The Dramaturgy of Memory Politics: The Dissonant Heritages of Remembering and the European Commission Mnemonic Strategies in the Field of Enlargement

The study of how the European Commission (EC) has developed specific mnemonic strategies to influence the political uses of history in the domain of the politics of enlargement is underexplored. This paper establishes a dialogue between Goffman’s dramaturgical theory, Foucalt’s analytics of power relations, and collective memory studies to understand the European Commission’s role in the democratic governance of European memory. Focusing on Western Balkans countries’ accession processes, namely Serbia and the Republic of North Macedonia, the article analyzes the mnemonic strategies employed by the European Commission in the realm of enlargement policy. The article answers the following research question: how can it be argued that the European Commission compels candidate countries to recontextualize their cultures of remembrance? The article argues that the European Commission performs the role of a memory entrepreneur, whose discursive power induces candidate countries to negotiate their mnemonic legacies in an effort to prevent the emergence of dissonant heritages. The study of how candidate countries present and negotiate their identity and collective memories and traumas throughout the accession process makes it compelling to address enlargement politics through Goffman’s theatrical analysis (1959) and as mirroring Foucauldian technologies of power and knowledge. From an epistemological perspective, the article employs Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly Wodak’s (2015) approach to discursive recontextualization through corpus-based research.