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Abstract
The discourse on EU–Russia relations amongst practitioners, think-tank experts, journalists and academics has congealed around a postmodern–modern binary. It is frequently argued that whereas Russia is caught up in a ‘modern’ framework of fixed territory, national identity and traditional geopolitics, the European Union is driven by a ‘postmodern’ spatial mindset that transcends these ‘backward’ values. This article argues that the EU's supposed postmodern geopolitics remains enmeshed in a very modern temporality—a consciousness of time that valorises the present over the past. It also detects a problematic disillusion with the postmodern and questions its implicit normativity.
Notes
See for instance Volume 61, Issue 10 (Averre Citation2009; Gänzle Citation2009; Dangerfield Citation2009; Haukkala Citation2009; Fawn Citation2009; Forsberg & Seppo Citation2009; Filippov Citation2009), but also other recent contributions that are discussed below.
The interviews were held in May 2010 in a climate of political relaxation. At the time of the interviews, Russo-Polish relations and Russo-US relations had improved and the Western European outrage at the South Ossetian war had somewhat waned.
My task here is not so much one of offering a new or better definition of the postmodern for the benefit of practitioners, but one of listening in to popularised understandings of the postmodern and exhibiting the contradictions at work within the texts that propagate these understandings. Rival conceptions do exist and include that of the EU as a ‘normative’ and as a ‘civilian’ power. Whilst the former is implicated in the postmodern, the latter does not play a role in the EU's discourse on Russia.
Somewhat paradoxically, even interviewees that claimed that the postmodern or modern labels had ‘absolutely no role in public policy’, argued along the lines of the postmodern–modern binary (author's interview with Fraser Cameron, formerly European Commission, and now director of the EU–Russia Centre, Brussels, 10 May 2010).
Cooper adds a third temporal classification: the premodern.
Author's interview with anonymous NATO official, Brussels, 7 May 2010.
Author's interview with anonymous European Commission official working on the European Neighbourhood Policy, Brussels, 10 May 2010.
Author's interview with George Dura, researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 12 May 2010.
Telephone interview with Katinka Barysch, Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform (CER), 4 June 2010.
Author's interview with Fraser Cameron, formerly European Commission, and now director of the EU–Russia Centre, Brussels, 10 May 2010.
Author's interview with anonymous European Commission official working on the European Neighbourhood Policy, Brussels, 10 May 2010.
See also Euractiv (Citation2007b).
Author's interview with Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 11 May 2010.
Author's interview with George Dura, researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 12 May 2010.
Author's interview with anonymous Commission official, working on Russia, Brussels, 7 May 2010.
Telephone interview with Katinka Barysch, Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform (CER), 4 June 2010.
Author's interview with Amanda Paul, Policy Analyst at the European Policy Centre, Brussels, 14 May 2010.
Author's interview with George Dura, researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 12 May 2010.
Author's interview with George Dura, researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 12 May 2010.
Author's interview with Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, 11 May 2010.
Moreover, Browning has suggested that Russia's policy towards Kaliningrad also displays elements of the postmodern (Browning Citation2003b, p. 19), so the idea that the European Union has a monopoly on postmodern geopolitics seems problematic from a number of angles.
What is more, even when postmodernism is engaged as a broad philosophical school and not as a catchy label, it can be co-opted by power. Some think-tank reports invoke postmodern philosophy and have, for instance, used it to claim that Russia's identity is fundamentally ‘unstable, divided, split and unfixed’ without showing any understanding of the fact that if this is what all identities are about (Makarychev Citation2009, p. 3), ontological dislocation cannot be something particularly Russian.