Refiguring the European Union’s Historical Dimension
| Author | Adam Chalmers |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885106067282 |
| Date | 01 October 2006 |
| Published date | 01 October 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Refiguring the European Union’s
EJPT
Historical Dimension
European Journal
of Political Theory
Adam Chalmers
© SAGE Publications Ltd,
McGill University, Montréal, Canada
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi
issn 1474-8851, 5(4) 437–454
[DOI: 10.1177/1474885106067282]
a b s t r a c t : The European Union requires a stronger approach to social solidarity
than has been offered in existing theory. Perhaps the exigency of this claim is
nowhere more evident than in the recent failed referendums in France and the
Netherlands. In both cases the narrow legal-economic sense of the EU won out over
what was hoped to be an emerging European public sphere, indeed a shared sense of
European identity rooted in history. This article asks what type of ‘history’ this
identity requires. Approaching this problem from a theoretical perspective, I will
outline why and how such a ‘history’ must accord with the existing limits set by post-
and/or transnationalism itself. Second, I will question how well various attempts at
writing such a ‘history’ have already managed in terms of these limits. Lastly, drawing
on the current work of sociologist Ulrich Beck, I will put forward a theoretical
alternative to the existing models.
k e y w o r d s : Beck, civic nationalism, ethnic nationalism, European Union, Habermas,
history, identity, nationalism, postnationalism
Shortly before the French referendum on the new EU constitution in May 2005,
a group of leading German intellectuals, artists and academics (Jürgen Habermas
and Günter Grass among the most notable) published a letter in the French news-
paper Le Monde featuring rather strong admonishments in favour of a French ‘Yes’
vote. From the vantage point of hindsight such comments seem tempered by a
certain uneasiness. Namely, after a resounding French ‘No’ vote, the ‘catastroph-
ic’1 consequences identified in the letter assume a certain reality. How imminent,
exactly, are these predictions? Whereas such hyperbole evokes the urgency of the
moment rather than the actual prescience of the claim, the distance we now enjoy
from the event allows us to ask: why did the vote fail and what real consequences
does this pose for the future of the EU?
Perhaps we can immediately say, following Habermas’s own explanation laid
out in a letter written little more than a week after the article in Le Monde, that the
lack of a ‘European public space’, or equally the fact that there is ‘no transnational
grouping of themes [and] no common discussion’,2 is at fault here. Put baldly,
Contact address: Adam Chalmers, 320, ave Laurier Est, apt. #7, Montréal, Quebec, H2T
1G5, Canada.
Email: adam.chalmers@web.de
437
European Journal of Political Theory 5(4)
Europe lacks solidarity in the form of a shared European identity; it lacks, to use
Habermas’s words, a ‘cosmopolitan consciousness’. Of course, the exact nature of
such an identity is difficult to pin down. It would, needless to say, move beyond a
simple union under the auspices of a shared democratic constitution and legal
citizenship.3 Not only would such a ‘thin’ identity be hard-pressed to produce any
shared sense of belonging and purpose, it would also likely only be ‘an elite
affair’,4 to speak with Craig Calhoun. It is from an understanding of these limita-
tions that we begin to inquire into the ‘historical-cum-cultural’ dimensions that
would help establish a so-called ‘thick’ EU identity. In other words, it asks how
Europe’s diverse cultures, histories and nationalisms can possibly be reconciled so
that democratic participation reflects a unified Europe, a voice that negotiates its
old alliances with a new, greater European commitment.
