Book Forum on Hans Kundnani's Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project

Abstract

This book forum discusses Hans Kundnani’s pivotal book on “Eurowhiteness” and the role of race in the EU integration project. It includes three reactions from Stefan Auer, Pavel Barša, and Agnes Gagyi, along with Kundnani’s response. Eurowhiteness skillfully reveals what has been obscured by the European Union as a vehicle of “imperial amnesia”. The three reactions and the author’s response continue a polemical discussion on this imperial amnesia, as viewed through different intellectual traditions and regions, including Central and Eastern Europe and anti-colonial perspectives. As a result, the forum uses the book to either deepen the debate on the EU’s civilizationism with new perspectives or expand the Eurowhiteness narrative with new geo-historical contexts and connections. Issues of Russian imperialism in Ukraine, the Israeli war in Gaza, and the economic dimensions of European coloniality are brought to the foreground, particularly when viewed through the imagination and reality of Central (and Eastern) Europe.

Keywords

whiteness, racism, European Union, Central and Eastern Europe, colonialism, imperialism

Author Biography

Stefan Auer

Stefan Auer is Professor of European Studies at the University of Hong Kong in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. Twice named Jean Monnet Chair in EU Studies, he has published an award-winning monograph, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe (London: Routledge 2004), and articles in Government and Opposition; International Affairs; the Journal of Common Market Studies, Osteuropa and West European Politics, among others. He also writes occasional opinion pieces for The Australian, The Financial Times, Politico, The South China Morning Post and The World Today (Chatham House) and comments on European politics in the media, such as ABC News 24 (based in Melbourne), CNBC and RTHK (based in Hong Kong). Most recently he published, European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency (London/New York: Hurst/OUP, 2022).

Pavel Barša

Pavel Barša is a professor in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague. His work focuses on contemporary political theory (feminism, multiculturalism, theory of emancipation), nationalism, and theories of international relations. His most recent English publications include Central European Culture Wars: Beyond Post-Communism and Populism (co-edited with Ondřej Slačálek and Zora Hesová; Humanitas 2021); Three Responses to the Rise of National Conservatism in Central and Eastern Europe in the 2010s and the Legacy of 1989 (in: Nicolas Maslowski, Kinga Torbicka, eds., Contested Legacies of 1989. Geopolitics, Memories and Societies in Central and Eastern Europe, Peter Lang, 2022); and Beyond "Democracy vs Populism": Urbinati's Theory of Populism from a Central European Perspective (in: Jan Bíba, ed., Democracy and Opinion. On Nadia Urbinati's Democratic Theory, Filosofický časopis, Special Issue 2024/1).

Agnes Gagyi

Agnes Gagyi is a sociologist working on Eastern European politics and social movements from the perspective of the region’s long-term world-economic and geopolitical integration. Her recent publications include The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe (Palgrave, 2021); Contemporary Housing Struggles. A Structural Field of Contention Approach (Palgrave, 2022, co-authored with Ioana Florea and Kerstin Jacobsson); and The Political Economy of Eastern Europe 30 years into the ‘Transition’. New Left Perspectives from the Region (Palgrave, 2021).

Hans Kundnani

Hans Kundnani is an adjunct professor at New York University and a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics. He was previously director of the Europe programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, senior Transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of three books: Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (Hurst, 2023); The Paradox of German Power (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014); and Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2009).