European memory in populism: representations of self and other

Introduction / Ayhan Kaya and Chiara De Cesari -- (Why) do Eurosceptics believe in a common European heritage? / Chiara De Cesari, Ivo Bosilkov, and Arianna Piacentini -- Anti-totalitarian monuments in Ljubljana and Brussels : from nationalist reconciliation to open rehabilitation of fascism / Gal Kirn -- The use of the past in populist political discourse : Justice and Development Party rule in Turkey / Ayhan Kaya and Ayse Tecmen -- "A great bliss to keep the sensation of conquest alive!" : the emotional politics of the Panorama 1453 Museum in Istanbul / Gönül Bozoglu -- The Mediterranean as a mirror and ghost of the colonial past : the role of cultural memory in the production of populist narratives in Italy / Gabriele Proglio -- Textures of urban fears : the affective geopolitics of the 'oriental rug' / Luiza Bialasiewicz and Lora Sariaslan -- Social media and affective publics : populist passion for religious roots / Ernst van den Hemel -- Caring for some and not others : museums and the politics of care in post-colonial Europe / Markus Balkenhol and Wayne Modest -- European culture, history, and heritage as political tools in the rhetoric of the Finns Party / Tuuli Lähdesmäki -- Between appropriation and appropriateness : instrumentalising dark heritage in populism and memory? / Susannah Eckersley -- Memory games and populism in postcommunist Poland / Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski -- Mizrahi memory-of and memory-against "the people" : remembering the 1950s / Hilla Dayan -- Final commentary : learning from the past/s? : contesting hegemonic memories / Ruth Wodak -- Afterword : against populism : memory for an age of transformation / Astrid Erll.

European Memory in Populism explores the links between memory and populism in contemporary Europe. Focusing on circulating ideas of memory, especially European memory, in contemporary populist discourses, the book also analyses populist ideas in sites and practices of remembrance that usually tend to go unnoticed. More broadly, the theoretical heart of the book reflects upon the similarities, differences, and slippages between memory, populism, nationalism, and cultural racism and the ways in which social memory contributes to give substance to various ideas of what constitutes the 'people' in populist discourse and beyond.

Bringing together a group of political scientists, anthropologists, and cultural and memory studies scholars, the book illuminates the relationship between memory and populism from different angles and in different contexts. The contributors to the volume discuss dominant notions of European heritage that circulate in the public sphere and in political discourse, and consider how the politics of fear relates to such notions of European heritage and identity across and beyond Europe and the European Union. Ultimately, this volume will shed light on how notions of a shared European heritage and memory can be used not only to include and connect Europeans, but also to exclude some of them.

Investigating the ways in which nationalist populist forces mobilize the idea of a shared, homogeneous European civilization, European Memory in Populism will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of European studies, heritage and memory studies, migration studies, anthropology, political science and sociology.

Chapters 1, 4, 6, and 10 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives 4.0 license.