Europe as an \"Empty Signifier\": A Radical Constructivist Perspective

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2. Europe as an "Empty Signifier": A Radical Constructivist Perspective Hrvoje Špehar and Vedran Jerbić With this paper we want to acknowledge and analyze the epistemological presumptions of radical constructivism in the field of European studies in general, but as well concerning particular issues such as the problem of EU identity and the process of Europeanization. Our thesis is that the gap between conventional and radical constructivism is a consequence of different perspectives on what constitute the very object of scientific research. Conventional constructivism, at least as Checkel (2007) sees it, does not pursue epistemological conclusions as derived from the very core of (sociological) constructivism: the social determination of knowledge and the reflexive interrelatedness of the observer and the object of observation. Radical approach, on the other hand, acknowledges the uncertainty and undecidability found in the presumption of (social) construction, both in the conditions of possibility of knowledge-claims and its legitimizing principles. Questions of identity, cultural match and logic of appropriateness, as well as relations between rules, institutions and actors have a similar scope of interest: they all wish to articulate a perspective on structure-agency dynamics in which there is either a middle ground between the two or the primacy of the former. In doing so, however, it is possible to lose sight of the epistemological reflection of our own categories of comprehension. Although, the length of the paper will probably prevent us, we will try to show how radical constructivism should always be "transcendental" in its application, dealing more with conditions of possibility then with some

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pre-established object which needs to be comprehended with the use of an adequate method. Onuf (1998) is therefore right that constructivism is less a theory, and more an "ontology" enabling us to deal with "any kind of social relations". It should tell us, for example, not what the exact nature of EU polity is, but what do we do, on various discursive levels and with different kind of strategies, to comprehend the multiplicity of relations, events, outcomes, statements, condensations and dispersions which we term the EU and how our own "observation" intervenes in the construction of the observed object. We will frame our paper through the aforementioned dichotomy between conventional and radical constructivism, subsequently grasping three current problems in the EU studies: (1) The question of the EU polity and how it cannot be seen as an object independent of our own reflection about it. The "radical constructivist" presumption is that speaking about an object contributes to the construction of that very object. It should not be surprising that there are so many conflicting perspectives on what in fact is the object we are dealing with. (2) EU identity should be seen as always already involving relations with the Other, both as the agents or groups, or as the context in which intersubjective meaning is constructed (see Neumann 1998, 1999). Therefore it renounces any kind of essentialist or enumerative criteria in dealing with issues of the EU identity. Also, this kind of approach is skeptical about any kind of aggregative approach which could be able to synergically account for the creation of observable whole out of its respective parts. Relational perspective of identity is not the same as the constructivist perspective, but the latter should retain some features of the former if it wants to avoid the essentialist trap of dealing with identity as something self-sufficient and completely transparent. Therefore, we claim, it is not enough to pose the problem in an individual-collective dichotomy proclaiming that identity matters. (3) Finally we tackle the process of Europeanization using the Spengler’s notion of pseudomorphosis in order to emphasize the complex dialectical tension between national and supranational instances of polity construction. Our contention is that "emptiness" and "hollowness" of the very idea of Europe (less on the normative, more on the level of identity) is in fact something which

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cannot be overcome by a comprehensive comparative studies or in-depth empirical research: this impossibility is not a matter of flawed methodology but a constitutive element of the process of Europeanization.

Distinguishing between radical and conventional constructivism There is now a widely accepted distinction between a so called conventional and critical/radical constructivism in the field of international relations (see Checkel, 2007; Hopf, 1998). Far from constituting a consistent theoretical approach or methodological guidelines, radical constructivism is a set of loosely connected perspectives on identity/subjectivity, language/ discourse, nature and limits of knowledge, structures of comprehension, progress, power relations, ideology, gender, culture…, derived from the work of postmodern and (post)structuralist authors such as Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Alhusser, Laclau and Mouffe, Saussure and others. Although to a certain extent boundaries between postmodernism and radical constructivism are blurred and their methods are congruent, there is still a possibility to retain the difference and to speak about it as an approach in its own right. Let’s take an example: in the landmark work of Berger and Luckmann (1966) there is an acknowledgment of avoiding certain epistemological and ontological questions concerning the sociology of knowledge1: "To include epistemological questions concerning the validity of sociological knowledge in the sociology of knowledge is somewhat like trying to push a bus in which one is riding. To be sure, the sociology of knowledge, like all empirical disciplines that accumulate evidence concerning the relativity and determination of human thought, leads towards 1

What we know today as social constructivism, or just constructivism, has its roots in a stream of social sciences called sociology of knowledge. Its basic presumptions are that all knowledge is socially determined and that in order to understand the social reality we must analyze and explore the social and material conditions of its possibilities. For Berger and Luckmann, whose work has contributed to an extensive use of the term (social constructivism) in the vocabulary of social sciences, "the task of the sociology of knowledge is not to be the debunking or uncovering of socially produced distortions, but the systematic study of the social conditions of knowledge as such (…) The sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything that passes for 'knowledge' in society" (1966: 24, 26). For "classical" text on the sociology of knowledge see also Mannheim, 1968.

