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Psychoanalyzing Europe? Political Enjoyment and European Identity
Author(s) -
Kølvraa Christoffer
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12547
Subject(s) - identity (music) , politics , mediation , sociology , narrative , dimension (graph theory) , european integration , gaze , order (exchange) , european union , aesthetics , political science , law , psychology , psychoanalysis , social science , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , pure mathematics , business , economic policy , finance , economics
This article seeks to discuss and illustrate how employing theoretical elements and interpretative frames from Lacanian psychoanalysis might help to conceptualize and analyze the affective dimension of European identity. European identity, as constructed in the discourses of European institutions, is believed to be crucial in legitimating the political project of European integration. It is argued that in order to understand how “desire” and jouissance (“enjoyment”) are active in this construction of European identity, we need to focus on the plotlines of the dominant narrative about Europe as articulated in official discourses. Using such an approach, I show that the EU’s preferred construction of a European identity, which narrates the EU as a grand peace project, is structured around the sacrifice of “national” jouissance, which in turn becomes a site of political enjoyment through the mediation of an external gaze.