The Hidden Interest in a Common European Identity

A common European identity is an important part of the European political lexicon; however, at the institutional level, it was taken seriously only when the economic crisis, the legal challenges of EU integration, and the Brexit story encouraged a fresh look into the problem. Moreover, the European identity problem may be viewed differently from the Western and Eastern European perspectives, which helps to identify the roots of contemporary “official” and “sociological” perceptions of a common European identity. The Standard Eurobarometer (EB) questionaries were used as a proxy to analyze the interest of the EU in a common European identity. We analyzed the types of questions asked from 2004 to 2020 and took a look at the responses. The shifts in the composition of the Standard EB questionaries signal that the “official” understanding of identity is gaining ground against the “sociological” approach. The promotion by official bodies of the EU of a one-sided understanding of a common European identity, based on the Western approach, narrows the field and creates certain risks. In the face of a permanent EU-ropean unity crisis, it would not be wise to lose one of the important instruments that could be successfully used to identify the hidden challenges of the future.

Contemporary Policy Challenges Identity in the EU

The author of the article attempts to use the theories of the European identity, memory politics, identity politics by placing them in the context of the European (international) security. The author considers it fundamentally important to pay attention not so much to the threats to European identity, but to how identity is used to legitimize foreign policy of the European Union. The article highlights such perspectives of this problem as the confrontation inside the EU on the politics of memory and identity and the justification of the EU foreign policy towards Russia by the need to protect the European identity and European values. The author uses the discourse-analysis and identity research methods. The main emphasis is placed on the competitiveness of identity politics and the possibilities of using it for political purposes, to legitimize solutions to ensure the security of the European Union and the world as a whole.

The Objectification of European Identity in the Treaties and in European Institutions’ Declarations

This paper explores some aspects of the scientific study of creativity by focusing on intentionalattempts to create instances of linguistic humour. We argue that this sort of creativity canbe accounted for within an influential cognitive approach but that said framework is not arecipe for producing novel instances of humour and may even preclude them. We start byidentifying three great puzzles that arise when trying to pin down the core traits of creativity,and some of the ways taken by Cognitive Studies in this quest. We then consider what we call‘creative humour’, which exhibits the core features of the aforesaid creativity. We then explorehow a key cognitive approach to human communication can account for creative humour.We end by drawing lessons and highlighting limitations to cognitive approaches to creativity.

Romantyzm krańców Europy. Portugalia, Polska i Chrystus narodów

This article tentatively provides acomparative outlook on Polish and Portuguese Romanticism. Taking as a starting point the famous parallel between the opposite ends of Europe sketched by the 19th-century historian Joachim Lelewel, the author claims that Polish and Portuguese literature, although they had almost no direct contact with each other, participated in the same system of cultural coordinates established by European Romanticism. At the same time, both nations had some sort of dispute or clash with Europe, developing syndromes of inferiority, as well as megalomaniac visions of their moral superiority. Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano tried to provide a solution, harmonising their country with its European context. The conclusion accentuates the uttermost victory of this harmonising vision, presenting the contemporary Portuguese culture as fully Europeanised and contrasting it with the doubts concerning European identity that may be observed in contemporary Poland.

The Two Faces of the ‘Global Right’: Revolutionary Conservatives and National-Conservatives

Studies of the Global Right usually trace its intellectual underpinnings to the revolutionary conservative New Right and its ideas claiming to defend an ‘ethno-pluralist’ European identity from the multiculturalist threat of a ‘Great Replacement’ through immigration. A second lineage, which we refer to as ‘national-conservative’, is less explored and is more concerned with threats to moral order and the loss of moral bearing due to liberalism’s relativism. These two intellectual lineages, and corresponding political alignments, engender different political projects of the Global Right, which is not that coherent as it seems. Taking a long-term historical-ideational perspective that underlines the power of ideologies as templates, we argue that a closer look at the different intellectual traditions of the Global Right can help explain the contrasting political preferences for socio-economic action, institution-building and transnational cooperation.

Protestantism and Europe

The Reformation still shapes European society—and its most important post-war creation, the European Union. This chapter explores how Protestantism fractured Western Christendom, sacralized national identity, and invented the nation-state as an alternative Christian society. In the process, Protestants fostered a profound antipathy to the Catholic ‘other’ and a powerful affinity for national borders making it difficult to imagine joining a federal Europe. They were reluctant to enter the EU and awkward on arrival. Protestants never caught the vision of a united Europe, nor did the continentals grasp how Protestant national identities would resist any sacrifice of sovereignty. This clash of irreconcilable visions—one Catholic, one Protestant—became an obstacle to post-war efforts to unite Europe and has led to enduring differences in the behaviour of states, elites, churches, political parties, interest groups, and public opinion towards integration and European identity.

"Cultural Narrative" about European Identity in the Context of Personal Stories (Reflections on the Book by Orlando Figes)

Статья содержит рефлексии по поводу книги известного английского историка-рос-сиеведа О. Файджеса «Европейцы. Три жизни и рождение космополитической культуры», его подхода к репрезентации биографической истории И.С. Тургенева, П. Ви-ардо и Л. Виардо в контексте складывания общеевропейской культуры во второй по-ловине XIX века. Особое внимание уделено методологической значимости присутствующих в рецензируемой книге и формирующихся в современной историографии таких трендов как «новый нарратив», «история репрезентаций» и «новая биографическая история», а также дискуссии о смыслах концепта «европейскости» как характеристики над-этнической идентичности и о ее проявлениях на микро- и макро-уровнях в меняющемся и модернизирующемся историко-культурном пространстве Российской империи и Европы в XIX в. The article contains reflections on the book by a famous English historian – Russian scholar O. Figes "Europeans. Three lives and the birth of cosmopolitan culture", his approaches to the representation of the biographical history of I. S. Turgenev, P. Viardot and L. Viardot in the context of the formation of pan-European culture in the second half of the XIX century. Special attention is paid to the methodological significance of such trends as "new narrative", "history of representations" and "new biographical history" present in the reviewed book and emerging in modern historiography, as well as discussions about the meanings of the concept of "Europeanness" as a characteristic of supra-ethnic identity and about its manifestations at micro and macro levels in the changing and modernizing historical and cultural space of the Russian Empire and Europe in the XIX century.