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epistemological questions concerning sociology itself as well as any other scientific body of knowledge" (1966: 25). Contrary to that, radical constructivism tries to push these limits as far as it can by questioning the position of its own enunciation and challenging already established intuitive understandings of its research field. For Checkel (2007, but also 2001), who differentiates between conventional, interpretative and radical constructivism2, the first is marked with a positivist ethos epitomized in a presumptions about the possibility of reaching an objective science of observation. Even if the object of inquiry is a construct conventionalists believe it is still possible to grasp it as it is independently of our own categories of comprehension (or to use Descartes’ terms, they still think it is possible to separate between res cogitans and res extensa). As Checkel points out, "these scholars are positivist in epistemological orientation and strong advocates of bridge building among diverse theoretical perspectives", they examine "the role of norms and, in fewer cases, identity in shaping international political outcomes" while staying in the boundaries of scientific realism (2007: 58, 62). Their motto is, Checkel argues, "to get on with it", to start the research without having to worry about epistemological issues such as the historicity of knowledge and subjectivity, a priori forms of cognition, constitutive nature of language, difference between knowable and unknowable etc. Adler (1997) is on the similar path when he sees (conventional) constructivism as occupying a "middle ground" between rationalists and interpretivists subsequently avoiding the choice between objectivism and relativism. Even if it is shown that international institutions are "based on collective understanding" and are "reified structures (…) diffuse and consolidated until they were taken for granted" (1997: 322), this kind of conceptualization (of constructivism) still remains firmly in the boundaries of an "ontological realism". Adler suggests that this is possible by following Giddens’ theory of structuration, (see Giddens, 1984) rather than postmodern theories (such as Derrida’s deconstruction or Foucault’s theory of power and discourse), while situating it in a perspective of intersubjectivity3 as the kind of conceptual bridge between the "aggregation For our purposes we shall not follow this threefold distinction but will to a certain extent merge the interpretative views on language and discourse (as an a priori framework of comprehension) with a radical approach. 3 When we talk about intersubjectivity it is important to notice, as Alder does, that "intersubjective meanings are not simply the aggregation of the beliefs of individuals who 2

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of the beliefs of individuals" and the "collective knowledge" that possess a constituency of its own, apart from the sum of its parts (Adler, 1997: 327). In that respect, conventional constructivism remains "an evolving modernist enterprise" (1997: 334) which do not seek to undermine its own possibility for quantitative research or observational capacities (it does question it, but only in order to methodologically sharpen it, not to epistemologically challenge its foundations). Therefore, the notion of constructivist’s middle ground includes the acknowledgment about "ontology" in a sense that there is a "set of paradigmatic lenses through which we observe all socially constructed reality" (Ibid.), but avoids confronting problems of the concept of observation as such. This resonates with Alexander Wendt’s notion of "thin constructivism" which is more concerned with "what there is rather than how we know it" while trying to retain the subject-object division in such a manner that even if we "are always within our constructs" (as Onuf would say4) these constructs still possess a "real" existence that is more or less independent from our own understanding of it (Wendt 1999: 40; but also 1995: 7475). Let’s say it a bit differently: Wendt thinks that even if a certain international institution is a construct its constructedness still has an "objective" consistency (it is not "just talk", 1995:74) which we are able to elucidate and grasp methodologically. The acceptance of this proposition, Wendt claims, "entails ‘scientific realism’, a philosophy of science which assumes that the world exists independent of human beings, that mature scientific theories typically refer to this world, and that they do so even when the objects of science are unobservable. Theory reflects reality, not the other way around; as realists like to say, they want to ‘put ontology before epistemology’" (1999:47). With the lean towards positivism and scientific realism conventionalists take a sort of step back regarding the very conception of "constructions" with which they are dealing, that is, they are ready to admit that ideas, identities or norms matters, as variables needed jointly experience and interpret the world. Rather, they exist as collective knowledge ‘that is shared by all who are competent to engage in or recognize the appropriate performance of a social practice or range of practices’. This knowledge persists beyond the lives of individual social actors, embedded in social routines and practices as they are reproduced by interpreters who participate in their production and workings. Intersubjective meanings have structural attributes that do not merely constrain or empower actors. They also define their social reality" (1997: 327). 4 "We are always within our constructions, even as we choose to stand apart from them, condemn them, reconstruct them…" (Onuf, 2012: 43, 155).

