| Abstract [eng] |
The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to establish a relationship between contemporary European politics of identity and the scholarly debates over the history and trajectory of the European Union. This relationship is explored by way of a narrative analysis of academic works dealing with the historical roots of contemporary EU challenges. The academic authors under analysis are historians, sociologists and political scientists interested in the historical figure of Jean Monnet, the author of the Schuman declaration and the first president of the European Coal and Steel Community. It is determined that the historical and theoretical literature on the EU has produced a rich variety of irreconcilable images of Monnet. EU studies scholars disagree sharply on Monnet’s key life facts, his political worldview and intentions, and his impact on EU’s development. These disagreements are interpreted through the lens of the sociological theory of European identity. It is argued that different scholarly accounts of EU’s origins constitute a battlefield of competing projects for European identity, and that this battlefield reflects the key contemporary ambiguities of the European political field: the ambiguity of economic paradigm, the ambiguity of sovereignty, the ambiguity of political method, and the ambiguity of belonging and ethnicity. The monograph advances a pluralistic understanding of the political sources of scholarly politicization in the field of EU studies. |
