Cultural Transformations After Communism: Central and Eastern Europe in Focus

By Nordic Academic Press

Focusing on the profound transformation in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, this record analyzes complex cultural dimensions, such as lifestyles, habits, value markers, and identity. Written by a group of experts, it presents case studies from the former communist countries that are members of the European Union today and attempts to answer crucial questions about the constructions of a new identity in the region: Have the processes of democratization and opening the borders produced mentality changes and new value systems? Is there a convergence of values and cultures between the new and old EU-members? Have there been backlashes in the processes of reconstructing national identities? This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in European integration, issues of national identity, and the politics and culture of the post-Communist countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9789187121838

Book preview

Introduction

Barbara Törnquist-Plewa & Krzysztof Stala

The years 1989–1991 saw dramatic changes in Europe. In the summer and autumn of 1989 the domino-like emancipatory movement, consisting in a rejection of the Communist rule in almost all countries of the former Soviet Bloc, brought the radical redrawing of the European political landscape. The symbolic culmination point of these events was the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, followed two years later by the dissolution of Soviet empire and an emergence or re-emergence of a number of new European states from its ruins.

This 1989–1991 period meant the start of several different processes in Eastern Central Europe. To begin with, the process of democratisation, which consisted in establishing a pluralistic political system together with new political institutions, got under way. Then the transition from a planned to a market economy took place, with all its challenges and traps. Last but not least, the accelerating process of modernisation that embraced almost all spheres of human life–social values and norms, beliefs, lifestyles and life strategies, symbolic meanings and family patterns–became increasingly visible.

An important moment in this great process of transformation occurred with the Eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004 to Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and in 2007 to Bulgaria and Romania. The main geopolitical objective of the transformation process has been accomplished: a new, enlarged Europe of 27 democratic states has emerged. The enlargement of the European Union signalled the beginning of a new phase in the history of Western Europe, and, for the new members from Eastern Europe, the end of a long period of separation and exclusion. Looking back today at the changes that have taken place since 1989–1991 in the Eastern European EU countries, there is reason to be filled with astonishment at the scale, pace and intensity of the transformation. However, some scepticism and a number of unanswered questions cast a shadow over that spectacular achievement. Are we really all European now, or does the West–East divide still persist, albeit in more sophisticated, latent forms: in mentalities, in habitus, in mutual stereotypes?

Discussions and commentaries on the transformation of Eastern Central Europe and the effects of the EU’s expansion to the east usually focus on hard institutional factors such as political rearrangements, legal coordination and economic readjustments. Much less attention is paid to the soft dimension of transformation such as changes of lifestyles, values and identities. This volume aims to contribute to filling this gap.

Two decades after the epochal events of 1989–1991 the editors of this book turned to researchers specialising in studies of society and culture in Eastern Central Europe, asking them to assess the pace and scale of cultural changes in the new Eastern European member states of the enlarged EU. Have the processes of democratisation and modernisation, engendered by opening the borders, produced new attitudes and value systems? Or have they maybe only adjusted the previous systems of values to the new reality? Can we speak of a convergence of values and cultures between the new and old EU members? Or can we see backlashes in the process of cultural rapprochement?

To discuss these and other related questions, we invited a number of specialists on the new Eastern European EU countries to an international conference, A Europe without Adjectives? Transformations of Mentality and Identity in Central Europe after the Breakdown of Communism, organised by the Centre for European Studies at Lund University and the Research Area Europe in Transition of the University of Copenhagen.

This volume contains a selection of the papers from this conference, supplemented by others delivered at later dates by the researchers belonging to the networks connected to the Centre for European Studies at Lund University.

The contributors to this anthology represent different academic disciplines–sociology, social anthropology, ethnology, history, cultural geography, political science, and last but not least regional studies. The ambition with this book has namely been to bring together different perspectives in order to elucidate the diversity of problems that new Eastern European EU countries are facing. As the extent and diversity of these problems are huge, this volume has no ambition to give a complete picture of ongoing changes. Instead it aims to deliver to the reader glimpses of certain, specific problems in each of the new EU countries.