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to be included in the researcher’s account, but are unwilling to expand this kind of reflexivity to include discontinuities, contestations, and ambivalences of the core concepts they use (identity, language, cultural match…). Radical constructivism, on the other hand, starts with a different set of questions which we will, for this purpose and in relation to conventional constructivism, denominate as "transcendental": dealing with form rather than content, and with conditions of possibility of experience rather than experience itself. Therefore, instead of searching theoretical influences in Giddens’s theory of structuration or Habermasian notion of communicative action (1984), radical scholars rather turn to Derrida’s deconstruction (1976), Foucault’ theory of discourse and power (1972), Laclau and Mouffe’s conception of hegemony and empty signifiers (2001), or Althusser’s views on ideology (1971) etc. Consequently, instead of asking what is the EU, what kind of polity it entails, are Europeans "real" or "imagined community", was the process of Europeanization successful in comparison to national identity constructions, and can a European identity exist without a coherent European demos – they are more prone to ask questions like what kind of hierarchically organized binary oppositions hold together the dominant narrative about Europe and European values (Derrida); in what way a semantic field must be organized in order for the privileged signifiers (Europe, human rights, rule of law…) to function as the nodal points for political mobilization and affective investment (Laclau and Mouffe); to what extent is the discourse we use to speak about the EU, and the knowledge we are certain to possess about it, already the effect of power relations, that is, of strategies and mechanics we are not able to properly elucidate (Foucault). Radical constructivists are thus more interested in a way language/discourse forms not only our understanding or reality but limits our ability of its complete comprehension, on the one hand due to the fundamental inaccessibility of reality as such (following [neo-]Kantian difference between noumenal and phenomenal, or Lacan’s conception of the Real which resists symbolization), and on the other because of the predetermined modalities of intelligibility and the historically specific criteria of distinguishing knowledge claims. For Glasersfeld (1984), who follows a different route of argument but comes to a similar conclusion as above mentioned authors, epistemological views of radical constructivists are the one that renounces a "correspondence" perspective by developing "a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an ‘objective’ ontological reality, but

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exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience. The radical constructivist has relinquished ‘metaphysical realism’ once and for all, and finds himself in full agreement with [Jean] Piaget, who says: ‘Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself ’" (Glasersfeld, 1984). For Derrida (1976) this kind of "theory" would have to include the critique of the history of Western metaphysics organized around the notion of logos and the belief in the possibility of reaching an unmediated presence.5 He would also insist on the "intertextuality" of our ability and conditions of comprehension, as summarized in his famous quote: il n'y a pas de hors-texte. According to deconstructivists’ perspective, in dealing with "political/social reality" (or in our case with "international reality") one always find itself confronted with texts that refer to other texts that refer to other texts, and it is only by and through this (inter)textual mediation that such, or any kind of, "reality" can be comprehended. On the other hand, reinterpreting Kuhn’s "constructivist turn" in the philosophy and history of science through the lenses of the theory of hegemony, Laclau argues that "there is no such thing as a peaceful and unilinear accumulation of knowledge. There is a conflict of paradigms, and that which succeeds does not do so as a result of having proved its case in an apodictic way, but because it redescribes a whole field in a more convincing manner" (1999). In that respect, the postmodern (and/or poststructuralist) influences on the constructivist approach (in the IR) lead to a position of leaving behind positivism and scientific/ontological realism, as well as renouncing the logic of legitimation of knowledge through a necessary referential link between the (scientific) concept and its "real" object – the consequence of which is exactly the aforementioned "transcendentality" which does not deal with the "objects" themselves but with their (discursive) conditions of possibility and horizons of signification by and through which they appear in the first place.

Europe (an identity) as an "empty signifier" What we want to do in this part is to try to reinterpret the problem of European identity from the perspective of radical constructivism, or at least to try to raise a different kind of questions for further research. If we 5

As Derrida says: "History and knowledge, istoria and episteme have always been determined (and not only etymologically or philosophically) as detours for the purpose of the reappropriation of presence" (Derrida, 1976: 10).

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embrace the postmodern ethos of aforementioned scholars then we have to reject approaching the European identity either as a possibility of aggregation of multiplicity in some stable formation or through deciphering the universal core of shared values. Instead we want to emphasize a view on identity as something in flux, unstable and contestable whose characteristics and elements are not predetermined but floating, and whose temporary fixation comes as a result of a struggle over its meaning (see Laclau and Mouffe, 2001 but also Laclau, 1996). Where conventionalists see the possibility of isolating "in-eliminable features" (as Michel Freeden would say6), radicals see openness and potentiality which cannot be reduced to any kind of progressive unfolding of the core, or a dialectical sublimation in some higher form. For Stuart Hall (2000) identity is a process of perpetual renegotiation in which there is always "too much" or "too little", and an overdetermination of various instances of identification blocks the possibility of an effective subsumption. Identities, Hall continues, "emerge within the play of specific modalities of power, and thus are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion, than they are the sign of identical, naturally constituted unity" (Hall, 2000: 17). As a "central organizing metaphor" (Delanty 1995, 1) identity is an effect of juxtaposition between Self and Other in such a way that "integration and exclusion are two sides of the same coin, so the issue here is not that exclusion takes place but how it takes place" (Neumann, 1999: 37). That is to say, all we can do is to articulate modalities of exclusion in which the Other, to use the terms of Chantal Mouffe, will not be treated antagonistically but agonistically, meaning that the "enemy needed to be annihilated" will be turned into an "adversary" with whom, accepting its claims and position as legitimate, it is possible to engage in a political struggle instead of waging war (see Mouffe, 2005). Most conventional constructivists frame their research through the opposition between EU identity and national identities, which can either exclude each other (national identity is the Other of the EU identity and vice versa), or coexist together (blend into each other like a marble cake7). For Risse, the permutation of these differences results in two perspectives: Freeden argues against the essentialist perspective but still thinks that it is possible to isolate something like an in-eliminable feature of political concept: "The feature is ineliminable merely in the sense that all known usages of the concept employ it, so that its absence would deprive the concept of intelligibility and communicability" (1996: 62). 7 See Risse, 2010: 25. 6

