Senka Božić - Strong European Emotions

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Strong European emotions: The politics of culture in the EU

Senka Bozic-Vrbancic*

McArthur Fellow in Social Anthropology, School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry (PASI), Room 252, Old Arts Building, The University of Melbourne,

Melbourne 3010, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 24 December 2008

Received in revised form

23 August 2009

Accepted 28 January 2010

Keywords:

European supranational identity

European added value

Emotions

Belonging and enjoyment

a b s t r a c t

In 2007 four video clips released by the European Union Media Programme achieved overnight popu-

larity in their ability to present and capture the emotional core of being European (the clips can be seenon EUtube). The clips were designed to promote the Media Programme (20072013) and to encourage

European citizens to identify with something that all of them have in common: Love, Romanticism,

Joy and Sadness. The clips have gained considerable interest. The video clip titled Love has become the

most watched European Union video clip ever. It shows eighteen couples having sex.

In this paper I analyse the way in which such images mobilize the pleasures of fantasmic identification

with the embodied agents of love and sex images that viewers enjoy as consumers of popular culture

and how these pleasures are linked to the processes of supranational (European) identity building. In

doing so, inspired by Sara Ahmeds work on the cultural politics of emotions and Ernesto Laclaus work

on populism, I open a set of questions about the libidinal character or the affective dimensions of

identification which images employ in order to construct identity formations. I argue that these clips are

mechanisms that attempt to contribute to the construction of European supranational identity. They are

part of the big network of projects established by European public policy makers that strive to produce

European culture. They are designed not so much to give information about so-called European

emotions but to construct a European public. Each clip represents ambiguities which surround concepts

of European culture and identity.

Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Strong European emotions: European citizenship and

visual pleasure

On 7 February 2007 four video clips which captured the

emotions of Europeans were released by the European Media

Programme. The clips were designed to promote the Media Pro-

gramme (20072013) and to encourage European citizens to

identify with something that all of them have in common: Love,

Romanticism, Joy and Sadness. All the clips are composed from

scenes in various European films. The clips have gained consider-

able interest they were screened at the Berlin Film festival

(Berlinale), they have appeared on many television programmes,and there have been many newspaper and magazine articles on

them. They have been on-line on the MEDIAwebsite since February

2007 and werealsoposted on YouTube at the same time (before the

new channel EUTube was launched in June 2007).1 The video clip

titled Love or Film lovers will love this has become the most

watched European Union (EU) video clip ever. It shows eighteen

couples having sex. It includes scenes from Breaking the waves (by

Lars von Trier); The best of youth (by Marco Tullio Giordana), Bad

education (by Pedro Almodovar), Goodbye Lenin (by Wolfgang

Becker), Head-on (by Fatih Akin), and The Dreamers (by Bernardo

Bertolucci). It lasts 45 s and at the end of the clip we see the film

public indulging in voyeuristic pleasure. And finally we read: LETS

COME TOGETHER. MILLLIONS OF CINEMA LOVERS ENJOY EURO-

PEAN FILMS. EVERY YEAR. EUROPE SUPPORTS EUROPEAN FILMS.

In this paper, through the analysis of this self-advertisement by

the European Union Media Programme, I explore questions of

diversity and supranational European identity. As Marc Abeles

argues: Understanding the process of Europe-building represents

a true challenge for anthropologists given the fact that Europe couldbe seen as a laboratory in which experiments are conducted into

new perspectives in post-national politics (2004:14). Although it

may seem that the four video clips which promote European film

reflect one of those cultural projects that cannot possibly link up to

a broader political question of European identity, they are in fact

a window that could be a key to understanding how the European

laboratory works. Rather than seeing these clips as a celebration of

European film, I see them as mechanisms that attempt to contribute

to the construction of European supranational identity by present-

ing emotions that create a sense of belonging to Europe. They are

part of the big network of projects established by European public

* Tel.: 61 3 8344 5096Q1 .E-mail address:[email protected]

1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/overview/clips/index_en.htm

Contents lists available atScienceDirect

Emotion, Space and Society

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / e m o s p a

ARTICLE IN PRESS

1755-4586/$ see front matter Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2010.01.005

Emotion, Space and Society xxx (2010) 15

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Please cite this article in press as: Bozic-Vrbancic, S., Strong European emotions: The politics of culture in the EU, Emotion, Space and Society(2010), doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2010.01.005
http://-/?-mailto:[email protected]://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/overview/clips/index_en.htmhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/17554586http://www.elsevier.com/locate/emospahttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/emospahttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/17554586http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/overview/clips/index_en.htmmailto:[email protected]://-/?-


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policy makers that strive to produce European culture. Their

purpose is twofold: on the one hand they are designed to give

information about European cinema but on the other hand they are

designed to construct a European public. Each clip can also bee seen

as a representation of ambiguities which surround concepts of

European culture and identity. I ask: What is the link between

attempts to create supranational identity in Europe and cultural

practices supported by the EU politicians and policy makers? What

kind ofenjoymentis offered through these practices?

