis added. ‘They are misleading us’ (Giota). All the informants mentioned that there are covert interests, often implying a symbiosis between politicians and the media. ‘We cannot even imagine the hidden interests’, Irini said. A frequent explanation for the prevalence of such reports in the news and what the interviewees interpreted as its sensationalist style, was the commercialisation of the media and the concomitant competition for audiences and advertising revenue. ‘They do it for the ratings’,

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was an oft-repeated phrase. ‘These are everyday incidents, which the media exaggerate in order to attract viewership’, many viewers argued. Viewers are analytical in attempting to add the missing pieces to the incomplete puzzle that is the news. They seek and provide explanations for the events and try to identify the causes, something the news did not do. Of course, as most of the interviewees admit, this kind of thinking is often speculative and only those involved know what the ‘hidden interests are’. Contextual knowledge The interpretive analysis of the ‘airspace incident’ reports revealed that there was no reference to the historical context of Cyprus and Greek– Turkish relations. Many viewers juxtaposed their historically informed perspective with the ahistorical news, and based their critical interpretations on their knowledge of the issue. Tasos, one of the older male informants, gave a historical perspective on the Cyprus problem that challenges its naturalisation in the news. ‘When I was young, there was no Cyprus issue. There was only the “Northern Epirus” issue back then.’11 The following excerpt from one of the discussions is revealing: Sergios: ‘The pretext for the invasion was a Greek coup in Cyprus orchestrated by the colonels’ junta in Athens. And, this is my personal view, Turkey had the right to intervene, she was covered by the Treaty. She was one of the guarantor powers.’ Interviewer: ‘Do people know about this?’ Christos: ‘I think that most people of our age know about this.’ Sergios: ‘Not of our age. Older people do.’ Stelios: ‘I did not know.’ Sergios: ‘It is not well known. It has been carefully hushed up.’ Not all the interviewees were familiar with the historical context. The younger interviewees did not know what had happened in Cyprus in previous decades and what caused the events of 1974. This is not something taught at school and, as Sergios mentioned above, it is not something that is often discussed publicly. It is even common for people in Stelios’ generation (mid-twenties) not to know the background of the events. Stelios heard some of the facts surrounding the Cyprus conflict for the first time in the context of the interview. Lack of contextual knowledge is not only related to age; it is also a generational issue, affecting people who were born after 1974. This means that those with no experience of the conflict have limited

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resources to learn what happened. Since the media do not present the historical context, younger informants rely on either education (which as has been pointed out is very often unsatisfactory in this particular regard) or personal networks as they themselves acknowledged. Even older interviewees such as Rena, who was an adult when the events in Cyprus took place, expressed frustration with her lack of knowledge. Demotic discourses Greek viewers contested the discourses about Cyprus in the news. In the airspace news reports there was a constant deixis, a rhetorical pointing to the nation that included Cyprus and Greece. Cyprus was referred to, almost affectionately, as Meghalonisos, the ‘Big Island’, as part of the national imagery. Conversely, interviewees contested the official discourse that advocates continuity between Greece and Cyprus. Thodoris, a taxi driver in his 30s said: Thodoris: ‘When [the invasion] happened, [Cyprus] was a national issue. Today, I don’t think it is. Because Cypriots themselves don’t want us to have them as a national issue and the Greeks are also tired of this Cyprus issue. It will never be resolved. What is the Cyprus issue? That half of Cyprus is Turkish. It will always be. Or, will Denktash ever leave Cyprus? It is more probable that he will take the whole of Cyprus. … There is no Cyprus issue for me. I think that they have accepted this; this is how things are. Either things will stay the same, or they will worsen. … What I’ve been listening to since I was a child is the “resolution of the Cyprus issue”. Before Cyprus they put the word resolution. But I don’t think this will ever happen. The resolution of the Cyprus issue will never take place.’ This view was shared by other informants: Dafne: ‘We have so many problems in Greece now I’m not saying that we should not be involved with Cyprus, I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but perhaps we should resolve some other issues first and then look at Cyprus.’ Stelios: ‘We shouldn’t be too preoccupied about the Cyprus issue because the Cypriots are not particularly preoccupied with us. Why should we be the parents of the Greek Cypriots? … The educational level in Cyprus is very high, they don’t need us.’

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The following excerpts are interesting as they point to a demotic discourse about the nation, while in parallel they reveal an ‘us and them’ dichotomy that renders the Cypriot as the ‘other’. In this sense the following quotes are ‘demotic’ and at the same time essentialist as they objectify Cypriot people. Michalis: ‘They feel Greek when it’s in their interest.’ Fotini: ‘[O]nce I gave private lessons to a Cypriot family, and their relatives, aunts and uncles, would come by. Cypriots have strong solidarity among them. And they would all refer to Greece in the third person. They never said “us Greeks”. Never.’ Cyprus is not the only issue about which demotic discourses concerning the nation are expressed. Sergios referred to the army as a ‘dump’, while Christos called it ‘a brothel’. Andreas, who works for the army, said that ‘there’s nothing exceptional in working in the army; it’s an ordinary job’. Everyday personal experiences contest a nationalist perspective in which the armed forces are considered the bastion of the nation. Moreover, some informants challenged the assumption that it is only Turkey which violates Greece’s airspace. Many interviewees mentioned that they know – from personal contacts and experiences – that when Turkish planes violate Greek airspace, Greek planes violate Turkish space. All the interviewees acknowledged that they did not expect to hear this on the news, suggesting that people are aware that the news presents a more formal account of events, a dominant discourse. Dominant discourses Not all Greek informants challenged the dominant discourse of the news. Georgia, a housewife, also expressed a dominant perspective that takes the ‘us and them’ dichotomy in the news for granted: ‘[The] Turks chase our planes, because we are enemies, Turks and Greeks and we seek to harm each other. We don’t really want to, but the Turks chase us so …’. Tatiana, a high school student, regarded Cyprus as a national issue. Note that she considers Cyprus a part of Greece that could be ‘lost’ if Greece is not interested. Tatiana: ‘Greece has to be interested in the continuation and preservation of the Hellenism of Cyprus. We need to make sure that we will not lose other lands.’

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In sum, viewers generally were critical of media practices and journalistic conventions. This critical stance was coupled with a critical perspective concerning news content. The majority of the informants contrasted the dominant discourse in the news to a more analytic and historical perspective. They challenged the news reports with their own experiences. Moreover, their accounts were more historically informed than those of the news. The interviewees who found it more difficult to challenge the news were those who either lacked experience or historical knowledge. These interviewees – a minority in this case study – are ambivalent, often oscillating between discursive positions within the context of the interview. From the analysis it emerges that the dominant framework about the nation found in the news is not reproduced in a straightforward way. Informants often contested the meanings of words and symbols linked to the nation that were present in the news. However, this should not mean that the news does not reproduce nationalistic discourses. A more conclusive answer to this question will be provided after examining the second case study.

The reporting of the Kosovo crisis It is impossible in this context to present a thorough account of the coverage of the Kosovo conflict in the Greek media. Here, I can only highlight some dominant themes (for a more detailed discussion, see Madianou, 2005, chapter 6) that emerged from the thematic content analysis of the 464 sampled news reports from the two leading private channels and the public service one during March and April 1999. Given its size, the sample was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively (discourse and interpretive analysis). The analysis revealed that the conflict was highly nationalised in Greece. One third of the reports were concerned with the effects of the crisis in Greece. The other two dominant themes were human interest stories focusing on the Serbian casualties and displaying a general sympathy for the Serbian population (32 per cent) and anti-Americanism (present in 25 per cent of the sample). References to diplomatic initiatives were present in 21.8 per cent of the reports, although in the case of the public service broadcaster this figure went up to 34.8 per cent. As in the airspace incident ET-1 was differentiated from the commercial channels by focusing less on the human interest stories and more on the diplomatic aspect of the conflict. An ‘us and them’ frame was present in the Kosovo reports, especially in the reports that focused on the Serbian casualties; these often

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displayed an identification and expression of solidarity with the Serbian population.12 The ‘us and them’ frame was also present in the reports that focused on the effects of the conflict in Greece. Notably, the reports on the Kosovan refugees were often accompanied by a sense of anxiety about their settlement in Greek-speaking villages in Albania as this move was interpreted as a move to change the demographic mix of the region.13 Although these reports were few (2.6 per cent), they are revealing of a particular discourse about the conflict, invoking an essentialist understanding of difference and belonging. Another interesting group of reports were those that were concerned with how the conflict was reported in the European and US media (4.5 per cent of the sample). Such reports are indicative of the local–global dynamic and the media’s response to Greece’s perceived position in the world. Although these constitute a small percentage of the sample, the negative references to foreign media are often reactions to the ways they had portrayed Greece and the Balkans in the context of this conflict. It needs to be noted that one significant difference with the airspace incident case study was that the experience of Kosovo was largely mediated. That is, most Greek audiences relied on television news in their understanding of the conflict.

Interpreting the Kosovo reports Although the reporting of the events in Kosovo and Serbia triggered more emotional responses compared with the first case study, most of the interviewees continued to express critical views towards the media and journalists. Andreas noted that Greek television is well known for ‘trading in horror’ and this practice is attributed to the commercialisation of television. ‘The more horror, the higher the ratings’, Andreas said. He also remarked, rather cynically, that he believed that there was a tariff for each sigh and sob in the news. ‘A sob, 300,000 drachmas,14 two sighs … Journalists will do whatever to sell their goods’, he added. What is different in the Kosovo case study is that the viewers who were critical of the media and journalistic practices were less so towards the actual content of the news. It was common for viewers to debate and shift between dominant and demotic positions when watching the news. Katerina: ‘Maybe we are only looking at one side of the story, because we think that [the Serbs] are being wronged in this case.’

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Andreas: ‘Look, the Greeks were always the people who were driven by emotions. On the other hand there is the historical relationship that binds us with the Serbs.’ Zoe: ‘The same religion … ’ Andreas: ‘The emotions prevail.’ Katerina: ‘If it is only emotional then why aren’t we emotional in relation to the others [the Albanians]? … Aren’t they people as well? They leave their homes and their belongings and they are even bombed while they are on the road.’ Andreas: ‘Let’s not forget that the Greeks were always on the Indians’ side and not that of the cowboys. Always.’ In the above excerpt it is possible to observe the competing discourses about the nation and its culture and how they relate to perceptions about the role of the media. While in the routine case study most interviewees challenged the news and the incident itself, here the voices were more mixed. From this extract, it is possible to discern one of the reasons why Greek viewers were sympathetic towards the Serbs in the Kosovo conflict. Andreas’ comment about ‘cowboys and Indians’ suggests that it is anti-Americanism, rather than ‘culture’, that determined the support for the Serbs. Andreas is projecting his experience and knowledge about US involvement in Greek politics in past decades in his interpretation of the conflict, a comment made by many of the informants. Contextual knowledge and alternative resources As in the previous case study, many of the viewers’ interpretations attempted to identify the causes of the conflict, thereby appearing more historical than the news, even if there were occasional inaccuracies in their accounts. All the informants noted that the conflict had its roots in past decades, although some expressed a more open narrative than others. The difference was between those who had alternative resources for finding out about the conflict and those who were more dependent on the media. During the Kosovo case study viewers reported an increased use of foreign language media, although it should be noted that the issue of access is important here, as not all the informants could follow non-Greek media. The other factor that shaped the interpretations of the reports was, as before, personal experience. Vassilis, a male informant in his 40s said that he knew that there was ethnic cleansing against the Kosovans from the Serbian army and this was the reason they were leaving. He had heard this from

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some Albanians in Greece whom he employed in his business. Reflecting upon his own history (his mother’s family had arrived from Asia Minor in 1922), he told me: ‘These things have always been happening. Here in Greece we are all refugees and foreigners.’ This comment, in stark contrast to the news reports that depicted refugees as a destabilising threat, evokes the successive population displacements in recent Greek history. Vassilis presented one of the most open interpretations of the conflict, avoiding the ‘us and them’ scheme that was prevalent in the Greek media. Vassilis: ‘Years ago, Serbs and Kosovars had no problems living together. It was a few years ago that people, for their own interests, created nationalist sentiments on purpose and the confrontations began. The Civil War started as a result. Two peoples lived together in the same land for 1,000 years without a problem and now there is a problem. … People do not have inherent problems with each other.’ Alexandros, a male student, knew about the conflict and the ethnic cleansing against the Kosovans through a branch of his family that lives in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and whom he sees every summer when they visit his home town in Northern Greece. Alexandros’ experience exposes the arbitrariness of the national and ethnic boundaries. His family is divided into two parts, one living in Macedonia and one in Greece. This is the same family that found itself on different sides of the border, when the borders were drawn. Dominant discourses Some of the informants drew a parallel between the intervention of NATO in Kosovo and its lack of intervention in Cyprus in 1974 or thereafter. Interestingly, while Greece’s relationship to Cyprus was contested in the ‘airspace incident’ interviews, it was reinstated in the Kosovo case study. Note how Sophia, a female university student, used the personal pronoun to include both Cyprus and Greece in her discourse. ‘What did the Americans do for Cyprus? They left us alone then’. All the interviewees (apart from one) made a parallel with the Turkish minority in Greece in order to justify the Serb reaction to the development of KLA in Kosovo. Most of these discourses are ‘dominant’, identifying and reifying communities. The use of pronouns is indicative of the ‘us and them’ dichotomy that evokes segregation.

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Ilias: ‘The same way we have the Turks in Thrace. If the Turks ever revolt and demand their own state, will we say, of course, go ahead? We will not. That was the problem.’ Katerina: ‘Are you worried about the Turkish minority?’ Andreas: ‘I know that something will happen. I know that something will happen. I am not afraid that we will have war with Turkey over this issue. Because we are a member of the EU. … In the worst case scenario, they already have their mufti in Komotini and in Xanthi, in the worst case scenario we will give them new representation in Parliament. And nothing else.’ Sophia: ‘The same way we have Greek Muslims. They are not Turks. They are Greek, only Muslim in their faith.’ These quotes reveal an underlying tension and also an obvious essentialist discourse on ethnicity and belonging. The minority is objectified and is considered a threat because it threatens ethnic homogeneity and thus contests the very essence of the nation, which is thought of as natural and taken for granted. To use the terms that Douglas (1966) has developed, minorities are thought of as impurities polluting the pure state; they are a symbolic danger threatening the discourse on which the nation is based. The power of naming (Muslims not Turks) and the use of pronouns are very significant. By insisting on calling them Greek Muslims, people symbolically reduce the threat. Overall, the discursive patterns identified in the news analysis were not symmetrically reproduced in the viewers’ interpretations. However, there were some similarities especially among those informants who had no alternative resources for finding out about the conflict. Thus, some interviewees reacted to the refugee issue as if it were a threat. The difference is that, while the news reports focused on the Greek speaking villages of southern Albania, the interviewees focused on Western Thrace and drew a parallel to the events in Kosovo.

Cultural intimacy In the context of discussions about media objectivity and the possibility of expressing different opinions about the conflict, some interviewees recalled the controversy with the former conservative minister Andrianopoulos and the article he wrote in the New York Times criticising the reporting of the Kosovo crisis in the Greek media. One interviewee, Sophia, noted that the problem with Adrianopoulos’ article was not that he actually wrote it but that he published it in the US: ‘[D]id

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he have to say this in America? Couldn’t he just say it in Greece?’ While Nicos added: ‘This is how a negative image is created about Greece.’ In order to make sense of the paradoxes, ambiguities and perplexity of the identities in Greece today – and in order to find a way to deal with the tension between essentialism and particularism – I borrow the term ‘cultural intimacy’ from the work of the anthropologist Herzfeld (1997). Cultural intimacy refers to the tensions between collective selfknowledge and collective self-representation. In other words, cultural intimacy refers to the cultural traits that define insiderhood but are also felt to be disapproved of by powerful outsiders and thus to ‘the aspects of cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment, but that nevertheless provide insiders with the assurance of their common sociality’ (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 3). The distinction between the public and the private is of paramount importance here. Although cultural intimacy is not particular to Greece (but rather present in most cultures in various guises and degrees), there are some particular features that shape the Greek version. An expression that casts light on this is a popular Greek saying ‘ta en oiko mi en dhimo’, which means that ‘the affairs of the house should not be brought into the public sphere’. Domesticity is commonly used as a metaphor for the nation in the Greek context. It is within the confines of the nationstate, ‘at home’ as it were, that dissent and rebelliousness are accepted as long as they are not brought into public display, to the attention of the outside world. In this context Greek people may refuse to pay their taxes, criticise the army and the government’s handling of the affairs with Turkey but will present (or will be expected to do so by fellow Greeks) a homogenous and harmonious identity to the outside world.15 Cultural intimacy allows for a dynamic conceptualisation of identity that accommodates contradiction and ambiguity. Perhaps the most appealing element of the concept is that it cannot be understood without taking the other (the ‘West’, ‘Europe’, ‘Turkey’) into account, as identity is performed differently at home, ‘internally’ and ‘externally’, in relation to the other. Thus, identity has to be understood in a comparative context and not in isolation. It is thus possible to attempt an explanation of these discursive shifts from openness to closure. During the airspace incident (an internal incident that also involved Cyprus) people were critical of the role of the Greek army, the relationship between Greece and Cyprus and the politics between Greece and Turkey. Such discourses are very different from the dominant discourse

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about Cyprus in the news when Cyprus was referred to as Meghalonisos, the ‘big island’ and Cyprus was part of ‘us’. In people’s discourses, however, Cyprus and Cypriots became ‘them’/’the others’. Conversely, in the Kosovo study, whenever the interviewees mentioned Cyprus spontaneously, it was in the context of ‘us’. Cyprus was incorporated into the symbolic national corpus in many of the respondents’ discourses. When discussing identity and difference ‘within the home,’ people were keen to contest the dominant discourse about the nation and its symbols. Conversely, a different discourse emerges when identity is challenged from the outside. During Kosovo, many Greeks felt they had to assert their identity to what they thought was a threat to their culture and identity from the outside.

Conclusions This chapter has observed a discursive oscillation in the reception of two instances of news reporting. Whilst the news discourse both in the airspace incident and the Kosovo crisis remained largely dominant in terms of representing the nation and identity, the viewers’ responses were evidently differentiated. During the airspace incident viewers expressed predominantly demotic, ‘open’ discourses about the nation and identity, while in the Kosovo case study some of the interviewees reverted to a more dominant discourse in line with the content of the news. How can we account for this discursive oscillation? As argued in the last section, cultural intimacy (Herzfeld, 1997) offers an interpretative framework for understanding these discursive shifts. By interpreting the airspace incident as an internal affair, viewers felt comfortable to criticise the dominant discourse found in the news. During Kosovo, however, many interviewees felt they had to embrace the dominant discourse and assert their identity in responding to an international conflict which they interpreted as a threat to their culture and identity from the outside. Another explanation for the discursive shifts is that of personal experience. Most interviewees who contested the content of the airspace incident reports did so by drawing on their own personal experiences (for example, their experience of compulsory military service or the events in Cyprus in 1974). This gave them the confidence and the authority to question the dominant discourse presented in the news. Conversely, the events in Kosovo were largely mediated in the sense that people had no direct experience of the conflict which they could then juxtapose to the news reports. This observation raises interesting points

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about the role of the media during war and conflicts, which are mediated par excellence (Allen and Seaton, 1999; Allan and Zelizer, 2004). It then emerges that the nationalism and dominant discourses about the nation in the news are not reproduced in a straightforward way. Such discourses are often challenged, although this contestation is not arbitrary but contingent on a number of factors. This chapter highlighted a few that make a difference when assessing media power: the degree of dependence on the media and the importance of direct, personal experience; and the relational aspect of discursive articulations, as one always needs to take account of the context in which and in relation to whom identities or discourses are articulated. All these parameters highlight once again that the media are more than texts; they are relationships between texts and audiences as well as audiences and historical, political and economic contexts. This understanding of the media as a process of mediation (Silverstone, 1999) is essential in answering the question about the role of the media in the reproduction of nationalism.

Notes 1. This chapter is part of a wider study that also included fieldwork with Turkish and Greek Cypriot people living in Athens; however, data from this part of the study cannot be presented here (but see Madianou, 2005). 2. Greece was the last country in the EU to deregulate its broadcasting system. This was a political and contingent decision rather than the product of planning and public policy (Papathanassopoulos, 1990, p. 387). 3. The respective EU mean for television news during the same period was 68 per cent, while for radio and newspapers it is 68 and 42 per cent respectively (Eurobarometer, 2000). 4. In 1999 the Internet connection rate was 6 per cent (Eurobarometer, 2000) and although this figure has improved significantly since, Greece continues to hold the lowest place in the EU in this area. 5. The dispute over the Imia islet in the Aegean Sea brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war in January 1996. 6. At the time of writing such an incident involved casualties when the Greek pilot died during an air-fight in the Aegean sea (23 May 2006). 7. For a discussion on the Cyprus problem, also in the context of Greek–Turkish relations see among others Mavratsas (2001). 8. All news and interview quotes are translated by the author. 9. A 12-month service in the army is compulsory for Greek men. 10. Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. 11. ‘Northern Epirus’ is how the part of south Albania where the Greek minority lives is popularly referred to in Greece.

116 Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics 12. There are many explanations for the public expression of solidarity towards Serbs during the Kosovo conflict. The two major themes – also evident in the analysis of the news reports and the interviews – are: a reaction towards what was perceived as interference by foreign powers into the domestic affairs of a neighbouring state (also expressed as anti-Americanism) and, second, a recognition of cultural and religious similarities between the Serbian and Greek populations, who are predominantly Orthodox Christian. Although the latter was often evoked in the news reports, given that cultural and religious ties have not always accounted for warm neighbourly relations (see the dispute over ‘Macedonia’), it was arguably the first interpretation that catalysed the identification with the Serbs. Greece has a history of foreign intervention in its domestic affairs that is often today expressed as anti-Americanism. For a critical appraisal of the role of Greek media during this conflict, see Madianou, 2005. 13. There is a sizeable Greek minority in Albania mainly concentrated in the south of the country neighbouring Greece (see note 11), which is a reminder of the multicultural legacy of the Ottoman Empire and that the borders that were subsequently drawn in the Balkans did not correspond to ethnic and linguistic boundaries. The news reports referred to in the text expressed a nationalist concern that the settlement of Kosovan refugees in southern Albania would undermine the Greek presence in the region. 14. Around £550. 15. Cultural intimacy bears a similarity to what Mouzelis has termed ‘reactive nationalism’ (Mouzelis, 1994, p. 41) referring to the Greek case. This type of nationalism is characterised by an almost paradoxical national identity that oscillates between the glorification of an ancient past and feelings of inferiority towards the ‘modern’. The result is a contradictory attitude towards the nation-state: patriotic sentiments are not linked with actual needs, obligations and practices at an everyday level. In other words, there is a discrepancy between how ‘Greek’ Greeks claim and are proud to be and the extent to which they fulfil their duties as Greek citizens (e.g. pay taxes).

Part II Discourse, Identity and Politics

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6 The Power of Metaphor: Consent, Dissent and Revolution Erik Ringmar

Political discourse is necessarily profoundly metaphorical; the language of politics is knee-deep in and entirely shot through by different metaphorical uses. This should not surprise us. Politics, after all, is the art of using power in order to achieve social goals. While some power can be exercised through the army and the police, far more can be accomplished – and more easily and cheaply – through the power of language. Metaphors give you power since they help to organise social life in a certain fashion. Metaphors tell you what things are and how they hang together; metaphors define the relationship between superiors and subordinates and between social classes; they identify social problems and their solutions and tell us what is feasible, laudable and true. Perversely, metaphors make sense of things not by telling us what they are but instead by telling us what things they are like. My love is emphatically not a ‘red, red rose’ but there is nevertheless something about love and about roses which makes it possible to compare the two. What we do when making sense of this image is to draw on the meanings which roses have in our culture; anything we have ever seen or heard about them; the role they play in horticulture, social conventions, in art or in poetry. The rose in question is surrounded by what we could refer to as a ‘system of reverberations’. By comparing our love to a rose, certain aspects of this system are highlighted; certain reverberations are picked out and in the process ‘my love’ becomes one certain thing rather than another. Compare the way in which metaphors exercise power. No one can say what ‘society’ or ‘the state’ really are. In fact, societies and states are not ‘really’ anything at all. Yet they come to be something rather than nothing as they are compared to other things which they are not. 119

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Once a particular definition is firmly established, it will influence our thoughts and our actions; it will guide and shape our presuppositions and our theories; it will make some things possible and others impossible. Say, for example, that the members of a political elite manage to convince a sufficiently large number of people to embrace a metaphor which identifies society as sharply hierarchical and social positions as rigidly fixed. Once this metaphor is perfectly accepted, it will simply describe ‘the way things are’ and as a result it cannot be questioned or altered. The more entrenched the metaphor, the more invisible the exercise of power and the more secure the position of the elites. In this situation a political dissenter has two basic options. The first is to elaborate on the accepted metaphors and explore their reverberations, looking for alternative and if possible more subversive interpretations. This is an internal form of critique which takes the existence of a certain world-view for granted but which seeks to explore the potentials it contains. Such an internal critique may be limited in scope but this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes very radical demands indeed can be formulated from within a dominant metaphor. The second and more obviously subversive option is to seek to replace the dominant metaphor with an alternative which is more congenial to the dissenter’s outlook and aims. Yet such a metaphorical replacement is necessarily difficult to accomplish. The people who benefit from the existence of a particular metaphor will naturally insist on its validity and inevitability. And people at large will often defer to tradition and to the powers-that-be. This chapter develops this understanding of metaphors. The first task is to provide an inventory of metaphors which traditionally have been used to create political consent. The second section discusses the ways in which dissenters can elaborate on established metaphors in order to create a discursive space for alternative interpretations. The third section discusses the ways in which revolutionaries may establish radically new metaphorical usages.

