Unexpected Support for European Integration: Memory, Rupture and Totalitarianism in Arendt's Political Theory

Abstract:

Collective memory is an important source of social stability, allowing human beings and political communities to integrate new experiences into existing narrative frameworks. In addition to sustaining individual and group identities, remembrance can also maintain cycles of hatred. Building on Arendts political theory, I present an alternative interpretation of memory as a resource for political change following historical ruptures. This constructive reading focuses on the ability of communities to create new futures out of the shattered pieces of the past. For Arendt, the experience of totalitarianism was a caesura that made nationalist histories, and the nation-state that came with these interpretations of the past, untenable. Following such breaks, communities must reconstruct the past into new narratives. Arendts unexpected early support for European integrationdespite its supranational, technocratic, and economistic qualitiesis an example of how memory can function as a resource for political transformation in the aftermath of historical ruptures. 

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 07/13/2014