The Temporalities of Constitutive Rhetoric: “Europe is a State of Mind”

Since its publication, Maurice Charland’s essay on constitutive rhetoric (1987) has become a central theory to studies concerned with rhetorical aspects of collective identity formation. Key concepts, empirical scope, and the question of effect have been challenged and elaborated. One crucial aspect, however, has avoided critical and theoretical attention: the temporal imaginaries of constitutive rhetoric. In an analysis ofthe constitutive rhetoric of the European Union, the essay investigates the temporal modes (rupture, continuity, progression, circularity) of the EU’s practices of remembrance and their theoretical implications for how we understand the historical narratives central to constitutive rhetoric.