Introduction
Like many of the great one-liners in history, Jean Monnetâs âIf I had to do it over again, I would begin with cultureâ [Si câĂ©tait Ă refaire, je commencerais par la culture], was not spoken by its supposed author. Yet the enduring pull of the statement, and the fact that it has been attributed to Monnet, one of the pre-eminent âfounding fathersâ of European integration, raises a question. Could culture have succeeded in integrating Europe, where politics and economics have not? Jacques Delors, French finance minister between 1981 and 1984, and eighth president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, saw Monnetâs statement as a reflection on a first stage of the construction of Europe. This first stage, he wrote, had been âa rather elitist adventure, essentially economicâ, and because of this, âprosaicâ and limiting. It had left no room for enthusiasm, for the mobilisation of energies, or even, as Delors put it, âfalling in love with Europeâ. Europeâs economy had to be rebuilt in the postwar era, but âpeoplesâ had to learn, also, to communicate and to share. This communication and sharing, in Delorsâ idealist vision, would have been the very way to rediscover a cultural Europe (Delors 1997). This chapter interrogates one element in the cultural construction of contemporary Europe: the Eurovision Song Contest. It views the development of Eurovision as part of the broader history of European integration since 1950. Given the longevity and popularity of the Contest, it makes a claim that the Eurovision Song Contest has been under-researched in the history of European integration and in particular the construction of European identities as an affective element of this political and historical project. Thus Eurovision should be taken seriously as an object of historical and political enquiry where European politics and the European past are (literally) performed before a live, global audience on an annual basis.
Identity and Integration in Europe
Writing in 2010 before the European Unionâs âmulti-dimensional crisesâ (Dinan 2017, p. 3) ushered in a new wave of identity politics across Europe, Wolfram Kaiser noted that âfor a long time, much research on the history of European integration, especially the federalist hurrah historiography and the conventional diplomatic history of interstate negotiations, has been conceptually underdevelopedâ (Kaiser 2010, p. 45). The concept of âfederalist hurrah historiographyâ related to the unusually partisan nature of much of the early historically informed analyses of the origins of European integration and the enduring nature of a European identity that was ruptured by the development of the modern state system and the rise of nationalism. For Kaiser the main reasons for this conceptual underdevelopment of European integration theory in relation to broader themes of postwar history came about because historical attention within the European integration literature focused almost exclusively on interstate bargaining at the supranational centre by the original member-states. This emphasis alienated social and cultural historians, although they in turn failed to make conceptual connections across the two world wars or across the Cold War divide. His claim that this research âfailed to make sufficient connections with either domestic contestation of EU policies or the Europeanization impact of integration on the member-states, their politics and societiesâ (Kaiser 2010, pp. 48â50) has subsequently been filled by âpost-functionalistâ scholars of the politics of European integration (Hooghe and Marks 2009; Usherwood and Startin 2013). Yet the place of what Sophia Vasilopoulou calls âidentityâ in our understandings of the history of European integration (Vasilopoulou 2013, p. 188) and the way that this relates to politics in member-states and the legitimacy of the European project as a whole remain under-researched. Identity and culture are linked by ideology, which provides ideas and actions to make sense of how the world is and how it ought to beâoften based on a comparison with how it was.
Following Jonathan Hearnâs definition of culture as âthe sum of mental phenomena that orient and structure life in social groupsâ (Hearn 2006, p. 170), we argue that the ESC is a cultural production that sustains and creates a particular form of European identity that links strongly with the idea of postwar Europe as a zone of peace: an idea that has legitimised European integration since the end of the Second World War. As Furio Cerutti has argued, âonly when people come to find that staying united is at the same time convenient for their well-being and relevant to their image of collective life can a new polity reach the critical point of acceptanceâ (Cerutti 2008, p. 13). In this sense Eurovision is itself a manifestation of postwar European identity, expressed through a vision of a post-war Europe, where conflict has been sublimated and contained.
The absence of consideration of identity in histories of European integration was all the more notable given the expectations of early actors and theorists of European integration that a European identity could, should and would come into being. Writing in the Revue general belge in 1952, Pierre Nothomb argued that âIt is difficult to have a soul without having a bodyâ (HAEU FD 528, Nothomb 1952) [âquâil est bien difficile dâavoir une Ăąme sans avoir un corpsâ]. The early steps towards European integration, embodied in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), provided corporeal form to this European spirit. The treaty creating the ECSC in 1951 was described by Walter Hallstein, the first secretary of the ECSC, as âthe mission that our peoples entrusted to us, which is also the expression of the general European willâ (HAEU JMDS/70, Hallstein 1951). Hallstein continued
We also know our most dangerous adversary: national selfishness which divides peoples and which still has allies in all of our countries. We are realistic enough to know that our project has not destroyed that adversary. But if, in the future, this accomplishment takes on life in the acts of men who are animated by a really European spirit, we shall have mortally wounded the adversary. What we seek is a unified Europe in which all free peoples will be able to live and work in a peaceful community. It must never again be possible for war to separate us. (HAEU JMDS/70, Hallstein 1951)
Commenting on the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 (which he helped draft) and which initiated the formation of the ECSC, Jean Monnet explained that
Of primary importance is the supranational character of the proposed Community. For the first time, six countries have come together not to seek a provisional compromise among national interests, but to take a concerted view of their common interest ⊠This represents a fundamental change in the nature of the relations among the countries of Europe, from the national form which opposed and divided them to the supranational form which reconciles and unites them. (HAEU JMDS/70, Monnet 1950)
Although the 1950s can be seen as a period of failure for federalist visions of European unity, notwithstanding the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Agency (Euratom) in 1957, this idea of national divisions being contained within a European framework remained pervasive across western Europe and over time. Situating its own European vocation within the liberal-national traditions of the Italian Risorgimento, the Italian federalist movement wrote in its official journal Risorgimento Europeo in 1962 that âThe liberal revolution of the eighteenth century was not only national, but Europeanâ [La rivoluzione liberale dellâOttocento non fu solo nazionale, ma europea] (HAEU HG13 1962b). This Mazzinian teleology was specific to Italy, however. The more usual response was to contrast statist and nationalist ideas and actions against those of a âEuropeanâ nature. Referring to the new attitude at the Quai dâOrsay in 1962 Paul Struye, President of the Belgian Senate, criticised what he called De Gaulleâs âinveterate anti-Europeanismâ [antieuropĂ©anisme invĂ©tĂ©rĂ©] (HAEU FD 528 1962a). What both views shared was the idea that a European identity was facilitated and embodied by the emerging structures of supranational governance.
This socio-political development had been anticipated by the (largely pro-European) academics concerned with analysing this emerging phenomenon. Building on existing analyses of how different nationalities amongst the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian Empire had interacted and formed a sense of shared identity, Carl Deutschâs âtransactionalist â approach suggested that the more people from different cultures were facilitated to interact, the more likely a new form of ide...