Fanning the flames? An exploration of EU discourse on culture in the Eastern Partnership

In contributing to the scholarly debate on the European Union's (EU) foreign policy, this paper focuses on an under-explored, yet central, subset of the latter, namely the EU's cultural relations with the Eastern Partnership (EaP). Concretely, it examines what discursive articulations the EU advances through its cultural relations with the region. To do so, it applies a poststructuralist approach to a selection of data retrieved from EU policy documents and declarations (2007-2020) and semi-structured interviews with EU officials and cultural operators. The analysis reveals that three discursive articulations of EU identity are advanced: a) 'United in Diversity', showcasing 'Europe' as a model; b) 'co-creation', promoting dialogue and mutuality with the EaP; and c) 'messaging', framing Russia as an existential threat. Despite some contradictions, the analysis detects an important tendency towards geographical othering, and notably towards the externalising of the threat location in identity production. By resorting to default conceptions of culture, EU discourse splits the EU and Russia into two organic systems of differences. Overall, EU identity reproduction within the cultural terrain - and the antagonism that comes with it - produces and nurtures the very contested world that the EU seeks to navigate.