The European Assemblage: A Discursive-Material Analysis of European Identity, Europaneity and Europeanisation by Nico Carpentier, Charles University

European identity, Europeanism and Europeanisation are the three concepts at the core of the first EUMEPLAT article by Prof. Nico Carpentier from Charles University published in August 2021 in the journal Filosofija. Sociologija, collecting original research articles in the fields of philosophy and sociology.

The article uses a discursive-material analysis, that acknowledges the importance of the material, but places it in a non-hierarchical relation with the discursive. Grounded in an extensive literature review on European identity, Europeanism and Europeanisation, the article first highlights the discursive nature of these concepts, how they engage in struggles with other place-based identities and discourses, and how the articulations of these concepts themselves are deeply contingent, with a long history of essentialist articulations.

In the second part, the material components of these three concepts are analysed, then allowing for a plea to understand Europe as an assemblage, where Europe is seen to be performed in always unique and contingent articulations of the discursive and the material.