For Habermas, EU constitutional patriotism took one step further away from
high altitude cosmopolitanism and subsequently one step closer towards the
achievement of a ‘thick’ EU identity on 15 February 2003. Mass demonstrations
against the war in Iraq simultaneously held in London, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona,
Berlin and Paris not only ‘brought to expression the helplessly furious indignation
of a highly diverse group of citizens’,5 it also marked, more importantly, an event
that ‘could retrospectively go down in the history books as the signal for the birth
of a European public sphere’.6 But that’s certainly not to say that Habermas’s
notion of cosmopolitanism was until this point totally ahistorical. In fact (contra
the popular, albeit false, reception of constitutional patriotism) Habermas has
made a consistent effort to uncover a history of postnational Europe that acts
to unite its individual member states. To this end Habermas invokes Europe’s
rather dark past, citing religious wars, class oppositions, the descent of imperial-
ism, the loss of the colonial empires, the destructive force of nationalism and
the Holocaust.7 Europeans, according to Habermas, have ‘productively worked
through their belligerent past’8 and can now draw on it to help secure a common
sense of identity, solidarity, even a cosmopolitan consciousness. Indeed, as
Habermas would have us conclude, our long, shared history of negative experi-
ence is the actual motivation – and shared indignation – underlying the mass
demonstrations in February 2003. But, as Habermas himself has even noted, the
recent failed referendums paint a different picture, asking us to question the
extent to which this ‘postnational European history’ is common or shared among
Europeans and, further, if it has helped produce a European public sphere from
which a shared sense of European belonging can emerge.
Nothing less than the success of the EU rides on such a European ‘historical
dimension’ and, in fact, as Habermas states with confidence, ‘governments beyond
the nation-state’9 in general are dependent on the example of Europe as a guiding
light. The failure of a European constitution on this point places unprecedented
pressure on this cosmopolitan project and a new exigency arises as to the exact
nature of such a crucial historical dimension that would ensure solidarity among
438
the European member states. It is this specific juncture that I will take as my start-
Chalmers: Refiguring the European Union’s Historical Dimension
ing point. Our general question is: what type of history is required to unify
Europe? I propose to approach this question from a purely theoretical perspective
and, as such, outline how such a ‘history’ must accord with the existing limits set
by our understanding of postnationalism itself. Thus, the first part of this analysis,
drawing heavily on Habermas’s account, outlines these limits via a consideration
of the crucial interconnections between the nation state and cosmopolitanism or
postnationalism. As I hope to demonstrate, these interconnections revolve around
two central elements that are at work in both systems: namely, the civic element
and the ethnic element. Balancing the two becomes postnationalism’s chief task in
terms of establishing the theoretical requirements for producing a postnational
European historical dimension. In the second part of this analysis I will question
how well various attempts at writing such a ‘history’ have already managed in these
terms. Lastly, drawing on the current work of sociologist Ulrich Beck, I will put
forward a theoretical alternative to the existing models which, I argue, is better
suited to postnational theory’s inner requirements.
I
The nation state, while inviting blame for the rise of xenophobia and the result-
ant catastrophes of the Holocaust and the Stalinist Gulag, also engenders, insofar
as it acts as the background from which human rights and popular sovereignty are
enabled, the conditions required for a peaceful cosmopolitan grouping of states, a
transnational union or postnational constellation. The nation state is, insofar as it
remains indispensably interconnected to the postnational system, at once an
incredibly fruitful idea and a powder keg easily ignited by irrational fears. Just how
deep do these interconnections go, and how might they be applicable to the task
of identifying the type of history that a postnational Europe requires?
Habermas explains these interconnections by turning to the admittedly ‘pre-
carious path toward postnational societies’ that finds its orientation in ‘the very
historical model we are on the point of superseding’,10 namely, the nation state
itself. For Habermas, the nation state arose out of the necessity to address a legiti-
mation crisis rooted in a ‘pluralism of worldviews’ that thoroughly ‘stripped
political authority of its religious grounding in divine right’.11 Put simply, the
newly secularized nation state had to derive its legitimation from sources other
than religious ones. In response, individual members of the nation state were
mobilized towards a type of democratic participation that subsequently produced
‘a new level of legally mediated solidarity via the status of citizenship’.12 As a
result, a sense of community or citizenship rooted in the political and legal con-
ditions of a democratic constitution was enabled: in other words, the civic element
of the nation state. However, as Habermas has observed, the civic dimension
alone lacked the ‘driving force’ required to motivate and inspire its citizens, a
force that was ultimately needed to give the nation state its ‘staying power’.13
Habermas explains:
439
European Journal of Political Theory 5(4)
This gap was filled by the modern idea of the nation, which first inspired in the inhabitants
of state territories an awareness of the new, legally and politically mediated...
To continue reading
Request your trial