European Constitutional Imaginaries

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyses the polysemy and polyvalence of the European constitutional imaginaries of pluralism, calculemus, imperium, and communitas. It argues that these imaginaries have to be distinguished from the imagination of EU constitutional theory. They spontaneously evolve in European society and, despite their theoretical contextualizations and uses, cannot be purposively constructed by theorists to justify the integration and constitutionalization of Europe. Imaginaries are societal power, which precedes the structures of political power and constitutes the common understanding of social reality despite all its fragmentations, diffusions, and differentiations. The chapter thus highlights the sociological meaning of the concept of imaginary as the background power of both national and transnational legal and political systems which determines legitimacies and illegitimacies in EU law and politics. It subsequently analyses specific imaginaries of EU integration and their general components. It concludes by arguing that these European constitutional imaginaries are part of the societal constitutionalism of the EU, beyond constraints of law and politics and the old semantics driven by the imaginary unity of statehood.