However, in spite of the diversity of the contributions, it is possible to distill from them the main challenges that the new EU countries have to cope with and the main patterns and directions of the development. The contributions point in one way or another to the fact that Eastern Central Europe has to cope today with three main challenges: nationalism, belated and rapid modernisation, and the legacy and memory of two totalitarian regimes–Communism and Nazism.

The historical development in Central and Eastern Europe was characterised by a lack of continuity in the processes of nation-building. The modern nations in this region were created largely in the nineteenth century, not through integration within existing states (as was mostly the case in the West), but through the disintegration of these states (multinational empires) into smaller units based on separate ethnic and cultural communities. The latest stage of this development took place after the end of the Cold War, with the disintegration of the Soviet empire and dissolution of both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Thus in many countries of the region there is today a need to reaffirm and celebrate national identity and national sovereignty; to reinvent national symbols or create new ones. Moreover, due to the changed conditions of geopolitical reality, shifting allies and enemies, there is also the necessity of re-reading one’s own history and of reinterpreting national symbols, myths and narratives. The Baltic states are the clearest examples of this development in the region. These processes often come into conflict with external (EU) and internal (liberal political currents) pressure for revision of ethnically defined national identities, to give them a more inclusionary and civic form.

Another source of tension between the West and East in the EU, but also within the new member countries, is the speed of ongoing modernisation. Western European societies went through a radical modernisation process and are today post-industrial, urban, rationally organised, economically effective, secularised societies with well-established democratic systems. In contrast, Eastern and Central Europe is today in the midst of a modernisation process that has not yet been completed. Thus the societies in these regions still have some pre-modern traits. Western Europe urges rapid changes, whereas societies in the new member countries are divided on the pace and scale of changes needed and adopt different strategies to deal with them: adaptation, escapism, protest, etc. In the West the process of modernisation occurred gradually. In the East the same emancipatory process is supposed to happen very rapidly. What took fifty or sometimes a hundred years in the West corresponds in some areas to fifteen years of the latest development in the new EU countries.

The profound changes of mentalities and cultures caused by modernisation unavoidably collide, however, with the patterns of behaviour and thinking inherited from the past. These are first and foremost the patterns of social and existential passivity (summarised in the concept of Homo Sovieticus), but also the ethno-nationalist attitudes, authoritarian, intolerant thinking as well as the conservative attitudes reinforced by Churches and religion.

In our book we attempt to locate and identify some patterns of response to the challenges of transformation and cultural integration between East and West in the EU. Of these, the issue of convergence is probably the most powerful. Its strength is most clearly demonstrated in the first two contributions to this volume.

The first, written by the Slovenian scholar Mitja Velikonja, shows Euroenthusiasm appearing in the late 1990s and especially at the time of the big bang of collective accession in 2004. We are no longer East-Europeans, we belong from now on to the big European family!; such opinions were expressed in mass culture and pro-EU propaganda not only in Slovenia but in most of the new member states. The author analyses the phenomenon as a myth and a meta-discourse with such rallying points as the idea of opportunity, the promise of growing towards the future, the idea of equality, and the myth of common origins. Velikonja traces amusing paradoxes and contradictions in this discourse (why the return to Europe, as we have always belonged to it?) and discloses its naïvety. He considers the myth of a return to Europe to be a crucial political myth of the revolutions of 1989.

The abolished borders within an enlarged EU contributed to the intensive West–East exchange, and this seemed to confirm that their convergence was both possible and close at hand. Not only material goods, but even ideas, values and lifestyles are continuously flowing across borders. The convergence is today most discernible in consumer culture, leisure and generally in the trends of homogenised markets. The second contribution to this volume, written by the Hungarian scholars Agnes and Gabor Kapitany, focuses precisely on changes in everyday life as epitomised by the modes of habitation, the choice of lifestyles, clothes, cooking, and leisure. The authors identify and trace various trends in housing, gardening, consumption and leisure, and demonstrate that the inhabitants of Central European countries have imported a large number of Western trends in regard to lifestyle during the past decades.

