nienass, b. 2013. postnational relations to the past

8/12/2019 Nienass, B. 2013. Postnational Relations to the Past

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Postnational Relations to the Past: A European Ethics

of Memory?

Benjamin Nienass

Published online: 2 February 2013# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract In nation-building processes, the construction of a common past and references to a

shared founding moment have played a well-documented role in fostering notions of a collective

political actor. While notions of unreflective national collective memories no longer hold in an age

of a postheroic politics of regret, the preferred subject of collective memories nevertheless often

remains the nation, both in academic literature and in public debates. In this paper, my aim is to

establish the role of collective memory in self-proclaimed postnationalapproachesspecifically

in the context of European integrationand to assess in how far these approaches can claim to go

beyond notions of memory handed down to us from earlier accounts of nation-building processes. I

start by laying out two different approaches to a postnational collective memory as they emerge

from the literature. The first approach aims at overcoming national subjectivities by focusing on a

specific content: a shared, albeit negative, legacy for all Europeans. The Holocaust plays a

particularly prominent role in this discourse. The second approach sees and seeks commonalities

not so much on the level of memorycontentbut rather on the level of specificmemory practices (a

European ethics of memory). While it is not aimed at dismantling the nation as a political subject

per se, it also creates a European self-understanding that makes the symbolic borders of Europe look

more porous: potentially everyone can employ these memory practices. However, as I will show,

this approach knows its own attempts to define a postnationalessence, most notably by tying the

ethics of memory to a specifically European cultural repertoire.

Keywords Europe . Ethics of memory . Cosmopolitanism . EU membership

We probably wont ever see the tomb of the unknown post-nationalist.

Jan-Werner Mller,Constitutional Patriotism (Mller2007a, p. 71)

It is a pretty safe bet that criticism of other peoples nationalism, in the name of our

own capacity to transcend it or the idea that we have already moved beyond it, is only

another figure of nationalism.

Etienne Balibar, We, the people of Europe?(2004, p. 15)

Int J Polit Cult Soc (2013) 26:4155

DOI 10.1007/s10767-013-9137-8

B. Nienass (*)

Department of Political Science, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, USA

e-mail: [email protected]


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I am (we are) all the more national for being European, all the more European for

being trans-European []

Jacques Derrida, The other heading: reflections on todays Europe(1992, p. 48)

Within the growing body of literature addressing transnational collective memories, both

empirical and normative theoretical approaches have increasingly addressed the question of

a shared European memory. More often than not, we encounter skepticism with regard to the

possibility of a postnational memory that can create new political communities beyond those

of the familiar nation-state context. But when one does come upon more optimistic depic-

tions of increasing overlaps among the memoryscapes of otherwise distinct national

discourses, these scenarios primarily highlight convergence around a more abstract notion,

one that stresses a consensus around the principles of apolitics of regret(Olick2007) or an

ethics of memory (Delanty and Rumford 2005, p. 102) instead of a shared content of

collective memory. These ethics are viewed as a departure from traditional nation-state

memory politics in that the legitimacy of a state is now derived from a full acknowledgementof its past and reflective and critical ways of working through it (Olick and Coughlin2003).

Each country is to apply these practices to its own specific national memories. Accordingly,

Europes shared memory is then best described as a commonly shared mode of memory or a

set of (ideal) practices.

Whether such a consensus exists across Europe is questionable. In this article, I am

attempting to excavate the structural possibilities of the discourse stemming from such an

argument, rather than debate the empirical basis of the claim about its widespread circula-

tion. What is claimed to be distinctively European about these ethics of memory? What is at

stake politically in the efforts to Europeanize these proclaimed ethics of memory? In

analyzing the structural potential of this particular memory discourse, I hope to exposesome of the processes by which efforts to arrive at postnational or cosmopolitan self-

understandings end up enforcing both old and new patterns of exclusion.

This is all the more important as the construction of a European identity is

sometimes described as paradoxical in the sense that exclusion is based on claims to

universality.1 However, we are not really facing a paradox: there is a logic of identity at

work when we divide the world into Europes cosmopolitanism on the one hand and

the particular outsider on the other. A careful look at the potential fault lines of

European memory discourses thus needs to be understood as part of a process of

unwrapping this supposed European paradox by analyzing the strategies (in the broadestsense of the term) by which a cosmopolitan and postnational Europe discursively

constructs its conditions for membership.

European Memory

The literature probing the empirical and theoretical plausibility of a European memory is

extensive.2 It has its origins in an even more well-rehearsed debate around the issue of a

shared European identity.3 The question of a European memory arises out of the high level

of integration that the European Union (EU) has achieved. Despite recent debates about the

1 See for example Le Gloannec (2006) or Todorov (2008). Le Gloannec (2006, p. 268) claims thatif Europe

defines itself as empty in substance and as open to the worldand ifEurope is the world and Europeanness

the blueprint for the world, discourses about a European identity will run into a dead end (p. 268).2 See for example Eder and Spohn (2005) and Pakier and Strath (2010) for overviews.3 See for example Cederman (2001), Checkel and Katzenstein (2009), and Kantner (2006).

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stability and durability of the EU in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007, there are

seemingly irreversible supranational characteristics that have triggered a debate about its

legitimacy and have led to discussions about the lack of or a necessity for a European people.

Most notably, this debate peaked around the attempts to create a European constitution. But

despite the failure of the more ambitious constitutional plans, the discussion about whatkeeps Europe together beyond its institutional framework has not come to an end. The

current crisis of the Euro has only made these debates more urgent. Many protagonists in this

debate start with the assumption that existing levels of integration have to be accepted as a

fait accompli and that democratic legitimation has to fill the void, or the much cited

democratic deficit,4 that was a consequence of this integration.

One could say that the future of Europehow deeply integrated it should be politically,

who may enter the union, in other words, its deepening and wideninglargely depends on

the raison dtre that emerges from the past. If Europe moves the two World Wars to the

center of its founding reason(ing), then it may stop at those levels of integration that make

future wars highly unlikely and keep those out that do not share the same traumatic history.

If it sees itself as the ultimate cosmopolitan project, however far projected into the future,

then it needs to highlight a specific past that predestines it to walk this path.

This specific debate on European memory is also situated within a larger debate on the

globalization of memory and the possibility of a postnational memory. While this is not the

place to reproduce this debate to its fullest extent, it is necessary to lay out some of its

parameters. It is by now a commonly held view that the heyday of memory politics

coincided with the heyday of the nation-state; in that moment, we came closest to the

imaginedunity and homogeneity of space, time and population,(Sznaider2008, p. 19, my

translation) that has since then been increasingly interrupted. In the realm of collectivememory, memory and the nation seem to have a peculiar synergy (Olick 2003, p. 2).

Consequently, some have argued that it makes little sense to talk about collective memory on

the postnational level at all (Margalit2002). For others, current processes of globalization

and Europeanization question this unity, without necessarily ending the possibility of

speaking meaningfully of collective memory. Rather, the coordinates of collective memory

have changed(Sznaider2008, p. 19, my translation, emphasis added).

What is clear is that the special position of the nation-state is certainly no longer secure. It is

sharing the field of meaning production(Levy and Sznaider2007, 161) with other actors and

along with these new developments of disintegration, different options emerge. One alternative

is integration on another, higher level (e.g., regional integration). This approach includesthose who use the language of amerger(Eder2005, p. 200) 5 of historical memories or even

those who search for Europes own founding moment.6 Levy (2010, p. 23) convincingly claims

that collectivized memory practices depend on their ability to mobilize and constitute mass

identificationsbased on a process of de-contextualization, which in turn requires a shift from

concrete memories to abstract remembrance. Since any notion of collective memory involves a

level of abstraction from individual memories, what prevents us from extending the process of

this abstraction beyond the national level?

Alternatively, other observers claim that memory is no longer functioning as a simple

integrating mechanism at all,

7

or, at least no longer in the same way. Instead, it is the co-4 See for example Follesdal and Hix (2006).5 While Eder uses this language to describe one particular option, he does not necessarily endorse it.6 See for example Hackmann (2009).7 See for example Huyssen (2003, p. 17), who states thatever more fragmented memory politicsquestion

whether forms of collective consensual memory are even still possible today, and, if not, whether and in what

form social and cultural cohesion can be guaranteed without them.

A European Ethics of Memory? 43


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existence and confrontation of particular and universal memories, and the constant process

of integration, disintegration and re-integration that is highlighted ever more often in this

part of the literature (Levy and Sznaider 2002). In the debates about Europes political

future, this last approach is represented by the proponents of a cosmopolitan Europe.

According to this specific analytical lens, Europe is in a process ofinternal globalization(Beck2002, p. 17), where the national, the European and the global are no longer mutually

exclusive categories engaged in a zero-sum battle, but rather co-existing and often co-

constituting spheres. The national is never fully transcended but constantly transformed,

leading to an increasing incongruity of borders (Beck 2002, p. 19). In the realm of

collective memory, this manifests itself by certain transnationally shared memory tropes

most notably that of the Holocaustand their incorporation into local contexts to such an

extent that these tropes never become fully universal but nevertheless transform the localized

meanings of specific events.

The Europeanization of national collective memories and the notion of a universal or

cosmopolitan collective memory often raise, of course, quite distinct conceptual problems.

There is already closure implied in the first notion (Europe), but far less so in the second.

Nevertheless, I would like to claim that it is precisely at the intersection of the tendencies of

Europeanization and cosmopolitanization(Beck2002, p. 18) that the memory politics of

Europes postnational moment can be found.

Postnational memories?

Self-evidently, there is already a postnational element implied in every discussion of aEuropean memory. Even if collective memories on the European level do not necessitate

the full replacement of national narratives, they imply some level of undermining their

hegemony or relevance. Thus even the idea that Europeans should share memories

(Leggewie2008, p. 217) which comes close to an attempt to apply to the European context

an integrative notion of collective memory known to us from the history of nation-building

isby a more narrow definition of the termpostnational. However, contributors to the

debate on European memory are more often than not highly aware that they run the danger

of repeating national modes of exclusion if they simply propose to copy the structural

trajectories of national memories. A postnational approach to collective memory thus also

implies a more structuraldeparture from national memories. In other words, self-reflectivepostnational approaches rarely intend to simply repeat on the European level those measures

of induced collective remembering that have worked on the national level. Instead, they

also strive to go conceptually beyond the national paradigms of remembering. This is

especially true for some of the most theoretically rich approaches that attempt to conceive

of the European project as a potentially postnational political experiment and is reflected in

ideas about a European constitutionl patriotismor acosmopolitan Europe.8

This structural departure from national memory politics could take numerous forms:

memory could be shared on different grounds than membership in a specific cultural group

or polity, it may be conceived of as generally more open, less particular, less celebratory, andmore inviting to internal contradictions, to name just a few possibilities. Most prominently,

we see this in the well-rehearsed but nevertheless continuously productive and intriguing

8 Major theorists of a constitutional patriotism for Europe are Habermas (1997,2001) and Mller (2007a,b).

Analysts applying the notion of acosmopolitan Europeinclude Beck and Grande (2007) and Delanty and

Rumford (2005).

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discussion about the Holocaust as a negative founding myth for Europe.9 Here, we see the

simultaneous incorporation of and departure from a language known to us from nation-

building processes.

The prominent role the Holocaust plays in the search for apolitical blueprint for todays

Europe(Leggewie2008, p. 219) is well established. Several initiatives and practices on theground reflect this central role of the memory of the Holocaust for processes of European

integration. Rousso (2008), for example, refers to the fact that the commemoration of the

liberation of Auschwitz has more visibility as a European-wide practice than the commem-

oration of Robert Schumans proposal for a European Union. Others have stressed explicit

attempts to formulate a common response to the demands the Holocaust poses to a European

self-understanding, prominently reflected in the widespread participation in the 2000 Stock-

holm conference, in the EU council framework decision of 2008, which mandates, among

other measures, the criminalization of public denial of genocide in all member states, and in

the European Parliaments resolution on Remembrance of the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism

and Racism of 2005, which described different sites of Holocaust memorialisation as

European resourcesto combat denial and revisionism and suggested Holocaust education

in school curricula throughout the EU (Hammerstein und Hofmann 2009, pp. 191192).

Through these and other practices, recognition of the Holocaust has arguably been transformed

into a major indicator for Europeanness, the toll to join the EUs prestigious club (Rousso

2008); in the words of a member of the European Parliament, Auschwitz and Strasbourg

definitely belong together(quoted in Hammerstein und Hofmann (2009, p. 192)).

In the specific discussion about Europes own foundingmoment, the centrality of the

Holocaust has turned the original notion of a founding myth upside down. It retains the

notion of a quasisacralized common narrative about the beginnings of ones polity and also

entails the view that this narrative provides the legitimacy and identity for the political

community that came into being in this foundational moment. But while in its original

meaning, a founding myth refers to those instances that provide a WE-identity and

temporal continuity(Probst2003, p. 46) through apositivelyviewed moment of collective

action, the act of placing the Holocaust at the beginning of European integration acts in a

largely negative fashion, in the banal sense of not constituting a positive precept, but a set

ofavoidance imperativesinstead (Dubiel2003, p. 60).

This negative reasoning offers possibilities to go beyond nationalistic or even national

relations to the past as it evokes the theoretical option ofothering ones own past. Abizadeh

claims that humanitys own past provides a rich and terrifying repository in contrast towhich cosmopolitan identity could constitute its difference (Abizadeh 2005, p. 58). Ac-

cordingly, otheringdoes not need to happen against other living persons or groups, but can

move the other from space to time. We are no longer different from or superior to our distant

contemporaries but attempt to be so to our former collective selves. The Holocaust as

Europes negative founding myth is an example of an attempt to construct the temporal

other. However, one needs to be specific about what exactly othering the past does to

particular identity constructions. Diez speaks of two different acts of violence in traditional

nation-building processes: the act of imposing a national identity within its borders and the

act of imposing the borders simultaneously (Diez2004, p. 323). Europe

s othering of thepast seems to potentially mitigate the first violence by breaking up national interpretive

frames of remembering, but it leaves the second violence intact. If we accept the view that a

negative foundation may help bring about a postnational Europe, then we need to conclude

that so far the othering of the past has done little to address the issue of boundedness per se.

9 See Hackmann (2009) and Probst (2003).



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Internally, the EU may open up modes of belonging by elevating the Holocaust to a shared

experience with a range of possible political consequences, but here the past as other

argument is still tied to a European space: it is Europes past and present (ibid., p. 332).

Some strands of postnational theorizing would not find this conclusion problematic in

itself. Much of the literature on the possibility of a European constitutional patriotism forexample quite comfortably assures that postnational politics emerge from a particular

experience, not easily replicated elsewhere. And while the lessons drawn from the Holocaust

may become more and more global, the actual particular experience is claimed to be an

important factor in the emergence of postnational political structures. As such, constitutional

patriotism, says Mller, may be post-nationalistic, but not postnational (Mller2007b, my

translation). A specific memory is one of the supplements of particularity(Mller2007a,

p. 41)10 that even an abstract patriotism around constitutional principles seems to need. It

provides the motivational base from which traditional modes of belonging to a political

community can be questioned.11

But, more recently, the literature on European memory politics has also stressed a

departure from specific contents of the past (whether consisting of particular events, or

shared positive or negative founding myths) and has instead increasingly focused on the

emergence of a shared set of practices or a commonly shared ethics of memory. As

Terdiman states, among the things that memory conserves, perhaps what it conserves par

excellence, are paradigms, protocols, practices, mechanisms, and techniques for conserving

memory itself (Terdiman1993, p. 15). Where could we find this meta-memory in the

European context?

A European Ethics of Memory?

Once again, at first we see a strong intersection with a general, more global trend of memory

politics. Memory politics are now primarily concerned with what Olick (2007) has paradig-

matically termed apolitics of regret, and what Giesen has described as the new traumatic

foundations of collective identity(Giesen2003, p. 31). Broadly speaking, we can observe

several strands that characterize this new mode of memory: an end to practices that merely

focus on heroic pasts; a willingness to allow for reflective and democratic (or at least more

chaotic?) processes to deal with the toxicevents in a communitys past; and a new focus

on learning from the past (Levy2010, p. 29). In this trend from the heroicto the traumatic,postnational commemorations based on forgiveness and the recognition of victimhood

(Delanty2005, p. 410) assume an ever more important role. The new project at the center of

memory politics is to establish guilt, or in some instances one could even say: to claim guilt

and to deal with it appropriately.

On the European level, this would mean thatEuropean countries commit themselves to a

separate national working through the past, in the name of shared universal principles

(Mller2007a, p. 100). It would lead to a diversity of national pasts, but not a diversity of

norms and principles regarding the relationship to these respective pasts, so that Europe

would be open to incorporate

any history

but not every way to relate to history

(Mller10 Mller borrows the term from Markell (2000).11 Beck and Grande (2007, pp. 228229) interestingly express a similar view: (A) minimum store of

norms(cannot)be traced back to a common origin or to a shared Western culture. These values must

be derived instead from the conscious break with the national containerconception of history and from the

self-critical commemoration of the Holocaustand colonialism. () Theexperience of absolute negativity

alone can establish substantive norms.(emphasis added)

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2007b, my translation). In this context, we are no longer referring to a European memory or

oneshared memory, but to Europeanized practices, derived from very different traditions

and histories(ibid.). Some observers have gone as far as to claim that these politics of regret

are indeed the new transnational signatureof a European memory (Uhl2008, p. 19).

However, as suggested above, this seemingly European practice is not restricted toEuropewhich means that it cannot generate a differentia specifica Europae (Mller

2007b, my translation). In other words, as a means to define a European particularity, these

norms seem ineffective. As such, they are not a true alternative in the search for aEuropean

memory.12 It is thus no coincidence that we encounter this discourse in the literature on a

cosmopolitan Europe. As we have seen, while this approach leaves more room for national

narratives, it also questions firm and newly drawn borders on the European level. The latent

affinity with the discourse of a potentially universal ethics of memory is clear. Delanty is

explicit about this alternative: Instead of a trans-European memory what in fact is charac-

teristic of Europe is that an ethics of memory has become a major site of public discourse on

the nature of peoplehood(Delanty2005, p. 410). In other words, no longer should we look

for Europes collective memory on the level of shared experiences, but on the level of a

shared memory ethics. Moreover, these ethics have become the site where peoplehoodcan

be questioned, the nature of its unity as much as the necessity for unity as such. And if we do

observe the practices associated with the ethics of memory more often in Europe than

elsewhere, thenaccording to Delantythis is simply so because of higher levels of

democratization. In other words, these established practices cannot establish Europeanness

in themselves, but are a function of generally more open political systems.

Furthermore, we obviously have to embed these practices in their larger social and

historical context. The reasons for this general development offered in the literature aremanifold: there are larger social shifts, away from heroic pictures of political life to a new

standard of self-reflexivity (Uhl 2008, p. 11), as well as changes in mnemonic techniques

(Levy and Sznaider2006, p. 37) and general developments towards apolitics of recogni-

tion(Beck and Grande2007, p. 171), which all play a part in bringing about these practices

of states accounting for their negative pasts.

At the same time, however, we would miss much of the politics of this discourse on the

new ethics of memory if we were to neglect the numerous efforts to Europeanize these

practices that I have grouped together here under the term ethics of memory (borrowed

from Delanty), but which we could also and perhaps more adequately describe as a specific

modality of collective memory or a set of memory practices. Even Delanty, Beck and Grandeask whetherEuropean cultures of apologies, mourning and collective guiltand cultures of

forgivenesscan be the basis of a European identity [rather than] simply an expression of

the therapeutic culture of the age? (Delanty2005, p. 412), or whether this radical self-

critique could be what sets the EU apart from the USA and Muslim societies? (Beck and

Grande 2007, p. 258). As much as these particular authors stress (and in their cases, I

believe, correctly so) that they speak about a cosmopolitan Europe, and not a European

cosmopolitanism, a constant redrawing of symbolic borders seems to be part and parcel of

much of the discourse about an ethics of memory.

A powerful association emerges when the specific practices that have come to stand forthe ethics of memory are characterized as part of a distinctively European cultural

repertoire. Mller himself hints at such instances, such as Finkelkrauts claim that the

12 Mller himself, however, has also hinted at the fact that efforts of Europeanization are part of this

discourse and that European self-depreciation and Eurocentrism can easily turn into each other (Mller

2007a, p. 106).



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critique of traditionconstitutes the spiritual foundation of Europe (quoted in Mller

2007a, p. 106). And we can find more hints in other scholarly discussions: Beck and

Grande, for example, describe the original internal European contradiction that not only

the traditions of colonialism, nationalism, expulsion, and genocide originated in Europe,

but also the standards and values which help us condemn and understand them (Beck andGrande2007, p. 9).13

Often, the effort to find the specific European underpinnings for an ethics of memory

comes back full circle to a culturalist argument when authors claim that it is the specific

European Judeo-Christian heritage that makes this discourse and this kind of memory

possible in the first place. Bernhard Giesens depiction is one of the most explicit treatments

of these underpinnings. In particular, he discusses the notions of redemption and repentance

as essential to the emergence of postheroic relations to the past. In fact, according to

Giesens argument, those engaged in confessing the guilt of their nations are unknow-

ingly reproducing a pattern of Christo-mimesis deeply rooted in occidental mythol-

ogy (Giesen 2009, p. 120). Particularly, the ability to differentiate between individual

innocence and collective guilt, or rather, the ability to think the two together, Giesen argues,

has provided the breeding ground for a negative anthropology after the Holocaust and the

discourse about Germany as a nation of perpetrators(ibid., p. 121).

In the Western context, in which the charismatic center of society has to be separated

clearly from its representations in particular individuals, individual life worlds are removed

from this center so that the public goodbut also public confessions of guilt and perpe-

trator traumascan take place without having an immediate impact on the individuals

self-image (Giesen 2004, p. 164). We could simply read this as an outgrowth of liberal

political systems, however, Giesen suggests that this structural logic owes its existence to theJudeo-Christian mythology of sacrifice, repentance and redemption, exemplified, ulti-

mately, in Jesus sacrifice that saved his people from collective guilt (ibid., p. 149).

Historian Dirk Moses detected the same approach in Martin Walser, the German writer

who had claimed that Auschwitz had become aMoralkeule, amoral club.For Walzer,

Germans [did not] require a mediator, like the media, for their salvation because their

secular godthe nationtook the communal sin upon itself and gave life at the same time

in the manner of the happy exchange between sinner and God described by Luther

(Moses2007, pp. 8788).

For Giesen, in the Japanese case, this possibility of assigning guilt to collectivities is

precluded by the Confucian tradition which allows no negative view of the nation. In thiscontext, the individual may be guilty, but the nation always remains innocent. In the Turkish

case, Giesen retreats somewhat from the stronger cultural argument. He instead stresses that

the genocide threatens the very founding myth of the modern Turkish state: ethnic cleansing

emerged as part of the effort to pursue the goal of creating a modern nation-state.

While in these examples Giesen refers to the particular cultural inventory of the broader

Western world that enables the new negative collective memories, elsewhere he claims

thatconfessing the collective guilt of the past may provide aEuropean identity; moreover,

this specific European identity cannot be accused of missionary triumphalism, because

contrary to other features of European identity, this feature cannot be universalized (Giesen2003, p. 34). Giesen thus successfully creates the border around a postnational practice.

For him, the specific Western or European element of a politics of regret is thus the ability to

think the individual and the communityand consequently individual and collective guilt

13 See also ibid., p. 134.

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apart from each other. He provides the most explicit argument for why a partof the politics

of regret can be understood as a specifically European achievement.

There is thus a tendency in the theoretical debates on European memory to create a sense

of Europeanness around the practices of a politics of regret. But several questions remain:

why should we pay close attention to these efforts to Europeanize the discourse? Can it helpus to make larger claims about collective memory or at least the discourse about collective

memory? And what is so attractive about a seemingly more procedural, but nevertheless

implicitly particular and cultural language for the European political context? Which role

does the Holocaust play in this discourse? The next section addresses some possible answers

to these questions.

The Politics of a European Ethics of Memory

While so far I have only addressed the theoretical contributions to the discourse on a

European ethics of memory, one can also begin to see similar developments in the political

arena. In the EU enlargement debate, the approach that valorizes the efforts of states to deal

self-critically with their past can increasingly be used to deny an applicants fitness for

membership. Indeed, we see this strategy across Europe in providing a rationale for

exclusion on the grounds that countries like Turkey, for example, continue to disavow

problematic aspects of their past.

Many excellent analyses exist about the everchanging constructions of the other in

Europe.14 From juxtapositions with the Orient, the East, Communism, and Islam,

Europes self-understanding throughout time has always been partly constituted by its

differentiation from what is perceived to be outside, or even, to be threatening from the

outside. As of late, Turkeys role in Europes modes of self-understanding has become the

focus of many studies of this process. However, the literature here mostly focuses on modes

ofothering in which Turkeys Muslim background is viewed as the ultimate obstacle for

its EU membership, in turn constructing Europe as a Christian (and/or secular) counterpart.15

This substantive discourse is undoubtedly very prominent, but here I am more interested

in the modes of othering that can keep the postnational, less culturalist self-understanding of

several European actors intact, while finding other grounds to exclude Turkey from the

possibility of full membership. While it never became ahard criteriafor accession, as early

as 1987, the European Parliament (EP) adopted the resolution On a Political Solution of theArmenian Question, officially recognizing the events of 19151917 as genocide.16 In 2005,

the same body supported a nonbinding resolution declaring Turkeys recognition of the

Armenian genocide a prerequisite for accession to the European Union.17 The EPs

assessment report of Turkeys membership prospect a year later, stressed that although

the recognition of the Armenian genocide as such is formally not one of the Copenhagen

criteria, it is indispensable for a country on the road to membership to come to terms with

and recognise its past.18 Since then, this direct language has disappeared from the annual

reports, but Turkeys reluctance to engage in a more serious politics of regret is addressed

more implicitly in the critique of its neighborhood policies, addressing the ongoing dispute

14 See for example Strath (2010).15 For an analysis of this debate, see Challand (2009).16Resolution on a political solution to the Armenian question,1987 (Doc. A2-0033/87)

17European Parliament resolution on the opening of negotiations with Turkey, 2005 (P6_TA(2005)0350)

18On Turkeys progress towards accession, 2006 (2118(INI), Committee on Foreign Affairs



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with Armenia in which the lack of the recognition of the genocide continues to play a central

role.

In the case of the French bill of 2006, which proposed to criminalize the denial of the

Armenian genocide, many Turks viewed the National Assemblys decision first and fore-

most as a cynical attempt to cater to the anti-Turkish sentiments prevalent throughoutFrance. Consequently, opposition to the law was not just expressed by Turkish government

officials, but also by two of the most prominent dissidents, the novelist Elif Shafak and the

TurkishArmenian journalist Hrant Dink (Chrisafis2006). In the French case, the political

impact is not as direct as in the case of the European parliament, where fulfilling these

memory practices was part of a debate about membershipabout who and what should

count as European. But the French example is helpful in that is shows that even those

actively involved in challenging the memory politics of the Turkish government felt

anything but supported by the French attempt to provide a legal answer to an ongoing

struggle within Turkey.19

The German example, on the other hand, reminds us of the strong link between the

memory of the Holocaust and a perceived European standard for memory practices. In June

2005, the German parliament passed a motion commemorating the expulsion and massacre

of Armenians in 1915. Internationally, the motion received attention mostly for what it did

notdo, namely officially recognizing the systematic killing as an act of genocide. However,

the declaration and especially the parliamentary debate preceding it also provided insight

into the possible chains of association between the experience of having worked success-

fullythrough the past of the Holocaust and a perceived responsibility and commitment

but also a certainauthorityto address processes of working through the past of genocide

elsewhere, often in the name of defending European standards. The final motion stated that[t]he German parliament knows from experience the difficulties of facing the dark sides of a

peoples past,20 while the Liberal Democrat Stinner evoked the systematic working

through (aufarbeiten) of the past, experienced painfully over decades, before presenting

severallessons, for instance that one should not underestimate the helping hand of external

pressure: we as Germans and Europeans will look at you and will observe how you

manage the processa process that you are responsible for. 21 Here, the relevance of

outside pressure is recognized to legitimize ones own intervention. The main source of both

responsibility and authority however, both in Stinners example and many others, is the

specific German experience, here elaborated by the Social Democrat Nietan: For usit is a

big commitmentto contribute to reconciliation[a commitment] which is based on theresponsibility stemming from the unimaginable, unprecedented crimes against humanity

committed in the German name.22

While most parliamentarians continually emphasized that they did not intend to create yet

another impediment to Turkish membership ambitions, the constant reference to the

19 Nor was there a consensus around the 2006 bill within the EU; on the contrary, the bill generated arguably

more resistance than support. EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, for example, warned the French

parliament that this law would strain the relationship with Turkey considerably. However, a new bill passed

both houses of the French parliament in January 2012 and caused severe diplomatic tensions between the two

countries. Eventually, after several French lawmakers submitted appeals to the French Constitutional Council,the bill was rejected on the grounds that it infringes on the freedom of expression. It remains to be seen

whether the French attempts to pass a law punishing the denial of the Armenian genocide will ultimately aid or

obstruct the efforts of those fighting for a more open discussion about the past within Turkey.20 German Parliament Drucksache 15/5689 (my translation).21 Dr. Rainer Stinner (Free Democrats - FDP), Plenarprotokoll 15/172: 16130 (my translation, emphasis

added).22 Dietmar Nietan (Social Democrats -SPD) Plenarprotokoll 15/172: 16134 (my translation).

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European element in the debate is striking. The MP Kuhn, member of the Green Party,

closed his statement by stipulating that German parliamentarians have to have this discus-

sion in order to represent the European standard according to which one needs to debate

reflectively about ones own history, including the dark parts.23 Representing this broad

consensus about the European character of this memory standard, the final motion declaresthat the Turkish position [of denial] stands in direct opposition to reconciliation, which

guides the European community of values.24

It is important to notice that these memory standards have not necessarily been demanded

from EU member states; or if they have, it has rarely been accompanied by questioning the

Europeanness of an established member.25 It is safe to say that it would not be the first

time that Europeanness acquires very different meanings when applied to those inside the

union and when applied to those who knock on its doors. Turkey could once again be the

ultimate other, because it has not dealt adequately with its own genocide. But what is the

potential merit of this discourse? Why is it of any use to specific actors, why does it emerge

now? To answer these questions, it may be useful to think through some of the logics of how

exactly the practice ofotheringworks.

In a powerful essay on Europe and Islam, Talal Asad (2000) has described the different

strategies of creating categories for Islam that either invite incorporation and assimilation or

alternatively ascribe essential features that justify a more permanent exclusion. Asad refers

specifically to the notion of Islam as a mere carrier civilization (ibid., p. 17), a term that

illuminates the depiction of Islam as a contingent cultural sphere, lacking any achievements

on its own and ready to be incorporated into something else. At the same time, there exists

also the picture of Islam with deeply ingrained attributes, one that gives it acivilisational

identity

. We could make the distinction in slightly different terms: either the other isexpected to fulfill a universal standard over time, to follow the European trajectoryas in

a parentchild relationship; or the other is essentially and permanently excluded from the

seemingly superior standard which in turn provides the basis for a particular European

identity.

Asad shows how Europe creates the other in images that essentialize and de-

essentialize at once, to continue exclusion where desired and to assimilate and incorporate

when politically necessary. I would like to suggest that Europe, consequently, constantly

creates itself with a very similar double strategy. Notions like civilization and cosmopoli-

tanism are presented as both a single universal development and a cultural rankable

comparison, to use Raymond Williams distinction (quoted in Asad (2000, p. 15). Thetension between both meanings is never resolved; on the contrary, it can be made politically

productive.

The new discourse on memory is one such ground where both essentialized and universal

ideas of Europe are employed. Europe, in one version, is postnational in a sense that it strives

to find new ways to define itself that lack the thick content of more explicitly cultural

23 Fritz Kuhn (Green PartyBuendnis 90/Die Grnen) Plenarprotokoll 15/172, 16131 (my translation).24 German Parliament Drucksache 15/5689 (my translation).25

One could think here of the case of Spain, which faced comparatively little outside pressure to engage withits fascist past. An exception is the recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

to internationally condemn the Franco regime (2006). This certainly put some pressure on the Spanish

government, but at the same time, Spain was presented as a prime example of a successful transition from

dictatorship by the Committee of Ministers (see Hammerstein and Hofmann2009, pp. 194196), despite the

broad acknowledgement that much is left to be done. However, it would certainly be misleading to imply that

there are no internal divisionsi.e., among members stateswith regard to real or perceived memory

practices. See on the division between East and West (Kovcs2006).



12/15

imaginaries (Christian Europe, Hellenistic Europe), employing ever higher levels of abstrac-

tion, that allow for an ever broader understanding of who potentially belongs to Europe.

Hutchinson, a scholar of nationalism who views the process of European integration largely

though the idiom of imperialism, has pointed to the strategic reluctance to define Europe in

limited cultural terms:The very indeterminacy of Europe presents tactical advantages, sincelike a text it can be readin very different ways by the different constituent nationalities, and

its borders can be extended elastically to fit the needs of a developing project. But this lack

of clear criteria of membership enhances the manipulative capacity of powerful states in

what is essentially a pragmatic imperial project(Hutchinson2003, p. 46).

But the discourse also finds ways to close these seemingly open features, to Europeanize

them once they have been proclaimed. Moreover, in this second instance, Europe can claim

its particularity paradoxically from its very postnational inclinations as opposed to tradition-

al nationalisms, providing not just a framework that differentiates Europe from its Eastern

neighbors, but also one that differentiates it from other Western states, especially the United

States.26 We end up, once again, with a specifically European cosmopolitanismwith a

logic of identity behind the self-proclaimed postnational practices.

While the discourse of an ethics of memory has the aura of a depoliticized sphere, it in

fact instantiates a highly politicized pattern in which authority stems from having been

through the worstor even, having committed the worst; and subsequently having worked

through it. As Asad observes, commenting on a German diplomats statement that Turkish

membership would dilute the EUs Europeanness (Asad2000, p. 13), Germanys Euro-

peanness has never been questioned despite the genocide and despite its attempt to rule

Europe. Instead, Europeanness is reserved exactly for those that were at the core of the

catastrophe and that have learned to overcome nationalism in its wake.

Concluding Remarks

To be sure, in this preliminary critical inquiry into the discourse of a European ethics of

memory, it was never my intention to imply that this discourse is necessarily the outcome of

a conscious weighing of options, nor that it is internally coherent, and much less that it is

shared throughout Europe. In fact, throughout the article I have stressed that in reality the

very notion of proving Europeanness through performing the politics of regret seems to be a

task mostly reserved for those whose potential membership is already disputed on othergrounds.

Furthermore, we cannot refer toone unified discourse about the ethics of memory in the

European context. There are numerous contradictions and uncertainties in the discursive

formation that I have tried to lay out here. In this context, I would like to name just one: the

idea that forgiveness is at the heart of this new ethics of memory seems to be in direct

conflict with the very case that helped shape the understanding of these practices like

arguably no other: the German story ofcoming to terms with the past. Forgiveness does

not seem to emerge from the paradigmatic German case; on the contrary, the tragic

narrative of the Holocaust, its transformation into the archetypal

sacred-evil

of our time(Alexander2002), into the symbol for radical evil, has presented the challenge to come to

26 See also Levy and Sznaider (2007, p. 174). While Levy and Sznaiders notion ofcosmopolitan memoryis

often criticized for neglecting political aspects, in this essay they explicitly argue that the cosmopolitan

tendencies in European memory politics can potentially denigrate the particularism of others by falling

back into established patterns ofothering.

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terms with the past precisely in the absence of any meaningful possibility of forgive-

ness. It is all the more striking that the notion of forgiveness is widely evoked as an

essential element of the new repertoire; not to mention that the specific topos of

forgiveness can hardly reflect the new priority given to victims that is claimed to be

part and parcel of the new paradigm.We thus see a rather disordered notion of what exactly European practices of post-

heroic, self-reflexive, and victim-focused memory should entail. But in this article, I was

less interested in criticizing the lack of internal coherence or in evaluating the hegemonic

potential of this language. Rather, I want to suggest that we may need to begin our

critical journey into this discourse by acknowledging that it reflects and addresses some

genuine current cosmopolitan anxieties in Europes ongoing and never-ending process of

differentiating itself from its outside. Moreover, it does seem to provide ample opportu-

nities to once againEuropeanize the universal, and even to exclude others from fortress

Europe on essentially cultural grounds while keeping the cosmopolitan self-image fully

intact. Derridas famous claim that [n]o cultural identity presents itself as the opaque

body of an untranslatable idiom, but always, on the contrary, as the irreplaceable

inscription of the universal in the singular (Derrida 1992, pp. 7273), is strongly

reflected in this discourse.

One more important qualification with regard to the specific politics surrounding

Turkeys EU accession is in order. It needs to be acknowledged that not every criticism

of Turkeys memory politics can and should be dismissed as hidden identity politics. To

put it in positive terms: there is undoubtedly a ground for justified criticism. But it is

very likely that the process of political integration itself has contributed much to the self-

proclaimed postnational ethos in several European countries; in other words, the faitaccompli of integration arguably facilitated an opening, a possibility for a less heroic

politics of the past.27 In this case, the conclusion to keep those out that have not yet

fulfilled a certain standard of memory politics seems anything but logically inevitable.

Accession itself may provide the breeding ground for a more open debate on Turkeys

past within Turkey. This is why the second layer of this discoursethe idea that others

may be culturally incapable of ever living up to the standardgains its political

importance as a related but qualitatively new impediment to accession in the name of

a European ethics of memory. The symbolic hierarchy created by this specific European

imaginary can have real political consequences even in the absence of formalized

requirements; especially if we remind ourselves that ultimately Turkeys future EUmembership is not just a matter of objectively fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria, but

also requires a unanimous approval from all member states.

Finally, further research into how exactly this discourse will continue to play a role in

accession debates about Turkey and other possible candidates for EU membership may also

help us understand something about the language around memory in more general terms. We

need to ask whether memory can ever be understood as a set of distinct principles applied to

distinct experiences, or whether it always retains the cultural pathos of experience

(Robinson2006, p. 139) even in a seemingly abstract and procedural discussion about the

postnational principles of memory, like the one I have attempted to lay out here. Thinkingabout collective memory in postnational terms and shifting the focus from a shared content

to shared practices of memory does not necessarily mean that we have departed from ideas

of aparticularEuropean political subject, nor does it always avoid the essentialist notions of

Europe it set out to overcome in the first place.

27 See Mller (2007a, p. 107) for a similar claim.



14/15

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