Unexpected Support for European Integration

Memory, Rupture, and Totalitarianism in Arendt's Political Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID8036124
AuthorsPeter J Verovšek (0000-0001-8946-2014, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume76
Issue3
Pages389-413
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670514000308
OpenAlexW1999852115
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited47

Collective memory is an important source of social stability, allowing human beings and political communities to integrate new experiences into existing narrative frameworks. In addition to sustaining individual and group identities, remembrance can also maintain cycles of hatred. Building on Arendt's political theory, I present an alternative interpretation of memory as a resource for political change following historical ruptures. This constructive reading focuses on the ability of communities to create new futures out of the shattered pieces of the past. For Arendt, the experience of totalitarianism was a caesura that made nationalist histories, and the nation-state that came with these interpretations of the past, untenable. Following such breaks, communities must reconstruct the past into new narratives. Arendt's unexpected early support for European integration—despite its supranational, technocratic, and economistic qualities—is an example of how memory can function as a resource for political transformation in the aftermath of historical ruptures

Collective memory · Constructive · Epistemology · Hatred · Interpretation (philosophy · Narrative · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Politics of memory · Sociology · State (computer science · Technocracy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy

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