The model of convergence launched together with Western models of consumption acted as positive incentives for Eastern Europeans, creating the hope that the unity of Europe was just around the corner. However, even before the end of 1990s somewhat different responses began to come into sight. The patterns of reaction in the form of denial, resistance, or even a refusal of Europe popped up in several places in the East. Defence of national values, a fear of European cultural liberalism, and the growing feeling of marginalisation, especially among people who perceived themselves to be victims of transformation, contributed to these negative tendencies. Scepticism towards the EU and Western Europe-modelled societal transformation started to be expressed in official political statements and in the proliferation of populist movements. These patterns of reaction are described in the third, fourth and fifth chapters of this volume.

In Chapter 3 the Polish scholar Tomasz Zarycki argues that after 1989 a gradual shift occurred on the Polish political scene. While in the first decade of post-Communist transformation the main political divide was between anti-Communists and post-Communists, around 2000 the political imagination began to be organised around the axis Western, liberal, strong pro-EU versus skepticism towards the Western model of civilizing and Europeanizing the post-Communist society. The protracted process of negotiation with the EU contributed to an increasing feeling of marginalisation in the countries of the new Europe and created a growing conviction of Eastern Central Europe’s peripheral status vis-à-vis the old EU countries. According to Zarycki this triggered a more balanced attitude towards Western Europe: in the Polish case, a quest to find the Polish origins of modernity has determined the political discourse, both on the Left and the Right. While Zarycki uses the case of Poland to support his argument, the analysis offered by him also seems applicable to other young Central European democracies acceding to the European Union in the new millennium.

Chapter 4 in this anthology also deals with Poland and points to yet another direction in the development of post-Communist Europe–the conservative reaction. Here the author Mattias Nowak shows that conservatism has in the last decade been on the march in Polish political life. Hard-line conservative ideology is strongly articulated not only by politicians but also by prominent scholars; the latter thus giving intellectual credibility to the political elite. Nowak gives an overview of conservatism in contemporary Poland, emphasising that Polish politicians and scholars have historically been–and are still today–open for ideological transfers from Western countries. Polish traditionalists have continuing contacts with their politically weaker Western counterparts, and they together argue that contemporary liberal democracy, especially in Western Europe, has very little in common with the original Christian heritage of the Occident and is not a political system of real freedom and tolerance. It is instead a kind of a politically correct, but in fact anti-Christian, civil religion, with utopian visions of a happy liberal and cosmopolitan future.

Scepticism towards, and rejection of, the Western model of civilisation find also other expressions such as in the phenomenon of post-socialist nostalgia. This is demonstrated in the fifth chapter in this volume by the Bulgarian scholar Daniela Koleva. Koleva points to the fact that the changes undergone by the post-Communist societies since 1989 do not always lead to the total rejection of the Communist past. Using Bulgaria as a case in point, she shows an undertow of positive recollections and references to the past by groups and individuals. Koleva focuses on post-socialist nostalgia as a biographical phenomenon, as expressed in the life stories of people she interviewed (about 90 elderly individuals living in five local communities in Bulgaria). She interprets their nostalgic attitudes as critical reactions to deteriorating material conditions and the social isolation of the interviewees in the present, articulated in relation to values associated with the socialist past, such as solidarity, equality, security, etc. Thus nostalgia is adopted by the older generation as a moral position enabling them to claim ownership of their past and to question ongoing changes.

