European Identity and Citizenship

Between Modernity and Postmodernity

Sanja Ivic

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137577849
• eBook ISBN: 9781137577856
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Politische Philosophie

This book uses a theoretical and empirical approach to explore the philosophies of European citizenship and European identity. The author applies a focused analytical framework to argue that European identity and citizenship should be perceived as postmodern categories which are multi-layered, dynamic and fluid.

The book offers a detailed review of political and legal studies which do not comprehend or explain postmodernist concepts of citizenship and identity. In the theoretical part of the book various philosophical models of citizenship and identity (from antiquity to the postmodern era) are portrayed, and the author's own theory and analytical framework is developed. The empirical part of the book discusses a variety of case studies illustrating how European Union policies apply to this framework.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Sanja IvicEuropean Identity and Citizenship10.1057/978-1-137-57785-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Sanja Ivic¹

(1)

Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic Institute for European Studies, Belgrade, Serbia

End Abstract

The aim of this study is to interpret and understand the concepts of citizenship and identity within the framework of European philosophical thought. Furthermore, the purpose is to examine whether European identity and European citizenship indicate an emergence of new, postmodern categories in legal and political discourse. Official European Union (EU) documents will be analysed with the help of a theoretical framework that consists of various models of citizenship and identity. The main research questions explored in this study are:

• Should European citizenship and European identity be considered modern or postmodern categories?
• Do they challenge the old concepts of citizenship and identity?
• Are they built on fluid borders?
• What is the place of difference and alterity in defining European citizenship and European identity?

The following sub-questions will also be considered:

• How can the concepts of European citizenship and European identity be interpreted in relation to various theoretical models in European philosophical thought?
• What patterns can be discovered in EU documents concerning the linguistic use of the concepts of EU citizenship and European identity?

This book aims to contribute to the debate about modernism versus postmodernism. Modernity and postmodernity are narrative categories that are interpreted differently by various authors. For instance:

In France, the modern is understood in the sense of that modernity which begins with Baudelaire and Nietzsche and thus includes nihilism: it has been ambivalent from the outset, in its relations with modernization and with history in particular, in its doubts and suspicions about progress… In Germany, however, the modern begins with the Enlightenment, and to give it up would mean abandoning civilized ideals (Jameson 2002, p. 99).

The same can be argued about postmodernity. This term can be traced back to 1940 in Anglo-American usage. In the 1960s, this term was commonly employed in artistic and cultural criticism. The term ‘postmodern’ embraces a number of related concepts: posthistorical, post-Aristotelian, postrational, postliberal, postindustrial, and so forth (Köhler 1977).

This study relates metatheoretical questions about the criteria for evaluating theoretical approaches to various issues within contemporary European policies. The term ‘postmodern’ is not sufficiently explained in legal and political studies and is often misrepresented and misinterpreted. Authors who examine the nature of EU citizenship (Bauböck 2010; Isin and Saward 2013; Kochenov 2009; Kochenov and van den Brink 2014; Kostakopoulou 1996, 2005, 2011; Shaw 2008; 2010; Soysal 1994) fail to identify postmodern traits of EU citizenship. The same can be argued about some major European research platforms and research projects on EU citizenship such as: Barriers to European Citizenship—bEUcitizen,¹ Enacting European Citizenship,² MACIMIDE,³ and so on.

These authors examine the postnational nature of EU citizenship. However, their research is not further developed towards examining EU citizenship as a postmodern concept. The consequence of this research gap is understanding ‘postnational’ and ‘postmodern’ categories as synonymous within political and legal studies. The concept of ‘postmodern’ is often equated with the concept of ‘postnational’ in studies that offer semantic and discourse analysis of EU citizenship and European identity (Van Ham 2001; Düzgit 2012; Tekin 2014). These studies start with a false premise, which leads to a false conclusion: that if the EU fails as a postnational order, it also fails as a postmodern order.

