“European Bodies”

Anika Keinz and Paweł Lewicki reflect on the thematic issue they prepared for the latest AJEC edition (Volume 28, Issue 1). Read the introduction to the thematic issue here (available open access) https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/ajec/28/1/ajec280104.xml

What was your inspiration for this thematic issue?

In the current rise of populist parties and racist discourses, we observe increased tensions around the notion of “Europe” that can be pinned down to discussions about who is and how should a “civilized” person look like and what this person should represent. Whether in the East or the West of the continent, it is predominantly the Muslim Other, refugees and people of colour who are allegedly “different” and not fitting to the imagined “Europeanness”, but also other minorities are picked out to construct the more vernacular and legitimate “European” norm. Presently, it is the case with non-heteronormative people in countries such as Poland and Hungary, where these minorities are constructed as a “threat” to “normal” people and “real” and “Christian” Europe, allegedly represented by the majority of Poles and Hungarians. Such matters are further complicated by complex intersections with gender and class. These different understandings of “Europeanness” in “the West” and so called post-socialist countries were the point of departure for this thematic issue, as they constitute our common interest, albeit from different perspectives. 

Paweł, as someone who grew up in socialist and post-socialist Poland, is interested in notions of “the West”. In the course of “European integration” and the access of post-socialist countries to the EU, “the West”, understood as source of “normalcy”, “civilization” and economic prosperity, became tantamount with “Europe” and “being in Europe”. In his research, Paweł was curious how these imaginations about “Europe” are put into practice by Polish EU civil servants in Brussels, where “Europe” is allegedly at its core and essence. 

After doing research in Poland on the negotiations of gender and sexualities after 1989, Anika turned her focus to Germany and “new” internal boundaries between migrants and native citizens, between “ethnic” and supposedly non-ethnic groups, between religious communities and a supposedly secular and liberal society. These boundaries have reached new dimensions in public discourses and practices, in policies, and security technologies. She is interested in questions such as how racism and racialized sexism works in (sexual and gender) politics, in discourses and practices across society and politics. Anika also asks which values and norms are articulated at a specific time (now) and space (here –meaning particularly EU-Europe or countries associated with the “West” such as the United States and Canada) and how these are linked to notions of belonging and national or European identity. Which story or which fantasy about “ourselves” emerges in new articulations about modernity, freedom, and progress? She investigates current processes of nationalization and normalization along which bodies of belonging and “strange bodies”, are being produced. 

Aside from these individual interests, we are both interested in how particular ideas, notions, and imaginations about Europe become embodied and practiced, what these imaginations evoke, and what cultural processes can be observed within the notion of Europe — depending on the place and context in which one is looking at it and at bodies. 

How does this thematic issue link with your research interests?

Paweł’s interests in anthropological studies on and of Europe merged during his research on the post-enlargement European Commission with interests in postcolonial theory and racism. Postcolonial theory describes complex (re)productions and relations between metropole and colony, the ways these relations are embodied and practiced. Together with studies on racism, it enabled him to grasp the ways different nationalities, particularly Polish EU civil servants, were spotted and classified at the European Commission based on the way they looked and acted, based on the impressions of the body or alleged representations of “Polishness”. These two perspectives sharpened reflections on the micro- and macro- political consequences it had on different positions of actors in the EU bureaucracy, and particularly on the ways in which Poles acted in that field.

Anika draws her inspiration from gender studies, critical race studies, and queer theory, particularly regarding the racialization of sexual identities, gender, emancipation, and tolerance in a “sexularizing” Europe. Following scholars such as Sara Ahmed, Gabriele Dietze, Fatima El Tayeb, bell hooks, Stuart Hall, Nira Yuval Davis, and many more, she is interested in problematizing the silent norm and the processes and markers whereby a body becomes racialised, classed, and gendered.

What are the theoretical underpinnings of this special issue?

Feminist and queer theory, as well as race-critical perspectives, provide a vocabulary for analysing the different but interlinked processes of normalisation and regimes of the normal, such as the binary gender order, heteronormativity, the colour-coded visual economy, and middle-class consumerist distinctions.

Although there is no such thing as a European body, we would like to draw ethnographic attention to the way in which imaginations of Europe fuel the development and reproduction of (new) markings, bordering mechanisms, and discourses constructing fantasies of a European body. We are particularly interested in how such processes may lead to social and cultural divisions. Numerous scholars from race-critical studies – past and present – have demonstrated that there are still bodies that can never fully perform Europeanness (understood as whiteness) due to the colour-coded visual economy. Following these scholars, we are interested in the subtle mechanisms that work through processes of embodiment: an ensemble of discursive, verbal, sartorial, and social performances and perceptions, respectively. 

What were your aims shaping this thematic issue?

Our aim is to show how the subtle practices, concepts, values, and narratives are attributed to and deployed for the construction and reproduction of Europe and how they become embodied. Bodies become marked when they are seen through discourses, images, and imaginations of (an essentialised) Other. We want to direct the ethnographic gaze to those moments when bodies collide, to historically, culturally and socially embedded practices when bodies and embodiment matters for the re-production of social, racial, gender, sexual and cultural boundaries. We see ethnography as a discipline that enables researchers to highlight how categories of race, class, gender, sexuality intersect in the production of these boundaries in specific moments. If we suggest to ask which and whose body represents globalisation, cosmopolitanism, modernity, progress, freedom, and emancipation, often linked to discourses on Europe, we challenge researchers not to repeat the obvious (that it is more often than not the white male body that represents the global north or the cosmopolitan). Rather, we seek to explore ethnographically the practices and often-unconscious categories of thought that shape embodiments of Europeanness. 

What is the broader contribution to the anthropology of Europe/European anthropology?

These perspectives led us to inquire how Europe becomes embodied, how Europe is read on and into bodies, and how it marks bodies in different situations. Scholars such as Stoler, Skeggs, El Tayeb, and Hall make us particularly aware of the elusiveness and arbitrariness of markings and positionalities, despite their histories and embeddedness in long established power relations. What their work provides us with is a vocabulary and fine analysis from perspectives that have not yet entered mainstream social anthropology – at least not the one we are familiar with in Germany (we cannot speak for all strands in the discipline of anthropology). If we ask to look at where, when, and in what places “Europe” is embodied and embodies, we wanted to invite readers and contributors to understand such moments through ethnography. 

With the thematic issue, we hope to stimulate the discussion on embodiment and contribute to critical studies on Europe and Europeanization beyond the notion of making research “in Europe” or “on European issues”. Embodiment implies inventiveness and situatedness, not only discourses, but gestures, gazes, and practices. Embodiment impacts the cultural context and is impacted by it, simultaneously reproducing cultural legacies that generate and rank bodies. In our perspective it constitutes a fruitful research field to look into how Europe produces borders and bordering practices in (post-) imperial ways in different, sometimes distant, locations and in multiple but not uncontested ways.

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Anika Keinz, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany.
https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/vs/anthro1/inhaberin/index.html

Paweł Lewicki, Comparative Central European Studies, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/ Oder, Germany.
https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/vs/mitteleuropa/Team/Wi_Mi_2016/index.html

(Cover image by Brian Merrill from Pixabay)