The convergence of values and lifestyles between East and West in Europe as well as a rejection of Western cultural influences in the East are two common patterns of response to the challenges of transformation and cultural integration between East and West in the EU. Nevertheless, in most cases of adaptation a middle-way model dominates. It could be called the pattern of innovative adjustment. In the majority of cases presented in this book the reader can observe a pattern of response that consists of the transfer of Western ideas to Eastern Central Europe, followed by their specific adjustment while being transplanted to the local soil. The need to implement civil rights and civil values often leads to the adjustment and modification of the dominant ethnic model of citizenship and ethnically defined national identity.

Several of the contributors to this volume claim that the nationalist legacy in the new member countries is gradually disappearing, or at least is being modified. This tendency is discernible in the changing attitude to popular, educational and academic history. The Europeanisation of history and collective memory as well as the tendency towards more dialogical, non-ethnocentric views are pointed out in several chapters.

The Slovak researchers Barbara Lasticova and Andrej Findor argue in Chapter 6 that the communicative strategy of the restructured Museum of the Slovak National Uprising is a significant indication of the changes in understanding history among the modern Slovaks on the eve of their joining the EU. In the early Communist period, the museum, and the historical event it represented–the Slovak uprising against the Germans in 1944–served as a tool for legitimising the socialist Slovak state. The reorganised museum (2004) extends the context of the historical event towards a more universal, European perspective. The patriotic uprising is now represented as part of anti-fascist resistance in Europe. The context of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied countries appears as one of the main themes of the exhibition. The authors argue that manifold contexts and the modern form of exhibition indicate the shift in understanding of the Slovaks’ own history: from the narrow, national perspective to the European, universal even.

The author of the subsequent chapter, Tomas Sniegon, is also concerned with the shift in national narratives, but those of both Slovaks and Czechs. His point of departure is nevertheless different: he attempts to identify the dominating historical narratives in the period after 1989 as they are presented in the broad cultural and political context. Sniegon points out four dominating narratives in use during the actual period: the Czech national–liberal narrative; the Slovak national–Catholic narrative; the Czechoslovak Communist narrative, and the Slovak national–European narrative. He convincingly argues that the Czech national–liberal and Slovak national–European narratives have delivered the right meaning for the emerging post-Communist Czech and Slovak identities. Both legitimise the current political development through the selective use of history. The remaining narratives, Czechoslovak Communist and Slovak national–Catholic, have been almost totally rejected as not harmonising with the modernising goals.

In Chapter 8, Anamaria Dutceac Segesten considers Romanian history textbooks, examining how they reflect nationalism as a political ideology, comparing the late Communist with the post-Communist period. She also asks whether a trend towards a post-national view of history is discernible in the textbooks written after the fall of Communism. After looking at the way the Romanians and their internal Other (the ethnic minorities) are described, the author concludes that the late Communist era is the apex of nationalism in these books and that there is a diminishing of the nationalist tone as we approach the present day. Textbooks are more inclusive of the Other, and their tone less hyperbolic and more nuanced. At the same time, however, the focus remains on the nation, and a visible trend towards post-nationalism cannot be identified.

The adjustment of nationalism to challenges posed by Europeanisation can also be discerned in Chapter 9, which deals with Estonia. Heiko Pääbo argues that with the collapse of the Soviet regime a significant paradigmatic change in Estonian history textbooks took place. The Marxist interpretation totally dominant in the Soviet era was replaced with a nationalist framing. However, at the same time yet another change occurred in the Estonian master narrative of the past: an emphasis on the firm separation from European nations (e.g. Germany, Sweden) typical for the Soviet era has been replaced by an emphasis on the ancient historical connection with Western Europe. The author shows how the new Estonian master narrative accentuates the position of Estonia as an European independent nation. Estonian self-definition has thereby changed from being the most Western Eastern nation to being most Eastern Western nation.

Chapter 10 in the anthology deals with the transformations of Lithuanian national identity. The Lithuanian scholar Jolanta Kuznecoviene investigates how that identity is being modified due to the processes of globalisation, epitomised by EU accession. She concludes that the emerging new identity cannot be defined as either civic or ethnic. The inherited patterns of ethno-genealogical national identity are nevertheless still very strong, even though decreasing. The dominant model is a hybrid of civic and ethnic markers; of openness and closeness, as the author points out.