A dictionary of consent Actor This metaphor gained prominence in the Renaissance and it is still commonly invoked today (Apostolidès, 1985; Nye, 2004; Review of International Studies, 2004; Ringmar, 2006a). The state is an ‘actor’ on the ‘world stage’ – the state is ‘playing a role’ and ‘inter-acting’ with

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other states. The implication is that the state is a unified entity to whom actions can be ascribed and as such it can be compared to a human being. Just like humans, states formulate preferences which they act in order to satisfy. The state-as-actor has a ‘national interest’ which its foreign policy is designed to further. The formulation of such an interest limits dissent. As political leaders never tire of explaining, we can only ‘defend our place on the world stage’ if we all unite behind the official policy. In the early modern period the state was always personified by the king. This was literally the case in the plays, masques and ritual jousts put on at court, in which the king himself would play a part. On the small stage of the king’s palace, the events on the large stage of the world were given a theatrical form. In the persona of Pax, the king would conclude an advantageous peace or, as Mars, he would defeat an enemy. Much in the same way summit meetings and international conferences are today used as stages on which political leaders can be seen acting and interacting with each other. By watching these dramas unfold, newspaper readers and TV viewers are taught what world politics is about; they form allegiances to certain actors and their political goals. Body In the Middle Ages the body metaphor applied above all to the Christian church (Cassirer, 1946; de Baecque, 1997; Gierke, 1996; Kantorowitz, 1957; Ringmar, 2007; de Tocqueville, 1945). Or to be more precise, the Church had two bodies – one temporal and one transcendental; one which human beings belonged to while still on Earth and another which they belonged to eternally in heaven. Jesus Christ was in charge of the eternal church and the Pope was in charge of the temporal. With the rise of the state as a sovereign entity in the Renaissance, this corporal language was gradually secularised and given a political application. The state also consequently came to be given two bodies – one temporal and one transcendental – and its subjects were simultaneously members of both. In its temporal capacity the state was made up of institutions and agencies staffed by officials but in addition the state was a transcendental idea. This was the Staat as guided by the Weltgeist of history, la France éternelle or the government enshrined in the principles of the American constitution. The body metaphor provides a convincing solution to the problem of social order. As the metaphor makes clear, the different parts of society are, just like the different parts of the body, intimately related

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and organically unified. Each social class corresponds to a bodily organ: the aristocracy is the ‘arm’, the clergy the ‘heart’ and the peasants or merchants the ‘stomach’. And naturally the person ruling over this ‘body politic’ becomes the caput or the ‘head of state’. As the metaphor makes clear, social diversity is not a problem but instead a requirement for social order to be established. It is precisely because groups and classes have different functions that they come to depend on each other. After all, if we all were the same there would be no reason for us to stay together. Equality of status leads to isolation and eventually to indifference and to the break-up of social life. The body metaphor is not necessarily repressive. It does not legitimate unlimited kingship since the king in practice always will have to investigate the condition of the heart or stomach or feet before reaching a decision. On the other hand, the metaphor makes conflicts quite inconceivable. Social groups and classes cannot be at war with each other for the same reason that one hand cannot fight the other or the heart rebel against the stomach. Instead groups and classes depend on one another for the proper functioning of the whole. The body metaphor, in other words, provides little place for politics; there is nothing much for the various body parts to discuss; there is only one head and one will. Business corporation This metaphor is popular among some contemporary politicians, in particular those with a business background (BBC News, 2001; Beckett, 2000; Collins and Butler, 2003). Having made their fortune, they come into politics promising to run the country as ‘efficiently as they ran their companies’. Most commonly this implies that the state bureaucracy should be streamlined and ‘unprofitable’ sectors should be cut back. People should stop wasting time on discussions and instead subject themselves to ‘the discipline of the marketplace’. Not surprisingly this metaphor is particularly attractive during times of political stalemate or economic decline. It is worth reminding ourselves that, although business corporations are actors in economic markets, they are not themselves markets. Business corporations are hierarchical systems of authority and subordination. Bosses are not buying the services of their staff but instead ordering them about. A corporation is emphatically not a democratic institution. Although a good boss naturally should consult with the people working for him, he is the one who makes the decisions. The implications for politics should be obvious.

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Congregation This metaphor transposes the image of the religious community onto the political community (Apostolidès, 1985; Frazer, 1994; Mishra, 2004; Sergeev & Biryukov, 1994). The faithful united in prayer come to be equated with the subjects united under the king and the authority of the king is juxtaposed with divine authority. The metaphorical linkage here goes through the figure of the priest, who in Catholicism is regarded as God’s representative and as a mediator to the divine. Thus the priest-king may claim to have been chosen by God or to have special miraculous powers such as the power to heal. His sovereignty is the sovereignty of omnipotence; his commands are commandments and his subjects are believers. There is obviously no arguing with this kind of a ruler. But there are other ways of imagining a religious community. The imperial Russian, and later Soviet, definition of society drew heavily from the Orthodox notion of the sobor. In the Russian church the congregation as a whole stood before God and the priest was neither a representative of God nor a mediator to the divine. This reduced the power of the priest but it strengthened the demand for unity. Soviet leaders drew on this cultural predisposition in order to silence opposition. By contrast the Buddhist religious community – the sangha – has inspired quasi-democratic decision-making procedures. Since Buddhism has no God, Buddhist priests are neither representatives nor mediators. Unity is not a requirement among Buddhist laymen since no one is tested on their religious beliefs. The political community understood as a sangha is self-ruling and egalitarian. And while this metaphor, as one would expect, often has been ignored in practice, it has nevertheless served as a source of political dissent. Family The family is an obvious metaphor to apply to social life (Englund, 1989; Lakoff, 1996; Trägårdh, 2002). Although families vary greatly across time and space, we all have a family of some kind or another and the interaction which takes place within it provides a basic model for how relations in society at large should be conceived. Again we are dealing with a metaphor which combines biological and hierarchical principles. Rulers have often found it expedient to define themselves as ‘fathers’ of the countries they rule and their subjects as ‘children’ of varying ages, genders and states of maturity. The father in the state, as in all traditional families, is the one who makes decisions and other family members are not supposed to question his judgement.

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Yet fathers should not be tyrants. Their first obligation is to care for the members of their family and to make sure that they are happy and well fed. In addition they should educate their dependents and prepare them for whatever challenges lie ahead. The ruler is a pater and the state which has children as its subjects is necessarily paternalistic. The paternalistic state thinks, plans and acts on behalf of the people; it disciplines and regulates people in order to protect them from the unexpected and the disastrous as well as from themselves. In the paternalistic state, just as in the family, care is inseparable from control. Families live in homes and the state understood as a family lives in the home constituted by the nation. Compare the Japanese kokka, the ‘national home’, or the Swedish folkhem, the ‘home of the people’. Understood as a home, the state becomes an institution based on genealogical criteria. The Japanese state was redefined on familial terms in the 1890s and it was only as a result that it started to make sense for Japanese soldiers to give their lives to the emperor. Similarly, the Swedish state employed various practices of eugenics well into the 1960s. This was a socialist-national form of racism rather than a national-socialist. The national home had no place for people who were too obviously alien. Garden This metaphor is another early modern favourite – compare the obsession with gardens which spread across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Englund, 1989; Milton, 2005; Schama, 1995). When applied to the state, the metaphor expressed a desire for order combined with a stress on social hierarchy. Social classes corresponded to trees and plants of various sizes, appearances and degrees of rarity. Aristocrats were like old oak trees, while peasants were like the wheat they themselves produced. Some of this language is still with us. Compare our contemporary references to ‘grass roots’ organisations. The king was the gardener, who planned and maintained the garden. Plants, just like human beings, were given by nature but in order to reach their full potential they first had to be ‘cultivated’ – ‘watered’, ‘pruned’ and ‘fertilised’. The state was the greenhouse in which such cultivation took place. In his garden the king created order and beauty and allowed some plants the space to grow, while others were cut back. He was particularly attentive to weeds and to plants that grew away from their allotted place and he made sure to cut off branches or to pull up plants that were diseased. If not, pests, mites and fungus might spread to other parts of the garden.

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Machine The machine metaphor suddenly gained in popularity in the seventeenth-century as a result of a new fascination with mechanical gadgetry of all kinds, above all clockworks (Hobbes, 1985; Hirschman, 1977; Koselleck, 1988; Mayr, 1986; Meinecke, 1998; Mumford, 1964; Ringmar, 2007). If the state is a machine, then the various parts of society become the levers, springs and cogwheels of which the machine is constructed. This metaphor also continues to be invoked. We still speak of ‘bureaucratic machineries’, the ‘wheels of administration’ and of ‘social engineering’. Enlightened autocrats were particularly fond of the machine metaphor. Just like the body, the machine combined a functional differentiation of parts with the need for social co-operation. Since the various components of society are radically different from each other, it is only through co-operation that they can attain their purpose. A refusal to put the collective interest above the individual interest is selfdefeating. At the same time not all parts are equally important. While some of the components are easily replaced, others are unique and crucial to its operations. All components should fit neatly with each other and any wheel that squeaks must be oiled or replaced. The state-as-machine may seem to have more repressive implications than the state-as-body. After all, machines are impossible to engage in conversation; machines are cold and heartless. For many of those who have confronted the state this mechanical power is only too real. Yet the machine metaphor also implies constitutionalism. After all, machines have to operate according to some definite and quite impersonal rules. This means that the ruler becomes a clockmaker or an engineer whose main job it is to oversee the operations of the machine. As such the machine comes to work quite independently of the ruler’s personal will and whims. There are laws of statecraft, similar to laws of mechanics, which the king has to follow in order to maintain the state in good working order and himself in power. As the theorists of enlightened absolutism made clear, the state and the king are both governed by reason and this raison d’état can at least in principle be objectively defined and calculated. In this way the machine metaphor served as a check on absolutist power. Not surprisingly the regimes where the metaphor was most popular – Prussia and Austria, in particular – were also the states which first granted rights to their subjects. Constitutional documents, pioneered in these Rechtsstaaten, were taken as the blueprints for the construction of the machineries of state.

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Musical performance In East Asia, the metaphor of harmony – wa in Japanese, he in Chinese – has always played an important role (Fei, 1992; Itô, 1998; Jullien, 2000; Pocock, 1989; Watson, 1993). Harmony is produced by the sound of instruments that are well integrated with each other. Each instrument plays its own tune but it is their combination which makes the music enjoyable. Harmony requires people to co-ordinate their actions; no discordant voices or awkward squeals should be heard. In both China and Japan the emperor was the conductor who made sure everyone played the same tune. In Europe similar metaphors have been invoked. Europeans too after all are supposed to ‘keep pace’ with each other and ‘sing from the same hymn-sheet’. In a state organised as a musical performance adjustments will happen more or less by themselves. It is above all other participants who notice when someone sings out of tune or behaves gracelessly. Overt repression is for that reason not required, instead some mild form of social disapproval is usually sufficient to set the clumsy performer straight. Here politics is not something that you talk about but instead something that you do. Politics is not about discussions and no confrontations between opposing views are possible. People can certainly object to the music but this is always going to be an aesthetic rather than a political judgement. Music, strikingly, has no contraries. Although you may object to a certain tune, there is no way of contradicting it. In a society where harmony is the highest social goal, there can be no dissent, only correct or incorrect performances. Ship Before the nineteenth century ships were the main vehicles of travel, trade and geographical discovery. In the Renaissance, in particular, the image of the intrepid sea-captain sailing off into the unknown captured people’s imagination and many contemporary authors fancied themselves as passengers on these ships. Not surprisingly, the ship-ofstate was another early modern favourite (de Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak, 1999; Machiavelli, 1983; More, 1965). As the proponents of this metaphor made clear, the ship has a captain – the king – and passengers and crew members of varying dignity and rank. The separate decks on which they live are sealed off from each other. The authority of the king-as-captain is absolute, he determines the direction in which the boat is sailing and mutinies are dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. At the same time everyone is dependent on the contributions of all others – they are ‘all in the same boat’

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– and this is particularly the case if the weather is bad and the ocean stormy. As the kings never tired of point out, it was only by following their direction that they could ‘get off the shoals’, ‘onto an even keel’ and ‘avoid treacherous rocks’. Team This is a contemporary metaphor invoked by politicians of a populist streak (Semino and Masci, 1996; Russo, 2001). ‘Italy is a team’, such a politician might say, and we all have to ‘work together’ in order to ‘win’. ‘Winning’ here is usually taken to mean ‘to be economically successful’ or ‘to remain in the top division of successful countries’. We can do it, we are assured, as along as we ‘think as a team’ and ‘never give up’, ‘Forza Italia – Go Italy!’ This metaphor also makes an appeal to unity and deference. Individual efforts make a difference to the outcome but self-serving behaviour is not allowed. Everyone has to be a ‘team player’ and cooperate for the benefit of the team as a whole. At the same time players have different ranks and abilities. Some are important goal scorers or play-makers, while others are far more easily replaced. The coach – the prime minister – is the one who selects the players and decides on the tactics – although some consultations with the players certainly may take place. A sports team, however, is not a democracy. Zoological collection There is a long-standing metaphorical connection between political power and exotic animals (Burckhardt, 1958; Foucault, 1982; Fu, 1996; Ringmar, 2006b). Already in medieval times kings used to keep rare beasts at their courts – lions, leopards, eagles, elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes. The awe inspired by such curious collections helped exalt the position of the rulers. All European monarchies used lions in their heraldry and put up statues of lions outside palaces and government offices. Some republics did the same – Finland is one example – while other republics considered lions to be tainted by their monarchical associations and preferred instead large birds of prey – compare the American bald eagle. Also in the animal kingdom there are differences of rank. In the popular image, ‘the lion is the king of the animals’ and the king is for that reason ‘the lion among men’. By contrast, most ordinary people are compared to some herding animal of little or no individuality – most commonly sheep. Ordinary people sound like sheep, are scared like sheep and like sheep they let themselves be led to the slaughter.

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Varying the metaphor and giving it a pastoral interpretation, the king becomes a shepherd who looks after his sheep, protecting them from ferocious animals and finding pastures for them. Such pastoral power of care and control is similar to the power of the father. See Family above. In imperial China, scholars of the Legalist school compared the emperor to a huntsman. The emperor hunted down his enemies; some he killed and consumed immediately, others he domesticated and kept as chattel. To assist him in these tasks he had his eagles – the state officials and his secret agents – who tracked down the prey and prepared it for the kill. A main task was to exterminate the ‘five vermin of the state’ – scholars, freelance politicians, independent knights, persons with connections to senior officials and merchants/craftsmen. What these groups had in common was the fact that they had access to independent bases of power – ideas, money, weapons – and for this reason alone they were seen as challenges to imperial supremacy.

Metaphorical elaboration The metaphors in this short inventory describe society in a meaningful and more or less complete manner. With their help we make the world make sense. The consent we give to the established social and political order – and to the elites who dominate it – is merely a by-product of this general quest for meaningfulness. Yet consent is not produced in all cases. There will always be those who for one reason or another disagree with the established order of things. Such dissenters may conclude that society is unfair, that the direction of social life must be altered and its elites overthrown. In order to be successful in these tasks the dissenters need access to power. Organisational resources and manpower are certainly crucial in this respect – sometimes also soldiers and guns – but in addition they need power over language. A way has to be found of replacing, or at least questioning, the entries in the official inventory of metaphors. One strategy here is what we could call metaphorical elaboration. Metaphors, we said, are interpreted as one system of reverberations is made to interact with another. Thus a word like ‘the state’ means nothing until we confront it with the reverberations associated with some other thing to which it is compared. Yet only parts of these systems are ever employed. Many, perhaps most, reverberations are left unused since they are plainly inapplicable, ridiculous or perverse. Thus we may nod approvingly when someone identifies the state as a ‘busi-

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ness corporation’ but still shake our heads if they go on to talk about the ‘lunch room’ or the ‘water-cooler’ of the state. Businesses have lunch rooms and water-coolers but states, by common consent, do not. The fact that large parts of any system of reverberations remain unemployed opens an opportunity for political dissenters. By investigating these unused references and by making them explicit, they can encourage people to think differently about the metaphors through which they organise their lives. People can be invited to discover more about their world-views and to think more creatively about themselves. If nothing else, dissenters can make fun of the official language and thereby seek to denaturalise it. The great advantage of this strategy is that no fundamental shift in metaphorical commitments is required. There is no need to radically change people’s perceptions. The official metaphors are not replaced, only tweaked, recoded and decentred. Consider briefly the following two examples: Mutiny on the ship of state The well-established image of the ‘ship-of-state’ provides interesting opportunities for dissenters to explore (Walzer, 1965). One obvious possibility here is to dispute the direction in which the ship is going. Perhaps the king is ignoring the safest or most direct route, missing a safe harbour or perhaps he is running the ship onto a rocky shore. Another possibility is to make comments on the weather. If the argument can be made that a big storm is approaching, then maybe everyone would be better off abandoning the ship or at least abandoning the rigidly hierarchical division of labour which characterises interaction onboard. Another possibility is to question the unlimited powers granted to the captain. Mutiny has of course always been regarded as a crime and in early modern Europe it was punishable by death. However, as the law of the seas also made clear, crew members and even passengers had a right to question the judgement of the captain if they could prove that he was drunk, insane or otherwise incapacitated. Indeed, under such circumstances it was their obligation to relieve the captain of his responsibilities. Not surprisingly this was the precise argument relied on by several early modern dissenters. Weeds in the garden Similar strategies can be employed in the case of the state understood as a garden (Englund, 1989; Gernet, 1999). There are different kinds of gardening after all, governed by different aesthetic sensibilities. Like the Daoist recluses of ancient China we could alter the value given to

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different plants and compare ourselves not to stately oaks but instead to withered old pine trees clinging on to mountain-sides. Or we could prefer the hardy grass to the frail flowers, the indigenous flora to the exotic and the rough to the too highly cultivated. After all, weeds have a power and a beauty unto themselves. We could even argue that the garden should be left to its own devices. Before long it will be completely overgrown and eventually it will revert back to nature. Anarchists prefer anarchic gardening! Political dissenters would also do well to explore the gardens of other countries than their own. Comparing various European traditions we find that there is a rough analogy between the repressive tendencies of politicians and the repressive tendencies of gardeners. The more liberal the regime, the more freely growing the plants. The gardens of the rulers of autocratic regimes are more regimented, with clearer borders and more tightly pruned hedges, than the gardens of constitutional monarchs. Compare the gardens of Versailles with those of Windsor. Not surprisingly a French radical like Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarded English garden art as a far better metaphor for social life. Another way of creatively re-imagining too-well-entrenched metaphors is to look for ways of expanding the system of reverberations to which they refer. Rather than being content with the existing set of possible interpretations, we try to come up with new ones. With more and new reverberations to chose from, new ways of conceptualising politics become available. Any new development can help in this respect – social, cultural or legal changes, scientific discoveries or new technical inventions. The role of the dissenter is to point these changes out to the general public and to explain what political implications they have. In this way the interpretation of society will change as the result of completely unrelated changes taking place elsewhere. Again consider two examples. Divorcing the familial state In early modern Europe the received interpretation of the patriarchal state was profoundly undermined as a result of changes in the definition of the family. According to the Protestant interpretation of the Bible, marriage was not a sacrament but instead a contract freely entered into by two independent parties. If one of the parties violated the terms, the contract could be annulled. The political implications of this reconceptualisation are obvious and they were quickly identified by seventeenth-century Puritans as they rebelled against the paternalistic English state (Walzer, 1965). Or as French revolutionaries argued in

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1789, if the father is tyrannical enough, ‘patricide’ may indeed be justified (Koselleck, 1988). Such a crime may bring the ‘brothers’ more closely to each other and thus constitute the basis for a new form of ‘fraternity’. Even after the father was beheaded, in other words, the metaphor lived on. Contemporary redefinitions have altered the meaning of the family metaphor at least as radically (Lakoff, 1996). Families are today quite egalitarian; their members are regarded as separate individuals with their own wants and aspirations; they discuss things together and reach decisions through consensual methods. Not surprisingly a contemporary society modelled on a family will allow a great measure of debate and dissent. The power of patriarchy has also weakened as a result of the increase in divorce rates. Today mothers rather than fathers provide the unifying force which keeps families together. Compare the feminisation of the state, which is evident at least in some countries in northern Europe. Here women constitute an everlarger proportion of the state’s workforce as well as of its leading decision-makers. New deal at work Business corporations have changed too, at least in Europe. Companies are today less hierarchical, more democratic and more participatory. One trend here is what Germans call Mitbestimmung, or co-determination, whereby representatives of the workforce are asked to join in crucial decisions and trade union officials are given legally guaranteed representation on corporate boards. A political dissenter may point to these changes and encourage people to re-evaluate the state-as-business metaphor. A prime minister-cum-CEO who fails to understand these shifts may be offered a ‘severance package’ by the citizen-shareholders. Another contemporary trend points to the end of traditional notions of a career (Capelli, 1999). Employees are no longer staying with their companies as long as was the case in the 1950s or 60s; people work on shorter contracts, they switch jobs more often and often shape their careers outside of corporate ladders. Employees, in short, are more demanding and more independent; if they do not like a particular company, they leave. Compare the far more tenuous relationship which many people have developed with the countries to which they ostensibly belong. This trend is most obvious within the European Union. If you do not like the country where you were born, you simply go elsewhere. As a result you are inevitably less likely to bother with politics, to engage with social issues and local concerns.

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Metaphorical replacement The alternative option open to a political dissenter is to try to break with contemporary uses and come up with completely new metaphors through which society and the state can be conceptualised (Ringmar, 2006a). However, it is obviously very difficult to successfully carry out such a metaphorical replacement. What needs to be changed are not only people’s opinions but also the basic categories in which their opinions are lodged. Most people do not want to have their worldviews undermined in this manner – and this resistance may often include people for whom an alternative metaphorical conception would constitute a great improvement. Moreover, the people who benefit the most from the contemporary social order are also the ones who are best placed to block any changes. And still, despite the odds, metaphorical reversals do occasionally happen. Consider briefly two examples. Construction site Modern politics began when naturalistic metaphors were replaced by constructivist ones. That is, instead of seeing society as a natural organism – a body, family or garden – or as an impersonal mechanical device, it came to be regarded as something man-made, something constructed, most commonly as some kind of a building (Arendt, 1977; Becker, 1932; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Tully, 1980; Vico, 1986). This metaphorical switch opened up a world of exciting new possibilities for political entrepreneurs to explore. If society is a building made by us, we should be able to fully understand it, including the most obscure of its nooks and crannies. And the better we understand society, the better we will be at reconstructing it in accordance with our preferred design. Politics, governed by this metaphor, will be a question of drawing up ever more appealing blueprints which can be presented to our fellow citizens. Political conflicts, accordingly, will be a question of which among many competing plans that should be implemented. The rationalistic pretensions of this metaphor should be obvious. The construction plans are drawn up by us, not by God or by tradition, and there is in principle no limit to the kinds of projects we can decide to embark on. Before we can start building, however, we need building materials and we need machinery but above all we need an opportunity to impose our plans on society taken as a whole. To this end we need access to state power since only the state can coerce people into following the instructions we give them. The state, with its monopoly

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on the legitimate use of violence, is the contractor with the greatest entrepreneurial capability. Controlling the state becomes crucial if you want to see your plans implemented. Obviously, if the projects are particularly ambitious, some pretty serious forms of coercion may be required. Cybernetic device The other main metaphor of modern politics conceptualises society as a self-organising mechanism or what we could call a ‘cybernetic device’. The idea of self-organisation gained popularity thanks to early modern inventions like the thermostat and Watt’s famous steam engine. In Newton’s cosmology the universe itself was understood as a self-organising system. Order here, as in all cybernetic systems, was produced through the interaction of contradictory forces – whereby a push in one direction automatically triggered a pull in the other direction, which restored the overall balance. This was also the model famously adopted by Adam Smith in his description of the economic system as governed by an ‘invisible hand’, a metaphor he had initially applied to Newtonian cosmology – as ‘the invisible hand of Jupiter’ – in an early essay. The economic system, Smith explained, maintains itself in balance as the self-serving actions of one party are counteracted through the self-serving actions of another party. The cybernetic metaphor is appealing in many respects. As it makes clear, little central direction or repression is required. In a self-organising society people are able to settle their differences by themselves. Diversity is not a threat but instead a precondition for social order to be established; the mutual antagonism of opposing interests and groups is what keeps society in balance. Outside intervention by a ‘balancer’ such as the state risks jeopardising this decentralised harmonisation. In a society which regulates itself, the king can be abolished and the state scaled back. This is the liberal idea of ‘freedom’, the freedom to pursue one’s own interests constrained only by other actors who pursue theirs. The main problem is the distribution of resources which self-regulation requires. If some people or groups have far less than others, their preferences and aspirations will play no role in determining the overall outcome. Meanwhile any redistribution of resources violates the requirement of self-equilibration which the metaphor stipulates. Constructivism and self-organisation are the two main metaphors of the modern era. It is with their help more than anything that contemporary politics has come to be conceptualised. Yet the metaphors are at

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the same time incompatible with each other. For each individual this is not immediately obvious since the plans he or she makes readily can be combined with self-organisation on a social level (Hayek, 1988). If we let each person build whatever buildings they like, our cities will simply become the aggregate of all these buildings. The problem arises when both metaphors simultaneously are taken to apply to social life in the aggregate. If someone tries to reconstruct society as a whole, individuals will have to be convinced, coerced or cajoled into contributing to the common project. Compare the proverbial clash between central planners and the laissez-faire market. The old Soviet Union was a gigantic construction site on which the Communist Party tried to erect its vision of the future; the free-market, as described by American libertarians, is a cybernetic device with which politicians tamper only at their peril. Although most societies have sought to strike some balance between these two models of social organisation, this has been notoriously difficult to do. The metaphors do not mix very well. Rather than trying to combine them, they have been applied sequentially – to different sectors of society or perhaps to the same sector over the course of time. Over the last thirty or so years, the self-organising metaphor has gradually become more influential than the constructivist. Regardless of the contradictions between them, both metaphors constituted radical breaks with previous ways of conceptualising society. The question is how and why they came to be accepted. An obvious answer is that the respective metaphors were backed by powerful groups employing a powerful rhetoric. In the eighteenth century, philosophers and radical reformers did everything in their power to convince people to tear down the ancièns régimes, maintained only by the force of prejudice and the inertia of tradition. Similarly the proponents of cybernetic models, often sponsored by assorted right-wing think-tanks, have recently launched campaigns against the ‘central planning’ and ‘socialism’ which the constructivist metaphor is said to imply. Yet it is obvious that the real causes of the metaphorical revolutions are to be found in far deeper social, economic and cultural changes. In both cases the revolutionaries benefited from developments which they in no way can be said to have been responsible for. Above all their success depended on a gradual undermining of the previously dominant metaphors. The world had changed in ways the official rhetoric had been unable to notice. As a result society and its representation in thought had become ever more separated. Again this is a consequence

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of the logic of metaphors. Since metaphors highlight certain aspects of reality while hiding others, there will always be things which we fail to see; there will be dark corners, as it were, which our concepts cannot illuminate. If dramatic economic, social or cultural changes take place in these dark corners, outside of the purview of the metaphor, the official interpretations will become less and less relevant. Eventually they can simply be brushed aside. Hence the unexpected ease with which the old regime in France – and in the Soviet Union – eventually were toppled. What really determined the success of the constructivist metaphor was thus not the rhetoric of the eighteenth-century philosophers but rather the dramatic social, cultural and economic changes taking place at the time. The construction-site metaphor became believable inter alia because of the weakening of the intellectual hegemony of the Church; the success of rationalistic science; the commercial, financial and industrial revolutions; the creation of new media, including printing presses; and the emergence of the state as an entrepreneurial power. Similarly, the cybernetic metaphor gained credibility above all as a result of the all too obvious failures of constructivism. After all, the constructivist plans rarely worked out the way they were intended. Many of the buildings were quite impossible to realise and far too many people died on the construction sites. The buildings, even if completed, turned out to be impossible to live in, to alter or refurnish, and in any case the constructivist projects always gave far too much power to the architects and the contractors.