In trying to answer these questions I initially grounded my

interest in issues on European identity within theoretical frame-

works of the post-Foucauldian governmentrality approach and the

anthropology of policy that stress that public policy could be seen

as a mechanism that contributes to the formation of identity. As

Shore and Susan (1997) point out, public policies affect the lives and

livelihoods of citizens. They actively constitute social reality. They

give shape and meaning to what we call reality, they are often

designed not so much to generate public support but to construct

what they propose in order to bear on the governance of the social.

Therefore, the anthropological task is to question naturalised

assumptions which often frame public policy, or, to put it simply, to

examine what policies actually set out to do. In line with this

approach, by asking what role cultural and media programmes inthe EU play in constructing supranational identity, I am considering

cultural and media programmes as a form of social action. However,

in addition to this approach, mostly inspired by the work of Ernesto

Laclau (2007) and SaraAhmed (2000, 2004)I also explore the ways

in which cultural and media programmes in the EU are designed to

offer emotional attachments to the supranation.

2. The EU cultural and media policy: a brief historical

overview

The European cultural and media policy programme started in

1991/1992 when culture was formally recognized as one of the

responsibilities of the European Community.

2

Though the Euro-pean Uniondates back to 1950,3 it was not until the 1980s that

culture was harnessed as an important element in the develop-

ment of a common European market. In 1985, the European

Commissions President Jacques Delors stressed that Europe had to

be more than simply an economic association. His claim, that, You

dont fall in love with a common market; you need something else

(Delors, quoted in Stavrakakis, 2005), markedthe moment in which

new symbols of Europeaness were created. These included theflag,

the European anthem and a common design for passports.4 In

addition, a range of initiatives promoting cultural and educational

cooperation between member-states was established.5 It was

around this time also, that the concept of European culture asunity

in diversity appeared based on the view that cultural differences or

national differences can co-exist peacefully, free of contradictions

the notion that differences are assimilable into the body of the

supranation a supranation which in turn enriches each individual

culture with European added value:

The European cultural model is not all exclusive, still less

a melting pot, but rather a multivarious, multy-ethnical

plurality of culture, the sum total of which enriches each indi-

vidual culture (EP 1990, 2829).

This concept of unity in diversity has been foregrounded in the

majority of cultural and media projects that intensified after 2004

(Accession of the Eastern European States). They have created more

and more European cultural symbols symbols of sameness

(values such as tolerance and open-mindness) and symbols of

diversity (specificities and uniqueness of each culture be it

regional or national).6

How are we to understand these cultural initiatives with their

foci on the issues of unity in diversity, the so-called European

added value and the possibility to simultaneously have many

different identifications: European, national and regional?

If we look at European cultural and media policies and their

attempts to create European added value which will enrich each

individual culture in a context thatLaclau (2007)calls the articu-lation between universality and particularity, we come to the

conclusion that added value is designed to function as some-

thing more in a Lacanian sense of the term, as a part which

identifies itself with the whole. According to Laclau, the articulation

between universality and particularity is based on a complex

interaction between the logic of difference and equivalence. The

logic of difference tends to expand political or cultural space,

enabling a proliferation of different meanings and positions. By

contrast, the logic of equivalence creates a second meaning by

subverting each differential position. Clearly, in contemporary

Europe Culture is taken as a signifier of a wider universality.

Culture embraces through the equivalent links concepts such as

civil freedoms, free economy and so on.It producesemptysignifiers

(as, for example, European heritage or European film) which referto the equivalent chain as a totality, the EU as a coexistence of

different national cultures, UNITY IN DIVERSITY, freed from all

problems. Equivalence here does not attempt to eliminate differ-

ence, on the contrary, it establishes itself as European added value,

as the ground on which difference continues to operate. So, Euro-

pean added value (equivalence) is an empty signifier which is

partially filled through the processes of articulation. It is repre-

sented as an excess of ideally mixed different cultures, an excess

which should function as the lovable object in the Lacanian sense,

the ego ideal7 for various European people, a libidinal bond for the

European community.8 And this is exactly what Laclau stresses as

the nature and logic of the formation of collective identities.

