Semantic Struggles in the Face of Crisis: ‘The West’ as Contested Key Concept in West German Parliamentary Debate (1973/74)

Abstract

This article suggests to read West German parliamentary debate on the first oil crisis as a semantic struggle on the concept of the West. Drawing on latest research, the West is considered to be a narrated concept with its meaning being negotiated upon when being evoked. Even though the West does not refer to any empirical reality, it is not an arbitrary concept either. Rather it repeatedly presents itself in three ideal typical narrative forms: being the civilisational, the modern and the political narrative. As shown by the analysis of the parliamentary protocols of the winter 1973/74, West German parliamentarians applied all of these narratives. However, with the civilisational narrative being referred to only marginally and the modern narrative applied with consent, it was foremost the political narrative that led to parliamentary dispute. Whereas the conservatives interpreted the political narrative in terms of the Cold War geopolitics, the social-liberal government under Chancellor Willy Brandt tried to renegotiate the political narrative by shifting focus to the European integration process. In West German parliamentary debate, the oil crisis of 1973 henceforth functioned as a catalyst for expressing different interpretations of the concept of the West, and above all, the political West. Against the background of the Cold War, these different interpretations of the political narrative of the West reflected the domestic struggle on German identity.