The strategic narration of future identity during times of crises: evidence from the European Commission

Authors

  • Pauline Heinrichs Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30722/anzjes.vol12.iss3.15362

Keywords:

ontological security, crisis, strategic narratives, temporality, uncertainty, European Union

Abstract

What kind of Europe the EU seeks to be, how it perceives itself and how it seeks to enact this Europe is a highly contentious issue and has powerful political stakes attached to its construction and realisation. This paper is specifically interested in how crises can constitute a compounded and expanded space for agency of political actors to forge identity narratives of the future. This paper draws on speeches by EC officials from 16 July 2019 to 7 July 2020, while coding along four analytical markers for crises as identified by Filip Ejdus (2020, p. 2, italics in original): “existence, finitude, relations and autobiography”. This article finds that while actors seek to create space for political agency by writing a moment of existential (external) crises to the EU’s project, they appear less equipped to use this moment politically. In this way, they co-construct a space potentially open to political creativity, but fail to fill this space with political creativity as to the future of the autobiographical narrative.

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Published

2021-05-07