2 In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty legitimized the Communitys intervention into

the cultural sphere. As article 151 states: The Community shall contribute to the

flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national

and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage

to the fore (The Treaty on the European Union, Art. 151.1).3 The beginning of the European Union goes back to 1950 when Robert Schuman,

the French Foreign Minister, presented his proposal on the creation of a European

Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) which brought together France, Germany, Italy

and the Benelux countries with the aim of organising free movement of coal and

steel and establishing a common High Authority in order to supervise the market.

In 1957 these six countries decided with the Treaty of Rome to build a European

Economic Community (ECC) based on a wider common market.4 SeeShore 2000.5 For example, the European City of Culture project began in 1985 in Athens and

continues today under the new name European Capital of Culture (see Sassatelli,

2008).

6 One of the most interesting projects for analysis is the project Enlargement of

Minds that was launched in 2004 when ten new member states entered the Euro-

pean Union. The goal of the project was to create in Europe a sense of belonging to

an open and diverse community and to achieve an enlargement of minds which

will not only counteract the kind of preconceptions which lead to prejudice, but

which will build on the emergence of a renewed European civic society. See

http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu/689.0.html and http://www.eurocult.

org/7 Jacques Lacan in his work distinguishes between ego ideal and ideal ego.

According to Zizek the ideal ego (imaginary) emerges when we appear likeable

to ourselves, when we identify with the image representing what we would

like to be. The ego ideal (symbolic) is the point from where we look at ourselves,

it is identification with the very place from where we are being observed (Zizek,

1989:105). So, the ego ideal is on the side of the symbolic and the ideal ego is on the

side of the imaginary. Q48

See(Bo

zic-Vrbancic, 2009).

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With their insistence on added European value (the sum of

many which enriches each particular culture), EU cultural policy

makers try to define European Film and European identity not as

a threat to national films or national identities, not as a market

where varied national films compete with each other, but as

a real community, as Unity in Diversity. Guided by this new

master signifier Unity in Diversity the most important thing

the EU must prove is the uniqueness, not just of European film but

of the European viewers becoming one Lets come together..

Europe supports European Film.

In other words, the clips illustrate well the new economy of

belonging propagated by the EU politicians and policy makers, an

economy which is designed to offer the needed populist supple-ment but it functions as a form of depoliticization. The question is

who are those who cannot laugh, cry and make love with us? Who

are those who are excluded from our laughter, sadness and love?

What distinguishes European emotions from other emotions? Why

are some emotions more privileged than others? For example, why

are feelings of hate and rage excluded from Strong European

Emotions? Like other cultural and media programmes that cele-

brate unity in diversity, a unity which is seen as a sum of different

national practices, this economy of belonging dislocates cultural

practices from their original spaces and from all historical problems

associated with their construction (each national or regional culture

masks the plurality of positions that exist behind each identity, it

masks power relations which operate in the construction of various

internal and external others). In this way it composes a politicalspace where different cultural programmes function as tools for

repression of traumas, where supranational identity becomes

a domain of fun culture or entertainment; where at the same time

diversity and commonality is unproblematicly overstressed.

This connection between diversity on the one hand and

commonality on the other is nothing new. Ahmed (2000:105) argues

that in multicultural societies (such as for example Australia) the

cultural difference (different styles of music, dress and food) is

celebrated as the main characteristic of the nation and therefore

marks the diversity of the national we. However there is always

something in multicultural national narratives that underlines all

differences as the same that is, the notion that all of them are

assimilable into the body of the nation, they do not threaten the we

of the national being. In a similar way, the narrative about the EUpresupposes that national (and regional) differences do not threaten

European supranational identity; on the contrary, the sum of these

differences creates something new, an added value which enriches

each particular culture. It is this discourse of enrichment that differ-

entiates the EU from those nation states that celebrate diversity.

