Europe's others and the return of geopolitics

Abstract

In the context of European Union enlargement and the discussions about a European constitution, the question of Europe's identity has once again entered the limelight of political debates. From a poststructuralist perspective, identities are constructed through practices of othering, articulating a difference. In this article, I follow Ole Wæver to argue that for most of the time after the Second World War the most important other in the construction of a European identity has been Europe's own past. This temporal form of othering offered the possibility to form an identity through less antagonistic and exclusionary practices than was common in the modern international society. However, since the 1990s geographic and cultural otherings are on the increase, marking a return of geopolitics in European identity constructions and undermining the notion of European integration as a fundamental challenge to the world of nation‐states.1 A previous version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘Other Europes’, organised by the Poststructuralism working group of the British International Studies Association, Keele University, England, 16 May 2003. I would like to thank the workshop participants, Alessandra Buonfino, Bahar Rumelili and the three referees of this journal for their critical and constructive comments.

Cite this

Thomas Diez (2004). Europe's others and the return of geopolitics. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. https://doi.org/10.1080/0955757042000245924

@article{thomas2004europes,
  title  = {Europe's others and the return of geopolitics},
  author = {Diez, Thomas},
  year   = {2004},
  journal = {Cambridge Review of International Affairs},
  doi    = {10.1080/0955757042000245924}
}

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