Within the European Union at least since the failed referenda on the EU constitution, there has been a strong realization that nationalism has been strengthened in the European countries, even in Western Europe, which has been seen as the civilized counterpart of the nationalistic Eastern Europe. In my paper I look at the construction of political communities through processes of memory and the politics of memory. I seek to highlight that there are politics of memory on different levels of political community building, not only the national or the European federal level.
This invites us to think forward the way in which the overlapping and competing levels of political memory – and not only the interaction between different groups or nations – have an impact on the memory processes and the articulation of key signifiers such as the nationhood or Europe. In the final instance, it should enable us to see how the multiplicity of levels is an ever-present issue, even if certain groupings and actors would want us to focus our collective imaginary, or the imagining of the collective, on only one level of political community. In this paper, I will offer a brief look at the politics of memory at the European federal and national level, on the national and metropolitan level, on the metropolitan municipal and local district level, as well as lead my analysis towards the politics of memory in the activist – often anti-(state) institutional – level. The last move would highlight the existence of memory building in the activist communities, which shows the importance of memory for political communities, and the function as a creator of continuity and even institutional base. It also highlights the multi-level character of these memory projects and community, which are, crucially to their political character, not without conflict.
