Unexpected Support for European Integration: Memory, Rupture, and Totalitarianism in Arendt's Political Theory
Peter J. Verovšek
Abstract Collective memory is an important source of social stability, allowing human beings and political communities to integrate new experiences into existing narrative frameworks. In addition sustaining individual group identities, remembrance can also maintain cycles hatred. Building on Arendt's theory, I present alternative interpretation as a resource for change following historical ruptures. This constructive reading focuses the ability create futures out shattered pieces past. For Arendt, experience totalitarianism was caesura that made nationalist histories, nation-state came with these interpretations past, untenable. Following such breaks, must reconstruct past narratives. unexpected early support European integration—despite its supranational, technocratic, economistic qualities—is example how function transformation in aftermath
The Review of Politics