Fanning the flames? An exploration of EU discourse on culture in the Eastern Partnership

ABSTRACT

In contributing to the scholarly debate on the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy, this paper focuses on an under-explored, yet central, subset of the latter, namely the EU’s cultural relations with the Eastern Partnership (EaP). Concretely, it examines what discursive articulations the EU advances through its cultural relations with the region. To do so, it applies a poststructuralist approach to a selection of data retrieved from EU policy documents and declarations (2007–2020) and semi-structured interviews with EU officials and cultural operators. The analysis reveals that three discursive articulations of EU identity are advanced: a) ‘United in Diversity’, showcasing ‘Europe’ as a model; b) ‘co-creation’, promoting dialogue and mutuality with the EaP; and c) ‘messaging’, framing Russia as an existential threat. Despite some contradictions, the analysis detects an important tendency towards geographical othering, and notably towards the externalising of the threat location in identity production. By resorting to default conceptions of culture, EU discourse splits the EU and Russia into two organic systems of differences. Overall, EU identity reproduction within the cultural terrain – and the antagonism that comes with it – produces and nurtures the very contested world that the EU seeks to navigate.

KEYWORDS:

• European union
• eastern partnership
• Russia
• cultural relations
• geopolitics

View addendum:

Publishers Note

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to colleagues at the Ghent Institute for International and European Studies and in particular to Prof. Fabienne Bossuyt and Prof. Olga Burlyuk, and to the members of my Doctoral Advisory Committee for their precious feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the guest editors of this special issue as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions, and interview participants for giving me their time and providing me with insight into their knowledge and experience.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I refer to this policy in line with EU terminology. The concepts of ‘cultural diplomacy’ and ‘(international) cultural relations’ are discussed and problematized in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds UGent (Special Research Fund of Ghent University), grant number BOF20/DOC_V/018.