European fantasies: on the EU’s political myths and the affective potential of Utopian imaginaries for European identity

Special Issue: JCMS Special Issue 2016: Another Theory is Possible: Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe. Guest Editors: Ian Manners and Richard WhitmanAbstract:
The question of European identity today seems to be all the more pressing, as the current financial crisis is not only quickly developing into one of internal political cohesion for the Union, but has also certainly aggravated the long-standing problem of a lack of identification with the European political project among European populations.
This article seeks to discuss this disenchantment with Europe through a concept of political myth. It argues that political myths entail both narrations of communal origins and utopian horizons of the communal future. Drawing on insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis, it connects the utopian dimension of myth to the level of affective investment in political communities, and suggests that the disenchantment with the European project might be partly due to the fact that its original utopian horizon – that of peace in Europe – today seems to have been achieved.