Peter Verovšek

Aufenthalt

Januar‒Februar 2012

Forschungsthema

»The Role of Memory within European Integration«

Projektbeschreibung

My project examines the role of memory in the foundation of the European communities after World War II. Though the past usually functions as a straitjacket, forcing events into chains of cause and effect, it can also provide the resources necessary for change. Building on twentieth century continental theorists, I argue that period from 1914 to 1945 represents an important historical rupture in Europe. This break discredited existing nationalist narratives, allowing for a rethinking of what the past meant for politics in the present and the future. I argue that memories of Europe’s age of total war provided postwar leaders like Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer with the cognitive, motivational and justificatory resources necessary to move away from national sovereignty and self-determination towards supranational integration and collective action.

Wissenschaftliches Profil

Peter Verovšek promoviert gegenwärtig an der Yale University mit einer Arbeit über »Memory and Political Community. Remembrance in the European Union«.

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl)

• »Meeting Principles and Lifeworlds Halfway: Habermas’s Thought on the Future of Europe«, in: Political Studies (im Erscheinen).
• Mitherausgeber von Politics in Dark Times, hg. von Seyla Benhabib, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010.
• »Human Nature and Justice: The Psychological Foundations of the Individual in Plato and Rawls«, Department of Government, Dartmouth College, May 2006.

Forschungskontext

Der Aufenthalt von Peter Verovšek wird auf Einladung von Rainer Forst (Professor für Poltitische Theorie an der Goethe-Universität und Sprecher des Exzellenzclusters »Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen« an der Goethe-Universität) gefördert von der Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung.