Memory and the Future of Europe: Rupture and Integration in the Wake of Total War

239 Pages·2020·2.595 MB·English

by  Peter J. Verovšek

Memory and the future

of Europe

Memory and the

future of Europe
Rupture and integration in the wake of total war
Peter J. Verovšek
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Peter J. Verovšek 2020
The right of Peter J. Verovšek to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 4310 5 hardback
First published 2020
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and does
not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate
or appropriate.
COVER IMAGE: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany.
© Rob Pinney
Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK
For my parents

Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
1 Collective memory as a resource for political change 25
Part I Origins and crisis diagnosis 49
2 Choosing integration based on the community model: memory,
leadership, and the first phase of integration (1945– 58) 51
3 Counter- memory and generational change: Eurosclerosis
(1959– 84) and the second phase of integration (1985– 2003) 77
4 The fragmentation and loss of European memory: the Eurozone
crisis, Brexit, and possible disintegration 106
Part II Memory and the future of Europe 139
5 Changing generations, negative memory, and
non- economic resources 141
6 The future of Europe from a comparative perspective 167
Concluding remarks: a plea for politics at the European level 187
Select bibliography 203
Index 223
vii
Acknowledgements
Any project that takes ten years to complete racks up an impressive number of
debts along the way. Over the past decade I have lived and conducted research
in numerous locations and received the generous assistance of countless friends
and colleagues. Unfortunately, due to constraints of space and the deficiencies
of my own memory, it is impossible to list them all. My apologies in advance
to those who I have unintentionally left out!
I started to conceptualise this project at Yale University in the fall of 2009.
At that point I hoped to write a book examining the role of collective memory
in political life using the origins and development of the European Union
since 1945 as an illustrative case study. Although the subprime mortgage crisis
had already started in the United States, it still looked as though Europe had
managed to avoid the contagion emanating from the other side of the Atlantic.
However, by the time I had started to work on the project in earnest in the
spring of 2010, Greece’s difficulties financing its sovereign debt had already
set off the crisis of the Eurozone, which would ultimately threaten the future
of the European Union as a whole.
As a result of these events, the reflective, backward-l ooking, and optimistic
manuscript I had planned to write about the ability of collective memory to
help individuals and communities learn the lessons the past, became much
more politically relevant, forward-l ooking, and pessimistic. Thinking and
writing in the shadow of a series of existential threats to the EU – from the
problems of sovereign debt in Greece in 2010 to Brexit in 2016 and the striking
electoral success of far- right populists in the EU parliamentary elections of
2019 – I found that the idea of crisis had come to play a central role in my
thinking. A project that was originally supposed to be about the transform-
ational power of the collective memory of what I call the ‘rupture of 1945’
viii
Acknowledgements
ultimately became a book that had to seriously contemplate what the loss of
this transnationally shared remembrance meant for European politics at a
time when the generations of experience were beginning to pass away. I was
also forced to reflect on the role that collective remembrance could play in
combating the return of nationalism on a continent that had suffered through
two world wars brought about by this ideology in the first half of the twentieth
century.
Luckily, I was well- prepared to undertake this work, which combined
research in collective memory studies with the critical theory of the Frankfurt
School. I initially became interested in collective memory when I had the
opportunity to help my undergraduate advisor, Richard Ned Lebow, edit
a volume on The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Duke University Press,
2006) as a Presidential Scholar in the Government Department at Dartmouth
College. At that same time I was receiving my introduction to the Frankfurt
School – and to continental philosophy more generally – from Amy Allen in
the Philosophy Department.
Although the discipline of political science is a relative latecomer to the
study of collective memory, I found a lot of support within the discipline
during my time at Yale. Seyla Benhabib deserves particular thanks for taking
me under her wing. She was instrumental to my development as a scholar and
infinitely supportive of my desire to pursue a somewhat unorthodox project
combining political theory, international relations, collective memory studies,
and history. She deserves much of the credit for whatever merits this book
might have.
Bryan Garsten and Adam Tooze also played crucial roles. As a political the-
orist, Bryan helped me to ensure that this book would appeal to a philosoph-
ical audience despite its interdisciplinary nature. He was also a valuable source
of support throughout my work, generously giving his time to talk through
minor details with me. By contrast, Adam provided me with the perspective
of a twentieth- century historian, guiding me through the process of historical
and archival research. I am also grateful to other faculty I consulted with at
the Department of Political Science during my time at Yale, especially Keith
Darden, Stathis Kalyvas, Jolyon Howorth, and Jim Scott. Bruno Cabanes
and Jay Winter, both of the History Department, as well as Ron Eyerman of
Sociology, were also important sounding boards for my ideas.
It is often said that we learn as much from our peers as from our teachers.
That was certainly true in my case. Although there are too many to name,
Matthew Longo, Luke Thompson, Lucas Entel, Onur Bakiner, Anna Jurkevics,
ix