Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

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Narratives of Redemption: Memory and Identity in EuropeRita Ribeiroproject. According to several authors (Castells, 1998; Delanty, 2002a; Eder, 2009; Sassatelli,2009; Strath, 2002), though with different perspectives, Europe’s identity can only be a projectfor a future society. In the words of Monica Sassatelli (2002, p. 436), “the Europe referred toby the EU can be envisaged as an ‘imagined community’ in the making”, and this symbolicconstruction fuels social cohesion and political legitimization. Above all, Europe seems to bean organism in evolution, learning how to cope with differences and asymmetries and howto make the whole set function as a unity of interdependent units. There are advantages toportraying Europe as a project, one of them being the malleability that allows the buildingof a future in an original, imaginative, experimental way. Indeed, this seems to be the onlypath which suits contemporary European societies, given their dialogic, liquid, plural, hybrid,and ambivalent features (Bauman, 2004). Furthermore, it is also congruent with contemporaryforms of identification and belonging, which give way to multiple, composite, in-transit identities.As discussed before, European identity narratives require hybrid, multilayered configurationsin order to encompass the specificities of a whole continent with a troubled history. KlausEder (2009, p.442) claims that “a European narrative is a dynamic combination of differentstories that will produce a dynamic form of collective identity”. Accordingly, European identitycannot be monolithic or hegemonic. A multilayered identity would thus be appropriate toencompass national, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, as well as post-national politicaland economic unification.Ultimately, European identity can only be envisaged as a plural, polysemic narrative.Eder (2009, p.441-442) suggests that we may see it as a “meta-story” that brings together criticalstories of “constructing and reconstructing a European identity”. The Common Market, theachievement of peace, citizenship of the Union, the European culture that derives both fromimmemorial heritage of the most diverse peoples that once settled in its territory, and thehybridization which arises from cultural diversity dynamics are some examples of what Eder(2009, p.438-439) calls the supranational, postnational and transnational stories. However,these stories are not necessarily compatible and consistent, so that European identity is,above all, derived from the combination of choices made at every moment. According to thisauthor (2009, p. 437),which collective identity is mobilized depends on the story that is chosen toidentify the boundaries of a network of social relations that bind ‘Europeans’ (...)to each other. The three basic stories, the story of a common market and a SocialEurope embedded in the story of a European citizenship, the story of a uniqueEuropean culture, and the story of a hybrid Europe are incompatible. They willnot coincide in terms of constructing a clear boundary; rather, they constructdifferent boundaries. They tell about different ‘Europes’ (in the plural). Thus,European identity emerges as something with different boundaries, dependingupon which story we tell.Additional insight is given by Gerard Delanty (2002b), for whom European identityshould be crafted from a cosmopolitan heritage and pluralisation, together with multipleprocesses of Europeanization that are already occurring, namely the construction of aEuropean public sphere (see also Risse, 2010). As Europe pervades the national frameworksof action and the common imagery of citizens, a new stage of reflexivity and pragmatismemerges, not only at an institutional level but amongst the social and political fabric of theNarratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches228
Narratives of Redemption: Memory and Identity in EuropeRita RibeiroEuropean community. To put it differently, a new level of identity and belonging is beingshaped, beyond national membership. The point is that European identity is not only thebureaucratic, legal, and institutional apparatus of the EU. On the contrary, “a full understandingof Europe’s ambivalence, refracted through its multiple, nested identities, lies at the intersectionof competing European political projects and social processes” (Checkel, 2009, p. 2).4. “Future memory” and “horizon of expectation”: the Europe to beIf we consider Europe as an in-progress project, what is the role of memory narrativesin the construction of a unified, transnational community? Forgetting or remembering –which one should come first? Can we do without either of them? Clearly, forgetting the pastis not an option, specially the dark past. In face of the painful memories of war, genocide anddictatorship, Europeans may forgive, yet they are not willing nor allowed to forget. The onlysolution, thus, appears to be to rescue the past, to redeem the past through the triumph ofthe present. Peace, democracy, freedom, human rights, political unification, economic prosperity,the welfare state, these are the achievements that legitimize present-day discoursesof unity and identity. We assert that it is possible to honour and exorcize the past and, at thesame time, to use this catharsis as a trampoline to the future.Richard Lebow (2008, p. 39) gives us some interesting hints on the use of memorywhen he suggests that we have the possibility of imagining the future the same way weimagine and mythify the past:we have no memories of the future, but we do have imagined memories of thefuture. We routinely build scenarios with good or bad outcomes based on thelessons we think we have learned from the past and use them to work our waythrough life and policy choices. (...) Future ‘memories’ of this kind are just asimportant for building and sustaining identities as memories of the past – andmany of the latter are, of course, also imaginary.Future memories refer to crossroads, to leading choices and, in a more explicit way, toalternative paths available to a community. How do Europeans picture Europe in the nexttwenty or fifty years? What position do they desire for their continent in the world? How dothey figure out their own commitment towards local, national and European spheres? WhichEurope would Europeans bestow on their children: a plural, egalitarian, federal society or aEurope of nations, fearing foreigners and globalization?Imagining the future, then, is what we do in the present. When the future is perceivedas an inheritance of our current steps, today’s choices constitute the foundation for futurememories. Therefore memory exists mostly in present time. It is present action that shapesthe future, but the former is actually elicited through an in progress image of the future. To acertain extent, Reinhart Koselleck’s category of “horizon of expectation” matches these notions,as it embodies the complex present-future intertwining. In Koselleck’s (2004, p. 259) words,expectation also takes place in the today; it is the future made present; it directsitself to the not-yet, to the nonexperienced, to that which is to be revealed. Hopeand fear, wishes and desires, cares and rational analysis, receptive display andcuriosity: all enter into expectation and constitute it.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches229
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Cinematic Landscape and Social Memo
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comprises both remembering and forg
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include important questions related
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Part ICognitive and Emotional Proce
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Narratives and Social Memory from t
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The Lay Historian: How Ordinary Peo
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Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
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Emotional Processes in Elaborating
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Transitional Justice Processes, Sha
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The Past and the Present (re)Visite
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Part IIMedia(ted) Narrativesand Pub
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Hard News Cognitive Shift: from Fac
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Narratives of Death: Journalism and
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Researching Identity Narratives in
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Journalistic Narrative: a Story of
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The Works of Sísifo: Memories and
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Audiovisual Post-colonial Narrative
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Cinematic Landscape and Social Memo
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Collective Mobilization and the Soc
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Narratives as Prison ‘Escapes’:
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Drawings and Narrative: the Inmates
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Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres d
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Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Readi
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