EU: Peace vs. Neocolonialism?

• The chapter examines the question of the EU's role as a force for peace versus an agent of neocolonial hegemony, using the House of European History (HEH) in Brussels (opened 2017) as a case study.
• Postwar Europe often viewed the United States as an imperialist power.
• The Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq led intellectuals like Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas to describe Europe as anti-imperialist.
• A body of literature characterized Europe as an empire due to the EU's eastern expansion in the 2000s
• Criticisms included rising economic inequality, social injustice, and cultural tensions after dismantling socialist welfare states.
• Leftist scholars warned against new forms of sovereignty within the EU's governance structures
• The Greek sovereign debt crisis revived critiques of EU neocolonialism through austerity measures.
• Political scientists and African studies specialists discuss a "new scramble for Africa" and EU's "economically recolonizing" the continent.
• Scholars examining internal European hierarchies connect EU expansion to postcolonial theory.
• Critiques of Balkanism and "nesting Orientalisms" contributed to the discourse of empire by critiquing race and racialization.
• Scholars viewed operations of racialization as central to the operations of empire
• The EU is accused of creating permanently unequal relations, hindering Eastern Europeans' progress.
• Racism and xenophobia are seen as populist reactions to the EU's prioritizing capital accumulation over social security and equality.
• European cultural studies scholars analyze EU cultural policies and funding's role in shaping European identity.
• Some criticized the EU's top-down nation-building efforts, while some have identified Eurocentrism and European dominance in EU-funded cultural relations with foreign partners.
• Increased opportunities to overcome racist and ethnocentric biases are praised in the unraveling of national frameworks of cultural production
• Cultural agencies, policies, and practices that fostered linkages across national boundaries and ideological fault lines have been enthusiastically appraised.
• Museums, part of transnational infrastructures, engage with minorities, immigrants, and foreign curators,
• Cultural institutions and practices play a key role in offering opportunities for inclusion for those excluded from national narratives.
• The chapter focuses on two campaigns to create a Museum of Europe: the Musée de l'Europe, aiming to foster supranational patriotic sentiment, and the House of European History (HEH), focusing on a self-critical assessment of imperialism and racist violence.
• The HEH aims to connect imperial history to contemporary racism and xenophobia and to question contemporary neocolonial structures and relations.
• The chapter examines the HEH's interrogation of the EU as a global actor, its translation of anti-racist critique into its own structures, and its role in decolonizing nationalist narratives.
• This chapter investigates museums and their exhibitions with a focus on European History, specifically how colonization past and the Holocaust are incorporated.
• The study looks at multilingual contributions and the representation of recent refugee crises and their impact on freedom and self-government.
• The chapter will discuss the philosophical aspects and implications of the museum's historiography.
• Europeanization of culture is exemplified through museums and institutional networks, contributing to European integration.
• EU cultural projects, despite their small budgets, foster connections among professionals, academics, policymakers, and civil society groups.
• Museum professionals participate in European associations to facilitate intellectual exchange, access funding, and encourage cooperation.
• Organizations like ICOM and NEMO aim to shape cultural policy at the European level.
• Museum professionals have broader connections and are predisposed towards deconstructive approaches to national histories.
• There's a shift towards pro-European attitudes among museum professionals, as they thematize Europe in exhibitions eligible for EU funding,
• Curators' positive stance contrasts the increasing Euro-skepticism in local and national environments.
• Attempts to create museums of Europe include the Museum of European Ethnology in Berlin and the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, which lack focus on Europe's political history.
• Memorial sites of EU's "founding fathers" emphasize their engagement with the European concept.
• The Visitors' Center in the European Parliament offers educational content about the EU but no historical depth.
• The Musée de l'Europe started a campaign for a detailed history of Europe, but its home closed, paving the way for a new push to create a museum around European History.

It's Our History!

