Discourses and Counter-discourses on Europe From the Enlightenment to the EU Critical European Studies Series

The European Union plays an increasingly central role in global relations from migration to trade to institutional financial solvency. The formation and continuation of these relations ? their narratives and discourses - are rooted in social, political, and economic historical relations emerging at the founding of European states and then substantially augmented in the Post-WWII era. Any rethinking of our European narratives requires a contextualized analysis of the formation of hegemonic discourses.

The book contributes to the ongoing process of "rethinking" the European project, identity, and institutions, brought about by the end of the Cold war and the current economic and political crisis. Starting from the principle that the present European crisis goes hand in hand with the crisis of its hegemonic discourse, the aim of the volume is to rescue the complexity, the richness, the ambiguity of the discourses on Europe as opposed to the present simplification. The multidisciplinary approach and the long-term perspective permits illuminating scope over multiple discourses, historical periods, and different "languages", including that of the European institutions.

This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics, European integration, European History, and more broadly international relations.

Introduction: Rescuing Europe from its Rhetoric

Part I: Thinking and Regretting Europe

Introduction to Part I

1. Thinking Europe in the Age of Enlightenment: philosophes and antiphilosophes between Universalism andFragmentation

2. Evoking Europe against the French Revolution: the Rhetorical Tools of Counter-revolutionary Thinkers

3. Discourses on Europe and their Political Value in Restoration France

Part II: The Burden of Rhetoric: inside the European Institutions

Introduction to Part II

4. A European Framework for Military Institutions? International Integration and European Perspectives in Military Rhetorics after the Second World War

5. Nuclear Europe: Technoscientific Modernity and European Integration in Euratom’s Early Discourse

6. Parliamentary Groups and Political Traditions in the Debates on EU Institutional Reform (1979-1999)

7. The Political Groups of the European Parliament in the Face of Yugoslavia's Disintegration and the Discursive Framing of EU Foreign Policy (1991-1995)

Part III: Communicating Europe

Introduction to Part III

8. The Alter-globalist Counter-discourse in European Rhetoric and Translation: Women’s Rights at the European Parliament

9. Europe in the Media Space: The Construction of the EU Public Sphere in Italy

10. ISIS’ Dabiq Communicative Strategies, NATO and Europe: Who is Learning from Whom?

11. Changing Perceptions of the European Union in the MENA Region before and after the Arab Uprisings: the Case of Tunisia

Manuela Ceretta is Professor of History of Political Thought at the University of Turin, Italy. She is a member of the Scientific Board of Studi Irlandesi, A Journal of Irish Studies and of the Editorial Board of Storia del Pensiero politico.

Barbara Curli is Professor of Contemporary History and Global History at the University of Turin, Italy. She was Jean Monnet Chair in History of European Integration at the University of Calabria, Italy, and Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Italian History at Georgetown University, USA; and Editor-in-chief (2011-2014) of Il Mestiere di storico .