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on the one hand "modern and secular Europe" open to pluralism, and on the other nationalist and to certain extent xenophobic "fortress Europe" hostile to immigrants and non-Europeans (Risse, 2010: 8). The central problem of this binary opposition is the following: if one is to say that the first is more European than the latter, and that it corresponds more to Europe’s core values, one is actually taking as a presumption that which is in fact at stake in the whole discussion. And that is, what European values, norms or ideas, around which its identity is organized, do in fact signify? Can we ever have an unmediated access to them as a sort of "objects" to unveil and preserve? That is, is it possible to avoid our own discursive intervention when we speak about them? Or does every such statement in fact constructs that which it claims to transparently reflect? Risse says that identity is elusive and contested, imagined and constructed, but he still thinks that "the EU and its institutions have made conscious efforts to develop their own symbols and identity markers" (2010: 57) and he therefore does not agree with the radical constructivist perspective on identity as "fluid and always contested" (2010: 29). He is unwilling to go one step further (and this is why he remains on the conventional side of the constructivist specter): it is not about referring to "true" values in opposition to wrong, or distorted ones (or by their enumeration in the context of "many "Europes"), but about modalities of interpretation and understanding, the way we use them in the "language games" of European politics8, that is, as a political concepts whose meaning is always already contested and struggled upon. Even if Risse is right when refers to human rights, rule of law, etc… as the European values, the problem is which meaning will be assigned to them, from which perspective or position of enunciation, and to what extent are we talking about empty signifiers whose emptiness is the precondition of their universal acceptance and political significance in a specific historical period.9 Emptiness in this respect means that a certain term or idea capable of crystalizing political and social space in an image of unity, as well as With the term "language games" Wittgenstein argues that the meaning of linguistic element does not precede its use, that is, it is "meant to bring into prominence the fact that the 'speaking' of language is part of an activity, or form of life". 9 Contrary to our view Risse thinks that the opposition between two Europes means that the concept of Europe is no longer an "empty signifier": "Although the Europeanization of national identities has not led to a uniform European identity, it has resulted in the emergence of two clearly observable concepts of what Europe and the EU stand for and mean" (2010: 85). 8

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assuring the necessary amount of mobilization and legitimation, is in itself without essential properties and is therefore suitable to perform a function of being a "surface of inscription" of various particular positions (such as of nation states or other actors of international politics).10 For Ernesto Laclau, who puts forward the concept by building on the Lacanian psychanalysis, an inauguration of empty signifiers is closely linked with dichotomizing the social space and the production of otherness (see Laclau, 1996).11 That is, whenever we use the term Europe or European identity we are engaging in a metaphorical condensation of heterogonous field of the social, whose consistency is being erected through a constitutive act of exclusion (which in different cases includes Europe’s own totalitarian and imperial past, East, Balkans, US, immigrants…) Delanty is on a similar track here when he claims that "it is not possible to see European history as the progressive embodiment of a great unifying idea since ideas are themselves products of history (…) the European idea has been more the product of conflict than of consensus" (Delanty, 1995: 2). This is exactly what is missing from the EU slogan "unity in diversity" which does not capture the constitutiveness of the act of exclusion and the necessity of the formation of its own outside. It is important, therefore, not to treat the concept of European identity as an "idea" detached from the context of its discursive use and realization. It is only through taking in consideration its contextual employment that we can analyze its signifying capacities. Such position was already anticipated by Carl Schmitt who said the following about the polemic nature of political concepts: "All political concepts, images, and terms have a polemical meaning. They are focused on a specific conflict and are bound to a concrete situation (…) [and] are incomprehensible if one does not know exactly who is to be affected, combated, refuted, or negated by such a term" (Schmitt, 2007: 30-31). For Walkenhorst (2008), it would mean that the European identity, as a political concept, should be seen as Therefore, as Laclau claims, "it would be a waste of time trying to give a positive definition" of empty signifiers, "that is, to ascribe to them a conceptual content, however minimal it might be. The semantic role of these terms is not to express any positive content but to function as the names of a fullness which is constitutively absent" (Laclau, 2005: 96). 11 For Laclau, "an empty signifier is, strictly speaking, a signifier without a signified (…) only if the signifiers empty themselves of their attachment to particular signifieds and assume the role of representing the pure being of the system – or, rather, the system as pure Being – that such a signification is possible" (1996: 36, 39). 10

