Reassessing the EU Memory Divide: Dereifying Collective Memory through a Memory Regimes Approach

Abstract

Abstract: This article questions the persisting notion that the European Union's memory is fractured between East and West, a notion that contributes to the reification of states as legitimately embodying national collective memories. It does so by building on actor-centered examinations of the EU memory divide, which is manifested in a challenge to the EU's Holocaust-centered narrative by an antitotalitarian memory regime, defined as an institutionalized network of politically driven historiographic expertise. The article shows that the antitotalitarian memory regime reflects a political culture of remembrance centered on a "politics of certainty" that disregards open historiographic disputes and contests the EU's hitherto prevailing "politics of regret."