• Ran from 2007-2008, it was a museum based on the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome
• The exhibit examined overcoming ideological division through European unification
• The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was presented as the triumph of freedom and individual self-determination.
• A video presented 27 Europeans, 10 Women and 17 Men who represented the then-twenty-seven members of the EU speaking about the design of unity.
• The theme of resisting communist ideology through dissent and westward flight was very clear
• A Latvian who created the "Baltic way" broke away when Latvia left the Soviet Union.
• Poland was represented by a fellow combatant of Lech Walesa and director of the Solidarnosic Museum
• A German couple escaped from east to West Germany
• The Slovak moved to Canada during the cold war
• Critics pointed out that suffering was noted as the basis for a shared European identity
• Common suffering was reinforced by a European city in ruins, Cologne served to represent the world war as a founding myth to the European Union
• The exhibition showcased heroes, martyrs, and homogeneity
• Minorities, migrants, and overseas territories were unrepresented
• The portrait gallery presented a portrait of White faces and lacked references to gender identity, sexual orientation, or ability
• In its search for identity, there was no distinction in differences
• Europe's "unity in diversity" differs from events like the Champions League or Eurovision
• There was a dichotomy between Europe and the EU and dramatized conflict
• There are few references to a diverse Europe or to colonialism as a condition
• Colonialism often bridges European history omitting it from the Exhibition
• The omission was rectified by a reenactment decolonization, visitors could climb into a Sabena airliner and relieve the Airlift
• The Airlift was filled with panic and hysteria which left newly independent republic of Congo with very few administrators
• There was accompanying wall text which highlighted no unification without decolonization in Europe
• The installation did nothing about the dimensions of the violence of colonialism
• The installation showed a past historical moment of frightened Europeans from violence because of Colonialism
• They timeline below the exhibit presented troops from the dutch and Portuguese governments who clung to their Asian and African colonies
• Critical views on colonialism didn't enter the public sphere until the publishing of King Leopold's Ghost
• The curators invited Europeans to gaze at knick-knacks from their former colonies
• Michel dumoulin a Belgian historian dismissed exhibition's depiction of decolonization and propagandized EU and Commission
• The exhibition omitted mass migrations to the continents, and racism in order to produce History of Europe
• There was a freedom of suffering which ended in liberation of communism in 1989
• The exhibit created a quasi nationalistic discourse of common European Values
• Imperial aggression omitted freedom
• Instead, it was the striving for peace while decolonization served as amicale sovereignty.
• Europeans could find project that opposed communist countries
• A distorted account was shown by mostly white middle-aged anti communists
• The EU was conflated with Europe resulting in inequality
• The exhibit presented a master narration of democracy and dismissing skeptical views.
• It presented the illusion that unification resulted in an end to a tragic Era.
• The Musée association's museum failed, but the idea was backed by Hans-Gert Pettering, Ludger kuhnhardt, and Hans Walter Huetter.
• The trio unified around a common vision
• Adenauer and Kohl aimed to use a project for strengthening european culture integration.

The House of European History

• Able to secure funding from European Parliament
• Commission contributed, becoming intertwined with the core institutions
• Former dental hospital named the Eastman building was designated as site
• 155 million Euros to renovate and clash the two time periods of gray and cream stone coupled with glass
• The interior was aligned with institution for EU governing bodies
• pottering chairs the HEH Board of Trustees and consists of EU and Belgium government people/politicians. Taja Vovk Van Gaal is museum director
• The dual leadership merged the EU's cultural and political
• An academic committee, chaired by wziodzimierz Borodziej which consists of international historians is the counterbalance to board.
• Museum stresses reflection, debate and challenging visitors for history
• Further it problematizes European Identity while emphasizing change and what europe could become. Instead encompasses diversity and subject
• It remedies shortcomings which includes unified story of suffering and liberation, eurocentrism
• the interrogative stance is encouraged.
• Its larger historical scope allow for self flattering Europe
• Itzel aims to have visitors confront historical histories of the present.
• Visitors can enter on the second floor and read in one of twenty four languages
• Enter at the first floor lobbying and pick up brochures including audio. Tablet loans are free
• The digital display knows where the visitor is and provides information and easy access for digital profiency
• Visitors become aware of how deeply to dive into hyperlinked data
• A vestibule that prompts the visitor to consider Europe begins permanent exhibition
• Greek myths, maps, Christian Europe and objects that represent fraught heritage are ways that Europe is displayed
• What binds the continent together? What is worth saving? What should be challenged?
• European History is structured on levels 3-4-5 while 6 has public events scheduled/
• Level 3- Nationalism, industry and wars
• Level 4 - Cold war, economic boom and cooperation
• Level 5 - Political Democratization and economic restructuring of communist bloc
• The spiral signifies progress.
• 1945 now shares Importance with the mid 1970's
• part of a dialectic that has nationalistic and totalitarian forces
• Collapse of Naxism but not fascist government resulted from the assessmemt of breaks
• based on growth and prosperity rather than democatratic participation
• requires citizens to complete it and European Democarcy is vulnerable
• The third floor notes the amount of attention colonialism receives.
• soundscape with the sounds of machines, battlefields and chanting crowds communicate dynamisn and disruptions of industrial age
• arcade for showcasing the global expansion
• Image of scientif invention
• mass communication
• African Artist's work
• African influenced by Europeans but images of brute subjugation starky clash.
• global trade routes
• maxim gun
• Plaster casts
• Narrow glass passage lead to WWI gallery
• the arc brings face to european colonialism
• Left is the good side while right is visited of bad
• a global power which physical anthropologist have used
• objects show racial cruelty; slaveships
• there is no demonstration of African colonial resistance .
• Only images of stereotypical exploitation.
• Use of facial casts was against the anthropology debate
• It's neither highlights the effect on colonial projects or decenters gaze and frames it
• the calculations transfer to moral terms and economic decisions.
• right and left balance moral decisions
• War and racism are discussed more.
• It includes colonial officers .
• and engraved national and racial stereotypes and childrens eduction.
• there is divergence between cultural groups of intrawar Europe.
• there are totalatarion population management and modernizations
• The museum turns racism as integral part
• the Josephine Baker symbolized Euro and Jazz era but lacked the understanding of the mass cultural industries because of racism
• the museoem paints multicultural for democracy
• parallels are showed
• there is the little brother. Anti totalitarian book is the criticism of oppression and international solidarity
• there is soviet system.
• First part corrects amnesia of It's Our History .
• imperialim not here to freedom. they are unity. bad
• there's postwar
• It is a neocolonial
• A little colonial