Building Bridges via Complexity : Memory Studies, IR, and the Issue of European Integration

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Drawing lessons from and overcoming Europe’s belligerent past have been important driving forces both in European societies and for regional integration after the Second World War. Extensive research in Memory Studies and History has shown the multifaceted empirical relevance of these memory processes both in a national and transnational European context. In contrast to this growing body of literature, International Relations (IR) has long ignored memory as a relevant factor for global relations as a whole, European integration or national foreign politics. I argue, this was mainly due to the still dominant science philosophical premises of positivism both in IR theory (IRT) as well as European integration theory and has only slowly began to change with the growing influence of post- or non-positivist approaches in the discipline. The constructivist, historical and relational turn in IRT have all brought IR closer to Memory Studies. To foster this trend, I propose another metatheoretical perspective: complexity thinking. In its “general” form, championed among others by Edgar Morin, it provides a science philosophical background for Memory Studies’ transdisciplinary endeavour and enables IR to join in it. Consequently, a complexity approach changes our perspective on European integration as well, not least with regard to the processes of remembering in its context. Hence, complexity adds to European Memory Studies as well.