Many contributions to this volume thus show that the process of transforming ethnocentric identities towards a more open, widely embracing model is slowly moving ahead. The Western, liberal discourse of multiculturalism, while being transplanted to the new EU member states, may lead, however, to some unexpected results –as the case of Latvia, analysed in the volume’s last chapter, demonstrates. Here Pascal Bonnard focuses on school politics in Latvia as a field of great changes. Having been closed down during the Soviet period, ethnic minority schools were (re)-opened in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This happened in accordance with the Western discourse on promoting multiculturalism, but the main reason for Latvian authorities to promote the ethnic schools was to attract children with different ethnic backgrounds from Russian-language schools and in this way to reduce their number. The Russian-language schools have at the same time been excluded from the category of minority schools. The support offered by the Latvian authorities was also inspired by the wish to segment the representation of non-Latvians. Thus the multicultural school policy in fact serves the goal of strengthening the power of the dominant, ethnically defined Latvian nation. The Latvian case shows the process of (re)definition of ethnicity in the post-Soviet space, and illustrates how Western ideas can be used in post-Communist societies for specific power goals.

The editors of this volume would like to express their gratitude to all who made the publication of this book possible. As the texts approached completion, the editors have benefited immensely from the work done by Niklas Bernsand, who, as the assistant editor, has transformed the contributions into a more consistent whole. We also wish gratefully to acknowledge the financial support given both to the conference mentioned above and to the publication of this book by the Centre for European Studies at Lund University and Research Area Europe in Transition of the University of Copenhagen.

CHAPTER 1

Eurosis–a critique of the EU discourse in Slovenia

Mitja Velikonja

Never during the one-party era of Yugoslav totalitarianism did I see as many red Communist stars as I saw yellow, European stars in the spring of 2004; that is to say, under democracy. To put it differently, I could not get rid of the impression that it is only one and a half decades after we abandoned the path of socialist revolution that we have finally managed to put into practice a line from the Internationale that reads: we have been naught, we shall be all; that we separated from Yugoslavia, a community of equal nations and nationalities, only to join another community of equal nations, the EU; that only in the present political system of parliamentary democracy have we really experienced perfect party discipline, with all important political parties and institutions in Slovenia unanimously supporting Slovenia’s accession to the EU; that only after we wrenched ourselves from the Yugoslav federal embrace have we managed to realize its ideological maxim–brotherhood and unity; that it took us only 13 years of independence to realize anew our thousand-year-old dream; that only now can we truly experience the meaning of the concluding lines of the Slovenian anthem, All men free, no more shall foes, but neighbors be!; and that after detaching ourselves from the West of the European East we have become the East of the European West. Only now, after living for decades next to the open border between Slovenia and Italy, which I sometimes used to cross several times a day, have I learnt that there was a wall there separating the two countries and that it was pulled down on the historic date of 1 May 2004. And last but not least, only now do I realize how profoundly European was my childhood habit of eating Eurokrem produced in Serbia: no less European than my fondness for Nutella or Kinder Lada!

Infinitely reproduced mantras of the new Eurocentric meta-discourse have caught on and become normalized within all spheres of social life: in politics, in the media, in mass culture, in advertising, in everyday conversations. Talk about the Europeanism of just about everything–politics, behavior, product quality, creativity, knowledge and so on–has permeated every pore of public discourse. Europe has indeed become a magic formula, a moral concept (Puntscher Riekmann 1997: 64), the alpha and omega (Mastnak 1998: 11). Euro(pe) is a trend; it is fashionable, it is hip, it is more progressive, better and greater. Together, we are building a Europe that will have more soul, will be based on greater participation and greater mutual exchange, and will be more prosperous. Anything that is of any value is European, and Slovenia has finally become part of it: according to the foreign minister, by joining the EU Slovenia has come one step closer to this European center, European trends, European life, European prosperity, European dynamics and the like. At the same time, all things bad, backwards, obsolete, and all that is out, standing for the other side–the Balkans, the East, the socialist past and so on. By joining the EU, Slovenia escaped the Balkan curse; only today has World War Two really come to its conclusion. That May, Slovenia finally found its place among the family of Western states.