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a "highly flexible instrument" whose ambiguity and vagueness is in fact the precondition for its expansion regarding the heterogonous relations between member states. However, we should not, as Guisan suggests, "fill the rather blank category of European identity with meaningful content" (Guisan, 2012: 1) but try to retain its "emptiness" as a methodological precaution and an epistemological limit of our research. Subsequently, radical constructivists articulate their research problem differently, that is, in what semantic constellation was the concept of European identity used, what did it oppose and what kind of stabilization of the field of differences did it produce? What is important to add is that while trying to answer these questions we should not fall into the trap of instrumentalism, or as Checkel and Katzenstein (2009) would say the "engineering view of politics", because then we would be neglecting the possibility of autonomization of the supranational (or transnational) formation in a way that it is no longer just an object of instrumentalization but forms itself as a "transcendental" horizon of meaning having a constitutive effect on international actors. The question is can an elevation of empty signifiers, which provide networks of meaning with a provisional coherence and stability, in itself account for the endurance of a certain collective identity? Building on the Lacanian psychoanalysis, Stavrakakis (2005) thinks it is not enough to articulate the problem in a vocabulary of (post)structuralist theory whose primarily concerns are permutations of the play of differences. Instead, he uses psychoanalytic concepts of "enjoyment" and "affective libidinal bonds" in order to address the problem raised already by Benedict Anderson (1991): why are people ready to die for their imaginary inventions and what can explain a radical investment in "objects" such as the nation, class, political party etc. He thinks that there can be no collective identification without this "obscene dimension" in which the affect, or passion, plays the key role in ensuring the temporality of symbolic constructions (Stavrakakis, 2005: 75-76). For Žižek it means that the focus of analysis should be the way in which a certain community organizes its enjoyment around particular myths, rituals and narratives. "The pure discursive effect does not have enough 'substance' to compel the attraction proper to a Cause – and (…) the strange 'substance' which must be added so that a Cause obtains its positive ontological consistency (…) is of course enjoyment" (Žižek, 1993: 202). But what happens if the affective bond is missing, as many authors believe is the case with the concept of European identity (see Stavrakakis,

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2005; Walkenhorst, 2008; Petković, 2007; Harris, 2011; Delanty, 1995; Risse, 2010). Can a community effectively perpetuate convincing self-narratives and assure metaphorical mobilizations without it? For Petković (2007), the issue here is whether it is possible to retain the distinction between "ethnic" and "civic" type of national identification: an argument which could eventually be used on the supranational level to justify, or refute, the claims about the necessary mythical and passionate dimension of the EU identity construction. He follows Roger Brubaker who thinks that this dichotomy is not operable because both terms, "civic" and "ethnic", are permeate with ambiguities and are themselves the result of ideological struggle: ethnic nationalism, being perceived as "illiberal, ascriptive, particularist, and exclusive" is always attached to the Other, while our own position is articulated through a "self-legitimating language of civic nationalism" as "liberal, voluntarist, universalist, and inclusive" (Brubaker, 1999: 56). Petković therefore argues that the "ethno-cultural" component is constitutive to "the formation of community and the stability of political regime", thus it is questionable whether the Union’s technocratic and bureaucratic language (which tries to substitute identity issues with the concept of "shared interests") is able to produce the necessary level of intersubjective attachment to transnational European identity (2007: 821). Harris also emphasizes the "lack of emotional pull the EU can exert from its citizens" and consequently, in comparison with the nation building process, "European symbols tend to appear hollow" (2011: 96,98). The question is can the European identity construction process unroll in a different manner which goes beyond what we know about identity from the theory of nationalism? That is, is it possible to transcend the emotional, passionate link which scholars have attached to the nation building process? If the vocabulary of Europeanization,12 as Stavrakakis asserts, tends to favor procedural over substantive dimensions of identification (the latter being the dimension of affective bonds) it is because it retains the possibility of the aforementioned dichotomy (2005: 83). In that respect, the concep12

This vocabulary is often seen as too bureaucratic for the kind of affective support Stavrakakis is arguing for. Similarly, for Delanty and Rumford "the discourse of Europeanization is dominated by superficial metaphors (...) such as ‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ or ‘ever closer union’; vague, if not inaccurate, sociological terms, such as ‘integration’ and ‘inclusion’, and morphological metaphors such as ‘multi-leveled’ governance" (Delanty and Rumford, 2005: 3).

