Narrativity and intertextuality in the making of a shared European memory

Abstract

The latest wave of European integration process, cultural Europeanization, includes complex processes, such as the attempts to create a shared European memory that would transcend national interpretations of the past. The cultural Europeanization can be perceived as a narrative operation: in it the EU, Europe, and Europeanness are given meanings and made sense of through narrativization. The article investigates the EU's attempts to create a shared European memory by analyzing the exhibition narrative of the Parlamentarium, the visitors' center of the European Parliament. The analysis indicates how the construction of an official shared European memory is operationalized through textual and narrative devices such as intertextuality and the pending narrative structure. I argue that the EU's memory texts are performative narratives which do not only describe a shared European memory in a particular way but also position the receivers as active agents in the story of the EU-Europe and invite them to produce it on their own initiative.

Politics of tangibility, intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

“…The exhibition narrative in Parlamentarium emphasizes and repeats the selected 'key events' of twentieth century Europe, such as the World Wars, setting up the Council of Europe and the European Community / Union, the collapse of Communist regimes, and the signing of various agreements that have strengthened cooperation and integration in Europe (Lähdesmäki 2016). …”

“…EU's identity and integration politics and policies (Lähdesmäki 2014a(Lähdesmäki , 2014b(Lähdesmäki , 2016Patel 2013;Sassatelli 2009). …”

Founding myths of EU Europe and the workings of power in the EU heritage and history initiatives

“…Narration is thereby a process of selecting meaningful elements and ordering them into a story that tells the plot in a particular way (Bal, 2009: 5). In the process of ordering the elements of the story, the complexity of the historical events is inevitably simplified and certain events are prioritized (Lähdesmäki 2017). Both history and myths are told from the standpoint of the past.…”

A Geography of Coloniality: Re-narrating European Integration

“…As such, these AHDs also diminish or disguise the transformative potential that heritage could possess as a future-oriented idea (e.g. Harrison 2013, Lähdesmäki 2017.…”

“…Crucial here are the narratives that are produced about these sites and the ways these narratives are able to connect the historical reality of these sites with contemporary European processes. In critical heritage studies, understandings of heritage have been shifted from being associated with the past towards notions that emphasizes contemporary and future motivations (see for example Harrison 2013;Lähdesmäki 2017;Macdonald 2013;Smith 2006). If we accept this basic principle, sites such as the Sagres Promontory could be powerful avenues to start sustained critical discussions of Europe's colonial past and slavery, as well as their connection to contemporary European racism (e.g.…”