Of Modern Ruptures: Verovšek's Appeal to a Collective EU Memory

Abstract

Of Modern Ruptures:Verovšek's Appeal to a Collective EU Memory Richard A. Vogt (bio) Peter J Verovšek. Memory and the Future of Europe: Rupture and Integration in the Wake of Total War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. 240 pp. £80.00 (hc). ISBN: 9781526143105. What began as a reflection upon the role of collective memory in the foundation of the EU project, soon became for Peter J. Verovšek a decade-long exercise in confronting the metacrisis that has been tearing at the Union's solidarity.1 The enlargement of 2004, the failed Constitutional vote of 2005, and the Great Recession all preceded his first written word in 2009. The Eurozone financial crisis continued. And then came the migration crisis, Brexit and a deepening nationalist, far-right movement which made electoral gains in the 2019 European Parliament. In June 2020 (after the book was released) when adding the current crisis of COVID-19 to this list, he reflected that now is not the time for significant EU reform. Better to muddle through, he reasoned, and consider wholesale change at a later date.2 But isn't that the problem that the EU project has had for most of this century: being captive to crisis after crisis? Does this not alert us to the fact that it is a political body fundamentally ill-designed to tackle widespread challenges across its dysmorphic geopolitical body? French right-wing nationalist Marine LePen made this clear at the start of 2019, declaring that she was no longer pushing for a form of Frexit, as she had been doing for years. "I summarize it this way: the European Union is dead," she campaigned. "Long live Europe."3 The discourse around the EU is now one of a metacrisis, and even (by extension) a crisis of liberalism and capitalism, abetted by mainstream media and politicians alike.4 Is this largely because the EU, through incessant territorial expansion and diminishing powers of coercion, has conceded its "mystical foundation of authority" to assume one of a purely economic and legal identity?5 If the compounding treaties of the EU have been seen as the way to anchor the EU's uniquely twentieth-century identity—one that is slowly devolving—then it appears the belief is that the Union a can leap from one that is essentially a legal and economic construct into one that will be a supra-national being. Schengen has become a hallowed doctrine, irrespective of its actual application. Yet, cultures and nations are molded from their myths as much as their history: this is especially true of national grievances and collective memories.6 What the EU project arguably lacks in this regard are more heroic foundational legends that can take precedence over any bureaucratic inconsistencies of origin.7 Yes, there is the appeal to the symbolism of Auschwitz, but at best the EU evokes a roll call of city names that are seen to sign-point its evolution into the present-day Union: Westphalia, Vienna, Versailles, Potsdam, Maastricht and Schengen.8 At worst, the EU is born out of the memories of genocide and total war. To counter this, Verovšek looks toward the great European rupture of 1945, relying on rephrasing the "traumatic events that tear existing narratives of the past asunder," and in doing so allowing "collective memory to act as a resource for social and political change" (12).9 [End Page 421] This short (but seemingly long) history of minor ruptures of the EU this century mentioned at the outset—from mass enlargement to the 2019 Parliamentary election in which 10% of the representatives were considered to be far right politicians—further crowd out a once-coherent European narrative. This has prompted Verovšek to reflect on the broader EU legacy. As the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was founded in 1951 upon the experiences of total war to create a more peaceful, inclusive future, does the current crisis of European identity ("potentially existential," he adds) rest upon the fading of this once-shared memory? And if so, what are the agitators of a changing EU identity? If Duncan Bell is right, and I suspect he is, then memory...