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tualization of such process as "post-national" is an attempt to establish, both on the level of discourse of political elites and academics, different modalities of identity construction, ones that go beyond exclusionary discourse towards "multiple identities", or as Risse would say, marble cake model (2010, 65). Multiplicity in this context implies blending and compatibleness which combines together seemingly antagonistic relations of identification. That is, national or ethnic identities are not seen as exclusionary in comparison with the European, but are able to peacefully coexist. However, Stavrakakis sees this peaceful coexistence as problematic because it neglects "that there is always a fantasy scenario which organizes and supports the apparent multiplicity of identity and determines the ‘rules of engagement’ between its different levels, a mapping which prioritizes particular modes of enjoyment (…) and not others, which remain structurally and emotionally peripheral" (2005, 84). The problem could also be articulated as the difference between Lyotard’s emphasis on the multiplicity of incommensurable language games among which there is no possibility of mediation (Lyotard, 2005) and Laclau’s notion of the construction of the chain of equivalences in which one particularity holds a privilege position and institute itself, through a process of emptying its particularity, as representing the chain as a whole (see Laclau, 2005 but also Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). In the case of the latter there is always an imposition, however provisional it is, of a hierarchy between various instances of identification, not blending peacefully into something like a marble cake, but organizing itself through a specific configuration of power perpetuating an unequal distribution of identity recognition and visibility. But even more, Stavrakakis thinks that by neglecting the affective dimension of identity markers, "by repressing this often obscene dimension, by focusing exclusively on institutional arrangements and symbolic ideals, they [EU politicians and academics] force the expression of passionate attachments through a variety of anti-European discourses; in that sense they are not only ineffective but they actually harm the prospects of constructing a strong European identification" (Stavrakakis, 2005: 81). This kind of "the return of the repressed" hypothesis sees the rise of right-wing populism across Europe as the consequence of inability of the EU to operate within/through affective discourse and to move beyond the "rationalist" account of the political. For Mouffe, reducing the political to rational procedures of achieving consensus and disregarding the antagonistic dimension of the formation of collective identities leads to a situation in which

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those who are excluded are treated as outsiders with whom no real political cooperation is possible, and are therefore ruled out from the participative mechanisms of decision making (see Mouffe, 2005). For other scholars such as Delanty and Rumford (2005) the problem is the conceptualization of European identity construction through an apparatus of the theory of nationalism whose tendency is to "monopolize" issues of the formation of collective identities as such. They argue that in order to properly address the case of the EU, it is necessary to leave behind the semantics of the nation building process and sovereignty: "So long as Europeanization is seen as another version of nation building, that is, as an exercise in supra-nation building, the current state of theorizing on Europeanization will not move beyond a discussion on whether the European Union can compete with the nation-state" (Delanty and Rimford, 2005: 4).

Europeanization as a pseudomorphosis? When talking about Europeanization most scholars use the terms "transformation", "impact", "domestic effect", "adaptation pressures" and so forth, to describe, and to certain extent explain, the complex processes that started with the formation of the European Economic Community in 1957. Since the exact nature of EU polity is contested – that is, depending on different perspectives it is perceived, for example, either as "‘objet politique non-identifié’ (Jacques Delors),‘ a technocratic edifice’ (de Gaulle), ‘a Family of Nations’ (Thatcher)…" (Carta and Morin, 2013:10), while lately the concept of "multi-level polity" is used to grasp these uncertainties and ambiguities – the notion of Europeanization is a sort of substitute word for the lack of agreement over the key issues regarding integration and enlargement mechanics. As we have discussed elsewhere (Špehar and Jerbić, 2015), radical constructivist presumption that speaking about object contributes to the construction of that very object (see Christiansen et al, 2001) resonates with the performative, or speech act approach in which speaking is seen as an activity with "constructive" aspect of bringing something into an existence, endowing something with a being of its own. Concerning the nature of the EU polity it means that, as Diez argues, "the various attempts to capture the Union’s nature are not mere descriptions of an unknown polity, but take part in the construction of the polity itself" (Diez, 2001: 85). While "polity" implies something solid and already shaped in a recognizable entity, the Europeanization is a more open