In this study I look at the content, aspects and principles of the formation and operation of the new Eurocentrism in Slovenia, which has generated a form of integrating–although inwardly differentiated –hegemonic and dominant meta-discourse.¹ While my interest in this ubiquitous and all-inclusive discourse was initially only superficial, over time it grew increasingly absorbing. Admittedly, at first I found it quite amusing, but this quiet pleasure was soon replaced with a growing wonder, sometimes even anger, eventually leading to the decision to conduct an analysis of the visual and textual aspects of this discourse. I focused primarily on the period which I call EUcstasy: the spring and early summer of 2004 when this Eurocentric meta-discourse reached its peak, with the first climax occurring immediately before and during the accession of the 10 countries to the EU on 1 May 2004, and the second one before the 13 June 2004 European Parliament elections. In planning this study, I deliberately left out some other critical and more reserved discourses on Slovenia’s accession to the EU that developed during this time.

In conducting this study, I was guided by a proposition put forward by Huyssen (1995: 42), who said that at a time when simplifications and slogans abound, nothing is more necessary than critical reflection. The structure of this analysis corresponds to the three sets of questions I sought to answer. First, I am interested in the emergence and the principle of functioning of this new Eurocentric meta-discourse. How could it happen that one and the same syntagms were employed by literally everyone asked? What was that binding tissue thanks to which all these discourses, so different when viewed from afar, merged into one, non-conflicting, all-embracing and triumphant meta-(or mega-) discourse? Second, I delved into the content of this meta-discourse. Which synonyms were used to denote Europe, or rather, which meanings were ascribed to it? What does Europe mean? What are its characteristics? What best expressed its essence and the necessity of Slovenia’s accession to Europe? What do its symbology, ritual and word combinations connote? I sought to answer the question of what Europe is not and in what ways the accession to Europe–and with it the entire Eurocentric discourse–was criticized, rejected or sometimes treated with irony. Third, I was interested in various aspects of this new Eurocentrism, primarily in terms of the new exclusions it brings with it. Which are its new peripheries and what kind of Non-Europe does it create? What new dichotomies and hierarchies does it introduce? And finally, what is neglected, concealed and avoided in this historic construction of Euroland?

The title of this chapter obviously alludes to neurosis in the psychoanalytical sense of the word, i.e. to a state that does not disavow the reality, it only ignores it (Freud 1987: 185). When analyzing the collected materials, I frequently had an impression that the process of constructing Europe, in terms of Freud’s fantasy world, is similar to the neurotic’s aversion to reality, because it is–entirely or in part–unbearable for him. (ibid.: 11). Therefore, neurosis disturbs the patient’s relation to reality in some way … it serves him as a means of withdrawing from reality and … in its severe forms, it actually signifies a flight from real life (ibid.: 183). As a rule, neurosis contents itself with avoiding the piece of reality in question and protecting itself against coming into contact with it (ibid.: 187). Its symptoms are the symbolic expression of a psychical conflict whose origins lie in the subject’s childhood history … these symptoms constitute compromises between wish and defence (Laplanche & Pontali 1992: 265). In my opinion, the new Eurocentric meta-discourse belongs precisely there, in between, occupying that ambivalent position between wish (for Europe) and defence (against Non-Europe).

