Images from Paradise. Eszter Salgó
enjoyment of the in-group members is jeopardized by the out-group members who are determined to steal it or to devastate the community by infecting it with its own (obscene) jouissance. For these reasons, in order to understand the real nature of political forces, one has to confront their underlying phantasy, “the nonrational nugget, the fantastic stand-in for enjoyment, that can be what we desire but can never achieve” (Dean 2006: 47).
According to Bernhard Giesen the “return of religion” is a fundamental trait of the project of modernity: political ideologies and social movements have emerged as secularized versions of the religious revival where a religious devotion is justified by reasons and convictions (2009). Harald Wydra believes that transcendence can also be a political force: individuals’ attachment to a political community may derive not from rational principles but from structures of thought “derived from religious practice, such as conversion experiences, rituals, cults of hero worship, and messianic expectations” (2011b: 266). The sacred, he asserts, has shifted from the symbolism of the king’s two bodies to social forces, cultural practices, and ethical imperatives (2015a). The “politics of enchantment” implies the nonrational and the sacred, which have become “pillars for the reconstitution of legitimacy in the reordering of people’s entire meaningful worlds” (Verdery 1999: 25). Sacralization of politics is often a symptom of disenchantment and crisis. Today’s transitional period provides a fruitful ground for exploring people’s overwhelming desire to reexperience the paradisiacal conditions of the golden age and the elite’s response—the endeavor to attribute sacred and mystical elements to secular institutions. According to Harald Wydra, sacred spaces and practices often originate in violence and death, in times of extraordinary politics, “in feeble moments of the social and political flux, when people’s yearning for ontological security becomes stronger and stronger” (2015b: 2, 3). Relying on Alessandro Pizzorno’s notion of absolute politics (1987) and Eric Voegelin’s political anthropology, he claims that in liminal situations the dissolutions of order and the disillusionment with traditional models entail a void of markers of certainty that may give orientation and meaning to the collective community, a void that may be filled with emotional excitement, crowd action, and collective ecstasy (Wydra 2011b: 268).
In the transitional era provoked by the trauma of the euro crisis, feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and alienation seem to prevail. The drama of 2008 has created an out-of-the-ordinary, incomprehensive, incommunicable situation where political reality has been shattered and markers of certainty have evaporated. The roots of the collective trauma lie in the loss of an illusion, the broken promise of the EU as the Land of Cockaigne. The profane circumstances felt to be unbearable have triggered in people a longing for the transcendental feelings of unity, order, and completeness. Perhaps, more than in the past, people require a sacred compass in order to orient themselves and overcome uncertainty. A quest for the transformative power of the Sacred, promising to compensate for feelings of fragility and existential insecurity, has resulted in the supranational elite’s attempt to make redress for the disenchantment. This recompense comes in the form of what is commonly perceived as a bureaucratic and technocratic organization, the application of eschatological visions to politics, the linking of transcendental symbols to the questions of power and legitimacy, and the binding of citizens to the Sacred. The hope is to shift allegiance from nation-states to Europe through the ritualistic form of equating federal Europe with salvation, thereby providing through the transcendental an extra sense of legitimation to the EU.
The federalist notion of the United States of Europe (USE) represents the contemporary manifestation of the ancient paradise myth. This political utopia has acquired a sacred dimension and is presented as the holy canopy, the only compass that can redeem the community. The supranational elite perform on the stage of European politics as authentic masters of ceremonies, whose goal is to give an end to our turbulent era and inaugurate the return of the golden age. The utopia of the United States of Europe is not only meant to fire Europeans’ imaginations and kindle their fantasies, but also to enchant them with a sense of completeness, homecoming, and rebirth. Similar to nineteenth-century intellectuals who called for some type of humanistic “civil religion,” a new “spiritual power,” a “religion of humanity” to foster human progress and to counteract the power of egoism and greed (Nussbaum 2011: 7), supranational policy-makers seem to draw on Auguste Comte to articulate their vision of the European Union and of the new civil religion. According to Comte, the new civil religion, like traditional religion, must have an object of worship and it must include a multitude of carefully planned ceremonies, rituals, and festivals that give meaning to time (1865/1957). The 2008 crisis prompted supranational policy-makers to recognize the central role civic emotions play in politics and turn Eurofederalism into a political religion. Today they are convinced that their sacred mission consists of giving birth to a new (idyllic) Europe by combating tendencies toward the pursuit of national interests, putting “European values” on the altar, strengthening citizens’ awareness of their “shared past” and “common destiny,” and encouraging them to extend sympathy and love to the whole European community. Supranational policy-makers see themselves as those who possess the right (the only) answer for today’s crisis, as the only ones legitimized to play the role Comte assigned to the council of philosophers—a new spiritual authority. In the European soteriology, the object of devotion is the “ever-closer Europe,” which, to be imagined and addressed as a deity, has received a singular name: the United States of Europe. Central in the EU’s communication strategy is the image of a united Europe threatened by the destabilizing forces of populist, nationalist, and Euroskeptic movements. Another fundamental feature of Comte’s religion, the spirit of control and homogeneity, also seems to resurface in the EU; to turn the dream of the USE into reality, supranational policy-makers demand a submissive reverence to their authority and offer no (or very restricted) room for opposing views.
The dreams of today’s federalists may also recall Julien Benda’s vision of Europe sketched in An Address to the European Nation in 1933. The Europe this French thinker envisaged was spiritual, moral, and intellectual. He encouraged intellectuals to follow clerkly values (i.e., dedicate their lives to the pursuit of universal truths) and to save people from power-driven passions for race, nation, or class. Return to paradise (i.e., to pristine universalism) could be achieved by giving birth to a new, spiritual Europe where the passion of reason would reign (1933/1993). According to Benda, endeavors to create a united Europe had ended with fiasco because Europeans did not want to be unified. He believed that to convince people about the need to transcend the existence of nation-states and create a new Europe, to make them love the idea of Europe, steps had to be taken to shift people’s political passions from the nation-states to the “European nation.” To realize this project of rebirth, intellectuals, once they converted to true intellectuals, were entrusted with the task of fostering people’s moral and spiritual metamorphosis by making new gods, inventing a new religion. Today’s Euro-bureaucrats champion themselves as an enlightened order of priests possessing spiritual power and representing the real source of moral authority in Europe. They seem ready to accomplish the task Benda attributed to clercs: vanquish nationalist passion with another passion, replace old idols with new idols, old myths with new myths, old mystique with new mystique.
Roger Griffin’s concept of “palingenetic ultranationalism” (1996) may help us better understand the underlying fantasy of the European federalist agenda. Palingenetic refers to the myth of regeneration; it is driven by the vision of the triumph of a new life over decadence and decay, by the expectation of an imminent rebirth following literal or figurative death, by the desire to leave behind what is perceived as an intolerable present to be born anew. Eurofederalism seems to be dominated by Euro-nationalistic connotations in which the problems of the old European nationalisms reverberate on a new level. Applying Griffin’s theory we could portray “palingenetic ultra-Europeanism” as an ideology driven by the mythical force of a regenerated European Union that emerges when ultrafederalism combines with the myth of a radical crusade against populism and nationalism and considers the utopian project of the United States of Europe as its symbolic manifestation par excellence. For the prophets of this soteriology, the realization of Europe’s mystic rebirth is hindered by the invasive presence of the nation-state. According to this view, the European Union requires not simply the erosion of national barriers to facilitate the free circulation of trade, capital, and persons,