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concept susceptible to various interpretive efforts and therefore cutting across different approaches and disciplines.13 It is most often apprehended as the top down process in which the EU institutions and discourse impacts and transforms the national instances of policy making, identity construction, and so on (Börzel, 2011). Risse will say that "we do not observe the emergence of separate European identities, but the Europeanization of national identities" and subsequently the "core understandings of what it means to be German, French, or Polish change and Europe and the EU become part and parcel of that understandings" (2010: 45). Although we agree with this part of Risse’s perspective we want to emphasize that it is just a half of the story and what we want to do in this part is to try to think the process of Europeanization in a form of structural dynamics of pseudmorphosis, the concept originated from the science of mineralogy and used for the purpose of political and cultural analysis in Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1926) and later by Zoran Đinđić (1988), to address the structure of federative constitution of Yugoslavia. Spengler says the following: "By the term ’historical pseudomorphosis‘ I propose to designate those cases in which an older alien Culture lies so massively over the land that a young Culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness. All that wells up from the depths of the young soul is cast in the old moulds, young feelings stiffen in senile works, and instead of rearing itself up in its own creative power, it can only hate the distant power with a hate that grows to be monstrous" (1926: 189). While for Spengler it is used to delineate modalities of permutations of the succession of cultures, in Đinđić’s work it is reinterpret to be suitable for explaining the tension between national and supranational instances of the Yugoslavian Federation as a disharmony between content ("internal structure of the crystal") and form ("external architecture)" (Đinđić, 1988: 6). National instances of political identification are perceived as the content which fills the empty form provided by the structure of federative government. The question Đinđić raises, following to certain extent Carl Schmitt’s critique of parliamentary democracy, 13

For example, a liberal integovernmentalist such as Moravcsik (1998) is probably less eager to use the notion of "polity", unlike federalists such as Burgess (2009, 1996) or Elazar (1995). On the other hand, it seems to us that the concept of Europeanization is suitable for different schools of European studies: constructivists, liberal intergovernmentalists, federalists, neofunctionalists and so forth.

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is to which extent can this "empty form" predetermined its own content, and what if it cannot (leading to an uncontrollable process of inscription)? "If between form and content, from their first encounter, there is a disharmony, then it is illusory to expect that internal conflicts could be resolved by appealing to a common framework; on the contrary, even a mention of it renews the primary frustration and makes a communication, which is already difficult, even more difficult" (Đinđić, 1988: 7). If we decontextualize the concept of "historical pseudomorphosis" from Spengler’s and Đinđić’s usage, retaining as central the tension between national and supranational forms of structuration, we can try to apply it to grasp the concept of Europeanization from a different angle. It would surely invert the aforementioned process of top-down transformation and would instead force us to try to think it as two folded and mutually interchangeable. Authors such as Risse (2010), Börzel (2011), Sedelmeier (2011) etc, see the Europeanization as a process in which certain substantive and fixed characteristic are transposed to a level of nation states – transforming them, forcing them to adapt, and causing various "domestic effects" – but forget to deal with the way in which the "common framework" is constituted by the inscription of national actors whose deeds (and words) contribute to its meaning and capacities of signification. That is to say, there is a dialectical tension going both ways. Let’s take an example: if the state A has to fulfill the foreign-policy aim A1 whose success partly depends on the nature of relations between state B and state C which are all the part of the international organization (or quasi-federal polity) Y skeptical about the participation in the fulfilment of aim A1 – the "constructive" aspects of this complex relations will for sure (at least constructivist would claim to) preconfigure not just strategies and options available but the very identity and interests of the state A. Interests of the latter could be articulated as the pro-Y while at the same time their identity would be constituted in relation to B and C, thus forming an ideational framework of shared intersubjective meaning between the three. The interrelatedness of all sides involved would mean that the constitutive aspects of the logic of appropriateness would leave no identity intact – "constructions" determines both input and output of the process of decision making. Constructing the common ground of shared ideational elements between A, B and C would recompose the starting position concerning the two unfavorable relations (between B and C, and international between B and C, and Y). What the concept of pseudomorphosis adds to

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this equation is that the position Y is limiting the scope of the logic of appropriateness, the "outer boundaries" of what can or cannot be achieved, while it is simultaneously the product of the inscription of various positions which performatively create contingent and temporal foundations of something in the same time autonomous and derivative. A careful reader could lay down two critiques: first, if Europe is an "empty form" not predetermining the content of its inscription then scholars such as Moravcsik (1998), with liberal intergovernmental approach assuming that the EU is nothing but intermediary between the bargain processes of national governments, are closer to this position then (radical) constructivists. However, what intergovernmentalists do not see is that the "emptiness" is not a transparent medium purely reflecting positions instrumentalizing it – hence, although not possessing a substance of its own, has an articulatory effect on the relations between elements in such a way that "their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice" (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 105). Also, they lack the apprehension of the constitutive split "between the content which provides the surface of identification and the function of identification as such – the latter being independent of any content and linked to the former only in a contingent way" (Laclau and Zac, 1994:35). Intergovernmental approach therefore, at least form the perspective we want to emphasize here, operates as if the "emptiness" does not have any other function then to provide a space for political competition and discussion, while radical constructivist are aware that emptiness does contributes to the permutations of the relation between elements organized around it. Second criticism would be that the usage of the concept of pseudomorphosis imitates Risse’s concept of multiple identities or marble cake model, since it presupposes not one but many Europes between which is hard to distinguish the "true" from less "true" values and ideas. What it overlooks is the "institutionalist" argument about the supranational instances which acquires a life of its own apart from the simple sum of its part. Even if the form does not predetermine its content – meaning that it is not possible, even in the light of normative criteria, to permanently fix the signifying network of the EU – it still possess what Đinđić calls "external architecture" as that instance by which contingency reaches its limits. That is to say, even if there is a plurality of what Europe or its identity signifies, there is a necessity of stabilization of the flux of meaning and a necessity of the creation of boundaries of speakable and unspeakable in a certain historical