While in national narratives through the discourse of enrichment

(Hage, 1998:121) different ethnic groups are seen as groups that

enrich society by their mere presence, where the dominant group

(for example in the case of Australia the Anglo/Celts)11 is put in

a different position from minority groups, in the EU the discourse of

enrichmentoperatesin order to establishEuropean added vale, a sum

of the total which shouldenrich eachindividual culture. This added

value suggests a sense of emptiness that can stand for anything; it is

constantly (re)filled by the continuous process of the idealization of

Europe. As in the clips Strong European Emotions, it suggests the

productivity of desire, rather than fullness. But this productivity, by

obliterating the origin of individual cultures (or images in clips),

opens a new dimension altogether the one of consumerism.

The link between consumerism and citizenship is also not a new

one.Sturken (2007: 3940)points ou Q2t that in the United States this

link has been operating for a long time. Consumer practices to

construct national identity have been clearly in use since 9/11. They

help to enable the discourse of security and defence in the context

of selling national comfort through consuming different products.

Different marketers and advertisers have been speaking to Ameri-

cans as citizens for a long time but now government agencies andofficials utilize the style of marketers and the language of

consumerism to address citizens as clients, as if the deep alliance

between the practices of consumerism and the practices of patri-

otism is self evident.Salecl (2004), in her analysis of consumerism

in todays society, argues that the subject seems to be increasingly

under pressure from consumerism due to the fact that the symbolic

is more and more fragmented. In that context todays society is

characterized by the new creation of communities communities

for various capitalist companies clients.

In many companies manuals one can read about the four stages

for dealing with clients: first, so-called awareness bonding,

which makes the consumer aware of the new product or

service; second, identity bonding when the consumer starts in

particular ways to identify with the brand; third, relationship

bonding when the consumer establishes a particular attach-

ment to the brand; and fourth, community bonding when the

brand maker keeps consumers satisfied by organising specific

events and gatherings, or at least by sending birthday cards to

clients (Salecl, 2004:61).

Is the strategy used by European cultural policy makers not

unlike the strategy used by contemporary capitalist companies?

First, Europeans should be aware of the new product the Euro-

pean Union then identify with the product the creation of the

European identity then develop a special attachment to the

product (a sense of belonging through different emotions) and

finally bond together during the specific events organised by

European institutions (for example different cultural festivals, inthis case film festivals). But, the question is which forms of enjoy-

ment are initiated by these strategies?

According to Salecl (2004) citizens in contemporary societies are

bombarded with the demand to enjoy and the selling of cultural

experience has become more important than selling goods. In the

Fig. 2. Sadness http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/overview/clips/index_en.htm

Fig. 3. Love or film lovers will love this http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/

media/overview/clips/index_en.htm

11 Describing the childrens book The Stew that Grew, which aims to explain the

multicultural notion of Australia, Hage (1998) shows how the stew, in which all

ethnic groups add their ingredients, is cooked by an Anglo-Celtic couple, (the Anglo

male having primacy). According to Hage, the discourse of enrichment expressed in

this Eureka stew not only places the dominant culture in a more important posi-

tion than other migrant cultures, but also assigns to migrant cultures a different

mode of existence to Anglo-Celtic culture. While the dominant culture merely and

unquestionablyexists, migrant cultures exist forthe latter (1998: 121).

S. Bozic-Vrbancic / Emotion, Space and Society xxx (2010) 154


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case of Strong European Emotions it is as if by selling emotions

European policy makers and politicians can construct a place for an

ideal viewer, an ideal European the one who should become an

invisible witness, an occupant of a privileged position; a parody of

a transcendental subject open to everything. In that context the

construction of added value could be seen as an attempt to deal

with the lack that marks the social, an attempt to eradicate or

suture a gap in the social, an attempt to offer some comfort through

consumerists enjoyment. But asLaclau (2000)warns us the suture

can never be complete the social will never exists as a given

objectivity; its meaning can be only partially fixed by the inter-

vention of privileged signifiers that try to fix the meaning of the

endless metonymic sliding. Even though numerous European

cultural projects suggest that there is no gravitational pull and that

the sliding could spin endlessly, it is clear that the seemingly open

character of added value presents an invisible discursive point,

a nodal point that quilts others by the exclusion of everything that

may disrupt its quilting. In that way it dislocates reality by opening

up the possibility of new articulations (new identifications).

Uncited reference

Abeles and Cris, 2004.

Acknowledgments

I wouldlike to thank Maree Pardy(University of Melbourne) and

LINEE WP1 researchers (the EC co-funded project) for comments

on all versions of this paper.

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