The making and unmaking of consent No one lives in the world as it ‘really is’. There are no such real worlds. Instead everyone lives in a world that is interpreted and made meaningful, with meaning created by comparing things to things they are not. Meaning is made through metaphor. The metaphors applied to social life determine how interpersonal relations are defined and how political authority and economic resources are distributed. In this way metaphors come to exercise power. Since different metaphors interpret the world differently, it makes a great difference which metaphors a society has come to embrace. For each individual the situation never presents itself in quite this way. The world we are born into is already made meaningful for us; it is pre-interpreted and, as we come to master the interpretative codes of our societies, we come to accept these meanings. Metaphors constitute

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the conceptual furniture of our everyday lives which we use without thinking too much or too deeply about. Very occasionally, however, even the sturdiest conceptual furniture breaks; the metaphors stop making sense if they are stretched too far. A broken, over-stretched metaphor has to be replaced by another. This accounts for the revolutionary shifts that take place in the history of our societies; a political revolution is a consequence rather than a cause of these revolutions in metaphor. Yet such metaphorical replacements are quite impossible to consciously bring about. Metaphorical shifts – from organic to constructivist metaphors, say – are always deeply embedded in large-scale social, economic and epistemological transformations. Such transformations cannot be carried out by individuals, no matter how fervently they try. Metaphorical revolutions are rare and if we hope to take part in one we will almost always be disappointed. The alternative open to dissenters is to take the world as it is presented to them – to accept the leading metaphors of our age as good enough but to reinterpret them in a subversive fashion. The aim is to explore and expand the systems of reverberations looking for ways to undermine, recode and decentre the accepted meanings. This may sound like a limited, reformist agenda and this may indeed be the case. Yet very powerful statements can often be made in this way and since they use rather than seek to replace existing metaphors, this is a strategy which is far more likely to meet with success.

7 Post-Liberal Anxieties and Discourses of Peoplehood in Europe: Nationalism, Xenophobia and Racism Gerard Delanty and Peter Millward

The demise of a liberal political culture is a feature of contemporary Europe which has not been fully recognised in academic thought. Liberal values have been the basis of the nation-state since the latter part of the nineteenth century and have defined the modern idea of peoplehood, which refers to a broadly civic conception of the people as coinciding with a nation. The essential unity of liberal projects has given way to multiple political streams. With these come new ideas of peoplehood which present new challenges for European societies. The liberal values of equality, tolerance and secularism need to be rethought in a way that is more fitting with cosmopolitan challenges that reflect different conceptions of peoplehood. If rigid liberal values do not mirror the flexibilities of the multicultural era, illiberalism and xenophobic anxieties may develop. If Europe is to overcome such challenges, a new political imaginary will have to be created out of the disparate and often colliding political currents of the present post-liberal age. The Europe of today is caught between remaining within a postliberalism of uncertainty and embracing a more cosmopolitan view of itself. This chapter will explore the relationship between liberalism and xenophobia to expose the role of ‘everyday’ discourses of racism in shaping widespread prejudices. We would like to start this chapter by briefly outlining the liberal conception of peoplehood.

The Liberal idea of peoplehood From the middle of the nineteenth century European societies moved in the direction of a liberal self-understanding through the dynamics 137

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of nation-state formation and a progressive democratisation through an active civil society. The main features of the liberal political values are worth discussing since the consequences remain. First, liberalism has been branded by strong confidence in the virtue of tolerance. This has been particularly the case in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since Locke, but is more generally a feature of European liberalism. The concern with tolerance was principally encouraged in the context of religious liberty. In this sense, the right to worship freely produced many modern liberties. In those political traditions influenced by French revolutionary republicanism, the notion of tolerance has been reconciled with the principle of secularism, which is the separation of church and state. The main tension in this was where the line was drawn, but for many traditions there was no basic conflict. Religion was privatised and in some political traditions (such as Britain and most Scandinavian countries) it was brought under the political control of the state. In general, the constitutional conservatism that forms much of the liberal heritage was inspired by the development of tolerance toward other faiths. Regardless of where European countries were located on the scale of secular republicanism and constitutional conservatism, all shared this aspect of the liberal philosophy. This is also true of political Catholicism since the 1870s. Indeed, the modern age is marked by the liberal recognition of free worship. Second, the assumption of a separation of private and public was related to the principle of tolerance. This was stricter in the republican tradition and assumed a more expansive role for the domain of the state, which included much of the public realm. In this tradition, religion belonged in the private domain. However, many countries, such as the Netherlands, are based on a mix of republicanism, liberalism and constitutional conservatism. In the Dutch case the private sphere is a larger domain of individual liberties and includes much of what, in the Jacobin tradition, is the sphere of the state. For example, in the Dutch case, school education is largely privately funded, while in the French tradition the institution of the school belongs to the state. This may also be called economic liberalism and has been associated with the ideas of John Hobbes and Adam Smith. Third, liberalism was closely related to the idea of national culture because it was based on the assumption of the essential unity of those people who constitute the political community of the state. This highlights the mutual interdependence of modern nationalism and liberalism, in that both share basic beliefs in the principle of self-determination, the idea that a people should rule itself and that every people

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conscious of itself as a nation should have a state. Therefore the idea of freedom from external force was linked to a notion of the independence of the political subject. The nation-state gave rise to a notion of peoplehood defined in at least four ways: politically the people are a sovereign body who exercised their power through democracy; through national citizenship peoplehood was defined legally in terms of its relation to the state established by rights and duties; a cultural definition of peoplehood arose as a result of ethnic homogenisation and which was the basis of national identity for most nations, and, finally, through the welfare state the people were socially engineered. We have drawn attention to these aspects of the liberal heritage in order to highlight some features of a conception of peoplehood that has existed for some time and which is now losing some of its relevance. Before developing this further, a point of clarification needs to be made. Our argument is not that the liberal political tradition of the modern nation-state has been inherently exclusionary. In the view of many, the nation-state was the principal, hegemonic order and institutional form in which liberal values were developed but which has since given way to transnational forces and emergent forms of governance (Wimmer, 2002). Peoplehood and nationhood have been closely linked but, as John Lie argues, this does not mean that systematic exclusion is necessarily the basis of all kinds of modern peoplehood (Lie, 2004). Whilst liberalism and the nation-state certainly tended towards hegemony, they did not succeed in overcoming what Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) has called the radical imagination and the institutional order. This can be considered to be the fundamental conflict at the heart of modernity. Claude Lefort (1986) has also argued that no political order has fully captured the modern social space, which has remained radically open. The tension that characterises this – between openness and closure – is one of the defining features of modernity (Delanty, 1998). The liberal project certainly established closure on the openness of modernity’s first major transformation. Nonetheless, this did not eradicate openness, not least because of the multitude of projects within liberal modernity. In the contemporary movement away from national securities toward so-called transnational freedoms, we must remember that such dilemmas are located in the context of modernity and its social transformations. But, of course, such freedoms are brought about by the demise of communism, the transnationalisation of the state, the enlargement of the European Union and the many faces of globalisation, but are also marked by new and different kinds of insecure closures, such as the ‘war on terror’ and the resurgence of far-right

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political parties across Europe. We now want to refer more specifically to new European kinds of closure and their expression in what we call post-liberal anxieties. We want to suggest that a new kind of political subjectivity is emerging around such anxieties.

The limits of Liberalism A major problem facing Europe is the consequences of the heritage of liberal tolerance. As we earlier considered, tolerance was shaped by the need for the modern state to accept the principle of free worship. Whilst those states based on Protestantism incorporated into their constitutions an official national faith – countries as different as Greece, Norway and Britain, for example – the principle was not intended for wider application to non-Christian minorities, as the experience of the Jews illustrates. Indeed, the Norwegian case is interesting in that Norway established a national church relatively late in order to curb the rising tide of political Catholicism. National churches were undoubtedly useful in shaping Christian state values. There is a curious contemporary revival of the idea that Europe is Christian, although little attention is given to the meaning of the term Christianity and its relationship to a poorly defined notion of ‘Europe’. When the Netherlands tried to use ‘pillarisation’ – an institutionalised system of tolerance – as a basis for multiculturalism in the wake of large-scale inmigration in the 1970s, it was too late; ethnic diversity did not quite fit into the established pattern of pillarisation and tolerance of diversity did not translate into full recognition. The question has been posed as to where the limits of tolerance lie: does tolerance have to translate into solidarity across culturally defined groups or does it breed indifference? Does tolerance amount to accepting others who are different and possibly intolerant? In France there has recently been a reversal of the liberal discourse through the protection of diverse cultures through the separation of different groups. Another example of late-liberal anxiety is the discourse of liberal xenophobia that appears to have gained some popularity in the Netherlands in recent years. According to this, liberal values are antithetical to some migrants who must be excluded in order to protect the liberalism of the majority. This protects the majority from becoming intolerant. Thus, multiculturalism becomes a defence of the ‘national’ culture, and ‘tolerance’ becomes a way to keep communities separate. This is why minorities often reject the term ‘tolerance’ and propose ‘acceptance’, ‘recognition’ or ‘respect’ instead.

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Given that Islam has often been Europe’s historical ‘Other’ (see Delanty, 1995; Garton-Ash, 2002), it is of little surprise that the veil and the headscarf have become a symbolic battleground within contemporary European democracy. The French public is polarised over the position of the headscarf as a religious symbol and questions whether it can be tolerated on the grounds of the school, which is part of the territory of the republican state. This tells us a great deal about the political subjectivities of European nation-states which are experiencing major difficulties in the transition beyond a formal multiculturalism to a politics of recognition. However, the veil and the headscarf have also paradoxically become a point of contestation in a closed democracy restricted by a narrow notion of secularism. Perhaps in this respect Joseph Weiler is right when he argues for a revival of the principle of tolerance as an alternative to secularism but it is hard to see how this return to constitutional conservatism will enhance the prospects of a more inclusive multiculturalism (Weiler, 2003). It is important to note that we are not suggesting Europe has ceased to be liberal, but that liberalism has given a basis to a new kind of exclusionary thinking that is a mixture of racism and xenophobia. Today, many who show racist dispositions claim to be liberals but deny such stigmatic labels, using inverted liberalist arguments (Bonilla-Silva and Forman, 2000). This marks a change from former expressions of racism in that we have racism but apparently no racists. This opens the debate of whether racism and xenophobia are essentially the same prejudice. Favell and Tambini (1995, pp. 148–63) argue that the two are distinct and suggest that the notion of ‘race’ is not just socially constructed but based upon genetic differences, whilst Miles (2003) recognises this but suggests that prejudices which emanate from this belief lost much of their influence after World War II, given the now widely rejected beliefs of Nazism. Yet, in the contemporary period a new form of racism which is based upon insurmountable cultural differences has become more popular. In this respect, the new European racism and xenophobia are the same given that they are both characterised by a focus of hostility that is not exclusively defined by the traditional terms of colour and race that was typical of ‘biological’ racism. For these reasons the new European racism is often referred to as ‘symbolic racism’, ‘cultural racism’ or, in France, racisme differentiel (Holmes, 2000; Macmaster, 2001). While accounts differ, there is widespread agreement that racism in Europe is on the increase and that its main feature is hostility to immigrants and refugees/asylum-seekers, who are often the new ‘Others’. In many European countries the extreme right

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have refined their electoral programmes under the rubric of nationalist-populist slogans and have adopted more coded forms of racism. The move away from overt neo-fascist discourse has in fact allowed these parties to expand their electoral support as populist-nationalist parties (Rydgren, 2003; Delanty and O’Mahony, 2002; Wodak and Pelinka, 2002). But this has paradoxically led to an increase in racist discourse, as racism takes on more pervasive and diffuse forms, to the point of being expressed as the denial of racism and the emergence of ‘commonsense’ cross-group differences (van Dijk, 1985). There is considerable evidence of a normalisation of racism in political discourse and there is much to indicate that this is also occurring on all levels of discourse, ranging from the media, political parties and institutions (Race and Class, 2001) to everyday life. The distinctive feature of this is a confluence of racism and xenophobia. The ‘new’ racism differs from the older kinds in that it is not expressed in overtly racist terms or in the terms of neo-fascist discourse. Thus contemporary racism does not take the form of claims to biological or racial superiority, white supremacy or overt skin colour prejudice. Instead, the repertoires of justification that are typically employed use social characteristics (e.g. protecting jobs, concern about welfare benefits) or cultural incompatibilities or differences (immigrants lack ‘cultural competences’, they are not ‘tolerant’). The new racism exploits xenophobic frames (fear of the other), ethnocentrism, masculinities and ‘ordinary’ prejudices in subtle ways and often, too, in ways that are unconscious or routinised. This form of racism has taken on an ‘everyday value’ – it is socially acceptable to talk about ‘common-sense’ cultural differences between social groups (based upon ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender and sexuality) – by permeating into various spheres of ordinary life. The values of football supporters are one example of this. According to O’Donnell (1994) the UK media tells us that, for example, French football players are prone to ‘diving’, German players are efficient (if unexciting) and most (European and non-European) foreigners are less hard-working than their British equivalents. During major international tournaments, such as the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championships, the same media sources cast a favourable light over the English team by arguing that our players play fair. Of course, this is reactive to foreigners, who are assumed not to play fair. When the English national team is eliminated from such tournaments, it is consistently argued that young English players are not of a high enough quality because the international football transfer market has meant that foreign players (who are deni-

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grated because they are assumed to play in the UK because of the high earning potential – a factor which apparently does not influence the English players’ choice of employer) have blocked our players’ route into the first team. Essentially, sport becomes an avenue in which even the liberal media are prone to argue that foreigners are in our country taking our jobs (Crolley and Hand, 2002). These messages transmit into many supporter cultures and help to develop the ‘common-sense’ values upon which other forms of contemporary racism can be sold. Therefore, the new racism can be termed ‘xeno-racism’, a mixture of racism and xenophobia. While being racist in substance, it is xenophobic in form: its outward defensive mode of expression disguises a stronger opposition to migrants and the continuation of racism in a new guise (Sivanandan, 2001; Fekete, 2001). The new racism has also incorporated a ‘quasi’ anti-racism into it, thus domesticating and diffusing it of its critique. Liberal values are inverted in ways that have been documented on the level of political discourse, but are not yet fully understood in wider socio-cognitive processes. Thus, multiculturalism becomes a defence of ‘national’ culture and ‘tolerance’. This then becomes an argument to keep various social groups/communities separate. The confluence of ‘nation’ and ‘race’ is occurring at a time when the nation-state is undergoing major transformation, and there are the as yet unclear implications of EU enlargement. Where nationalism was once defined by reference to other nations, in the current post-industrial/information societies, nationalism is becoming more defensive and defined by reference to immigrants and other marginalised groups (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991). Moreover, where the border lies between xeno-racism and the more overt and explicit neo-fascist racism is frequently blurred in political discourse. In everyday discourse ordinary people tend to be more susceptible to xeno-racism than to the more overt messages of neo-fascist racism (Essed, 1991). Fears, insecurities and anxieties give such prejudices an allusion of substance and relevance. However, racism also differs in another sense: the racialised subject is now as likely to be a poor white migrant from another European country rather than a person identifiable by skin colour. Therefore, it is noteworthy that the opening up of Europe may potentially lift the lid on racist and xenophobic actions just as much as it promotes cosmopolitan attitudes (Delanty, 1995). Yet, in countries such as the UK, the vast majority of migrants are in the professional occupational category. In the case of the UK about 40 per cent of migrants come from other European countries. Therefore the racialised subject is not always easily identifiable.

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This makes ways of conferring racist discourse easier because it appears that nobody who is seen is prejudiced against. Thus, a discourse of otherism emerges. A striking example of this is anti-Semitism in Poland, a country where Jews are almost non-existent and where apparently anti-Semites also do not exist, or so the discourse goes. Does this amount to a specifically European racism? To an extent it does. Racism in Europe is a mixture of liberal values and xenophobia. The inversion of liberal values has resulted in a certain normalisation of racism. Therefore, as earlier discussed, the new racism incorporates anti-racist reasoning, which means that multiculturalism can become a defence of the ‘national’ culture and tolerance becomes an argument to keep communities separate.

New discourses of racism Euro-racism or xeno-racism finds powerful resonance in everyday life and for this reason it can be considered part of what Philomena Essed has termed ‘everyday racism’ (Essed, 1991). Fears, insecurities and anxieties enter into it, giving it form and relevance. But there is often no objective substance to these anxieties, which is what makes them anxieties. Anxiety is a fear that is objectless. It is a fear that cannot easily be given substance. Renata Salecl has pointed out that for Freud, in his work Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, anxiety has to do with expectations of a danger that does not manifest itself. Anxiety seems to be without an object and in this respect it is different from fear, which is based on an external threat to the self (2004, p. 19). It was a central aspect of Freud’s theory that anxiety is coped with by fantasy, which is to be understood as a story that makes sense and one that helps the subject to prevent the emergence of anxiety. It could thus be argued that there is a connection between anxiety and fear of the Other as expressed in racist discourses today. In other words, in Freud’s terms, fantasy – or lack of objective truth – is a cause of anxiety and this is manifest in xenophobic constructions of otherness. Thus, the fear of the unknown is often more severe than the threat of those whom are already understood. A second way of theorising the issue is to follow Manuel Castells, who argues that the rise in organised xenophobia and racism, as represented by the extreme right, is a defensive reaction to globalisation. Castells (1997) suggests that resistance and project identities are born of a culture in which collective defiance is developed against external conditions – such as the many representations of globalisation. In this

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case, a simple rejection of the global age is the retreat to insular attitudes which are opposed to global ‘Others’. On a similar theme, Zygmunt Bauman argues that globalisation offers freedoms – which are psychological needs required to avoid social actors feeling ‘claustrophobic’ – from the nation-state from which they hail, with contemporary Europe offering freedom through transnational, exotic life-style choices (1998). Yet, Bauman also argues that social actors have a simultaneous ‘desire for security’ (p. 29; our emphasis). This means that Europeanisation, globalisation and the transnationalisation of the state unleash new kinds of anxieties about security, social status and identity. These anxieties can also be viewed as responding to the breakdown of the traditional solidarities of local democracy and class. In this sense they form part of the second wave of post-industrial social movements that have been a feature of the past decade and half. Such movements fill the space created by the rise of Third Way politics, i.e. the tendency for the right and left to move towards a midway position between social democracy and market liberalism (Giddens, 1998). This has opened up opportunities for new political parties, which appeal to the anxieties produced by perceived loss of status in many occupational areas as well as changes in the nature of authority and masculinities. Such anxieties coupled with a loss of national status produce powerful sentiments for the extreme right and lead to a renationalisation of political discourse. In general, it appears that the smaller European countries, with liberal political cultures, are experiencing the greatest difficulties in adjusting to the changed situation of post-1989/post-September 11th. The extreme right now have a foothold in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. Protected from large-scale migration and transnational processes, capitalism and democracy in these countries had developed within protected national models, based on a clearly defined sense of peoplehood. As a result of globalisation and Europeanisation such social models and their cultural assumptions have been challenged. However, despite the obvious increase in extremist political parties and populist parties of various kinds, the significance of post-liberal nationalism goes beyond these movements. Post-liberal nationalism is neither a hegemonic expression of the nation-state nor purely a defensive reaction to globalisation that can be explained by devious cadres such as Le Pen and Haider. It is the product of a transnationalisation of the state and the crisis of liberalism (see Holmes, 2006). It makes its gains on the basis of post-liberal anxieties, such as the fear of too much tolerance, the uncertain limits of the state and fears and uncertainties

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about who constitutes the political community and where the limits of its membership lie. It is undoubtedly the case that such anxieties were largely responsible for the defeat of the proposed European Constitution in the referenda in France and the Netherlands in May 2005. The huge public debate in these countries was dominated by social anxieties that found in the proposed European Constitution a focus for fears about immigration. The social securities associated with the nation-state are central in the formation of such anxieties. The left, especially in France, was divided on the constitutional question because of the fear of a loss of security allegedly guaranteed by the welfare state and a significant element within the right mobilised the population around the defence of securities associated with national sovereignty. In both cases it was the nation-state that was the guarantor of a certain social and cultural model of society which was perceived to be under threat in the transnational age. The absence of a European social model and the fear of market liberalisation unleashed social anxieties as pro-European middle-class voters preferred the security of the nation-state to the uncertainties of a perceived new political order. Furthermore, as noted earlier, post-liberal anxieties are not, as many claim, the hegemonic discourses inherent within modernity (for example, Wimmer, 2002). There has been an irreversible logic towards individual or transnationalisation of rights (Soysal, 1994; Joppke, 2005). Therefore claims of a new age of exclusion are unjustified in so far as Europeanisation has long been characterised by moments of openness and closure. As expressions of anxieties they rarely reach the level of official ideological positions, and are generally no more than marginalised pressure parties. Racism and xenophobia are sustained by the decline of class- and nation-based solidarities rather than by a turn in the political culture to the right. Throughout Europe, there has been a progressive weakening of class and nation as foundations of solidarity. The resulting anxieties are easily translated into xenophobia as well as more direct expressions of racism. Islamophobia is one recent expression of xenophobia in which racism is present in a direct form. The significance of such forms of xenophobia and racism is a certain normalisation of political communication around social issues. The danger then is not the extreme right, which succeeds in amplifying such anxieties into more overt expressions of racism. This recalls a remark made by T.W. Adorno in one of his most important essays, in which he attacked the political complacency of Adenauer’s Germany on the question of

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German guilt and the neutralisation of atonement. He reminded the German public that ‘National Socialism lives’ but in a different form. He considered ‘the continued existence of National Socialism within democracy potentially more threatening than the continued existence of fascist tendencies against democracy’ (Adorno, 1986, p. 115). In the present context the issue is less about the dominance of the extreme right than the normalisation of xenophobia resulting from anxieties that have their origin in the post-liberal ethos of contemporary European political culture. The prevalence of such anxieties suggests that liberalism is not enough to oppose xenophobia and racism. This is consistent with Rydgren’s view that xenophobia exists as a ‘subjectively rational’ phenomenon in response to perceived threats (Rydgren, 2004; 2004a). It would be foolhardy to consider a perception of threat as irrational, even though it is communicated in different ways, with different groups targeted at various times across European societies. Therefore, as we have argued, racism has become ‘democratised’ as a result of being made ‘common sense’. As a post-liberal phenomenon it is without an object, and hence, as we have suggested, represents itself as public anxiety. There is no doubt that some of the most explicit features of racism have been eroded, but this has paradoxically led to the proliferation of a cultural racism, which is more difficult to overcome since it is to be found in many discursive spaces.

Conclusion Our aim has been to highlight the importance of discursive spaces that must be captured for what can be termed a cosmopolitan peoplehood. Conversely, we have also expressed the role of ‘everyday’ discourses of racism in creating popular forms of prejudice amongst ‘everyday’ people. Our unfolding argument is that this type of racism is more diffuse than more openly prejudiced sentiments and this helps to create the viewpoint that ‘racism’ does not exist. Therefore, unlike liberal conceptions of political community – which do not go beyond the view that we are all different and requires only a tolerance of difference – our argument has been that an emergent cosmopolitan peoplehood must be based on a politics of recognition. This entails a positive recognition of difference, which moves away from the liberal model. Cosmopolitanism is not merely about the plurality of cultures but more about the embracing of difference and the search for an alternative political order. In this respect it differs from the liberal emphasis

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on tolerance and the tendency found in much of communitarian multiculturalism to relinquish common ground in an exaggeration of cultural differences. This is not to suggest that liberalism is redundant but that it alone does not offer a viable political basis to address illiberalism. Two key elements – solidarities and recognition – are missing from liberalism. There are two kinds of cosmopolitan recognition that need to be addressed separately, internal and external differences (see Beck and Grande, 2007). Of these, external recognition is simpler to achieve in that it is easier to recognise others who are far away than those within. Internal cosmopolitanism requires a form of recognition that entails self-transformation. As a concept, cosmopolitanism indicates a condition of self-problematisation, incompleteness and the awareness that certainty can never be established once and for all. The suggestion then is that Europe needs to develop such a cosmopolitan imagination in order to transcend the limits of existing national loyalties. It has been the aim of this chapter to point out that the absence of solidarities that go beyond class and nationhood results in an increase in anxieties about identities and citizenship. Whether or not the European project is undermining traditional national forms of solidarity is an open question, but it is evident that it is not enhancing solidarities and forms of recognition beyond class and nation. The constitutional debate in France and the Netherlands in 2005 provided ample evidence of the predominance of discourses fuelled by anxieties of belonging. It would be unduly pessimistic to conclude that more cosmopolitan discourses do not exist given the existence of global civil society and wide-ranging expressions of popular global solidarities (Calhoun, 2003; Kurasawa, 2004). However, such sentiments and movements have had little impact on questions of peoplehood within Europe, where anxieties and prejudices emanating from national identities prevail.