I am primarily interested in how this new Eurocentrism has been constructed, presented and then interpreted, and what (material) aspects it involved. Eurosis is not meant to be simply a chronicle of the specific period, or a microanalysis of the events, reasoning and behavior during that specific time. My intention is also to point to the wider platform constituting the basis of this new, hegemonic meta-discourse of united Europe, which has become an established notion over time and has acquired distinctive traits in Slovenia and elsewhere. Since abstract notions always hide a sensible figure, to use Derrida’s words (1990: 8), and since they always take on one or another kind of material form, I collected and analyzed a sizeable heap of visual and audio materials, including bizarre eurokitsch handed out in various advertising campaigns and from street stalls. The major part of the analyzed material comes from Slovenia.

EUtopia–the emergence and operational logic of the new Eurocentrism

What first catches the eye when surveying this new Eurocentric discourse is the absence of an essential distinction, in terms of either structure or content, between the so-called Left and Right political wings, lay and ecclesiastical circles, between political and commercial advertising, or state and party propaganda. Similarly, there was no noticeable difference in the opinions held by institutions, journalists and anonymous individuals, nor in the stances of high officials and randomly selected respondents interviewed by the media. Indeed, this is the very secret of the success of this meta-discourse. It can be so successful because every individual protagonist has invested something of his/her own in Europe; everyone perceives it in their own way, and everyone sees it as an opportunity to profit in some way. Everyone may, could and did project onto Europe whatever they like, and obtain in return whatever they expect. Only in this way can Europe become a business opportunity for businessmen, a safe future for children, a Christian continent for fervent Christians, a political opportunity for ruling parties, and a channel for the promotion of our own identity, culture and language for nationalists. In other words, it is everything at once for anyone who cares to give it a thought. This totality-minded, umbrella-like meta-discourse addresses all: it is a kind of state-formative and corporate platform of national unity. Its function is to seek a dynamic balance and links between individual discourses and, in so doing, to create a form of all-inclusive identity. In recent Slovenian history, we have had several opportunities to see the potential of this type of meta-discourse to convince and mobilize (gaining independence, joining NATO, etc.).

A conspicuous sign of this sentiment is the European flag itself: twelve equal-sized stars arranged in a circle whose empty inner area almost begs to be filled in and to be given meaning; that is, an individual, specific meaning. This empty area is open to all who want to insert their message, i.e. a political, religious, commercial or cultural signifier. Much like the starry rim on the European flag, Europeanism itself is a universal form hollow on the inside. It may be appropriated by anyone, at any time and for any purpose. In the words of Laclau (1996: 35), "the universal has no necessary body and no necessary content; different groups, instead, compete between themselves to temporarily give to their particularisms a function of universal representation." In other words, the place of the universal is an empty one and there is no a priori reason for it not to be filled by any content (ibid.: 60; see also 15, 28, 34, 57, 61, 65, 72, 95). Eurocentrism as a discursive structure is not only a ‘cognitive’ or ‘contemplative’ entity, but an articulation practice that establishes and organizes social relations (Laclau & Mouffee 1987: 81). It is undoubtedly true that a United Europe is still a project of the social elites rather than populations (Debeljak 2004: 10), undeniably a top-down enterprise of new Eurocratic structures. However, the victory of hegemony is total when the interests of some become the interests of all and when the objectives of a particular group are identified with society at large (Laclau 1996: 45). This new hegemonic meta-discourse needs to be understood in a Gramscian sense: it not only involves coercion on the part of the ruling power, but also implies the consensus of all. Seemingly, all interests, values, wishes and identities suddenly converge within this discourse. The articulation and justification of this discourse engages everybody–the state apparatus, mass culture, the economy, consumers, educational, cultural and religious institutions, societies, intellectuals and the media.

e9789187121838_i0002.jpg

Euro donut. Slovenia, 2004. Photo: Elena Fajt.

New Eurocentrism thus succeeds in generating a consensus between various centers of power and their discourses. It operates by allowing and even expanding, rather than confronting, competitive or opposing interests and meanings, all of which revolve around the hollow center and thus become linked. Europe condenses many tensions, struggles and contradictions that accompany the transition of its new members to the