From the cultural and foreign policies of western European far-right parties to the European Union’s 2015–2018 Work Plan for Culture – identifying and opposing nativism

ABSTRACT

This article is framed by an interest in cultural policy in the context of shifting political trends and cultural governance. It begins by comparing the cultural and foreign policy proposals of a number of western far-right Eurosceptic parties (FN, PVV, UKIP), arguing that they reveal a set of shared assumptions regarding cultural identity and sovereignty. It then suggests that the European Union’s 2015–2018 implementation of its motto (‘United in Diversity’), emphasising the ideas of intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity, did not question such nativist assumptions. Finally, proposing to imagine a relational cultural strategy incompatible with nativism, the article connects François Jullien’s understanding of culture as something that is built around shared resources with Judith Butler’s notion of performative agency. In doing so, the article contributes to the development of cultural policies that aren’t methodologically nationalist.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• European Union
• cultural diversity
• nativism
• far-right

Acknowledgments

I thank the participants of IFA’s 2017 Conference The Role of Culture in a Divided Europe and of the 2017 seminar in Intercultural Relations in Arts and Cultural Management for their feedback. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments. Any errors and omissions are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For more on the relation between culture and identity in the European Union, see Demossier (2007).

2. In June 2018, the party's name was changed to Rassemblement National (National Rally). The article employs the name that was in use when its 2017 manifesto was published.

3. For more on the party, see Eltchaninoff (2018).

4. This translation, as all others in this article, is my own.

5. More on the party can be found at Vossen (2016).

6. For the history of the party, see Ford and Goodwin (2014).

7. See Benessaieh (forthcoming) for a detailed discussion of the differences between these terms and their main origins.

8. Originally imagined as something that could be used vis-à-vis sovereign regimes of power (Butler and Athanasiou 2013).

9. This has been recognised by the European Commission in its Communication on Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture (European Commission, 2017a).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mafalda Dâmaso

Dr Mafalda Dâmaso is an independent researcher and consultant whose work focuses on the intersection of culture, identity and international affairs. She lives in London, United Kingdom.