8 Talking Security? The Discourse of European Identity in the Baltic States Richard Mole

Over the years the impact of European integration on national identity has generated reams of newspaper editorials and ignited heated discussion among politicians, opinion-formers and everyday citizens across the continent. In the 1990s debates in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania about membership of European political, economic and security organisations were particularly salient given the situation the three states found themselves in following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Political actors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania argued that they were in a security ‘no-man’s land between Russia and the West’, between the Commonwealth of Independent States, which they refused to join, and the EU and NATO, membership of which appeared to be some way off (Dean, 1996, p. 19). The danger of this situation, they argued, was that history could repeat itself and their states could once again find themselves sucked into Russia’s sphere of influence. However, integration into European political and security structures was not universally supported in the three states. While some saw integration as the best way to protect their states from Russian control and safeguard their identity and culture from assimilation by Orthodox civilisation, others argued that demands from European organisations, particularly with regard to the integration of the Russian-speaking communities, could jeopardise the identities they were hoping to protect in the first place. Whatever their position on European integration, politicians in all three states were insistent on being perceived as European – defined in opposition to the Russian Other – a process aimed at both enhancing their security and consolidating their ethnocultural identities. They sought to attain this goal by creating a social reality through discourse whereby they embedded their states in the global political consciousness as members of a broader collectivity 149

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(‘Europe’) beyond the control of Russia. This self/other discourse vis-àvis Russian culture did, however, also reinforce ethnic and cultural boundaries within the Baltic States – especially Estonia and Latvia – hampering the integration of the Russian-speaking minorities and creating a new type of security dilemma. These debates raise various issues relating to the reconceptualisation of security and highlight the fact that security is no longer understood as the product of rational and material considerations but is also shaped by ideational factors, such as identity. This aim of this chapter is thus to examine the relationship between identity and security and to analyse the way in which, given the limited material resources at their disposal, political actors in the Baltic States, prior to their joining NATO and the EU, employed an identity discourse predicated on the basis of European culture and values and the otherness of Russian civilisation to enhance their external security, a discourse which subsequently escaped their control and had the unintended effect of undermining social cohesion and constraining their actions with regard to policies aimed at consolidating their identity and societal security. I will start by looking at changing perceptions of security since the end of the Cold War and the role of identity in security discourse, before going on to examine identity as a reference object of security and as a mechanism for enhancing security.

Changing perceptions of security after the Cold War The concept of security is highly contested. The only assumption shared by adherents of the various schools of International Relations theory would appear to be that it entails freedom from threat. Whether this freedom from threat applies to individuals, groups, the state or the international system as a whole, however, has been a matter of considerable debate. The traditional Realist position characterises security largely in terms of military power and capability. The referent object of security in Realism is the state, a unitary and rational actor, and the main threat to security is external, i.e. to come from other states. The Realist understanding of security as a derivative of power results from their view of the international system as one of anarchy with each actor seeking to pursue its own selfish interests: if a state is strong enough to exert its influence over other states, it will feel secure. However, this approach does little to enhance inter-state or international security. The accumulation of power required to attain the security prescribed by Realists diminishes the security of other states,

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resulting in the ‘security dilemma’ first identified by John Herz (1950). Nevertheless, the memories of World War II and the subsequent superpower stand-off ensured that during the Cold War the Realist position was dominant and that security was defined exclusively in terms of military capability (Bellany, 1981, p. 102). Over time, various Pluralist opponents of Realism argued that the focus of security on the state and military power was too narrow. In the 1960s English School theorists such as Hedley Bull argued against ‘the spirit of indifference to the security of other nations’ and for a greater understanding that ‘the security of each power depends not only upon what it does itself, but upon what is done by its opponents’, i.e. the idea of the security of international society as a whole (1961, p. 28). And in the 1970s interdependence theorists sought to highlight the fact that issues such as the economy, environment and human rights were ones that states could not control unilaterally but which could have a serious impact on their national security (see Keohane and Nye, 1977, chapter 2). The debates in IR about agency, the correct level of analysis and the breadth of the security agenda therefore highlights the lack of consensus as to what should be the main referent object and the focus of security. At one end of the spectrum theorists such as Johan Galtung argue that the ultimate referent object of security must be the individual and that the security agenda must encompass all his security concerns (1980, pp. 145–9). While bringing down the level of analysis to that of the individual and including all possible security threats within the security agenda allows us to analyse the issue from various perspectives and consider not just material but also ideational criteria, it runs the risk of casting the net too wide. If security is everything we worry about, the term risks losing all meaning. At the other end of the spectrum, the Neorealist focus on the international system as a whole – while perhaps apposite during the Cold War – proved to be insufficient to explain manifestations of ‘new’ types of insecurity following the decline of Soviet power in the late 1980s.

Post-communist reconceptualisations of security The collapse of state socialism throughout Central and Eastern Europe had enormous implications for the way we think about security – not just in the former communist satellite states but on the continent as a whole. Inter-ethnic fighting in the former Soviet and Yugoslav republics undermined the myth of the unitary state, while the spread

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of globalisation challenged state sovereignty from both inside and out. In addition, the absence of a common enemy meant that Europeans lacked insecurity in the Neorealist understanding of the term. Taken together these changes required new thinking about security. As Bill McSweeney explains: If the tangible enemy had walked away, an intangible replacement had to be found if governments, diplomats and international theorists were to sustain a coherent image of the world of international politics. … Either the real world must be different to what it was hitherto thought to be or the threats which are believed to constitute its insecurity must be rediscovered. (1999, p. 6, emphasis added) The end of the Cold War thus prompted analysts to widen and deepen the security agenda to ‘rediscover the threats believed to constitute insecurity’. The political changes that took place from the late 1980s, promoting integration among some states and fragmentation among others, shifted the focus away from states and their interaction towards societies both smaller (nations, ethnic groups) and larger (religious communities and civilisations) than states. Tensions between the state, sub-state and supra-state levels of action thereby ‘created’ security issues and security actors previously ignored or marginalised by Neorealists. The new political environment gave birth to Constructivist and Postmodern approaches to the concept of security. As Constructivists reject the claim that social facts can be defined such that they correspond correctly to reality, they question the value of defining the term security at all. As reality is a social construct and analysts are part of this process, the best they can do is ‘analyse how concepts are used and how the security discourse is evolving’ (Møller, 2003, p. 278, emphasis added). To Ole Wæver, the task at hand is to examine security as a Wittgensteinian language game, i.e. to see what the term means to those who are using it (1995, pp. 46–86). In the period of late modernity, issues other than territorial integrity and sovereignty – such as environmental degradation, mass immigration and AIDS – are now being presented as security threats. Security is thus seen as a ‘complex speech act’; it is the utterance itself and acceptance thereof that establish an issue as a threat or security concern (Wæver, 1991, p. 17). Wæver’s definition of security thereby points to the self-referring character of security discourse; it is not the threat of military force but the ‘securitisation’ and ‘desecuritisation’ of specific issues that creates the

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security discourse – although security will, of course, be invoked if another actor threatens to use military force. From a Constructivist perspective, security has ‘specific meaning only within a specific social context. It emerges and changes as a result of discourses and discursive actions intended to reproduce historical structures and subjects within states and among them’ (Lipschutz, 1995, p. 17). It was from within this theoretical framework that the Copenhagen School presented its definition of the ‘new security agenda in Europe’ (Wæver et al., 1993). The Neorealist approach to security assumes that state and society are synonymous. However, developments such as the ethnic separatism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the emergence of domestic resistance to the expansion of the European Union in Western Europe demonstrated that the security needs and interests of the state and society do not always coincide (Bilgin, 2003, p. 211). It was with these concerns in mind that the Copenhagen School developed the concept of ‘societal security’, which it defines as: the ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing conditions and possible or actual threats. More specifically, it is about the sustainability, within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture, association, and religious and national identity and custom. (Wæver et al., 1991, p. 23) Identity thus lies at the heart of societal security. Threats to societal security can be brought about by processes of regional integration, on the one hand, or large-scale immigration, on the other. The latter, in particular, can result in the division of society along national lines, which may undermine the cohesion required to make society function. As Wæver observes: ‘Survival for a society is a question of identity because this is the way a society talks about existential threats: if this happens, we will no longer be able to live as “us”’ (ibid., pp. 25–6). Within the societal security paradigm, however, the identity ‘under threat’ is invariably defined in ethnic or cultural terms, with little attention paid to the possibility of civic or territorial identities developing in its place. The securitisation of threats to language and identity could therefore be criticised for being giving justification to xenophobic political forces, seeking to maintain their exclusivist definition of national identity at all costs. Nevertheless, to Constructivists, such a project is still of value if it uncovers the ‘interests and power games underlying the security discourse’ of the actors (Møller, 2003, p. 278).

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Such interests and power games have been the focus of considerable research by David Campbell. In Writing Security, he argues that foreign policy is a boundary-producing practice predicated on a discourse of danger, entailing the securitisation of external threats posed by the Other against which the Self must protect itself (1992). As security and foreign-policy discourses thus often reify ‘a positive image of the self as representative of order and rationality vis-à-vis negatively depicted others representative of chaos, irrationality, as potentially threatening, and which therefore need to be excluded’ (Browning, 2002, pp. 17–18) and produce boundaries between Self and Other that are given highly positive connotations (Paasi in Browning, 2002), foreign and security policy – and in particular, the identification of threat – is a key means of constituting and consolidating the identity of the state. This is confirmed by a recent statement by Gleb Pavlovsky, foreign and security policy advisor to the Kremlim, in response to accusations by US Vice-President Dick Cheney that Russia was bullying its neighbours and backsliding on democracy: ‘Moscow has always suspected that the USA needs an enemy to maintain its identity. Now we have proof of it.’1 Since the end of the Cold War, then, security has thus experienced ‘a shift in focus from abstract individualism and contractual sovereignty to stress on culture, civilisation and identity’ (Krause and Williams, 1997, p. 49). The international arena governed by the balance of power between the US and the USSR has now been replaced by ‘local, regional and international spaces in which communities make political demands on the basis of their identities’,2 while the post-modern project seeks to clarify how security/insecurity is created by the ‘settled oppositions of inside/outside’ and Self/Other (Miniotaite˙ , 2001, p. 9). According to Neorealism, the conditions of anarchy require small states with limited resources to side with larger powers or join alliances in order to create security. And, indeed, the resources available to the Baltic States are limited: the Estonian Regular Armed Forces comprise some 3,800 personnel, plus the Voluntary Defence League of 8,000 members; personnel in the Lithuanian armed forces, including the professional military, conscripts, cadets and civilians, total just over 15,000; and the National Armed Forces in Latvia consist of approximately 5,000 civilians, officers, soldiers, 1,600 Conscript Service soldiers and 15,000 national guards.3 The Russian Federation, by contrast, has 1,162,000 officers and men.4 Under such circumstances Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would, according to Neorealism, be unable to provide for their own security and would have to join a security

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alliance or align itself with a larger power. However, in the early 1990s there was no prospect of the three Baltic States joining NATO, while siding with the major regional power, Russia, was out of the question given the history of the three states. Not only was the annexation of their territories by the USSR still a living memory for many Balts, but the presence of the hundreds of thousands of Russian-speakers within their borders was considered a threat to Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national identities, a threat which was conceived as a security threat. I will now examine how security actors in the Baltic States incorporated these identity concerns into their security discourse, in general, and their security and defence concepts, in particular. I will then examine the way in which political actors in the three states – given the absence of Neorealist security-promoting options – emphasised their identities and their European identities, in particular, to define their Other and thereby seek to enhance their security. Paradoxically, as we shall see, this approach produced a new kind of security dilemma – not in the sense that ‘increasing my security reduces your security’ but ‘increasing my external security reduces my internal security’, the latter defined as maintaining the cohesion required to make society function.

The post-Soviet security concepts of the Baltic States As we have discussed, following the end of the Cold War, national identity came to be seen by analysts as a referent object of security in its own right. In Estonia and Latvia, this was implicit in the citizenship legislation (which gave preference to ethnic kin) and became explicit in the security concepts and guidelines of all three states. The Law on the Basics of National Security of Lithuania, adopted in December 1996, sought ‘to ensure the safe existence of the nation and the state’, with the preamble stipulating that the security concept is guided by the provision that ‘the Lithuanian nation’s aspiration has been and continues to be to safeguard its freedom, to guarantee secure and free development on its ethnic land [and] to foster its national identity’.5 The Self/Other split is clearly evident. The Self refers to Lithuania and, by extension, the Baltic States, the community of European nations, the European Union, the countries of central and northern Europe and the United States (Chapter 5). Relations with the extended Self are based on integration and co-operation. The threatening Other is defined as ‘militarised territories and states of unstable democracies’ (Chapter 9; Section 1). While no states are named explicitly in this connection,

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Chapter 4 stipulates that one of Lithuania’s primary security responsibilities is ‘to ensure efficient control over the State land border with Belarus and the territory of the Kaliningrad District’. Relations with the Other are based on the prevention of threat, with the primary political threat defined as ‘political pressure and … attempts to establish zones of special interest and ensure special rights, preventing Lithuania from obtaining international security guarantees’ (Chapter 9; Section 1). A further specific threat is identified as the ‘incitement of ethnic groups to disloyal behaviour towards the State of Lithuania’. While Russia is not mentioned by name, it is clear to whom these threats refer. More specifically, Chapter 3 refers to the Constitutional Act of 8 June 1992, which prohibits Lithuania from joining ‘any new political, military, economic or any other inter-state alliances or commonwealths established on the basis of the former Soviet Union’. The aim to ‘demilitarise ∨ the Karaliaucius (Kaliningrad) Region’ is also made explicit (Chapter 5). In the Security Concept of the Republic of Latvia of 1997, the Latvian Ministry of Defence also sought to protect a mixture of Realist and societal security referent objects: ‘the sovereignty of the state, territorial integrity, the language, national identity, human rights and the parliamentary democracy’.6 According to the Concept, threats to Latvian security include: activities aimed against Latvia’s independence and its constitutional system; the political or economic subjugation to or other types of dependence on other countries; hindering Latvia’s integration into European and Transatlantic structures, the unification of different social and ethnic groups into one nation, impeding economic and social development in Latvia, as well as delaying the improvement of its defence capabilities. … External pressure, the unfavourable development of international political processes, can destabilise the internal political situation, aggravate conflicts between political forces and social groups within the country and lead to a crisis. External and internal threat factors are closely related as they interact and combine. While no state is named explicitly, we can infer from the list of threats that Russia is seen as the main Other – specifically with reference to Latvia’s economic dependence, Moscow’s opposition to Latvia’s joining NATO, Russian insistence that Russian-speakers in Latvia be awarded Latvian citizenship and the tension between ethnic Latvians and Russians within the state.

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In the Guidelines of the National Defence Policy of Estonia, adopted in 1996, the main threats were considered to be ‘aggressive imperial aspirations and political and/or military instability’. Again, there is little doubt that the main threat to Estonia was seen to come from the Russian Federation. The Estonian parliament adopted its National Security Concept on 6 March 2001. In it Estonia’s national interests and security policy goals are defined as: ‘To promote national welfare and preserve the cultural heritage, to safeguard the preservation of the Estonian people, Estonian language and culture as well as Estonian identity’ (Section 1.2). Again, maintaining the Estonian nation and language was identified as a core national interest by Foreign Minister Toomas Hendrik Ilves.7 Threats to national identity in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were thus ‘securitised’, i.e. ‘presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure’ (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 23–4). I will now examine identity not as a referent object of security but as a mechanism through which security can be achieved.

Identity discourse/security discourse In addition to being a referent object of security, identity is also a means of enhancing security. The process through which this is achieved is discourse. As outlined in my introductory chapter and developed in Felix Ciutaˇ’s contribution in Chapter 10, discourse can be employed instrumentally by political actors to further specific sociopolitical goals or can be non-subjective in the Foucauldian sense that it is not tied to any particular subject but nevertheless conditions and constrains political action by legitimising and delegitimising certain policy options. The following sections will analyse both aspects. The first will examine the way in which Baltic politicians instrumentally employed a discourse predicated on European culture and values to construct social reality in such a way as to enhance the security of their states. The subsequent section will show how the European discourse then escaped their control and had the unintended effect of undermining social cohesion and constraining their actions with regard to policies aimed at consolidating their identity and societal security. In this context, discourse is understood as ‘a relational totality which constitutes and organises social relations around a particular structure of meanings’, which seeks to grant certain meanings a dominant position by excluding certain others (Doty, 1996, p. 239). Language is not

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‘seen as describing a pre-existing social reality but as a medium through which reality is created and the material world is given meaning’ (Wennerstein, 1999, p. 274, original emphasis). Discourse is thus a key mechanism in the social construction of reality and the definition of power relationships in society. This applies to all societies but, I argue, is especially true in ethnically divided societies. As Fowler explains, discourse is ‘an instrument for consolidating and manipulating concepts and relationships in the area of power and control … Not only is it used to enforce and exploit existing positions of authority and privilege in the obvious ways (commands, regulations, etc.); the use of language continuously constitutes the statuses and roles upon which people base their claims to exercise power, and the statuses and roles which seem to require subservience’ (1985, pp. 61–2). Discourse thus creates and reinforces ‘social cognition’, the shared representation of groups and the mental strategies that groups use to produce, represent and understand situations, people and institutions (van Dijk, 1994). Members of national collectivities produce and reproduce their own identities in contrast to the Other. This production of differences can be manifest in parent talk during socialisation, textbooks, news and advertising, as Don Ellis explains in his chapter, and, at the interstate level, in parliamentary debates and political discourse, as Ruth Wodak discusses in hers. Political discourse can thus be used to cement specific identities for the purpose of inclusion/exclusion. Discourse is a process whereby, as we learnt from Campbell above, identifying the threatening Other is a key means of constituting the identity of the Self. For the core Self, controlling discourse and managing its effects (legitimating its existence or behaviour) is largely unproblematic within the state’s boundaries thanks to the core Self’s dominance of the state institutions, such as education and the law. Controlling and managing the effects of discourse vis-à-vis the extended Self and, more importantly, the Other are far more problematic but, if successful, this discourse can influence the way the core Self is perceived, a factor that can have a significant impact on a state’s security. If a state (the core Self) can convince the world – and particularly its perceived enemy – that it belongs to a particular camp (the extended Self), it will feel included and protected and out of the reach of its potential enemy (the Other). As former Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Hendrik Ilves points out, ‘where a country lies is a subjective decision and only in part a product of its own desire. Much if not most is determined by what others believe about it. As Milan Kundera pointed out twenty years

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ago, Prague is 300 kilometres to the West of Vienna. Yet Prague was East, Vienna West.’ (Ilves, 1999) As we shall see, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sought to influence this subjective decision of their identity through discourse. In particular, they sought to emphasise the Europeanness of their identities in contradistinction to Russia, thereby creating a reality that placed the three states in the West beyond Moscow’s reach.

The Baltic States and the idea of Europe Discussions on the relationship between European integration and national identity are not, of course, restricted to states of the former communist bloc. The British have been debating their place in Europe for decades, with Conservative politicians seeking to highlight the dangers posed by European integration to the British sense of self. As mentioned above, debates within the Baltic States about membership of European political, economic and security structures were equally animated. While some felt that integration into European organisations was the only way to enhance their security by protecting their states from Russian control and safeguarding their culture from assimilation by Orthodox civilisation, others criticised the influence European institutions had over citizenship legislation and minority rights in their countries and saw membership of these organisations as a threat to their national identities. Political rhetoric about the Baltic States’ relationship with Europe was therefore carried out against the backdrop of these two competing identity narratives. There was, however, a more serious side to this debate. By emphasising the European nature of their identities and the otherness of Orthodox civilisation, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania reinforced the ethnic and cultural boundaries within their own polities, which stood in the way of societal integration. As Merje Feldman explains: ‘These dichotomies frame[d] identity in essentialised and exclusionary terms and thereby contradict[ed] … proclaimed efforts towards multiculturalism and international integration’ (Feldman, 2001, p. 5). From the very outset relations between the European Community and the Baltic States were based upon the assumption that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were geographically, culturally and historically European nations. When Brussels officially recognised the independence of and established relations with the Baltic States on 27 August 1991, it declared that ‘the time had come for Latvia, Lithuania and

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Estonia to occupy their rightful place among the peoples of Europe’.8 This statement may seem unremarkable but it is important to remember that the EU has never had a definition of the term Europe. While the Treaty on European Union stipulates that any European state is entitled to apply for membership of the EU, Brussels is vague about what it considers European. The idea of Europe has long been contested (see Wallace, 1990, pp. 7–34). Like national identity, European identity has a number of constitutive elements. While it obviously has a geographical component, there is no consensus as to where the continent begins and ends and, more importantly, whether or not it includes Russia.9 Most geographers agree that Europe stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals, with Yekaterinburg lying on the border with Asia. Yet few would argue that Russia is entirely European. Neither is it entirely Asian. It is a state sui generis. Estonia and Latvia can therefore be seen as the most easterly states in Europe that are fully European. Of course, the concept of Europe is also a cultural one. According to Huntington, the Baltic States lie on the fault line separating Western and Orthodox culture – a division that demarcates Russia from Europe proper (Huntington, 1993). This point highlights the fact that, as with national identity, European identity also needs an Other for the purposes of selfdefinition. Before you can say what is European, you need to know what is not. Discourse on the idea of Europe is thus always twopronged. On the one hand, it requires an expression of the defining elements of European identity and, on the other, an explication of non-Europeanness. Of course, European identity includes more that just geographical and cultural affinities. Europe has come to represent a set of values and norms, including democracy, market economy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. The European Union is seen as the embodiment of these characteristics and EU membership is thus seen as the yardstick for being European, a point made by EU Commissioner, Leon Brittan, when he said that ‘this Community has earned the right to call itself Europe’ (Brittan, 1994). To many in the former socialist bloc it is these values that lie at the heart of European identity. Subjected for decades to authoritarian single-party rule, these ‘returnees’ look to Europe to help them cope with the legacies of their communist past. In the words of Russian journalist Sergei Butmann, ‘in countries still torn apart by warring factions, European identity is the patch of blue sky which holds out the hope of a bright and peaceful future’ (Driscoll, 2001).

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In stressing their European-ness, therefore, the constitutive elements of identity that Baltic statesmen continually highlight are geography, culture, civilisation, norms and values. With regard to their geographical location the discourse employed by politicians admits that their states are on the outer edge of Europe but are nonetheless European. As Toomas Ilves has emphasised, ‘geographically and spiritually our European identity has never been in doubt’ (Ilves, 1997). However, he admitted that the feeling held by Estonians that they are Western is ‘probably mainly subjective’.10 It was the threat caused by their precarious geographical position on the border between Europe and Russia that Estonia sought to negate through discourse. As President Meri warned, ‘only a small push is needed to make us fall into one side or rise into the other’.11 To ensure they ended up on the right side, political elites stressed the ideals and values they shared with Europe. Indeed, it was on the basis of these European ideals and values that President Brazauskas expressed his belief that it was Lithuania’s right to join the European Union: ‘Since independence was restored, democratic reforms are being carried out in the republic; the country has ensured the main rights and freedoms of man and the national minorities live in peace and accord. … Lithuania historically orients itself on the values and ideals of the European civilisation, that is why Europe is the only space in which our people can preserve its distinctive features.’12 ‘Civilisation’ became a popular buzzword in Baltic political discourse following the publication of Samuel Huntington’s book on the issue (1996). In fact, the Estonian edition included a foreword by then Foreign Minister Ilves. In these terms, the Balts see themselves as the outer edge of Western civilisation. In the words of former President Meri, Estonia had ‘through centuries been the eastern border of the European legal system, and will so remain … our border is the border of European values’ (Kuus, 2002, p. 97). Obviously, in terms of civilisation, Russia is seen as Europe’s Other (Neumann, 1996). It is seen neither as European nor sharing European values. With reference to the Russia–NATO Treaty, Vytautas Landsbergis, Chairman of the Lithuanian Seimas, expressed his view that ‘the signing of the document … strengthens the hope that Russia could abandon yesterday’s thinking and develop into a European democracy’.13 In other words, he did not yet consider Russia to be democratic and thus not European. While Russia may be able to lay claim to sharing certain geographical and cultural affinities with Europe, it would be hard pressed to convince the world that it is democratic, enforces the rule of law and respects human rights. Estonian academic Rein Taagepera

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further suggests that unlike Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which could successfully combine their identities with a European identity, Russian and European identities are mutually exclusive: Whenever Russia or Serbia consider adopting western ways they must go outside and give up parts of themselves. In contrast, when Estonia or its Baltic neighbours (Latvia and Lithuania) adopt western ways, they only have to reach deeper and actually recover parts of themselves. (1999, pp. 24–7) Attempts on the part of the Baltic States to define themselves as Europeans and Russians as non-Europeans were supported by reciprocal statements from representatives of the EU, who sought to create a collective identity between the EU, on one side, and the Baltic States, on the other. This discursive practice emphasised the European characters of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and underlined the otherness of Russia and Russian culture so as to articulate ‘a distinction between the Self and an Other and establish a boundary between them’ (Wennerstein, 1999, p. 277). In so doing, EU representatives ‘include’ the Baltic States in the Western Self (and in some instances simultaneously ‘exclude’ in particular Russia but also the other states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)), thus working to construct a social reality by which possibilities to lay claim to a sphere of influence in the region are constrained’ (ibid., p. 289). Here we hear echoes of Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to create a dividing line between Old and New Europe. (See the following chapter by Jan Ifversen.) While Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were at pains to stress that Baltic membership of European organisations was not aimed at isolating the Russian Federation, their arguments were couched in such terms that Europe and Russia were seen as two mutually exclusive entities. As Latvian Foreign Minister Valdis Birkavs said in an interview with Diena: ‘We should move towards Europe but not at the expense of our relations with Russia. On the other hand, we should not move towards Russia at the expense of our relations with Europe.’14 Compared with the other states of the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were always singled out for preferential treatment. Only on one occasion – in a report on ‘The Community’s relations with the independent states of the former Soviet Union’ – were Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania grouped with the other former republics of the USSR.15 In all other cases, the Baltic States were not treated as post-Soviet states in the same way as Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, etc.

