Since ancient times, the human body, the family, and the theater have been used as traditional metaphors to imagine, construct, and describe political communities. Their meanings have transformed, but they are still among the most effective tropes. Today, European federalists make use of the family metaphor as a means to rally popular support for the project of the United States of Europe. Numerous attempts have been made to inject intimacy into the (still embryonic) European public life. There is a belief that emotions, sentiments, sensations, and fantasies can be nurtured through tropes of familial ties, such as “European family,” the “European house,” “birth,” “child,” “mother,” “father,” and “twinning,” and can serve to reinforce the feeling of community and a sense of belonging. In the family model promoted by the European Commission, top-down, often aggressive symbolic policies have been launched to prescribe not only who should be intimate with whom but also who deserves this intimacy: who can be considered a legitimate member of the European family. According to Eleni Papagaroufali, “The Commission’s extensive ‘investment’ in the normative ‘distribution of [familial] affections’ among its members, as well as its enormous interest in creating multiple microsites of intimate space is best exemplified by the institution of twinning” (2008: 73). For me, among the most important attempts to fill the emotional gap the EU suffers from would be to highlight the Commission’s portrayal of the Eurozone through the metaphor of the European family; the ECB’s decision to ornament the symbol of a united and prosperous European family, and its most beloved “child,” the euro, with the pictorial metaphor of Europe’s “mother”; the advertising campaign aimed at reinforcing these fantasies (and implicit promises) and the videos launched to prepare the act of communion that was to take place in occasion of the 2014 elections to the European Parliament.
The transition to monetary union lacked “humanity” and “intimacy” according to the report “Reflection on Information and Communication Policy of the European Community” (De Clercq 1993). The “intimization of politics” (Ringmar 1998), which was an outcome of the French Revolution and served as an engine for establishing a democratic public space where politics would be based on the authentic relations among actors, came to be seen by the European Union as a useful strategy to enhance popular attachment to the organization. European politics of intimacy has been following the model adopted during the nineteenth-century process of nation-state building. Since the tropes of familial ties had not contributed to transform the Eurozone into the intimate space of a European home, the ECB had to invest in the enterprise of taking Europeans on a journey to the maternal womb, back to the era of omnipotence. Independently, whether we see Europa’s portrait through the mirror image of Winnicott’s mother or through the Lacanian gaze, the initiative can be interpreted as Draghi’s attempt to offer, through the visual representation of the idyllic mother-child relationship, the symbolic illustration of the maximum level of intimacy that could be reached between the euro and the citizens. The taking of possession of the mother by the child (symbolized by their reencounter on the euro banknotes) nurtures the hope that the return to aradise can be accomplished, the European “art of unification” can be completed, and common currency can finally become the holy icon of Europe’s newborn fantastic family.
In the fantasies of many Europeans, the golden era is associated with the last decades before the outbreak of the First World War. Stefan Zweig writes about Vienna in The World of Yesterday: “We shouted with joy when Blériot flew over the Channel as if he had been our own hero … a European community spirit, a European national consciousness was coming to being” (1943/1964: 196). In the imagination of many, the First World War is equated with Europeans’ expulsion from paradise and signals the beginning of an era characterized by a strong sense of nostalgia for the lost Garden of Eden. According to Heinrich Mann, to accomplish a return to the much-desired state of wholeness and serenity, “we Europeans must build our own church … For our church depends upon our unshakable belief. The belief is Europe, the doctrine of salvation is its unity” (cited by Orluc 2000: 135).
This book will examine European federalism as a political doctrine of salvation, driven by the paradise myth, and the fantasy of a redemptive end characterized by the transformation of the United States of Europe from dream into reality. Since its beginning, the European integration project’s undeclared goal has been to accomplish the project of palingenesis—to create a new Europe, return to illud tempus, rediscover the sacred, and to reexperience idyllic feelings. The term integration has the same roots as entire; it comes from the Latin integer, meaning intact, untouched, whole, complete, impeccable. Integrare means to restore or make whole, while integration refers to processes of unification of separate units. Following its etymological roots, the European integration process could be seen as the par excellence example for the European “art of unification,” consisting in the remaking of Europe’s fantastic family as a whole and providing a new home for reborn Europeans.
Symbolic activity can be seen as the most important means of bringing things together, both intellectually and emotionally, thus overcoming isolation and even individuality (Walzer 1967: 194). Supranational policy-makers have identified in symbol politics the ideal tool to reunify European citizens in a strong emotional community. The belief that the EU needs new myths, symbols, and rituals in order to change the nature of familial relationships, reinforce citizens’ loyalty to the EU, and attribute transcendental qualities to the organization lies at the base of the federalist agenda and constitutes the main object of inquiry in this book.
With Images Europe, Luisa Passerini aims to subvert the traditional interpretations of myth and symbols and find Europeanness hidden in images (2003b). Considering images, in particular moving images, as privileged sites of the imaginary, she analyzes their connections with the unconscious in relation to the Europa myth. Her conclusion suggests that we cannot define ourselves as European without questioning not only our cultural heritage but also our own intimate feelings and attitudes (Passerini 2003a: 27). Jacques-René Rabier contributes to this idea when he points out that the recent renaissance of the various versions of the Europa myth relates both to “mundane factors” and to “phenomena of a psychological nature” (2003: 76). He himself explores the former and leaves the latter to others. With this book, I seek to respond to his invitation and bring in psychoanalytical and anthropological perspectives, along with elements of art theory, film, and communication studies, to explore some of the most novel elements of the European Union’s symbol politics, including the revival of the fable of the Phoenician princess. My hope is to show that the reappearance and the various uses of the image of Europa reflect a widespread nostalgia for the golden age, a heartfelt yearning for transformation and rebirth, and the European elite’s promise of fulfilling these paradise dreams.
Though the 2007 Berlin declaration officially stated that the dream of earlier generations (a peaceful, prosperous, and unified Europe) had become a reality, today, notwithstanding official celebrations of (alleged) triumphs, the European political elite are seen by many as the “mother of our problems” rather than actors performing the functions of the loving and nurturing mater familias. The European Union’s failure to fire people’s dreams is a self-evident proposition. The collective imaginary is tied to nationalisms and local roots; the European imaginary is weak to reawaken passions for a different, supranational project. Yet EU institutions have not given up the hope of challenging the grip that nationalism continues to hold on the modern imagination. They still aim to take possession of Europeans’ fantasies, invent a European culture, promote a new sense of Europeanness that would transcend parochial and nationalistic loyalties, and guarantee a higher level of consciousness based on (unconditional) loyalty to federal Europe. Several questions arise spontaneously: Is it still possible to resurrect the paradise myth? How to appeal to European citizens’ emotions? How to make people believe in and feel thrilled about their European family and about the construction of their new European house? How to turn the EU into an intimate space offering a home-feeling? How to transform the nightmare of “a corpse whose hair and nails, wealth, and cumulative knowledge are still growing, but the rest is dead” (Heller 1988: 154)