European Union cultural history: introducing the theory of ‘paradoxical coherence’ to start mapping a field of research

Abstract

In this article, the author reflects upon recent critical research on the sui generis-qualities of the European Union. He provides a proposal of theorizing European Union cultural history as a distinct field of research. So far, discourse has not been able to produce a conclusive theory of EU history. In this context, the author provides research with a first theoretical concept of EU cultural history which keeps a critical distance from EU-biased perspectives, and, at the same time, tries to explain its cultural sui generis-qualities, by scrutinizing its distinct cultural constitution in post-1945 decades. This distinct cultural constitution can be seen as having produced an own mode of the production of cultural meaning, which is supposed to be described theoretically by a concept of a ‘paradoxical coherence’.

Keywords:

• European Union
• European Union cultural history
• cultural history
• paradoxical coherence, theory
• cultural meaning

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Anita Ziegerhofer for her thoughtful remarks on an earlier version of this article.