In the following chapters it will be shown that this standpoint is not correct. Even if the European Union, EU citizenship, and European identity are not postmodern categories, they can still reflect postnational categories. Terry Eagleton poses the question of whether ‘post’ is a ‘historical or theoretical marker’ (Eagleton 1996, p. 30). Within this study, this prefix will be primarily perceived as a theoretical marker, as postmodern thought should not be tied to a certain historical period, but to a way of living and a perception of the world. On the other hand, the prefix ‘post’ in the word ‘postmodernism’ theoretically leaves behind the essentialist and universalist ‘modernism.’ Nevertheless, it does not leave it behind historically, as a matter of the past, since modernism, with its binary hierarchies, is still part of our present. This will be shown in the analysis of European identity and citizenship.

Caporaso (1996) addresses the postmodern nature of the European Union. However, Caporaso does not explore the postmodern nature of EU citizenship and European identity. While a great deal of attention has been paid to European citizenship and European identity, as yet no comprehensive study has been undertaken of the philosophical reading of these concepts and the difference between modernist and postmodernist accounts of European citizenship and European identity.

Enacting European Citizenship (2013), edited by Isin and Saward, develops a distinctive perspective on European citizenship and its impact on European integration by focusing on ‘acts’ of European citizenship. However, this book does not address the philosophical aspects of European citizenship that give it a particular value.

European Identity and Culture—Narratives of Transnational Belonging (2012), edited by Rebecca Friedman and Markus Thiel, centres on European identity and the role of political culture, but it does not sufficiently explore the concept of postmodernism and hermeneutic⁴ and contextual approaches to the concepts of European identity and European citizenship. Düzgit (2012) examines EU discourses and reveals the discursive construction of European identity. However, the author focuses on the EU representations of Turkey. The author relies on a poststructuralist framework that conceptualizes identity as discursively constructed through difference, and the book applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the analysis of various legal and other texts. While the book addresses poststructural and postmodern notions of identity, it is mostly focused on binary oppositions (we/they, identity/difference, citizen/stranger, and so forth) inside the framework of the subject of the accession of Turkey to the EU. The dynamic and changeable nature of both European identity and citizenship is not sufficiently recognized by Düzgit.

Hansen and Hager (2010) analyse the concept of European citizenship. However, the subject matter is tackled only from the critical political economy perspective, neglecting some important topics, such as symbolic oppression (based on various binary oppositions) within European law.

Van Ham (2001) focuses on the idea of the European Union as a postmodern political community. Miller (1993) Bridges (2004), Minda (1995), Thiele (1997), Madison (2001), and Douzinas (2004) explore implications of postmodern subjectivity and its relevance for postmodern legal studies. Nevertheless, these authors do not sufficiently investigate the concepts of EU citizenship and European identity within the context of postmodernism. Although the concept of European identity is widely discussed (Bauman 2004; Berezin and Schain 2004; Bruter 2005; Checkel and Katzenstein 2009; Delanty 2002; Dell’Olio 2005; Fligstein 2008; Gfeller 2012; Guisan 2012; Kuhn 2015; Pinheiro, Cieszynska, and Franco 2012; Stråth 2002; Taylor 1992), the question of European identity as a postmodern category is still not sufficiently explored.

Benedict Anderson described the nation as ‘an imagined political community’ (Anderson 1983, p. 49). From the poststructuralist and postmodernist perspective, the European Union can also be perceived as an ‘imagined political community,’ which is constantly in the process of reconstruction and the articulation of its goals and of its meaning (Düzgit 2012, p. 8). The emergence of EU citizenship represents a paradigm shift towards a postnational model of citizenship.

The historically dominant concept of ‘national citizenship’ has come under particular challenge from supranational developments such as EU citizenship as well as changes occurring within and across the boundaries of states, such as increased toleration of dual and plural nationality, the tendency to allocate political and welfare rights to non-nationals under the heading of ‘integration’, and the legal treatment of transnational minorities. (Shaw and Štiks 2010, p. 7)

An overview of the major philosophical schools addressing the issues of citizenship and identity is presented in the following chapters, because different models and traditions of citizenship and identity in European philosophical thought provide the research with a theoretical framework of the binary oppositions on which EU citizenship and European identity are based. The key concepts hav...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Modernist and Postmodernist Accounts of Identity
• 3. Philosophical Roots of Citizenship
• 4. The Concept of European Citizenship
• 5. The European Identity
• Backmatter