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moment. Are such boundaries the consequence of the power relations underlying its logic, or the structure of semantic field in which the very idea becomes thinkable, or leftovers of the acts of ideological interpellations disseminated through what Althusser calls ideological apparatus (1971) – is a matter of specific research and the lenses through which one decides to "observe", or rather construct the field of its observation. The complex dialectic from both examples is perfectly summarized by Oliver Marchart when talking about Laclau’s political ontology as quasi-transcendental: "The ultimate grounding of a system is not impossible because the latter is too plural and our capacities are limited, but because there is something of a different order, something lacking, which makes pluralization itself possible by making impossible the final achievement of a totality. Consequently (…) [it] assumes that the ontological status of this impossibility of an ultimate ground must be stronger than the status of any of the multiple and contingent foundations established through processes of grounding" (2007: 17). The same could be applied to the notion of anarchy in the IR. Following an appeal for a process-oriented international theory, Wendt perceives anarchy not as something from which the power politics and self-help doctrine naturally, or logically, emerges, but as a field which is constituted through the very processes that are taking place in its field of influence. If "institution is a relatively stable set or ‘structure’ of identities and interests" (Wendt, 1992:399) then we cannot perceive the leader-less international arena as a neutral field on which state-actors confront each other in the game of power-politics. That is to say, the very field is determined by "its use", while the iteration of its patterns constitute the institutional framework which sets limits and shapes actors’ identities and preferences. "There is no ’logic‘ of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another; structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process. Self-help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy. Anarchy is what states make of it" (Wendt, 1992: 3). Or to say it differently, structures are themselves structured by various processes through which they are realized. Anarchy, as a terrain on which the international relations and foreign-policy making process takes place, is itself an institution "codified in formal rules and norms" (Wendt, 1992:399) and always subject to transformative potentials. To use the language of radical constructivism, it means that the perceived boundaries of what is constructible are themselves constructs and therefore every construct

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is tendentially empty on the level of signification, open to a plurality of interpretation that can only temporarily stabilize the flow of differences constituting it. Therefore, radical constructivism pushes both the concept of "many Europes" and Risse’s marble cake model to its limits by claiming that there can be no final ground nor core values apart from the struggle over their meaning and signifying capacities.

Conclusion In this paper we wanted to occupy a radical constructivist perspective in order to think about the European identity and the process of Europeanization. We started by distinguishing between conventional and radical constructivism – the former relying on scientific realism and positivism in treating concepts such as ideas, identities, cultural match… as variables that can be made compatible with the "objective" science of observation, while the latter renounces any kind of "metaphysical realism" in order to deal with an epistemological reflexivity of its own research field and the conditions of possibility of intuitive understandings that conventionalists are not keen to challenge. The difference could also be delineate as whether it is possible to grasp international reality independently of our own apparatus of understanding, or does our own position (as academies) intervenes in the process of its construction. We proposed to think about European identity as the kind of concept whose ambiguity and vagueness is the precondition for its expansion and whose comprehension is limited by its conceptual structure. This conceptual structure is best described by Ernesto Laclau (1996) as an "empty signifier", that is, the signifier whose meaning is not fixed and which does not possess essential or in-eliminable features, but whose signifying capacities are the result of the struggle over it. Scholars like Risse are ready to acknowledge the interpretative pluralism regarding the European values and identity, but are not willing to go all the way, to think of "Europe" as not possessing any core meaning beyond being the "surface of inscription" for various particular positions trying to "usurp" its semantic usage. Conceptual "emptiness" is accompanied with the affective dimension of collective identifications, which many scholars believe is missing from the EU identity construction. In comparison with the nation-building process EU symbols and narratives tend to appear "hollow" and without "emotional pull" which prevents them from achieving a desirable intensity.

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However, the question is can the EU identity transcend the logic of nation-building and inaugurate itself above the affective dimension, or will the inability to operate within the affective discourse contribute to the rise of anti-European movements? Finally, we argued that from a radical constructivist perspective the process of Europeanization can be elucidate using the notion of pseudmorphosis as originated in the work of Spengler, and later used by Đinđić to express the dialectical tension between national and supranational instances of structuration. Supranational appears as an "empty form" providing the "external architecture" for the inscription of various actors and, although it does possess its own mechanisms of influence, it cannot, in the last instance, predetermine the content that will fill the "empty form". That is, apart from the procedural dimension, as Stavrakakis would say, it lacks the substantive dimension which could effectively contribute to the dissemination of "core" ideas and identity patterns.

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