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This differentiation was underlined as early as December 1991, when the Baltic States were admitted into the PHARE programme, run by the EU to promote political and economic reform throughout the former communist bloc. PHARE is aimed at the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, while the TACIS programme provides assistance to the former republics of the USSR, excluding the Baltic States. Wennerstein suggests that the economies of the Baltic States were more in line with those of other former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine and Belarus, and that their inclusion in the PHARE scheme was an intentional attempt by the EU to emphasise Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania’s European character. However, within the scope of the ‘Return to Europe’ debate in the Baltic States, it became increasingly clear that the Europe to which Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sought to return was the one they had left in 1940, one of essentially homogenous nation-states with few, if any, non-indigenous inhabitants. The Europe of the European Union in the 1990s, on the other hand, was much more ethnically diverse, with most states home to numerous national groups. In recognition of this, the EU placed respect for and protection of national minorities at the heart of its social and political agenda and required potential members-states to adopt European norms on minority rights. This forced the Baltic States to re-evaluate the European values they espoused. A test of Latvia’s adherence to European values came in October 1998 in the form of the referendum proposing to ease the requirements for citizenship upon the recommendations of the EU and the OSCE. Latvian politicians and the population at large were thus faced with a choice between easing the citizenship law for the Russianspeaking community and thereby facilitating the state’s entry into the European Union or maintaining the ethnic purity of the citizenry but reducing Latvia’s chances of integrating into European structures and thereby increasing its insecurity vis-à-vis Russia. The possibility of Latvia’s failure to live up to its proclaimed European identity and adhere to European values (with reference to minority rights) was thus seen as a security threat by the Latvian foreign minister: ‘Estonia is making a sharp leap forward and it’s because of its practical stance. Lithuania is going in NATO’s direction, but we are heading straight for the embrace of our big eastern neighbour by our slow, wrong position on nationally very important issues.’16 Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was equally sceptical about whether Latvia was really European: ‘On the one hand, they seek membership in European organisations,

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claiming they are close to western civilisation, while on the other hand, facts testify to the contrary.’17 It was generally felt that a rejection of the citizenship referendum would go against the grain of European values, thereby diminishing Latvia’s Europeanness and undermining its claims to be a natural part of ‘the West’. As it happened, the referendum was passed by a narrow margin, a fact which Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said ‘clearly affirmed the European identity of Latvia’.18 While the European Union was seen by many as a guarantor of at least ‘soft’ security, there emerged over time increased euroscepticism among certain sectors of Baltic society. The European discourse that political actors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had employed to distance themselves from Russia and facilitate their membership of the EU and NATO was now constraining the very same actors in their treatment of the Russian-speaking minorities. While European structures may help minimise Russian control in the internal affairs of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and ensure that their national identities were not absorbed by Orthodox culture from outside, it was felt that the norms of these same organisations were eroding the identities of the Baltic peoples from within.

External influence, internal cohesion and societal security As discussed, many politicians in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania saw European integration as the best means of guaranteeing their states’ security and safeguarding their national cultures and identities from Russian influence. However, others argued that demands from the EU and other European organisations that the three states adhere to European norms and values in respect of minority rights would jeopardise the identity that they were hoping to protect in the first place, and many Estonians and Latvians, in particular, disapproved of EU/NATO involvement in what they considered to be their internal affairs. Certain factions in Latvia, in particular, were angry at demands from the EU to accelerate the integration of Russian-speaking minorities into society. When on 20 March 1996 Latvian President Ulmanis informed EU Ambassador to Riga Gunther Weiss that Latvia was ready to start accession talks, Weiss reminded Ulmanis that it would be impossible to discuss Latvian integration into the EU without considering the status of non-citizens in the republic. Similarly, at a meeting between Ulmanis and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana on 18 April 1996 the latter explained that NATO’s expansion would be unable to guaran-

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tee Latvian security if its relations with Russia remained unsettled: ‘Latvia’s admission to NATO depends on its ties with Europe and Russia [and] a solution of the ethnic minorities’ problems will be a precondition to admission.’19 These demands that the Russian-speaking populations be integrated into Latvian (and Estonian) society were seen as a potential threat to national identity in that it would ‘increase the role of Russia-friendly individuals’ within Estonia and Latvia (Kuus, 2002, p. 98). This opinion was substantiated by a survey conducted by Tartu University: Whereas Russia’s malevolent behaviour towards Estonia makes Estonia view Russia as a dangerous neighbour, … [non-Estonian residents], notwithstanding all the threats, have retained a positive attitude – they do not consider Russia a potential threat. This brings us to the conclusion that … non-Estonians [in Estonia] accept and consider normal Russia’s potential malevolent actions against Estonia.20 This fear that Russians in Estonia would always side with their ethnic homeland was exacerbated during the Kosovo crisis. According to Estonian Foreign Minister Ilves, there was a clear ‘Huntingtonian breakdown’ on the issue.21 Estonians identified with the Kosovars, Russians with the Serbs. Estonians felt that what was being done to the Kosovars by the Serbs was what had been done to them by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. While President Meri rejected criticism that the Estonian nation would lose its cultural identity as a result of European integration, pointing out that ‘Europe in the end of the century should be able to find a harmonious way to link the shared aspirations and different identities’, this attitude did not appear to apply to identity discourse within the borders of Estonia.22 Demands from the West that Tallinn ease its stance towards its Russian minorities were often attacked at home. Kristiina Ojuland, leader of the Estonian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and future Foreign Minister, criticised the Council’s insistence that Estonia guarantee secondary education in Russian up to the age of 18 for as long as there was sufficient demand for it among parents.23 Likewise, in August 1998, recommendations from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that the Latvian law on citizenship be softened were attacked by right-wing parties, which considered the amendments approved by the parliament to be too

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liberal and insisted that the matter be put to a referendum. President Ulmanis suggested that the broad support for the referendum was a sign of ‘protest against the exaggerated stance of Europe’s politicians’.24 Similarly the Latvian Saiema’s Education, Culture and Research Committee refused to amend the draft state language law on the advice of the OSCE. OSCE experts objected to regulation of the use of the state language in the private sphere. However, the Committee argued that it was not possible to apply all European norms concerning language legislation because Latvians had become a minority in many places in the country. While many in Estonia and Latvia saw the EU as a threat to their identities and therefore to their societal security, a more significant problem arose with regard to the integration of the Russian-speaking minorities. By continually highlighting their Europeanness and emphasising the otherness of Orthodoxy, Estonia and Latvia’s self/other discourse vis-à-vis Russian culture was reinforcing ethnic and cultural boundaries, which acted as a disincentive for Russian-speakers to apply for citizenship. In the early years of the new millennium, 52 per cent of Latvia’s Russians were still without citizenship.25 Despite the significant easing of citizenship legislation by the Latvian government under pressure from the EU and the OSCE, Russian-speakers were not feeling encouraged to apply. It was a similar story in Estonia. By 2000 only 113,000 non-Estonians had acquired Estonian citizenship by means of naturalisation. In other words 23 per cent or some 310,000 of Estonia’s inhabitants were non-citizens. Of these about one-third were citizens of other states (primarily Russia), while two-thirds had no citizenship at all.26 This situation was producing two societies within each state. Former Latvian Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans was one of the few to see this issue in security terms. Without a common identity drawing in all national groups, he argued, the state would lack the cohesion necessary to make society function. Redefining society such that it was divided along ethnic lines would constitute a threat to the continued existence of the state. He argued that security could only be guaranteed by stabilising society, a task that would be impossible without taking into account the interests of the non-indigenous population. He criticised nationalist politicians for using inflammatory discourse about Russia and the Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia, as this would instil permanent enemy perceptions in the mind of the Latvian people: ‘If I treat you like an enemy, you will become my enemy.’27

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Conclusion Within the scope of the main themes of this edited volume, this chapter examined the discursive (re-)construction of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian identities as European on the basis of shared culture, norms and values and the concomitant construction of European identity as non-Russian. It also analysed the impact of these discursively constructed identities on the external and internal security of the three states, demonstrating how specific identity discourses can be employed by power-holders to create social reality for instrumental purposes and how discourse can also develop an existence independent of actors which then conditions and constrains action by legitimising and delegitimising particular policy options. In this case political actors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sought to enhance their states’ security by creating a social reality aimed at establishing themselves in the global political consciousness as European states beyond the Russian Federation’s sphere of influence. This has been a successful strategy – especially among Western states but also, I would suggest, in the minds of the current Russian administration. While President Putin opposed NATO enlargement in principle and while the Duma continually accuses Estonia and Latvia of violating the rights of Russian-speakers in their states, there is little talk now of the Baltic States’ being part of Russia’s natural sphere of influence. Given the state of affairs in the mid-1990s, this is quite an achievement. Over time, however, the European discourse escaped the control of the Baltic actors who had constructed it and this had the unintended effect of undermining social cohesion, whereby the self/other split in respect of Russia as an external entity was also prevalent internally, i.e. vis-à-vis the Russian-speaking minorities. While seeking to enhance their external state security, this strategy thus had a detrimental effect on social cohesion. Moreover, the European values that political actors espoused to emphasise the Europeanness of their states and the otherness of the Russian Federation constrained their actions with regard to the citizenship and language policies aimed at consolidating their identity and societal security in that ‘European values’ require respect for and the protection of national minorities. The Baltic States were thus presented with potential new security dilemma, whereby attempts to enhance their external security by means of European identity paradoxically undermined their internal social cohesion and societal security. What this entire debate made clear was that the Baltic States and European Union were working with different understandings of

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European identity. The Europe to which Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sought to ‘return’ was that of the inter-war period, the Europe of nation-states, a Europe that ends at the Russian border. The Europe of the EU, by contrast, recognises the multicultural nature of European states, places minority rights at the heart of its social and political agenda and seeks to engage with the Russian Federation. The clash between these differing conceptualisations forced both sides to rethink their idea of Europe, highlighting the ongoing process of its (re)construction and the power of the meanings ascribed to it.

Notes 1. Daily Telegraph, 5 May 2006, p. 18. 2. New Forms of Conflict and their Resolution, Tampere Peace Research Institute: www.uta.fi/laitokset/tapri/project2.html 3. Estonian Ministry of Defence (www.mod.gov.ee); Latvian Ministry of Defence (www.mod.gov.lv); North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (http:// www.nato.int/invitees2004/lithuania/defence.htm) 4. Johnson’s Russia List, 14 May 2003 (www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/ 7181–5.cfm) 5. Accessed on the website of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania (www3.lrs.lt). The Law was subsequently amended by the Seimas on 10 October 2000. 6. Accessed on the website of the Latvian Ministry of Defence (www.mod.gov.lv). The Concept was subsequently amended by the Saeima on 24 January 2002. 7. Interview with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia, 6 September 2000. 8. Foreign Broadcast Information Service: FBIS-SOV-91–173, 6 September 1991, 63. 9. The Council of Europe includes the Russian Federation and the Western littoral states of the former Soviet Union as well as the Transcaucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, while the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe represents all former Soviet republics, from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan. 10. Interview with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia, 6 September 2000. 11. Eesti Päevaleht, 6 March 1999. 12. INTERFAX, Moscow, 10 May 1996. 13. Trud, 10 June 1997. 14. ITAR-TASS, 15 March 1996. 15. ‘The CSCE and the European Community’. Information memo from the European Commission, 30 January 1992 (P/92/1). 16. Baltic News Service, 30 September 1998.

Richard Mole 169 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

ITAR-TASS, 23 September 1998. Baltic News Service, 8 October 1998. INTERFAX, 18 April 1996. Tartu University Market Research Team, Estonia’s Experiment – The Possibilities to Integrate Non-Citizens into the Estonian Society, Open Estonia Foundation, Tallinn, 1997 (http://www.oef.org.ee/english/publications/integrenglish/seven.php) Interview with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia, 6 September 2000. Estonian Telegraph Agency, 20 November 1996. Estonian Telegraph Agency, 3 February 1997. Baltic News Service, 24 August 1998. Naturalisation Board of the Republic of Latvia (www.np.gov.lv). Estonian Citizenship and Migration Board (www.mig.ee). Interview with Janis Jurkans, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, 12 December 2000.

9 It’s About Time: is Europe Old or New? Jan Ifversen

The old Europe resembles a corpse whose hair and nails, wealth, and cumulative knowledge are still growing, but the rest is dead. (Agnes Heller)1 Now, you’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. (Donald Rumsfeld)2 While the American Spirit is tiring and languishing in the past, a new European dream is being born. (Jeremy Rifkin)3 Recently there has been much debate about whether Europe is old or new. The debate was ignited by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s casual remark in January 2003 that Europe could be divided into old and new. What Rumsfeld meant by this remark has been the subject of considerable debate. Among those appointed ‘new’ Europeans by Rumsfeld were the upcoming EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as longer-standing members such as Spain, Britain and Denmark. The only apparent common trait among these ‘new’ Europeans was that their governments supported the American position on the Iraq crisis (and would sign the so-called ‘letter of the eight’ a week after Rumsfeld’s remark). At first glance Rumsfeld’s understanding of ‘novelty’ seemed to mean alignment with the US government on its Iraq policy. 170

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This is, however, only a superficial interpretation. Rumsfeld was probably aware that words like ‘old’ and ‘new’ carry a wealth of associations. Novelty could be understood as dynamism and creativity; being old could be seen as synonymous with fatigue and decline. Oldness, on the other hand, could be associated with wisdom and maturity, novelty with childish behaviour and lack of experience. There is little doubt that Rumsfeld was valuing novelty and indirectly pointing to a divide between a Europe that was living in the past and a new Europe willing to follow an American future or live the American dream. He could play on the more conventional meaning of new Europe as meaning the new members of the European Union or a new Eastern Europe arising from fifty years of communism. He might also be hinting at America as a part of the new world so named by ‘the old world’ but now reversing the right to name: the new world is in a position to produce other new worlds. Novelty is obviously a relative term. You are always new compared to something or somebody older. The debate that followed Rumsfeld’s remark was very much about the meaning of old and new in Europe and about the right to decide about age and time. In this chapter I want to focus on the conceptual battle around the meaning of old and new Europe. This involves reflecting on how the concept of Europe itself is at play in the debate. How do the participants in the debate use and challenge the concept of Europe? The battle over ‘Europe’ is also about taking positions. Different discursive strategies are being unfolded. Who can speak on behalf of Europe or new Europe? How can various speaker positions be aligned? The right to speak paves the way for the right to act. The battle is about legitimising different types of political action in the world. It is about the moral right to take action outside your own world. In the end, it can even be about taking responsibility for the world.

Method The following analysis can be placed within the broad field of discourse analysis. I shall limit myself to a few remarks on the basic premises of my approach. My understanding of discourse is inspired by Michel Foucault, who takes discourse to mean rules governing how particular statements are formed and distributed to constitute a given object.4 Discourses are the rules and fields that discourse analysts seek to identify in the formation of the object. Discourses construct objects, whereby ‘strategic choices’ are made to carve out boundaries which

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mark off what is included and excluded (Foucault, 1969, p. 89).5 Discourses establish their boundaries within a universe of ‘competing’ discourses and, as elements from other discourses are drawn in and transformed by a particular discourse, the relationship between discourses is analysed as a matter of interdiscursivity. Context can be viewed as a universe of discourses but it is also important to emphasise the relationship between discourse and social practice. This is done by connecting discourses with particular ‘fields of action’ in line with Ruth Wodak’s definition of the term, whereby ‘fields of action’ indicate sets of institutionalised social practices that relate to particular discourses (Wodak, 2000c).6 In my approach to discourse analysis I focus on three elements derived from Foucault: themes, conceptual architecture and subject positions. I use ‘theme’ as a term for the condensation of the subject matters or the narratives rendered in a discourse. The atrocities of World War II might be a theme in a particular discourse on Europe. The conceptual architecture concerns basic concepts that go along with formulating a particular theme. 7 Civilisation could be a basic concept in a discourse on Europe. The subject position indicates the symbolised speaker positions formed around a certain object. We might thus imagine the authorisation of a speaker position around Europe or perhaps the refusal of such a position for Europe. These three elements, themes, concepts and subject positions, only appear at the textual level of discourses. We have to trace them in actual configurations. Themes are parts of narrative patterns that structure the emplotment of a text. They can be viewed as the ‘headlines’ of the story rendered by one or more texts. Concepts can be analysed through the clustering of meaning in key words and through the semantic fields in which key words are embedded. Some key words might perform the role of battle concepts, i.e. concepts whose meaning is being contested by actors engaged in debates. Europe is obviously one such concept. Subject positions relate to the pragmatic dimension of language. They point to those positions in language that connect the content with a context. The speaker position takes the message rendered and directs it towards others. This involves a play of positions. Positioning relates to the strategy of the speaker in a given text. The performance of strategies is intimately linked to the subject positions available at the discursive level. Strategies are especially important in that particular political field of action to which the texts I deal with in this chapter belong.

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Round one: past and future Rumsfeld’s use of the labels old and new must be placed in the wider context of the debate about a possible rift or divide within the West, between Europe and America. Mutual claims of difference between America and Europe can be traced back at least to the creation of the United States, which again points back to the divide between the old and the new world. It would not be wrong to say that these differences play a role in constituting the unity of the two entities. We might speak of America and Europe as each other’s internal others – internal because they can also be placed together in a common entity, ‘the West’ in contrast with ‘the rest’, the real others against which the self is defined and between which a dividing line is constructed. AntiAmericanism – and its American counterpart, anti-Europeanism – is just one way of depicting difference.8 European fascination with America – as a saviour or as a realisation of human progress – is another way of emphasising the difference. In the past, we have witnessed several rounds of transatlantic rifts involving discussions on how important and how deeply layered differences are (Sedivy and Zaborowski, 2004; Jones, 2004). The last round was prompted by European disagreements over the rhetoric and strategies of the Bush Administration following 9/11. Within a year, the feeling that we were all Americans – as formulated by the French newspaper, Le Monde9 – was replaced by efforts among Europeans to distance themselves from the Bush strategy, in particular, or America, more generally. But the real opening fanfare in the latest transatlantic rift was blown by Robert Kagan’s 2002 article ‘Power and Weakness’. Kagan provided a structural explanation for the divide. It was all about power. Americans had it and were prepared to use it when necessary. Europeans had lost it and were therefore seeking other ways of legitimising their role as international actors. Much has been said about Kagan’s rather rigid realistic framework, which simplifies the notion of power and dramatises the differences in ‘strategic cultures’ (Lindberg, 2005; Sedivy and Zaborowski, 2004; Cox, 2003; Lukes, 2003). For my purpose, it is more interesting to focus on the rhetorical effects created by the way he relates the distribution of positions to a perception of time. In order to explain Europe’s weakness in terms of power or military capability, Kagan turns to the past. He provides two versions of this past. One is a European history of loss and decline. World War II marked ‘perhaps the most significant retrenchment of global influence in human history’ (2002, p. 7). This retrenchment was

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followed in 1989 by yet another loss: ‘The 1990s witnessed not the rise of a European superpower but the decline of Europe into relative weakness’ (ibid.). This fatalist narrative is, however, coupled with a more positive history of choice: ‘The modern European strategic culture represents a conscious rejection of the European past, a rejection of the evils of the past’ (ibid. p. 15). These two versions seem to contradict each other. In the first one, Europe after 1945 has lost the greatness of old Europe. Real Europe is the Europe that dominated the world for more than five centuries and present-day America is what Europe once was, a superpower. This version tags into an older narrative of European decline. The years immediately after World War I in Europe were marked by extensive debates over the crisis of European civilisation. Paul Valéry expressed the fear that Europe would become ‘what it is in reality – that is, a little promontory on the continent of Asia’ (quoted in Ifversen, 2002a, p. 153). Arnold Toynbee fatalistically spoke of the dwarfing of Europe (1958). The other version emphasises a European will to change. The past is not represented as powerful and glorious but as nasty and brutish. In this version, it is the experience with evil in the past – the memory of wars – that makes the Europeans turn away from power and choose a Kantian approach to the world. The history of Europe after 1945 is thus not one of decline but of progress. Europe after 1945 is not a crippled version of old Europe but ‘a new order’, a new Europe. Kagan ironically talks about Europeans turning themselves into ‘bornagain idealists’ (2002, p. 16). As we shall see, this version also tags into an existing European narrative of the past. The expression clearly demonstrates Kagan’s ironic deconstruction of this second version. We all know that ‘born-again’ people are self-righteous and try to see the world according to their narrow views. Kagan’s point is that the second version – the version told by many Europeans – is based on an illusion. The new Europe of the Europeans rests on an unwillingness to look reality in the eye. It can only be upheld because they have a totally imaginary approach to the outside world. In fact, new Europe is a result of a narcissistic tendency to care only for oneself. Kagan reproaches Europe for doing what many Europeans have accused the United States of doing, namely lacking understanding of the world beyond their borders. Europeans are the true isolationists. Kagan portrays new Europe – the Europe incarnated by the European Union – as living in a ‘geopolitical fantasy’ (ibid., p. 17). Its idealism is utopian. Its claim to be advanced and ahead of America in moral terms is thus a fiction produced to escape reality. Kagan takes issue with

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Robert Cooper’s argument about Europe representing a new postmodern form of statehood and political behaviour (Cooper, 2000). He views Cooper’s post-modern Europe as yet another expression of the illusion of having progressed and dismisses it with bitter irony: ‘Americans apparently feel no resentment at not being able to enter a “post-modern” utopia’ (Kagan, 2002, p. 22). I shall come back to Cooper in a moment. First I want to underline that not only the past but also the future of Europe is being contested by Kagan. This leaves the Europeans with very little. They are either reduced to dreaming nostalgically of past greatness (this is the classical French position according to Kagan) or they are living with fantasies of a better world (this is the position represented by the EU). In either case, they are stuck in illusions. Nostalgia is about producing utopia from the past (Knudsen, 2004); post-modernity is about believing that you have entered the future. But what about the Americans? Are they caught up with power? Not entirely. According to Kagan, Americans are not only realists, they are also idealists. Contrary to the Europeans, they can be both at the same time. Americans were even idealists before the Europeans. Kagan construes America’s past in opposition to the old Europe of power: ‘Americans never accepted the principles of Europe’s old order’ (Kagan, 2002, p. 5). This counter-narrative of the American past emphasises the depiction of an asymmetrical relationship between America and Europe. America was idealist when Europe was enmeshed in power, and when Europe became enmeshed in fantasy, America stayed realistic and took on the burden of defending liberal civilisation. Americans learnt realism from the European past (‘Americans … still remember Munich’), while the Europeans repressed their past, including any sense of realism. In the end, this asymmetrical structuring places Europe in a deficient situation, where it is always less than America (less realistic, less idealistic and less powerful). The purpose of this structuring is to deny Europe any subject position. In Kagan’s rhetoric, new Europe becomes a product of America. It becomes so because it has thrived innocently under the protection of American power. Without America there would not be a European Kantian paradise. Just as the old world discoverers created a paradise in the new world five centuries ago (Baudet, 1965), Americans are also creating a new paradise. But now the roles have been reversed. It is America that is in a position to create worlds and uphold world order. Kagan ridicules any attempt by Europeans to imagine a new international role for Europe. In fact he has grasped very well the way leading

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European politicians are reformulating Europe’s global role and is certainly also sensitive to the way these formulations feed into identity politics in Europe. But he sees these efforts to formulate a new European mission civilisatrice as just another result of European fancies, the hollowness of which is being brutally exhibited by American actions in the world. He actually blames the Europeans for the transatlantic rift. It has come about, he claims, because the Europeans feel offended by these actions, which reveal the emptiness of their fantasies. Robert Cooper, from whom Kagan wrested the notion of postmodern Europe, developed his views independently of the debate on the transatlantic divide. He first presented them in a small pamphlet entitled The Post-Modern State and the World Order from 2000.10 Although he only intended to emphasise the novelty of the form of statehood represented by the European Union, he ended up pointing to major differences between America and Europe. Cooper agrees with Kagan in that novelty must be evaluated in terms of power. The novelty of Europe with the development of European integration is that it has ‘moved beyond’ a world order based on the balance of power. This order has been replaced by a new one based on transnational openness and self-imposed rules of behaviour. Cooper’s formulation of moving beyond shows that he is thinking in terms of progress. Post-modern Europe is more advanced than the modern, not to mention the pre-modern world. But all of these worlds exist simultaneously. In Cooper’s terminology they exist as different zones. Postmodern rules only apply within the post-modern world. The modern world is regulated by the more old-fashioned balance of power and the pre-modern world is simply chaotic and lacking order. This way of locating time through spatial metaphors goes back at least to the eighteenth-century theories on modernity and progress. Adam Ferguson, who in 1767 developed a theory of civilisation as a movement through stages of time, depicts modern Europe as surrounded by contemporary barbarian and savage nations that have not been able to move forward to civilisation (Ferguson, 1995). Cooper is depicting a world where post-modern Europe is surrounded by pre-modern states that carry the basic features of barbarism, that is modern states that still have to rely on power and the radical denouncement of rules (just like Ferguson’s martial but courageous barbarians). In the pre-modern world we find rogue states and failed states that do not or cannot follow any rules; America mostly belongs to the modern world of sovereignty and power; Europe is truly post-modern but still has to rely on power when dealing with the outside. That is the reason why Europe must operate

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with double standards: one set of standards for itself and another for the less advanced world. Although Cooper agrees with Kagan that perceptions of power divide the world, he views the renouncement of power as a sign of progress or – we could say – a sign of civilisation.11 From this perspective, postmodern Europe becomes more advanced than modern America. One might even say that post-modern Europe outlines the future of America. This view is directly opposed to the one presented by Kagan. Europe is not in a situation of deficit. On the contrary, it contains a surplus of civilisation. In such a situation relations with the outside world are relations with less civilised nations. Cooper, however, does not conceive of any civilising mission. He is careful to draw a line between imperialism, which involves hegemony, and a promotion of European values based on openness and mutual interference: ‘The task is to promote open democratic institutions, open market economies and open multilateral or transnational diplomacy with as many neighbours as possible’ (Cooper, 2000, p. 34). What Kagan viewed as preposterous illusion is for Cooper a real option and an obligation. Europe’s task is to extend its order to the rest of the world. America is reduced to either a partner in dealing with power in the modern world or a danger (if it encroaches on the values of the post-modern world). The other dangers come either from the barbarians at the gate or from an internal crisis. As with other thinkers of civilisation, Cooper fears an internal breakdown produced by the advanced level of society: ‘We may all drown in complexity’ (ibid., p. 41).12 Cooper secures a prominent position for Europe from which America is secluded. This positioning is backed by a rather triumphalist narrative of Europe’s past. 1989 is viewed as the crucial moment where Europe is set free from the chains of the modern world and can reap the benefits of the post-modern potential inherent in the EU. In the grand scheme, Europe laid out the lines of history as it developed first the imperial system, then the modern balance-of-power system and finally the post-modern system. Although Cooper leaves room for the negative experience of the world wars, their effect is reduced to clearing the ground for Europe’s leap into the post-modern era. Only in passing does he touch upon their formative role in shaping a new Europe (‘a change … was required’ (Cooper, 2000, p. 8)). New post-modern Europe emerges from the end of the Cold War. 1989 represents the end (for Europe) of that modern era which began in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. A rampant philosophy of history is built into Cooper’s narrative, which effaces the scars that other

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narratives would locate in 1945. Europe’s past thus becomes a history of civilisation.13

The birth of Europe In his now famous manifesto published in the spring of 2003, Habermas cleverly took up the challenge launched by Kagan and Rumsfeld. Habermas also emphasised the differences between America – or rather the Anglo-American world – and Europe but reversed the question of strength. Europe, in Habermas’ rendering, represented moral strength based on solid liberal and social democratic values (a strong belief in international law and an ethos of social justice, secularism and post-national tolerance). America, on the other hand, was portrayed as a less liberal country with a dubious relationship with international law. Habermas only indirectly places the difference in a temporal scheme: due to the supranational governance of the EU, Europe finds itself in ‘a postnational constellation’ (Habermas and Derrida, 2003, p. 294). ‘Post-nationality’ indicates a move in time. There is no doubt, however, that America’s ambivalent liberalism points back to a less modern world, where religion infects public life. Habermas’ ‘old Europe’ (written with inverted commas) is old and new. It is old in the sense that is experienced. Europe has a long experience with illiberal values and with power, from which it had learnt to be truly liberal. Europe ‘has had to painfully learn how differences can be communicated, contradictions institutionalised and tensions stabilised’ (ibid.). This past – and particularly the experience of totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust – has left a legacy of moral sensibility towards power and politics. In Habermas’ scheme, the past is a learning process that transforms Europe. The colonial experience added to this process because Europeans ‘learnt from the perspective of the defeated to perceive themselves in the dubious role of victors’ (ibid., p. 297). In other words, they learnt from their past mistakes to become Kantians. What makes America different, we must assume, is that it did not experience such a past and therefore cannot establish the same ‘reflexive distance’ to itself. Habermas seems to imply that America remains couched in a certain innocence and naivety that characterises the new world. America is also old and new. It is old because it is less modern and it is new because it does not possess a past that can orientate it. Europe’s transformative and interpretative capacity is also what makes it possible to imagine the birth of a new Europe. Habermas sees the growing European opposition to the Iraq war as sign of a new

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European self-consciousness. He argues that a European identity emerges out of a reinterpretation of the past. Those liberal values that Europeans have ‘painfully’ acquired become the mark that makes them aware of who they are and who they are not. New Europe is thus a Europe where Europeans assume their post-national identity and also their obligations. Habermas indicates a dual process: by opposing America Europe becomes aware of itself and from there it can begin assuming its obligations in the world. We must bear in mind that Habermas entitled his text ‘Europe: a Plea for a Common Foreign Policy’. If we follow his logic we might say that Europe only fully emerges when it assumes a new civilising role. It is civilising because it is meant to counterbalance America’s ‘hegemonic unilateralism’. America stands as the dangerous hegemon – Habermas does not say empire – which must be countered by a Europe defending and promoting ‘a cosmopolitan order’. By portraying a Europe acting on the side of universalism, Habermas creates a new and different subject position for Europe. Europe is different because it is self-critical and therefore truly universal; and it is new because it is taking shape for Europeans as well as non-Europeans. Habermas does not make use of a simple temporal structure where the past is viewed as determining the present. He escapes Kagan’s fatalism. Nor does he end up with Cooper’s triumphalist theory of history. According to Habermas, Europeans have become civilised because they have learned from their past. Europeans are neither Kantians by default, nor by simple political choice. They have become so because of their hermeneutic capacity. It is not about being locked into a past or about repressing the past. It is about learning from it.

