Visions of Europe in the East of Europe from late socialism to EU enlargement

Abstract

This introduction argues that Eastern European ideas of Europe were central to the production, contestation, and redefinition of European identity from the 1980s to the present. It charts the history of the ‘eastern ideas’ for the European project over the past four decades, which moved from a mildly enthusiastic, yet ambivalent, ‘return to Europe’, to a sceptical and equally ambivalent ‘after Europe’. The second section discusses the paradoxical condition of the region: its liminality and ambiguity have often situated it both within and outside Europe, which occasionally has been refracted through a racial lens of Eastern Europe being ‘White / not quite’. The introduction then foregrounds Eastern European ideas of Europeanness before ending with a plea to include otherwise neglected ideas about Europe and Europeanness in the broader gamut of ‘the idea of Europe’. In all, the introduction sheds new light on the intellectual and political genealogy of contemporary tensions in debates about Europeanness and its meanings.