Images from Paradise. Eszter Salgó
renewal, the construction of a new Europe (the USE), must be preceded by the dismantling of the nation-state and its associated ideologies of nationalism.
Similar to “palingenetic ultra-nationalism,” the federalist soteriology is born of a human need for a sense of transcendence. It offers to its followers the prospect of returning to the golden age; it resorts to the sacralization and dramatization of discourse as a means to conjure up a spiritual and mythical atmosphere that may facilitate the emergence of new order, a new faith, a new transcendental community. Through the persistent use of myths, symbols, and rituals, it seeks to convince citizens that they belong to a supranatural reality, to replace the primacy of affective attachment to the nation. “Palingenetic myth” itself is the belief in the imminent transformation of the old world into a new one. As in rites of passage, the new status (“European citizens”) represents a new beginning, the possibility of entering a new, more mature phase of life. In this sense, the progress toward the United States of Europe becomes the journey toward a rebirth and the dawn of a new era.
The federalist discourse portrays the robust reaction against the “populist,” “nationalist,” and “Euroskeptic forces” as a soul-saving crusade against the evil, as an intent to destroy those who threaten the paradise dream from coming true. It aims to purify from the community of “true Europeans” any “anti-European” myths and influences, to destroy the virulent social disease menacing European democracy, and to restore and disseminate the cult of federal Europe. The European federalist agenda has strong Romantic components; its vision is inherently unattainable. Just like romantic nationalism, it is a kind of chiliastic doctrine seeking perfection on earth. It preaches an ethic of brotherly love, the purification of the elect, the destruction of barriers, and the abolition of this corrupt world for a new dispensation of absolute love and justice on earth. The federalist agenda doesn’t take into account the real world of the European Union in which there is imperfect organization and dividing lines among members are growing in number and becoming deeper, all the while the willingness to unite weakens more and more.
According to Stefan Auer, like the Great Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, the European Union is “never satisfied, always wanting more; insanely rich, yet unable to pay their bills” (2013). Like Gatsby, Europeans grew accustomed to living in a fantasy world in which everything must be possible. The European elite became so infatuated with the vision of “an ever-closer union” that they chose to disregard real-life obstacles to their plan (Auer 2013: 2). To reinvent himself, Gatsby is ready to remake not only his own history but also Daisy’s past (to wipe out her husband forever, she must deny that she ever loved him). In a similar vein, the supranational elite, in order to reinvent themselves and their object of love (Europe), are not just ready to recreate through new narratives Europe’s past, but they seem to be committed to deny unacceptable factors (present and past moments and periods of distrust and conflicts between nations). All those who embrace the religion of European federalism need act as if cleavages did not exist, as if unconditional love characterized the relationship among the members of the European family.
Federalists perform on the stage Žižek’s “politics of jouissance.” The fantasy that supports their political agenda and what is supposed to bind together the members of the European family is the shared enjoyment of the mother imago. Identity entrepreneurs appear on the political stage resolute (and desperate) in their willingness to liberate European citizens from the suffocating feeling of castration, to create a new order free from the burden of the Law of the Father. This particular jouissance is transmitted though verbal and visual (mythical) discourses and reinforced by rituals. The revival of the fantasy of the USE exemplifies the willingness to deny the loss and to celebrate the everlasting mother-child union. For the new European family to resurrect, the phantoms of the past need to be entombed. The construction of a new European order cannot be accomplished without seizing the “cathartic moments” of the fiscal and debt crisis as they allow for purification, for experiencing a miracle, for transformation.
Perhaps supranational architects’ plans for a federal Europe and the populist movements’ (Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Five Star MoVement in Italy, and so on) projects of direct democracy and “liquid politics” in reality represent different versions of the same phantastic object, different versions of the same paradise dream. Palingenetic ultra-Europeanism and “populist movements” (re)appeared on the political scene for the same purpose—to interrupt the painful reality of chaos provoked by the economic (and identity) crisis with a utopian topos of sacred serenity. Both supranational identity entrepreneurs and Euroskeptic populists are driven by the (omnipotent) fantasy of constructing an idyllic community. Both models have mythical connotations: they are disguised cosmogony projects in which the goal is to initiate a new era in European politics. Alexis Tsipras, Beppe Grillo, Pablo Iglesias Turrión, and Nigel Farage on the one hand and José Manuel Barroso, Herman von Rompuy, Vivian Reding and Mario Draghi on the other present their own plans as the last occasion, the last opportunity of a Greece/Italy/Spain/Great Britain and Europe dangerously sliding toward the edge of the abyss. Their catastrophic discourse exemplifies a black-and-white thinking. In case regeneration does not happen, the phantoms of the past will return: skies will collapse on us, the crisis, the enemies (both inner and external) will destroy our lives, deprive us of our pleasures, and prevent us from recovering for a long time to come. However, if we are successful in our struggle, then we can again be the first. Failure of the mission would entail the demise of Europe, while victory would allow her to become an archetype, a model to emulate.
While both supranational architects and populist leaders seem to be active in building a new democratic European home with a new European demos, they both conduct utopian, antidemocratic politics. They function according to an exclusionary logic. In their utopian politics they need an anti-figure, a stigmatized scapegoat, an archenemy. While constructing the fantasy of an idyllic community they produce its reverse and call for its elimination. Supporters of a united Europe and “populists” have become each other’s archenemy: each group is present in the other’s fantasies as the evil that threatens the accomplishment of the in-group members’ dream. Both perceive themselves as the moderate defenders of democracy and the other as representing irrational, radical forces. Both construct a Manichean view of society, leaving no place for authentic playful discussion and for the emergence of divergent positions. Both seek to create a civil religion and release “collective effervescence.”
MANIFESTATIONS OF EUROFEDERALISTS’ PARADISE DREAM
According to George Soros, the European Union was, in its boom phase, what the psychoanalyst David Tuckett calls a “fantastic object”—unreal but immensely attractive, a desirable goal firing people’s imagination, invested with extraordinary powers and vested with emotions (2011). The boom phase according to many did not last long. Agnes Heller, back in 1988, claimed that the time had come for the funeral oration of the European dream. Among the symptoms of Europe’s deadly illness, she mentioned that the promised land had already ceased to exist as a museum, as a leader, and as a powerful source of inspiration for the rest of the world and that it lacked a creative future-oriented social phantasy. She pointed to the possibility of Europe becoming again “the initiator of a new imaginary institution of signification,” a completely new discourse, as highly unlikely (Heller 1988: 158). At the same time, she also contended that no prologue could be written to a dream and that something that had never lived could not die. There is no corpse to be buried because there is no “natural” European identity; the European project is rootless because it lacks a history; European culture does not exist, either, because there are no European stories and legends about gods, demigods, and heroes transmitted from one generation to the next. She did not omit to remind us that what had never existed could still one day come to life. Those sharing the “European dream” certainly cannot write an epilogue; for them the dream still might come true (Heller 1988: 159).
As the treaty establishing the European Economic Community declares, the aim of the European integration process is “to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” (1957). Notwithstanding the official denominations