Civilisation as a new European ideology In European political rhetoric we can detect three different ways of positioning Europe. Firstly, we can observe a Kaganian discourse of a powerless old Europe in decline. Secondly, we see an introvert discourse of protecting Europe from external chaos (Cooper). Thirdly, we are witnessing the emergence of a Habermasian discourse on Europe as a civilising force in a world demanding civilisation. The idea of a crisis-ridden Europe has found fertile ground among some Europeans. Old Europe is made identical with a Europe marked by stagnating growth rates, falling fertility, aging population rates, lack of competitiveness and protectionism. Signs of weakness are collected and connected to draw a picture of a fundamental crisis in Europe. The

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most pessimist Europeans revive the classical discourse of decline that dominated in the first half of the twentieth century. In response to the French ‘non’ to the Constitution in the spring of 2005, Timothy Garton Ash interprets the reactions as ‘symptoms of a civilisation in decline, if not in decadence’ (Garton Ash, 2005a). André Glucksmann, the French philosopher, links decline with defeatism. In line with Kagan, he blames the Europeans for their ‘terribly naïve attitude to the international threats, which makes Europe look like a holiday camp of well-off people, where egoism dictates that we must at any costs sleep comfortably at night’ (Glücksmann, 2005; my translation). The consequence of this ‘total apathy’ is that Europeans are losing their virtue and their values. A Danish commentator follows suit when he claims that Europeans do not understand American patriotism because they have lost a sense of their own values. What is left, he claims, are ‘vague ideas about cosmopolitan democracy and world citizenship’ promoted by European liberals like Habermas (Støvring, 2005). In this discourse Europe is characterised by a loss of values, alienation and the lack of a sense of self-worth. Looming behind such statements is a larger discursive setting of civilisational decline which goes back to the eighteenth century. European Enlightenment thinkers feared that the material benefits of modern life would lead to a loss of virtue and freedom. Ferguson warned of the corruption of the minds of individuals living in ‘nations under a high state of the commercial arts’ (1995, p. 241).14 Rousseau proclaimed that growing inequality due to modern technology and wealth would jeopardise virtue and happiness, while Spengler, in the early twentieth century, reinterpreted civilisation as the ultimate downside of human life and radicalised the decline discourse through an extensive use of organic metaphors (Ifversen, 2002a).15 The decline discourse portrays a Europe falling apart and European governments paralysed by the challenges facing them. Either Europeans do not believe in their own values anymore or cannot come up with a European project. Integration has lost its momentum and no new strategies are being formulated. Europe has no response to external challenges, whether globalisation or Islam: ‘There is no model for how to encounter the challenge from Islam, the low birth rate, globalisation or many other things pressuring Europe’ (Blüdnikow, 2006). Sometimes threats are perceived as being external. Such a perception points in the direction of a fortress Europe, where the aim is to defend Europe from a less civilised world. In the decline discourse, however, the paralysis of Europe has internal causes. It can be a result of prosperity, of internal destructive forces or simply of age. In the discourse, we can witness a

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manifest use of age metaphors. European economy is ‘old and rigid’ (Friedman, 2005), ‘stiff-legged’ (Hundevadt, 2005), ‘sick’ (Møller, 2005). The decline discourse is directly opposed to the Habermasian discourse on civilising Europe. Instead of a rising self-consciousness, Europe is experiencing a lack of identity; instead of a growing feeling of responsibility, Europe is thriving in egoism and self-sufficiency; instead of confirming its fundamental values, Europe is losing track of them; instead of becoming an actor, Europe is stuck in apathy or is reduced to being a pawn in a game played by other forces. This image of Europe as the sick man of the world is countered by a more mobilising discourse in line with Cooper’s call for action in the less civilised world. We could call this defensive discourse a ‘fortress Europe’ discourse. In this discourse, Europe is triumphant inside and threatened from the outside. Integration has brought happiness and civilisation to Europe. But civilisation is confined to Europe.

Fortress Europe Cooper’s idea of a post-modern Europe surrounded by barbaric chaos and modern violence fits into this fortress Europe discourse. The main feature of this discourse is a portrayal of Europe as threatened by others adhering to different values. Singling out threats indicates a strategy of securitisation, that is turning an issue into a matter of security for the community (Wæver, 1998). In his first speech to the European Parliament in 2000, Romano Prodi emphasised Europe’s need for external security because of ‘unrest and tensions at our borders’ (Prodi, 2000). When some years later Günter Verheugen, Commissioner for Enlargement in the Prodi Commission, talked about a wider Europe and the need to come to terms with Europe’s new neighbours, he emphatically stressed that the question of security was intimately linked to border control (Verheugen, 2004). Securitisation involves a manifest designation of borders that must be protected. Marking borders means setting limits. The question of borders has also been raised in discussions of whether enlargement of the EU should continue. In 2002 Prodi introduced a proximity policy and neighbourhood policy that should be seen as an alternative to enlargement (Prodi, 2002a). The unification of Europe would be completed with the integration of the Balkans, he claimed. He envisaged that the European project could be ‘fulfilled’ (Prodi, 2002b), which would finalise a border between those that are part of the project and those that are not. Neighbourhood, proximity and wider Europe introduced a

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new semantics of difference meant to moderate the borders resulting from the fulfilment. Prodi is careful not to emphasise cultural differences when speaking of neighbours. He primarily invokes concepts relating to distance and geography. It is, however, possible to detect an underlying metageographical premise where geography slides over into other fields. Europe is not merely a ‘continent’, it is a community of values. Prodi has often referred to the existence of a European soul that defines the essence of Europe: ‘I would say that what constitutes “the soul of Europe” is our shared heritage of spiritual values, expressed in our wonderful diversity of cultural forms’ (Prodi, 2001) Although this soul is ambiguous because it also contains a reference to ‘diversity’, it still singles out a particularly European essence. When this essence is related to Europe’s roots, its particularity comes out even stronger: ‘These values spring not just from Europe’s Christian roots, but also from its experience of reconciling a diversity of peoples and religions’ (ibid.). Speaking of roots reminds us of the nationalist discourse, where nations appear as constant actors in time. There is always the risk that the search for a European identity would result in Euro-nationalism, which would constitute the ultimate fortress discourse.16 In Euronationalism, differences become incompatible and borders appear as zones of conflict. Scenarios of cultural wars easily become part of a Euro-nationalist discourse. There is a clear match between Cooper’s temporal zones and the cultures at war in Euro-nationalism. A fully fledged fortress discourse demands that securitisation be linked with the culturalisation of borders. In its most robust versions, Europe is viewed as threatened by external others (or their representatives inside) and security becomes a question of cultural survival. More moderate versions acknowledge that transactions can take place across borders. While praising ‘our continent as the home of an exceptional civilization’, Viviane Reding, former Commissioner for Culture, recognised that ‘Europe had benefited from … essential contributions from other civilizations’ (Reding, 2000). In either case, however, Europe has to be constructed as a particular entity, which is a product of its own past, with a telos that leads it towards a particular post-modern or postnational future. The post-modern and post-national character of Europe can also be used as an argument for opening up the fortress. The prefix post can indicate a route leaving the culturalist conceptions of Europe and leading to more minimalist conceptions where borders are defined in non-cultural terms and therefore become more flexible and less partic-

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ularistic: ‘Europe is a candidate for such a novel case of a postmodern identity construction’ (Eder, 2001, p. 238). The ‘de-culturalisation’ of post-modern Europe is only one way of opening the gates of fortress Europe. Post-modern Europe could also be ‘multi-culturalised’. Etienne Balibar has suggested thinking of Europe as ‘a borderland’, which has learnt ‘a lesson of otherness’ from its colonial past and is now undergoing a process of hybridisation and multiculturalism (2003, p. 325).17 He even goes so far as to see Europe as ‘a vanishing mediator’, that is a mediator that dissolves itself when mediating between old and new or between cultures. With ideas of borderland and of vanishing mediator we have defined a position which is the complete opposite of fortress Europe.

Europe as a civilising force The idea of Europe as a civilising force has gained currency in official EU rhetoric. The growing focus on the EU’s external activities has been followed by a political rhetoric emphasising Europe’s obligation to act outside its own realm. Part of this rhetoric is couched in a discourse of civilisation that completely reverses Kagan’s image of a passive and decaying Europe, dying of old age. The discourse of civilisation builds on a semantics of civilisation that frees it from any crisis association. Although the concept of civilisation contains a reference to a space or a location that – at some point in time – is civilised, it can be freed from this constraint when it becomes something that spreads across space. Spreading involves an action and consequently also an actor. Civilisation is therefore about acquiring a certain type of actorness or subjectivity. This actorness – let us call it the civiliser – infers a specific relation to others. The object of civilisation – the civilised – is set in an asymmetrical relation, which points to a situation showing deficit. The civiliser brings something that the other needs. To speak of civilisation, it is, however, not enough to help others in need. The civiliser must also bring a better world. Civilisation is this sense is not about material goods but about values that will change peoples’ lives. The discourse of civilisation is particularly observable in efforts of legitimising EU politics for a broader public.18 In his first speech to the European Parliament in February 2000, Romano Prodi announced a shift in focus towards external relations. After having stated that ‘(w)e Europeans are the heirs of a civilisation deeply rooted in religious and civic values’, he announced that Europe’s goals included the need ‘to project its model of society into the wider world’ (Prodi, 2000).

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Although Prodi speaks of civilisation in a conventional sense as values located or ‘rooted’ somewhere, he immediately proceeds to speak of Europe’s action in the world.19 Europe has an obligation to ‘project its model’. According to Prodi, this model is capable of emancipating people from ‘poverty, war, oppression and intolerance’ (ibid.). The reason it works is, firstly, that it is based on universal principles and, secondly, that is has proved its worth in Europe. It is also based on experience. If we look closer at the rhetoric at play in Prodi’s speech we can observe that he implicitly links the conventional sense of civilisation with the meaning of external action. Prodi is well aware that this linkage can be understood in terms of dominance and hegemony and thus immediately distances himself from imperialism: ‘it is not imperialism to want to spread these principles …’ (ibid.). Imperialism relates to a situation of pure dominance. It is very important for Prodi to escape any linkage to power and to a fortress discourse. Europe is only seeking to become ‘a global civil power’ (ibid.). In a later speech, he explicitly states that ‘(w)e have left behind us that realpolitik that we ourselves invented. Our conception of power is the “power of the rules” …’ (Prodi, 2003). Prodi only speaks of soft or civil power, which is opposed to hard or military power.20 This concept of power is in line with the way European action is conceptualised. In most commissioners’ speeches on the EU’s external relations we can observe a ‘soft’ wording. In its most active version, it is about promoting, projecting, fostering or exporting values. When Prodi speaks of mastering – which certainly has connotations of hegemony – the object of civilisation is not a particular country or region but globalisation: ‘We are alone in building a genuine, serious model for mastering globalisation’ (Prodi, 2002b). Often Europe is only meant to contribute or offer values. In the most passive sense, where any sense of action disappears, Europe is perceived of as an example, a reference point or a pole of attraction. The latter reduces Europe to a magnetic force, which involuntarily pulls others towards it. There is a direct link between Europe’s soft power and the values offered. Values such as ‘peace, democracy and respect for human rights’ are the basis for softness (Prodi, 2000). To underline this, they are often framed in an ethical language, whereby ‘the very nature of the Union’ is based on ‘dialogue, solidarity, multilaterialism and an ethical dimension to politics’ (Prodi, 2004), while the need for European action is often formulated as a ‘global responsibility’ (Prodi, 2002a). A Europe responding to the calling of others is not a traditional civiliser. In this discourse on civilisation it becomes important to

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exclude any reference to a unilateral and self-interested actor. This exclusion operates at several levels. The values that underpin soft power must be truly universal, which means that they must be cleansed of their European features. If too tight a link is established between the values and their European origin we either move into the fortress Europe discourse or reinvent imperialism.21 This rhetorical universalisation goes hand in hand with a vague notion of borders and differences. In its most idealistic version, Europe is taking on global responsibilities and is conscious of avoiding setting up ‘barriers’ (Prodi, 2002b). This universalisation and dissolving of borders is, however, played out in a discourse emphasising an asymmetrical relationship. What we can observe is an ambiguity which constitutes the discourse. There has to be a difference between the civiliser and the civilised for any projection to take place but this difference must be framed in a universal language. Sometimes we see formulations that at first glance seem to negate any talk of difference. Notions such as partnership, dialogue and neighbourhood normally perceive relationships as being on equal terms (Prodi, 2002a).22 But in order for equality to be conceptualised, we would need an idea of what the other can bring. This is hardly ever mentioned. Complete universalism – which would amount to a cosmopolitan discourse – and partnership mark the limit of the discourse of civilisation. The latter discourse has to fence itself off from these two alternatives. An important dimension in talking about civilising Europe is the role of the past. The values endorsed by Europe are not simply seen as a product of a glorious European civilisation. They have been experienced through a history filled with moments that negated them. Europeans value peace, democracy and human rights because they have experienced war, dictatorship and uncontrolled power. As Prodi puts it: ‘We have learnt to our cost the madness of war, of racism and of the rejection of the other and diversity. Peace, rejection of abuse of power, conflict and war are the underlying and unifying values of the European project’ (Prodi, 2003). We recognise here the same use of the past as the one propagated by Habermas. Europe has transcended its past because it has learnt from it. On the other hand, the past lives on as a constant reminder of what can happen if the values are lost.23 The past thus plays a double role in the political rhetoric: as reality it is transcended; as memory it lives on. In both forms, it brings about a new Europe. Prodi turns this process of memorising and learning into a constitutive moment for Europe. Precisely those values that resulted from a negation of the past are ‘the unifying values of the European

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project’ (Prodi, 2003). For Prodi and many others there is a risk of the project losing momentum. In his inaugural speech from 2000, Prodi warned about resting on ‘yesterday’s successes’ and talked about a Europe in need of ‘a sense of meaning and purpose’ (Prodi, 2000). It is easy to see that Prodi finds this sense in a civilising Europe. We might thus infer from this that the vision of a civilising Europe is a way of reinforcing a European identity.24 The discourse of civilisation has also influenced the scholarly debate: since the 1970s a debate has been going on in political science about how the particular nature of the EU polity has equipped the EU with a particular international identity based on non-military, ‘civilian’ power.25 In recent years the growing interest in the EU’s foreign policy dimension has been followed by discussions of its ‘normative power’, i.e. the EU’s capacity to export its norms and values to areas outside its own sphere of governance (Manners, 2000). The emphasis on the EU’s civilian and normative force points in the same direction as the discourse on civilisation. Scholars have pointed to the semantic familiarities between civil, civilian and civilising (Nicolaïdis and Howse, 2002) and to the link between civilian power and universal values (Manners, 2005). The French-Greek scholar Kalypsos Nicolaïdis has gone even further in the direction of a discourse on civilisation. She speaks of ‘a global European narrative’ or ‘a narrative of projection’ that stems from ‘a learning process that led Europe to accept and embrace its distinctive approach to international affairs’ (Nicolaïdis, 2005, p. 98). She does, however, include Europe’s colonial past in this learning process and sees Europe as ‘a union of post-colonial states’ (ibid., p. 99).26 In her view, Europe’s post-colonial status adds to its broader post-national character, which it has derived from its past. It is the management of this past that has equipped the EU model with ‘expansionary potentials’ (ibid., p. 100). And it is precisely the postnational character that grounds these potentials in ‘a cosmopolitan belief that there is no radical separation between a national, European, and universal community of fate’ (ibid., p. 104). As Nicolaïdis claims, ‘European exceptionalism is a postnational one’ (ibid., p. 103), whereas America is still anchored in nationalism. Europe’s external potentials adhere to the future where those nation-states that belong to a prior era have been superseded.27 Because Europe is ahead of time, it might thus function as a ‘Eu-topia’ or a dream for those standing outside in the present (Nicolaïdis and Howse, 2002, p. 769).28

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Conclusion Europe is being positioned in time. On both sides of the Atlantic, a battle of whether Europe should be designated old or new is taking place. Proponents of old Europe would point to the weaknesses and decline of Europe compared with other parts of Europe. They would present European talk about moral superiority as an illusionary dream covering up the real situation. In this image of old Europe, the dangers come from Europe itself; they are the result of Europe’s lack of realism and vigour. The old Europe discourse is countered by other discourses that place Europe ahead of others. In the fortress Europe discourse Europe is that haven that Kagan ridiculed. Europe has fulfilled its purpose of establishing peace, prosperity and freedom but others – less advanced than the post-modern Europeans – are threatening to overrun it. Therefore Europe must become Janus-faced, peaceful inside and martial at the gates. The discourse on civilising Europe builds on the idea of European superiority gained by remembering and learning from past experiences. Due to its learning capability Europe has acquired a position of superiority, which allows it to act upon the external world. Europe is acquiring an actorness, which gives birth to a new Europe freed of its burdensome past. What threatens civilising Europe is only the reactions of those being offered European civilisation.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Heller, 1992, pp. 20–1. Rumsfeld, 2003. Rifkin, 2004, p. 3. Foucault defines his notion of discourse in chapter II(2) and II(3) of Foucault, 1969. 5. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe highlight this element of discourse analysis with their focus on differentiation and antagonism (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). 6. One of the basic premises of Critical Discourse Analysis to which Wodak’s approach belongs is to differentiate between social practices and discursive ‘practices’. See Titscher et al., 2000, pp. 148–52. 7. The notion of basic concepts is inspired by German Begriffsgeschichte. For a further elaboration of the link between Begriffsgeschichte and discourse analysis see Ifversen, 2003.

188 Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics 8. Anti-Americanism is a common denominator for numerous different negative expressions of the difference between America and Europe or parts of Europe (Garton Ash, 2005b). 9. Le Monde, 12 September 2001: ‘In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans!’ 10. Cooper, 2000. Like Kagan, Cooper later turned his small text into a book (Cooper, 2004). 11. In fact, Cooper is more interested in how power is perceived, whereas Kagan emphasises the sheer possession of military capability. 12. Ferguson feared that the development of commerce would corrupt modern Europe with its egoism and lack of virtue. Cooper fears that ‘[a] postmodern economy can have the result that everyone lives for themselves and not at all for the community’ (Cooper, 2000, p. 41). 13. In this, his approach is quite similar to Fukuyama’s universal history. Also for Fukuyama, the latest stage of civilisation can only be threatened by either barbarians at the gate or the last man. 14. ‘It appears, therefore, that although the mere use of materials which constitute luxury may be distinguished from actual vice; yet nations under a high state of the commercial arts are exposed to corruption, by their admitting wealth, unsupported by personal elevation and virtue …’ (Ferguson, 1995, p. 241). 15. ‘From great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from the vast variety of passions and of talents, of useless and pernicious arts, of vain sciences, would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to reason, happiness and virtue’ (Rousseau, 1913). 16. Normally Euro-nationalism is used not as an analytical term but as a pejorative in political denunciations of European identity politics. For examples, see Ifversen, 2002b. 17. The figure of incompleteness or of dynamic otherness also lies behind Derrida’s conception of identity: ‘There is no culture or cultural identity without this difference within itself’ (Derrida, 1992, p. 9). 18. Such efforts are very visible in public speeches given by members of the EU Commission, particularly the President. 19. The same conventional sense can be found in the preamble to the Constitutional Treaty: ‘Europe … intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity’ (Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe). The processual dimension of civilisation as a movement in time is, however, given greater emphasis here. 20. This concept of soft power has its counterpart in scholarly discourse. See Nye, 2004 and Manners, 2000. 21. An example of the first would be Huntington’s portrayal of the Western world. The second is obvious in former commissioner Viviane Reding’s celebration of European civilisation: ‘Our civilisation has been so exceptional that it has shaped the rest of the world’ (Reding, 2000; editor’s translation). 22. A communication from the Commission introducing the new neighbourhood policy refers abundantly to co-operation, interdependence, partnership and dialogue (Commission, 2003). 23. Some scholars have claimed that Europe’s past served as the other that constituted post-war Europe. (See Wæver, 1998; Diez, 2005.) I think this

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24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

claim overlooks that the constant revival of the past – its function as a public memory – makes it part of Europe, not Europe’s other. The claims also fails to recognise the role of the civilised other. Although primarily basing himself on scholarly statements of ‘normative power Europe’, Thomas Diez makes the similar claim that narratives of this kind construct the EU’s identity (Diez, 2005, p. 626). For an overview of the debate, see Manners, 2000; Diez, 2005. Others speaking within a fortress Europe discourse would argue that Europe’s immigration policies are an example of Europe having repressed its colonial past. See Hansen, 2004. The idea of temporally advanced Europe also appears in political rhetoric. The current Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, referred to ‘the successful construction of a ‘post-modern’ peace in Europe itself and the strategy to project this stability to our neighbours’ (FerreroWaldner 2005; my translation). Jeremy Rifkin takes this line of thinking a step further by proposing to replace the American dream with a European dream more suitable for the future: ‘Stripped to its bare essentials, the European dream is an effort at creating a new historical frame that can free the individual from the old yoke of Western ideology, and at the same time, connect the human race to a new shared history, clothed in the garb of universal rights and the intrinsic rights of nature – what we call global consciousness’ (Rifkin, 2004, p. 7).

