The Politics of Becoming European. A study of Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War security imaginaries

Abstract:
This book weaves together perspectives drawn from critical international relations, anthropology and social theory in order to understand the Polish and Baltic post-Cold War politics of becoming European.

Approaching the study of Europe’s eastern enlargement through a post-colonial critique, author Maria Mälksoo makes a convincing case for a rethinking of European identity. Drawing on the theorist Edward Said, she contends that studies of the European Union are marked by a prevailing Orientalism, rarely asking who has traditionally been able to define European identity, and whether this identity should be presented as an historical process rather than a static category. The central argument of this book is that the historical experience of being framed as simultaneously in Europe - and yet not quite in Europe – informs the current self-understandings and security imaginaries of Poland and the Baltic States. Exploring this existential condition of ‘liminal Europeaness’ among foreign and security policy-making elites, the book considers its effects on key security policy issues, including relations with Western Europe, Russia and the United States.
Contents:

1. The Politics of Becoming European
2. Dialogical Understanding of Collective Identity Formation
3. Liminality in the Politics of Becoming
4. ‘Becoming European’ as Identity Politics: Europe and Old and New
5. The Memory Politics of Becoming European: The East European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe
6. The ‘Carnival’ of Iraq as the Meeting Point for Identity, Memory and Security Politics of Becoming European 7. Conclusion: How We Become What We Are