Abstract
The aim of this study is to interpret and understand the concepts of citizenship and identity within the framework of European philosophical thought. Furthermore, the purpose is to examine whether European identity and European citizenship indicate an emergence of new, postmodern categories in legal and political discourse. Official European Union (EU) documents will be analysed with the help of a theoretical framework that consists of various models of citizenship and identity. The main research questions explored in this study are:
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Should European citizenship and European identity be considered modern or postmodern categories?
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Do they challenge the old concepts of citizenship and identity?
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Are they built on fluid borders?
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What is the place of difference and alterity in defining European citizenship and European identity?
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Notes
- 1.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration. A team at Utrecht University is responsible for the organization of the project.
- 2.
Enacting European Citizenship was a consortium that brought together researchers from Belgium, The Netherlands, UK, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey. The project was completed in January 2011.
- 3.
Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration, and Development (MACIMIDE) is the interdisciplinary research platform of Maastricht University that brings together scholars working in the fields of citizenship, mobility, migration, development, and family life.
- 4.
Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation of meaning. According to Bleicher, there are three separate strands of hermeneutics: hermeneutic philosophy, hermeneutic theory, and critical hermeneutics (Bleicher 1980).
- 5.
A similar approach is presented by Roberto Alejandro (1993) (however, he mostly relies on Gadamer’s hermeneutics).
- 6.
According to Paul Ricoeur, the ‘self’ can also be perceived as the model of the text. Ricoeur asserts: ‘There is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts, in the last resort understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms.’ (Ricoeur 1991, p. 15) In Oneself as Another (1992), Ricoeur ties understanding of one’s self to narrative configuration. For instance, authors and readers make sense of various elements of literary texts by employing configuration. Ricoeur argues about the narrativity of a person’s life based on configuration.
- 7.
Following Roberto Alejandro (1993), the term ‘text’ employed in this study is understood as a social event, which is open to a plurality of meanings.
- 8.
‘But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show’ (Eliot 1982, p. 38).
- 9.
Hermeneutics may be defined as a philosophy or theory of interpretation of meaning (Bleicher 1980, p. 1).
- 10.
Tyrer v. the United Kingdom, Judgment of 25 April 1978. Publications ECHR, Series A vol. 26.
- 11.
Tyrer case sentence, para. 31.
- 12.
Marckx v. Belgium, Judgment of 13 June 1979, Publications ECHR, Series A vol. 31.
- 13.
Dudgeon v. the United Kingdom, Judgment of 22 October 1981, Publications ECHR, Series A vol. 45.
- 14.
Soering v. the United Kingdom, Judgment of 7 July 1989, Publications ECHR, Series A vol. 161.
- 15.
Loizidou v. Turkey, Judgment of 18 December 1996, European Human Rights Reports (EHRR), vol. 23.
- 16.
Although hermeneutics and deconstruction are often perceived as two bodies of thought, both points of view deny the possibility of language-free thinking and understanding. Both twentieth-century hermeneutics and ‘Derridean deconstruction present a significant challenge to the metaphysics of modernity, whose assumptions continue to dominate not only a good deal of thinking within philosophy but also within other interpretative disciplines, including literary criticism, theology, and the social sciences. And, however far apart their views of language may appear to be, both find a common ground in this challenge itself, in questioning the metaphysical assumptions that language is at our disposal’ (Michelfelder and Palmer 1989, p. 2).
- 17.
Terry Eagleton makes a distinction between ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity.’ He argues that the concept of postmodernism refers to ‘a form of contemporary culture,’ while the term ‘postmodernity’ refers to a specific historic period (Eagleton 1996, p. vii). In this study, these kinds of binary oppositions within postmodern thought will be avoided as they contradict the nature of postmodernism, which is beyond sharp divisions.
- 18.
Paul Ricoeur argues that his idea of ‘paradigm’ refers to the narrative understanding of a competent reader. He has chosen to use the term ‘paradigm’ as a general term synonymous with a rule for composition. However, the term ‘paradigm’ should not be confused with the terms ‘paradigmatic’ and ‘syntagmatic,’ which stem from semiotic rationality (Ricoeur 1985).
- 19.
Ricoeur defines plot as a synthetical and schematic principle. That is why he instead employs the term ‘emplotment,’ which means ‘building of a plot’ (la mise en intrigue) (Ricoeur 1985).
- 20.
‘I am calling narrative exactly what Aristotle calls muthos, the organization of the events. I do not differ from Aristotle, therefore, on the plain he places himself on, that of “mode.” To avoid any confusion, I shall distinguish narrative in the broad sense, defined as the “what” of mimetic activity, and narrative in the narrow sense of the Aristotelian diegesis, which I shall henceforth call diegetic composition.’ (Ricoeur 1985, p. 36)
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Ivic, S. (2016). Introduction. In: European Identity and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57785-6_1
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