10 Narratives of Security: Strategy and Identity in the European Context Felix Ciuta˘

It was not very long ago that any attempt to fit these three words – context, identity and narrative – into a sentence about European security would have been frowned upon in the academic circles of International Relations (IR) and security studies. A sign of the paradigmatic debates and epistemological anxieties of these disciplines, there is still a perceived need to demonstrate the empirical relevance and analytical prowess of any conceptual framework that centres on these categories. This is therefore a double challenge. On the one hand, students of security must show that, for example, ‘identity’ or ‘narrative’ gives us significant explanatory or hermeneutical purchase in a field of interaction typically circumscribed by the categories ‘anarchy’ and ‘material capability’. On the other, one is also compelled to show that ‘identity’ is not only a useful conceptual lens but also something that has profound relevance for the actors under investigation. European security offers a particularly complex illustration of this dynamic interplay between the political and hermeneutical relevance of the categories and concepts used by actors and analysts alike. For more than a decade now, it has become commonplace to describe European security in ‘broad’ terms and to regard ‘Europeanisation’ and institutionalisation as its key features. In analytical discourse, these two themes are heavily interlinked: on the one hand, the broadening of the security agenda beyond its traditional state-centrism and military focus is seen as a global phenomenon which has found a particular expression in post-Cold War Europe and its institutions; on the other, the institutionalisation of the solutions to these broad security problems is seen to reflect a European identity which has become a normative standard as well as a political instrument itself. This particular reading of the European security context 190

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deals a double blow to the traditional definition of security (broad instead of narrow) and the traditional understanding of security politics, where institutions replace spheres of influence and identity politics replaces the balance of power. What puzzles many observers of European security is not necessarily the proliferation of references to European identity as the driving force of the institutionalisation of European security or to the Europeanisation of national identities as the profound motive for membership of the EU or NATO – and consequently for the enlargement of these organisations. Just like the discourse of the ‘return to Europe’ of Central and European states right after the end of the Cold War, ‘European identity’ is at once desiderate, political instrument, myth, source of pride and bargaining tactic. More surprising is the coexistence of the views which consider the reconfiguration of European security a function of the (re)building of national identities along a profoundly normative idea of European identity with traditional views which describe and prescribe European security in terms of Realpolitik, national interests and strategic rationality. The coexistence of the two parallel narratives of identity and strategy adds epistemological complexity to what already is a complex political issue. From an analytical point of view, the arguments that see a direct relationship between contemporary European security (broad, normative and institutionalised) and European identity (discursively constructed) seem to have won the day. If the enlargement of NATO can make any strategic sense and if the enlargement of the EU (or the Council of Europe) is to make sense in terms of national interests, it is only when they are understood through the prism of European and Euro-Atlantic identity, which provides a unique context in political, normative and ideological terms. Politically speaking, however, the actors to whom analysts ascribe this identity-driven and normativelyladen behaviour often contradict themselves and equally often give us reason to be suspicious of what has become a rather hackneyed vernacular combining the ‘return’ to Europe with the ‘eternal’ essence of European-ness and the primacy of geopolitical logic. The question is therefore which of the two discourses can (or must) we take at face value: references to European identity as the driving force of institutionalisation, domestic reform or anything else, which could be mere political posturing, or the constant return to Realpolitik, which could be a cliché of foreign policy discourse rather than a resilient logic of national security. Even if ‘European identity’ is a convincing explanation for the evolution of European security, we must still make sense of

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the discursive – and thus political – coexistence of identity and strategy, community and Realpolitik. Faced with this conundrum, any analysis of European security therefore requires a hermeneutic that 1) accounts for the coexistence of the two contradictory discourses of identity and strategy; 2) explicitly prioritises lay over theoretical conceptions of security; and thus 3) engages directly with the tension between conceptual logic and contextual praxis and is able to investigate the logic of action in European security as deployed by its actors, which is thus real despite the fact that the hermeneutic might find it contradictory or fictitious. In this chapter I will argue that narrative provides this necessary hermeneutic, which responds to the analytical problems posed by the European security context as well as to wider issues in IR and security theory. Although a number of scholars have already brought narrative to the study of international politics (Campbell, 1998; Kuus, 2002; Ringmar, 1996b; Suganami, 1996, 1997, 1999), its precise epistemological or empirical relevance has yet to be fully spelled out, as demonstrated by increasingly frequent and sometimes vague references to ‘narrative’, ‘plot’ and ‘story’ in IR literature. The first step in this direction is to note that it is conceptually as well as methodologically insufficient to think of narratives as mere stories or histories. Thinking narratively requires moving beyond the representational attributes of narrative towards a comprehensive understanding of its logic, which is finely but significantly different from the more generic ‘discourse’. The intrinsic attributes of narrative – which, distilled in its particular structure, casts all action in a sequential, linear and intentional mould – generate a subtle picture of the complex relationship between doing and being, identity and action, knowledge and practice. Narratives carry meaning which is always geared for action, and also produce meaning. As vehicles of sedimented but immanently transformative logics of action, narratives are a medium – perhaps the medium – for the mutual and contextually effective synchronisation of the meaning they produce and the action they guide. It is therefore what narrative does, not only what it tells us, that makes it interesting for the study of European security and European identity construction. My argument in this chapter is that a narrative perspective allows useful insights in the constitution, transformation and sedimentation of categories of meaning – especially ‘European identity’ and ‘European security’ – that are taken as the normal and meaningful constituents of daily international practice. As a consequence, it does not call for the study of ‘security narratives’ in order to demonstrate the true nature of

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European security in terms of either geopolitical law or patterns of common identification. Narrative does not intend to demonstrate – it cannot demonstrate – that European security and identity is ‘this’ or ‘that’. On the contrary, my argument is that narrative allows us to understand how ‘this’ or ‘that’ formulation of European security and identity coexist; how categories of meaning and principles of action such as security, strategy or identity are transformed; how practices move between contradictory logics of action, and how contradictory discourses formulated by security actors are reconciled. A narrative perspective therefore shows how the meaningful coherence of ‘European security’ and ‘European identity’ is produced by what I will call the narrative shuttle – through which actors constantly adjust and re-adjust the meaning of experience, retrospections and projected expectations – despite the severe contradictions, failures and serendipities that regularly confront actors. It also shows that this coherence is contextually necessary and perpetually metamorphic. The discussion will begin with a summary of some of the central debates in narrative theory, with the aim of spelling out the considerable conceptual and normative significance of narrative and also indicating the significant impact of different conceptions of narrative. The following sections make a case for a narrative exploration of contexts where logics of action such as Realpolitik – often the language of choice in European security – are simultaneously naturalised and contradictory, sedimented and transformed. I will conclude by sketching the epistemological contribution of narrative to the study of European security, drawing attention to the productive crossovers with other theoretical perspectives.

Narrative: a brief introduction References to narrative have now become somewhat commonplace in IR and security theory literature, ranging from the primordial ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’ of post-structuralism (Lyotard, 1984, p. xxiv), to non-specific use interspersed in vastly dissimilar conceptual constructs (see Adler, 1997, p. 330; Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 33 and 188; der Derian, 2001, p. 672; Neumann, 2002, pp. 627–8, 638; Tonra, 2003, p. 739). It can be argued that this semantic and conceptual imprecision has not only diluted the overall impact of narrative theory in IR but has also obscured the complex and by no means obvious epistemological choices it requires. Generic talk of ‘narrative’ is not warranted by narrative theory itself, which is characterised by

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significant variety and sometimes radical disagreement. A clear discussion of these internal cleavages is therefore necessary both for signposting the different routes that can be taken narratively and for marking out the hermeneutic potential of narrative. Simply put, narrative is an account which has the properties of a story: a central character, an unfolding plot, a beginning, middle and end. Narrative is therefore a species of discourse whose main feature is its linear and sequential form, which reflects the common representation of temporal structure (past, present and future) as well as the linearity of narration. Stories are woven together by the vehicle of narrative, the plot, ‘the design and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning’ (Brooks, 1984, p. xi). As the ‘logic and dynamic of narrative’, the plot integrates events as meaningful parts of narrative and organises their contributions to the unfolding of the story towards its end (ibid, p. 10; Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 21). Put briefly, the plot puts meaning and action into narrative form, i.e. it gives them linearity, intentionality and internal coherence. Starting from this general definition, perhaps the most fundamental debate of narratology refers to whether narrative structure is created by the act of narration or is a feature intrinsic to lived experience. The issue of contention therefore concerns the distinction between narrative as form, a way of representing reality, and narrative as life, a way of experiencing reality. This debate constitutes a meta-theoretical interface between alternative conceptions of social action and their relationship with knowledge, meaning and context. Perhaps the key representative of the ‘narrative form’ perspective is Hayden White, whose work has been introduced to IR by Campbell, Ringmar and Suganami. White argues that story and life are different, that experience does not have the coherence and meaningfulness of a story. Narrative, White argues, produces meaning ‘by its imposition of a certain formal coherence on a virtual chaos of events, which in themselves (or as given to perception) cannot be said to possess any particular form at all, much less the kind that we associate with stories’ (White, 1981a, p. 251; see also White, 1978, p. 90). Meaning is generated in the process of narration, where events are ‘revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning, which they do not possess as mere sequence’ (White, 1981b, p. 5; original emphasis). The first consequence of White’s ‘narrative constructivism’ is the multiplicity of stories that can be told about life (Carroll, 1993, p. 3). White’s work has been praised and criticised with equal fervour for what seems to be a

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yawning opening for relativism, generated by his view of the historian selectively interpreting the ordering of the events into the meaning of events. In its own terms, such an argument engenders an epistemological and normative dilemma. Epistemologically, the very argument that events can be emplotted differently suggests a contradictory ‘quasipositivist sense of events “out there” to “be observed” by the historian’, an issue in tune with many recent debates in discourse theory in general and IR in particular (Vann, 1998, p. 153; see also Lorenz, 1998). Normatively, we are confronted with the task of identifying the real/best story from a set of (possibly) contradictory ones, given the radical undecidability governing the condition of truthfulness of different histories. Confronted with the necessity of ethical judgement prompted by its own normative concerns, this position seems compelled to appeal to a reality beyond narrative to produce this elusive criterion, which contradicts both the thesis of the meaninglessness of un-narrativised life and that of the apparently unrestrained freedom of narrativisation. This freedom cannot be other than hypothetical, because analysts are also situated actors who do not operate in a vacuum of meaning and deal with already ‘processed’ histories, and because of the finite number of story forms (tropes) White identifies (White, H., 1991, p. 144). Pointing to the situated and social nature of narrative, eminent in its pervasiveness at the level of lay narrators, as well as in the resourcing of every act of narration in the ‘stock of canonical life narratives’ (Bruner, 1987, p. 15; see also Somers and Gibson, 1994, pp. 61–2), this observation leads to the second contribution of White’s approach, which is to highlight the necessarily retrospective nature of meaning. From national history to our personal lives, the webs of meaning that define identities and conditions of action become webs of meaning only through the re-evaluative ‘look behind’ of narrative. In the analysis of European security and its relationship with the construction of European identity, we can thus see that actors retrospectively interpret and reinterpret their actions in a manner that produces the rationality and intentionality that these actors always take for granted. Unsurprisingly, the claim that ‘life’ is an amorphous, meaningless experience cast post facto into narrative form according to the whim or inspiration of the storyteller is found quite unsettling by a number of narratologists. To White’s statement that ‘no one and nothing lives a story’ (1978, p. 111), David Carr responds that actors live ‘in a narrative fashion’ (1986, p. 177). Narrative form is not ‘a dress which covers something else but the structure inherent in human experience and

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action’ (ibid., p. 65) because nothing ‘enters our experience … unstoried or unnarrativized’ (ibid., p. 68), there is ‘nothing below this narrative structure, at least nothing that is experienceable by us or comprehensible in experiential terms’ (ibid., p. 66). As a consequence, Carr’s narratology considers the past a lot more stable, a recoverable ancestral source of original narratives that hold not only the form but also the meaning which historical accounts have to convey if they are to make any claim to truthfulness (ibid., p. 176). This rescues – if rescuing were needed – the possibility of objective knowledge and the aspiration to find out what really happened, which cannot be ‘wished away or forcibly altered by an inventive narrative imagination’ (ibid., p. 171). Since meaning is ontologically inscribed in the flux of experience, knowledge of the ‘real story’ is thus desirable, objectively possible and fairly unproblematic.1 Despite the intuitive plausibility of his view of the pervasiveness of narrative structure in lived experience, Carr’s eminently phenomenological view generates its own problems. The first is that the relationship it postulates between life and form ignores experiences that do not fit the meaningful coherence offered by narrative (see Yngvesson and Mahoney, 2000). From Carr’s perspective, we always see actors performing rational and coherent actions, always in control of themselves and their environment, their structures of meaning never disrupted, multiple or in tension. This view of narrative also runs the risk of seeing cause in sequence and thus treating ends as inevitable products of beginnings and outcomes as unavoidable effects of intentions. We could thus be tempted to see the story of NATO/EU enlargement as the purposeful product of a grand strategy which can be traced back to its ‘origins’. Similarly, the narrative of the former communist states’ ‘return to Europe’ could be read as the unfolding of a direct causal relationship between national identity and European security. In either case, analysis would be faithful to the actors’ description of these events but would lose sight of the frequent turns, changes and contradictions engendered by the repeated telling and retelling of these stories. Despite the apparent tension between Carr and White’s positions, the relationship between them is neither as contradictory nor as dramatic as these categorical statements could suggest. The tension is created by their references to ‘reality’ and its interplay with narrative. Whereas the arguments seem to be a) that reality is narrative in its fundamental structure (Carr) and b) that reality is not narrative as such but only because we emplot it (White), both positions make reference to a narrative process that shapes something which at close inspection

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proves to be a different thing. While White takes meaning to be the ‘reality’ that has narrative form only because of our desire for coherence and meaningfulness, Carr takes action to be the ‘reality’ that is only experienceable in narrative fashion (see Carr, 1986, pp. 67, 177–9; Carr et al., 1991, p. 172; Ankersmit, 1986; Ankersmit, 1998; Lorenz, 1998). In my reading, therefore, this narratological debate does not rest on a prohibiting dichotomy but rather generates a potent understanding of the dynamic constitution of meaning and action. Reconciling story and life, meaning and action, the social dimension of narrative permeates both arguments, which converge towards a common understanding of the constructedness of the meaning of history and identity, encapsulated in Paul Ricoeur’s vision of ‘a life in search of its own history’ (Carr et al., 1991, p. 181; original emphasis. See also Ricoeur, 1984, 1991c).

Narrative matters In view of the clash between the logics of identity and strategy identified at the beginning, we must ask what narrative analysis can offer in the study of NATO enlargement, the archetypal meeting point of these two logics in the European context. My argument here is that the production of narrative is the cardinal ingredient of a narrative analysis of European security and identity. Analytically, NATO enlargement can be understood as a contextual deployment of certain categories of meaning (such as military alliance or security community) and logics of action (for example, balance of power or European solidarity). How can we understand the narratives of the ‘return to Europe’, Europeanisation and common identity building in NATO: as concocted stories, fake ideologies or sedimented meaning in taken-forgranted yet metamorphic logics of action? What happens when narratives are formulated: are they ‘invented’, ‘imposed’ or ‘constructed’? Can anyone produce a narrative of European identity through the proper or forceful application of a plot or, on the contrary, are we all prisoners of powerful narratives, of which we can only be more or less suspicious? Whether narratives impose, discover or construct meaning is a question with significant implications for our understanding of political action, and narrative theory provides different answers.2 A precise answer to these questions enables an analysis of NATO enlargement to ascertain its logic as it is deployed by its actors but also to go beyond the apparent coherence of this logic, revealing the process that produces it, constantly transforms its meaning and accommodates its

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contradictions. In order to clarify the significant contribution of narrative to our understanding of the constitution of contextual logics of action and their transformation, we must explicate what narrators ‘do’ in narrative and why as well as what narrative itself does. Here we are confronted once again with different narratological perspectives. Hayden White’s account of narrative has the ring of manipulation and symbolic violence: ‘the narrative impulse carries us into the arms of social stability and naturalizes bourgeois desire for coherence, harmony, intelligibility and order’ (Partner, 1998, p. 167). Narratives are in essence products of power and class interests: the bourgeois can produce narratives given their position of power in the context which anchors the act of narration and the bourgeois value harmony and order because they reinforce this position of power. As David Campbell, who has used White’s work in IR, puts it, narrative is an ‘interpretive and performative coup de force’ (Campbell, 1998, p. 183), ‘a violent performance’ (ibid., p. 27). Campbell refutes the view of policy makers ‘as being engaged in a sort of conscious and deliberate construction of reality’, yet his understanding of narrative does not put in place a convincing alternative (1992, pp. 218–19). Coups de force remain esoteric episodes which axiomatically assume the existence of different types of actors, some of them discretionary agents who deliberately manipulate meaning, others helpless prisoners of power structures, who are asked to practise an impossible permanent hermeneutics of suspicion which can only be encountered in the considerably limited realm of theoretical inquiry (Campbell, 1998, pp. 78–81; see also Bryant, 2000, p. 508). In the end, the conditions necessary for the exercise of the agentic attributes inherent in narrative production are only partially disclosed and in any case disputable. This constitutes a constant problem for Campbell, White and other authors who adopt this position (see Anchor, 2001; Carroll, 2000; Zagorin, 1999, 2000; Jenkins, 2000; Fish, 1980). In this light, narratives of European security are produced through an imposition of meaning, no matter what the actors of European security say (and they will definitely say different things). If what is at stake in the formulation of the European security narrative is a relationship of power, however subtly conceived, then as analysts we will eventually end up looking for centres from which power is exercised, an enterprise with undoubted, if limited virtues. Not only would the narrative about Europe – what it is and what it does – be reduced to a result of or legitimating cover for a manifestation of power, but the continuous re/construction of ‘Europe’, via the reformulation of the meaning

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of ‘security’ and ‘European identity’, would also be analytically as well as empirically effaced. But is there no role for power in the production of narrative? Is not contemporary European security at least partially the product of Cold War bipolarity and the unipolar distribution of power that followed? Are we not routinely confronted with narratives produced by actors in power – concerning for example the dual enlargement of NATO and the EU, intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan or 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 – which tell questionable stories while attempting to make undisputable truths? While a negative answer is obviously untenable, a positive one – of course, power has a role – requires careful qualification. Such a qualified answer needs a definition of power and needs to accurately identify its actors (who has it and why) and the relationships it engenders (how it is used and why). While this requires a theory of power which I am not interested in producing, it is important to note that the very appeal to power negates the understanding of narrative as ‘the product of power’, because power itself – what it means, how it is constituted, what are its actors, practical and ethical expressions – is a narratively produced category (see Guzzini, 2000, 2005, especially pp. 515–19). To argue that narratives of European security are the product of power is banal; to argue that narratives of European security are the product of European power is to reflect on the narrative transformation of the meaning and practice of ‘power’ in Europe, a process intrinsically related to the narrative constitution of ‘Europe’ itself. It is thus necessary to take a different view of the production of narrative, one in which narratives of European security are more than the mere products of might. Instead of narratives concocted in unspecified loci of power, we must focus analysis on the contextual logic (the plot) that structures narrativisation, on the specific security practices made possible by the telling of this or that story and on the manner in which these practices are considered the natural product of unswerving and deliberate agency. We are thus able to signal the contradiction between NATO’s assumed identity as a military alliance – which, as alliance theory warns as, is ‘always against, never for something’ (Liska, 1962, p. 12) – and the incompatible practice of the Partnership for Peace, which has profoundly shaped NATO as a European security institution and has established the ‘Europeanisation’ of national security policies as the cornerstone of European security. Moreover, we are able to trace the manner in which this contradiction was transcended through the repeated telling of apparently the same story, a story in

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which NATO has never been other than strategically oriented, its actions never other than rational, its transformation always deliberate, the effects of its actions always intended, its place always the same in the grand plan of European security in which only the threats change (see Ciuta˘, 2002).

The ‘narrative shuttle’ A narrative reading of European security provides in essence an understanding of transformation under the guise of sedimentation, in which narrative is the vehicle of change as well as the ‘vessel’ which carries the changing categories of meaning shaping security practice. In this view, narratives are not produced because actors have or want power; they are ‘the product of our refusal to allow the experience of time to be meaningless, our stubborn insistence on making meaning in the world and in our lives’ (Brooks, 1984, p. 323; emphasis added). ‘Making meaning’ is a profoundly emancipatory endeavour and was an essential ingredient of White’s narratology, encapsulated in his argument that the meaninglessness of history ‘can goad living human beings to make their lives different … which is to say, to endow their lives with a meaning for which they alone are fully responsible’ (1987, pp. 62–3). One is hard pressed to find a more felicitous description of this alternative understanding of what narrative does – and what narrators do – than Paul Ricoeur’s formulation: ‘reading the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end, we also learn to read time itself backwards, as the recapitulation of the initial conditions of a course of action in its final consequences’ (1991e, p. 110). The linearity and coherence of narrative are created through the constant revision of the plot, which ‘is not merely imposed but produced by a complex moving back and forth between events and plot structure until both are fitted together’ (Ezzy, 1998, p. 245; see also Carr et al., 1991, p. 166; Carr, 1986, p. 37; Brooks, 1984, p. 319). I will call this process a narrative shuttle, suggesting the constant to-ing and fro-ing between lived experience and a projected plot, which results in the sedimentation and continuous transformation of the actors’ knowledge, action design and interactional context. The narrative shuttle establishes the ‘necessary but ontologically anomalous’ conditions of meaningful interaction (Bernstein, 1991, pp. 114–15). If we understand European security narratives as basically exercises in sense-making, then the irreconcilable dichotomy of identity and strategy melts away, because they are the product of the same process.

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Both narratives give actors a coherent and meaningful view of their own actions and their consequences. Their coexistence is unsurprising if we consider the narrative process that produces them, linking beginnings and ends in a coherent and linear whole that bears, as White suggests, the mask of intentionality and inevitability. The reading of European security through the lens of Realpolitik or ‘strategic rationality’ makes perfect narrative sense, its logic incorporating retrospective knowledge by design: since states are always in rational pursuit of interest, they end up where they are because of the rational pursuit of interest – no matter where they end up and no matter what they do to get there. Lay deployments of strategic rationality fit perfectly Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative, because nothing reads the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end more than a grand strategy, which is designed to induce regular recapitulations ‘of the initial conditions of a course of action in its final consequences’ (Ricoeur 1991e, p. 110). European security is perhaps the strongest example of a project of action whose meaning is constantly reformulated ‘as the story moves along, until it coincides with the conclusion’ (Ricoeur, 1991a, pp. 21–2; see also Potter, 1996, p. 49). If the post-Cold War reconfiguration of European security is read as a process of socialisation into European norms and values (i.e. ‘European identity’), we can understand that this process is not one in which European identity functions as an isolated learning referent. Rather than a description of a road from ‘there’ (authoritarianism, defence nationalism, military security) to ‘here’ (democracy, common identity, human security), the narrative of European identity constantly produces the ‘here’ as well as the ‘there’ and reveals that getting ‘here’ gives relentlessly new meaning to the point of departure. The narrative of the return to Europe – for a long time, the guiding principle of NATO and EU enlargement – constantly produces not only the idea of Europe but also the fiction that Europe has always been what it is now, which allows the candidate states to also claim that they have ‘always been European’. To put it differently, what Europe has ‘always been’ is made possible by what Europe has become. To sum up, the argument of the narrative shuttle emphasises the metamorphic nature of all logics of action as interrelationships ‘of the intentional, the social, and the historical’ (MacIntyre, 1997, p. 246). It thus becomes clear that the narrative shuttle is irreducible to a deliberate manipulation of reality according to national interests. Narrative construction is not and cannot be ‘endlessly reflexive [and] self-conscious’,

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manipulative or ‘calculative’, evoking instead a form of agency which is not reducible to either heroic, or heinous impositions of power (Heritage, 1984, p. 118). To paraphrase Ricoeur, narrative neither mirrors reality, nor does it falsify it or do violence to it (Carr et al., 1991, p. 180; see also White, E., 1991, p. 312). Instead, permanently attuned to its social and political context and the available stocks of knowledge, the narrative shuttle produces intelligibility and coherence, the necessary – and necessarily natural as well as eternal – conditions for sedimentation and transformation (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 25; Carr, 1986, p. 66; Carr, 1997, pp. 18–20). Simultaneously shifting and eternal, narrative identity mediates ‘between permanence and change’ (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 195).

Narratives of European security In this final section I will discuss in more depth the contrast between the descriptive and productive understanding of narrative, a contrast that is at the heart of the hermeneutic project outlined at the beginning. It is worth reiterating the puzzle: is the reconfiguration of European security a matter of identity or strategy? If ‘identity’ provides significant hermeneutic purchase, what should we understand when the actors of European security talk strategy rather than identity, or talk both, or do both? We are already accustomed with a considerable literature that, having deliberately pitted European identity against strategic necessity, finds the latter analytically insufficient and normatively problematic. In empirical research around Europe, however, one often finds actors who embrace strategic and geopolitical logic and, despite the fact that their actions do not appear geopolitically sound to the analyst, consider the convergence of national and European identity as an expedient but ultimately shallow rhetorical exercise. So policy-makers want to be strategists: there’s nothing new about this. There is also nothing new, theoretically speaking, about thinking of actors being strategists (or ‘realists’) in the sense of following the principles of a hegemonic discourse that constitutes their field of interaction. ‘Strategy’ may be a grand narrative and it may be constructed, and we (as analysts) may be incredulous towards it because we understand that European security really is about identity but we are still confronted with a question: if actors want to do strategy, does this validate the logic of strategy? Briefly put, it is difficult to know if NATO enlargement is a matter of strategic gains or strengthening the Atlantic community of values, because actors routinely operate simultaneously with both logics. NATO often portrays itself hard at play in the realist

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game of security, strategy and national interest, but the logic of action it deploys constantly breaks down in the tension between strategy and partnership. As I have argued above, the categories of meaning and action ‘strategy’ and ‘identity’ are narratively equivalent – they are narratively produced in similar fashion – which means that the paradigmatic war between them is at least to some degree artificial. This is only one aspect which makes the answer to the puzzle difficult. The second is that we can find a wealth of discursive evidence to support both logics of security. Narrative responds to these two problems precisely in terms of the hermeneutic requirements outlined at the beginning of this chapter, allowing the analyst of European security to a) focus on the logic of security formulated by its actors, even if this logic is most often ‘strategy’ and even if most often this logic is inconsistent; b) understand why ‘strategy’ is a constant feature in the actors’ representations of their own actions; and c) grasp the permanent transformation of ostensibly strategic or geopolitical logics of security. (a) The starting point must be the actors’ definition of the situation, because for these actors – although admittedly not for the suspicious narrativist – logics of action and identity are and need to be coherent and meaningful.3 Here, the essential contribution of narrative comes mainly from its descriptive, not productive, dimension. Narratives of grand strategy or national identity remain what they are: products of canonical narratives and, as indicators of agency and conveyors of meaning, statements of fact.4 (b) As argued above, this basic observation is fundamental to narrative: actors cannot just abandon the logics that give meaning to their interaction, and therefore meaningful categories of action such as security or strategic rationality seem to remain unchanged. Sedimented logics are the foundation of the productive dimension of narrative hermeneutic. Narrative shares with critical, pragmatic or constructivist approaches in IR an understanding of the ‘constructed’ nature of the seemingly unrelenting and perennial logic of action of international politics, organised around principles of strategic rationality, interest and security. It sees this logic not as a consequence of the objective realities of international politics and not the result of the oppressive power of its grand narratives but the product of a permanent necessity for a stable interactional pattern, commonly defined and shared. In this sense, the central role played by sedimented logics of actions like ‘strategy’ and ‘geopolitics’ is essential to a narrative understanding of the relationship between European security and European identity.

