March 5, 2018
12:15 pm
CK Choi, Room 120
Breaking with Europe’s Past: Memory, Reconciliation, and Ontological (In)security
Bahar Rumelili, Associate Profesor and Jean Monnet Chair, Department of International Relations, Koc University
The European Union is widely credited for consolidating a democratic ‘security community’ in Europe, and bringing about a definitive break with war-torn and authoritarian/totalitarian pasts in many European countries. Drawing on recent discussions in ontological security studies, this article points out that these radical breaks may have come at the expense of ontological insecurity at the societal and individual levels in Europe. While conventional teleological narratives often treat reconciliation and breaking with the past as automatic by-products of European integration, ontological security theory calls for greater attention to the societal tensions and anxieties triggered by these transformations and how they are being managed –more or less successfully- through reconciliation dynamics and memory politics in different societal settings. The article draws comparative theoretical and empirical insights from case-specific literatures on reconciliation and memory politics in Europe to develop an ontological security perspective on European integration.