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The taken-for-granted-ness of strategic logic is what accounts for the apparent antinomy between identity and strategy in the first place. In the absence of the strategic logic of European security, European identity could not have become its alternative and even usurper. Yet while security actors continuously think of their actions as strategically rational (which is unsurprising), they continually reformulate the meaning of these actions and their consequences within the logic of action that they sometimes contradict. As the study of European security demonstrates, old practices coexist with new and contradictory ones, previously inconceivable in and incompatible with strategic rationality. It was after all strategic logic which led to the formulation of NATO’s Partnership for Peace; similarly, it was against the background of strategic logic that the principles of NATO enlargement were formulated, principles that made the CEE states’ return to Europe the cornerstone of European security. The coexistence of grand narratives of European security/identity is not a sign of ignorance or conspiracy but an indication that European politics, like international politics in general, needs meaningful coherence precisely because it is in continuous change. (c) Narrative grasps this process of continuous realignment – through the narrative shuttle – of the logics of identity and strategy, seeing both as ‘narrative logics of situated social action’ which give meaning and legitimacy to security practices in their political, cultural and normative context (Bryant, 2000, p. 511). Our analytical incredulity towards narratives provides an insight into the making and un-making of stories of grand strategy in action and demystifies their quasi-heroic status but also risks rendering unintelligible the practices circumscribed by these narratives. For this reason, the logics of action of European security must be understood in their immanent metamorphosis. We are thus less tempted to dismiss the contradiction between strategy and identity as political folly or the product of irrelevant rhetoric and encouraged to understand that the contradiction reflects – and is circumvented through – the transformation of the constitutive rationality and normative significance of security practices. The key to understanding European security is therefore not in the descriptive content of strategy/identity narratives but in their practical product. The rapport between the logic of strategy and that of European identity cannot be judged by measuring how true European identity has become or by defining more precisely the parameters of Europeanisation but by observing their fraught coexistence in national and institutional security policies. These will always be expressions of ‘national interest’ and will always demonstrate expediency and

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strategic adequacy, even when – especially when – their very object is national and European identity. The evolution of post-Cold War European security discussed at the beginning of this chapter must therefore be understood as an archetypal narrative reconfiguration. Each security document could be treated as a narrative and as such loaded with meaning, categories of action and symbols of identity. Tracing the successive formulations of European and national security strategies is nevertheless a much more telling endeavour which allows us to follow the narrative transposition from one set of security practices to another, both invariably coterminous with the requirements of strategic wisdom as well as European identity. This is perhaps the most significant contribution of narrative to the understanding of the construction of European security and identity: its ability to grasp the process through which ‘hard’ security has morphed into ‘broad’ and human security, balance of power has morphed into institutional bargaining, and fragmented memories have morphed into European identity, however embryonic and fragile.

Conclusion Even if its epistemological status is still hotly contested (Ricoeur, 1984, 1991d; Klemm, 1983; Becker, 2000; Suganami, 1999) – which signals that narrative is not ipso facto compatible with the post-structuralist perspective of this volume (Abbott, 1992) – narrative adds analytical as well as normative depth to the study of European security and identity. By engaging the themes of the simultaneity of continuity and transformation, creation of traditions and retrospective rationalisation of history, identity and practice, narrative finds common ground with other perspectives in IR (see Kratochwil, 1998, pp. 206–7) as well as ethno-methodological sociology (Housley, 2000, pp. 425–43), Schutzian phenomenology, Wittgensteinian philosophy, social identity theory (Gergen and Gergen, 1997; Mancuso and Sarbin, 1983, p. 166), Deweyan pragmatism and theories of social practice.5 One thing that narrative does not provide is an infallible methodological algorithm as a key to empirical fiat. As I hope this chapter has made clear, narrative methodology is heavily determined by the position one holds in a series of unsettled narratological debates, which traverse disciplinary boundaries and any given empirical referent. The cardinal argument of this chapter is that the study of European security and identity is hospitable to narrative because, more than any domain of human interaction perhaps, international politics is gripped

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by the wholeness of its linear, intentional, meaningful and productive logic. In this sense, narrative helps us make sense of the apparent omnipresence of ‘strategic’ or ‘geopolitical’ thinking among policymakers: even if not always convincing, their claim that what happens is the product of clear judgement, rational design and intentional action is entirely unsurprising. National security strategies are understandably keen on stable realities and particularly on linking policy planning with policy outputs, precisely what narrative offers through form and plot, structure and process. Yet the narrative form of security strategies is not analytically remarkable unless we understand the manner in which narrative is produced and the effects of narrativisation. A narrative reading of the European security context not only shows the intrinsic relationship between security policy and identity which was previously ignored by or invisible to the analyses which approached European security armed conceptually only with ‘anarchy’ and ‘strategic interests’. With narrative we also see that this relationship is continuously reformulated, that the linear continuum that seems to connect Europe’s factious past to its institutional present is narratively produced and that the trek from the European balance of power to the logic of security community not only relies on a new vision of what Europe is but also constructs a new vision of what Europe has always been. Narratives of European security reflect therefore, in the words of Jerome Bruner, ‘how our way of telling about ourselves changes, and how these accounts come to take control of our ways of life’ (1987, p. 15).

Acknowledgements This paper has been in the making for a long time, and I am especially indebted to Peter Lawler for his comments and support over this period. For their advice and observations on this and earlier drafts, I also thank Alex Anievas, Richard Mole, Véronique Pin-Fat, Hayden White and the participants of the BISA Post-Structural Politics Working Group workshop ‘Time for narrative’, May 2002.

Notes 1. Carr follows here Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology (1973, p. 36). 2. Among IR narrativists only Ringmar formulates explicitly a ‘narrative theory of action’ (1996b, pp. 71–5 and 87–91).

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3. Neumann makes a similar argument (2002, p. 639). 4. For a detailed discussion of the analytical consequences of focusing on the actors’ definitions of security, see Ciuta˘, 2004. 5. See Millennium, vol. 31, no. 3, 2002.

11 Conclusion: Revisiting Discourse, Identity and ‘Europe’ Richard Mole and Felix Ciuta˘

In this brief conclusion, we try to draw together the contributions of the chapters of the volume, reconstructing – from the diversity and multiplicity deliberately embraced by all the contributing authors – the theme of the ‘discursive construction of identity in European politics’. The contributors to this volume were brought together by a common interest in the political and conceptual intersection between identity, discourse and power. Despite the fact that the contributors did not start their work from a common research agenda, the previous chapters have charted, in their ensemble, three key dimensions that have driven this project from its inception: (a) the theoretical reach of the concepts of identity, discourse and narrative; (b) the empirical relevance of the concept of ‘identity’, which not only structures scholarly analysis but also permeates routinely the political, cultural and security practices of the actors investigated; and (c) the methodological purchase of investigative techniques such as discourse analysis or narrative analysis. In this sense, the contributors try to move beyond the argument that ‘identity and discourse matter’. Rather, they explore, from different disciplinary perspectives and in different empirical contexts, both the multifaceted production of identity and the deep constitutive relationship between identity and politics in all its aspects. In addition, the arguments of all the previous chapters are circumscribed by the simultaneously palpable and nebulous presence of ‘Europe’, at once discourse and identity, power and principle, the foundation of and challenge to national sovereignty, the product and origin of national policies.

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Identity That identities are social constructs is now widely accepted as a selfevident analytical truth. The conceptualisation of nations, for example, as organic, self-contained entities is derided by all but die-hard primordialists. Even theorists who emphasise the pre-modern roots of contemporary national identities, such as Anthony D. Smith, admit that ‘[t]here is, at least in the case of historically well-preserved ethnie, a choice of motifs and myths from which different interest groups and classes can fashion their own readings of the communal past to which they belong’ (1986, p. 179). Why and how identities are constructed is the subject of fierce debate among academics but the fact that they are constructed is the current orthodoxy. So what does this book add to the debate? Its aim has been to take the constructivist position further, by challenging the reification of identities and highlighting the indispensable role of discourse in their construction. Put differently, the book takes the analytically self-evident constructedness of identity as the starting point for the investigation of its apparent political rigidity. While the fluidity, constructedness, multiplicity and contingency of identity may have become part of the academic orthodoxy, these characteristics are still politically contentious, as demonstrated by their discursive deployment in ongoing debates centred on the nation, statehood, sovereignty and the future – and past – of ‘Europe’. In so doing, the book has sought to engage with two aspects of discursively constructed identities: their content and their impact on social and political action. The deliberate rejection of an essentialist view of identity makes the identification of its content a matter of context but also one of political dispute. Absent an ‘essence’ of identity, its study focuses not on detecting single constitutive elements but on the manner in which identities are filled with meaning – their ‘content’ in historical, normative, and practical terms – and on the manner in which identities are legitimised and accepted as such. As Mole, Ellis, Wodak and Thomson demonstrated, language, literature, culture, art, history, myths, symbols, traditions, institutions, territory, etc., all play a part in identity-construction. Inherent in the construction of identity remains only ‘Otherness’, an equally factious, multiple, blurred identity that emerges – as Delanty and Millward, Mole, Ifversen, and Ciuta˘ show in their chapters – with as well as against the Self. While the production of identity markers – contingent or constrained, inter alia, by history,

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ethnicity or territory – is still the subject of much debate, the chapters by Madianou, Ringmar and Mole draw attention to the interplay between psychological need (collective as well as individual) and the political machinations of elites. In the same vein, Thomson and Ciuta˘ emphasise the necessity of stable identity narratives but point out that such stability is narratively produced and eventually only an appearance, a (necessary) figment.

Discourse So what does this have to do with discourse? The answer lies in the fact that – whatever the process of identity formation – the various symbols, traditions, myths, institutions, etc., only acquire significance once they have been interpreted and given meaning. And it is through discourse that this meaning is created, maintained and disseminated. For example, to a geologist the Stone of Destiny is simply a block of sandstone. To the Scots, however, it is a symbol of Scottish nationhood and sovereignty, imbued with historical meaning and capable of driving men into action. The political implications of the latter are enormous. If, as constructivists argue, there is no a priori relationship between object and meaning, the ability to control the meaning of a particular symbol, event, myth, etc., is a major source of power. In this regard, the second half of the book also challenges the dominant theories of social and political action that have traditionally been based on rational choice and the role of material forces, particularly economic and military might. The critical approaches adopted by the contributors demonstrate that discourses and discursively constructed identities grant specific interpretations of the social world a hegemonic position, thereby legitimising the organisation of specific structures and hierarchies, which eventually come to be seen as the natural order of things. By regulating what can be said, what can be thought and what is true and false and rational and irrational, these essentialised discursive structures condition and constrain political action by legitimising certain agents and policies and delegitimising certain others. From the simplistic assertion of ‘You’re with us or against us’ to the complex logics of sovereignty and national self-determination, discourses carve the world into legitimate and illegitimate actors and actions. Discourse is power, therefore, and not only is power the ability to determine the ‘truth’ but also, as some of the contributors to this volume show (Madianou, Mole, Ifversen), ‘truth’ is power. Historically,

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sermons, political speeches, school books, newspapers, etc., have allowed those in power – from the medieval Catholic Church to the Soviet nomenklatura – to construct social categories to fit their interests, presenting them as superior and natural. In the medieval period and in totalitarian regimes such as the USSR, controlling meaning or the interpretation of meaning was straightforward. Today, television, the Internet and, in particular, the processes of globalisation – regional integration, on the one hand, or large-scale immigration, on the other – make it far more difficult to exercise this control. As a result, hegemonic discourses and meta-narratives are undermined, identities are recast and the elites’ control over their production and meaning – by which they are nevertheless constrained – lessens, with the result that alternative truths jostle for audiences and legitimacy.

Europe If anything, the explorations into the discursive construction of identity in European politics in this volume show that ‘Europe’ is a product as well as a condition for the contestations of identity, power and legitimacy referred to above. Furthermore, not only is ‘Europe’ one of the identities whose meaning is constructed and contested but it also is the background condition for the very articulation of contemporary discourses of national and ethnic identity, of legitimate claims to community, territory and sovereignty and of security, fear and survival. As the contributions by Wodak, Delanty and Millward, Ifversen, Mole and Ciuta˘ illustrate, the construction of ‘Europe’ occurs at the same time in specifically designated deliberative environments that are open to a creative exploration of the limits of European identity and through discursive and narrative articulations that (attempt to) reify ‘Europe’ as a historical, political and normative referent. In this sense, the discourse of national identity is enabled by ‘Europe’ as a context of tolerance and civility, and simultaneously constrained by ‘Europe’ as a totalising discourse whose universality undermines national specificity. The paradox of the discursive constructions of identity in European politics is therefore that national culture and/or national security function as if European identity were out there, an immutable and intransient other to be embraced or rejected, while in effect national culture and/or security continuously recreate European identity – and thus recreate the very conditions of their own possibility. The ambiguity of European identity is viewed from this angle not necessarily as an impediment to the actorness of Europe or as a sign of its political

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inefficiency. Since European identity is as ambiguous, fluid and shifting as all identities, the intersection of national and European politics that produces it becomes relevant primarily in normative terms. To paraphrase Hill and Smith (2005, p. 406), Europe may not be a power, but ‘Europe’ certainly has power.

Beyond the discursive construction of identity in European politics It is probably impossible to do justice to the all the topics investigated in this volume, whose complexity makes their intersection inciting – even though at times prohibitively labyrinthine – both analytically and politically. The chapters of this volume have added to the literature on the discursive construction of identity and provided meticulous analyses of different segments of this process at the national and/or European level. Among the questions to be further investigated, the epistemological status of discourse, the methodological requirements of studying identity and the specificity of the European context are perhaps paramount. As demonstrated by the contributions to this volume, the fine line between ‘construction’ and ‘manipulation’ is still to be (re)drawn, as are the moral and normative contours of ‘Europe’ and European politics. Is the power of discourse perforce a function of the power to formulate a discourse? What methodological tools are required for the exploration of these two facets of power/discourse? Is Europe special? Is this because European states now engage in specific forms of identity politics or are the national identities of European states constructed in a way that reflects the historical and political specificity of Europe? This volume contributes to these debates and – as the variety of perspectives and approaches included as well as the overlap between them show – points out the significant potential for multidisciplinarity in providing answers to these questions that will no doubt linger in the politics and analysis of identity.

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232 Bibliography Wodak, R. and Wright, S. (2006b) ‘Communicating Europe in Cyberspace’, Journal of Language and Politics, vol. 5, no. 2, 251–75 Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. and Liebhart, K. (1999) The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Wodak, R. and van Dijk, T. (2000) Racism at the Top: Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava Worre, T. (1995) ‘Danish Public Opinion and the European Community’, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 20, no. 3, 209–22 Wright, S. (2004) ‘Deliberation by Design? Discussion Board Design and the Nature of Online Discussion’, in Gibson, R., Oates, S. and Owen, D. (eds) Civil Society, Democracy and the Internet: a Comparative Perspective. London: Frank Cass Yngvesson, B. and Mahoney, M.A. (2000) ‘As One Should, Ought and Wants to Be: Belonging and Authenticity in Identity Narratives’, Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 17, no. 6, 77–110 Zagorin, P. (1999) ‘History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now’, History and Theory, no. 38, vol. 1, 1–24 Zagorin, P. (2000) ‘Rejoinder to a Postmodernist’, History and Theory, vol. 39, no. 2, 201–9

Speeches Brittan, L. (1994) ‘Creating a New Europe’. Speech on behalf of the European Commission, 9 May Ilves, T.H. (1997) Speech to the Società Italiana per le Organizzazione Internazionale, Rome, 20 March Ilves, T.H. (1999) Speech to the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, 14 December Prodi, R. (2000) ‘Shaping the New Europe’. Speech to the European Parliament, 15 February Prodi, R. (2001) ‘Rich Diversity: the Union’s Strength’. Speech, Innsbruck, 9 November Prodi, R. (2002a) ‘A Wider Europe: a Proximity Policy as the Key to Stability’. Speech, Brussels, 5–6 December Prodi, R. (2002b) ‘The Final Lap’. Speech to the European Parliament, 9 October Prodi, R. (2003) Speech to New York University Law School, 4 November Prodi, R. (2004) ‘The Role of the EU in a Changing World’, Beijing, 14 April

Index Actor, metaphor of the, 120–1 Adorno, Theodor, 146 Anderson, Benedict, 12–13, 18, 46–52, 60, 68 Anti-Semitism, 144 Argumentation strategies, 75 Asylum-seekers, 75, 141 Atlantic divide, 176 Audience studies, 96, 98, 102, 104, 115 Autocracy metaphorical language of, 125 Baltic States, 149–69 Banal nationalism, 14, 48, 71, 95–6, 101–2 Bauman, Zygmunt, 145 Benjamin, Walter, 13, 49–50, 52 Bhabha, Homi, 51, 54, 67, 69 n7 Billig, Michael, 14, 18, 95, 100–2 Body metaphor of the, 121–2 Boundaries, 3, 4, 10, 34, 50, 65, 70, 71, 97, 150, 154, 159, 162, 166, 171–2 Brubaker, Rogers, 2–3, 11–12 Bruner, Jerome, 195, 206 Business corporation elaboration of the metaphor of the, 131 metaphor of the, 122 Campbell, David, 154, 158, 194, 198 Carr, David, 195–7, 206 n1 Castells, Manuel, 144 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 139 Categories of analysis, 11 Categories of practice, 11 Categorisation, 3–4, 6, 9, 10, 33, 34, 79, 81, 199 China metaphorical uses in, 126, 128 Christianity, 121, 140, 182

Citizenship, 75, 79, 81, 82, 84, 139, 148, 155, 156, 159, 163, 165–6, 180 Civil society, 73, 138, 148 Civilisation, 38, 90, 149, 150, 152, 159, 161, 172, 174–8, 179–81 discourse of, 183–6 Civilising, 177, 179, 181 Closeness deficit, 73 Co-construction of identity, 74, 78, 79 Communication, 13, 25–44, 73, 79, 82, 83, 86, 96, 146 Community of values, 76, 182, 202 Congregation metaphor of the, 123 Consent metaphorical uses and, 120–8 Constitutionalism metaphorical language of, 125 Constructivism, 4–6, 8, 10, 12, 152–4, 194, 203, 209–10 metaphors of, 132–3 self-organisation and, 133–4 Context-dependent, 74 see also Recontextualisation Cooper, Robert, 175–7, 181 Copenhagen School, 153 Cosmopolitanism, 137, 143, 147, 148, 179, 180, 185–6 Crisis, 174, 179, 183 Critical Discourse Analysis, 17–18 Cultural intimacy, 112–13 Cybernetic device metaphorical replacement and, 133–5 self-organisation and, 133–4 Cyberspace, 71, 91 Cyprus, 98–108 Decline, 171, 173, 174, 179–81 Decoding demotic, 102 dominant, 102 233

234 Index Deixis, 14, 61, 99–102 Denmark, 45–69 Dinesen, Isak, 45, 68 n2 Discourse Theory, 17–18 Dissent, 113 elaborations of metaphor and, 128–31 metaphor and, 120 metaphorical replacement and, 132 Dugri, 40 Education, 5, 14, 34, 35, 38, 48, 80, 158 English School, 151 Epistemic communities, 76 Equality, 47, 76, 89, 90, 122, 137, 185 Essed, Philomena, 144 Essentialism, 4, 15, 96, 107, 109, 112, 113, 159, 209 Estonia, 149–69 Ethnic codes, 26–9 Ethnic discourse, 25, 36, 41 Ethnic sub-codes, 26–9 Ethnies, 7 Ethno-symbolism, 6–7 European identity, 1, 21, 78, 79, 85, 90, 160–4, 179, 182, 186, 190–3, 195, 197, 210, 202, 204, 205, 211–12 European Union, 1, 57, 69 n1, 70, 74, 83, 89, 132, 160, 161, 163, 171, 174, 176 Enlargement, 1, 75, 83, 139, 143, 153, 181, 191, 196 Exclusion, 79, 81–2, 90–1, 93, 139, 146, 158, 159, 185 Experience, 3, 26–7, 36, 38, 53, 80 Extreme right, 141, 144, 145, 146–7 Face-keeping device, 86, 88 Fact establishment of, 17, 47, 51, 55, 64, 203 Family elaboration of the metaphor of, 130–1 metaphor of the, 123–4 Football, 142 Fortress Europe, 71 discourse of, 180–5

Foucault, Michel, 16–17, 171 France, 71, 135, 140, 141, 146, 170 Freud, Sigmund, 144 Garden elaboration of the metaphor of, 129–30 metaphorical uses of, 124 Gellner, Ernest, 5, 8, 9, 47, 48 Genres, 27, 45, 49, 63, 71, 82 Geopolitics, 174, 191, 193 Geopolitical logic, 202, 203, 206 Globalisation, 75, 92, 139, 144, 145, 152, 180, 184, 211 Greece, 95–116 Group identity, 28, 68, 79 Habermas, Jürgen, 88, 93 n3, 178–81, 185 Harmony as political metaphor, 126 Herzfeld, Michael, 113 Heterodynamic sub-codes, 28–9 Historiography, 45–69 Hobbes, John, 138 Hobsbawm, Eric, 7, 8 Homodynamic sub-codes, 28–9 Hybrid public space, 82 Identification, 2, 4, 8–9, 10, 12, 13–14 Identity development, 30 Ideology, 5, 17, 26, 34, 35, 36–9, 75, 180 Imagined Communities, 12, 46–52, 60, 68 Immigration, 43, 71, 79–80, 82, 140–6 Inclusion, 79, 81–2, 90–1, 93, 158, 163 Industrialisation, 5 Intercultural communication, 29, 32, 41 Islam, 27, 37, 141, 180 Islamophobia, 146 Japan metaphorical uses in, 126 Jenkins, Richard, 10

Index 235 Jews, 26, 30, 32, 40, 140, 144 Jørgensen, A.D., 45, 46, 52–3, 56, 63–8, 68 n1 Kagan, Robert, 173–7, 179, 183, 188 n11 Knowledge, 4, 17, 25, 26–8, 32, 50–1, 192, 194, 196, 200–1 Latvia, 149–69 Lefort, Claude, 139 Legitimisation, 2, 15, 17, 43, 65, 72, 75–6, 79, 85, 94 n11, 157, 171, 173, 183, 209–10 Liberalism, 137–49, 178 Lie, John, 139 Lithuania, 149–69 Locke, John, 138 Machine metaphorical uses of, 125 Macro structures, 33–4, 38 Marx, Karl, 5, 18 Meaning, 2, 3, 9, 14–16, 18, 27, 29, 32, 41, 71, 75, 96, 108, 119, 135–6, 157, 172, 192–201, 203, 209, 210–11 metaphor and, 119–20 metaphorical elaboration and, 128–9 metaphorical replacement and, 132 Metaphor consent and, 120–8 meaning and, 119–20 political elaboration of, 128–31 political uses of, 119–36 revolution and, 132–6 Micro structures, 33–4, 38 Migrants, 43, 71, 79–80, 82, 140–6 Modernity, 5, 139, 146, 175–6 Multiculturalism, 6, 75, 137, 140–1, 143–4, 148, 183 Musayara, 32, 40 Musical performance metaphor of, 126 Narrative, 37, 46–7, 49, 51, 58, 65, 159, 172, 190–207 Narrative shuttle, 193, 200–2, 204

Nationalism, 138, 143, 182, 186, 188 n16 banal, 14, 48, 71, 95–6, 101–2 metaphors of, 124 theories of, 1–24, 47–8 Nation-state, 1, 12, 55–7, 89, 93 n1, 137–9, 141, 143, 145, 186 Netherlands, 71, 80, 138, 140, 145 New Europe, 170–89 Nexus of discourses, 71, 74, 82 Normative power, 91, 186, 189 n24, 190, 191 Norway, 140 Novel, 13, 45, 47–52, 67–8 Old Europe, 170–89 Orthodox civilisation, 116 n12, 123, 149, 159–60, 164, 166 Pillarisation, 140 Poland, 144 Post-modern, 3, 6, 13, 46, 154, 175–7, 181–3 Power, 13, 15–18, 33, 43, 73, 92, 139, 150–1, 158, 173–8, 184, 185–6, 188 n11, n20, 198, 199, 202, 208, 210, 211, 212 metaphor and, 119–20 metaphorical elaboration and, 128–9 revolutions and, 135–6 Primordialism, 4, 6 Productive logic, 206 Psychology of identification, 2, 8–9 Realism, 150–1 Realpolitik, 184, 191–3, 201 Recontextualisation, 73 Refugees, 109, 111–12, 141 Reification, 6, 8, 10–15, 97, 154, 209, 211 Renan, Ernest, 60 Representation, 71, 72, 74, 76, 93 n3, 158 Reproduction circuits, 41–2 Republicanism, 138, 141 Return to Europe, 163, 191, 196, 197, 201, 204

236 Index Revolution metaphorical replacement as, 132–6 Ricoeur, Paul, 197, 200–2 Rumsfeld, Donald, 162, 170–1 Russia, 123, 149–69 Rydgren, Jens, 72, 147 Salecl, Renata, 144 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 16, 21 n1 Secularism, 121, 137, 138, 141, 178 Securitisation, 152–4, 157, 181, 182 Security, 145, 146, 149–69, 181–2, 190–207 Security dilemma, 150 Self-esteem, 8–9 Self-organisation see Cybernetic device Ship elaboration of the metaphor of, 129 metaphor of the, 126–7 Smith, Adam, 133, 138 Smith, Anthony, 6, 209 Social Identity Theory, 3 Social movements, 145 Societal security, 150, 153, 156, 157, 164–6 Soviet nationality policy, 11 Soviet Union, 134, 135, 149, 153, 156, 162, 165 Strategic logic, 202, 203, 204, 206

Strategic rationality, 191, 201, 203 Structuration, 29, 35, 41 Suny, Ronald, 11 Tajfel, Henri, 9 Team metaphorical use of the idea of the, 127 Television news, 95, 97, 98, 109, 115 n3 Theatre metaphor of the world as a, 121 Theory of Relevance, 85 Third Way, 145 Tolerance, 30, 137–8, 140–1, 145 Topoi, 71, 78, 88, 94 n10 Turkey, 97, 99, 101, 103–5, 107, 113 USSR, 11, 154, 155, 162 see also Soviet Union Utilitarianism, 35, 38 Viewers analytical, 104–5 critical, 96, 103 Wæver, Ole, 152–3 White, Hayden, 51, 194–202, 206 Zoological collections metaphor of, 127–8