The Fox and the Raven: The European Union and Hungary Renegotiate the Margins of 'Europe'

Abstract

This study is an empirical attempt to analyze the intersection of the sociologies of power, knowledge, interstate relations, underdevelopment, identity, and communication. I look at the expert exchange that took place as part of diplomatic communication between Hungary and the European Union during the last phase of the former's application for membership in the latter. In doing so, I apply to this contemporary material various tools of textual analysis in the mode of what Carlo Ginzburg calls the "evidential paradigm": that is, I seek clues that help map the topography of the communicative space of two documents - the book-length (but nonetheless abbreviated) version of the Hungarian response to the EU-questionnaire (which reproduces the EU's original questions as well) - and the reaction to the Hungarian self-study report by the European Union itself. In my search for, and interpretation of, such clues I repeatedly rely on advice from the scholarship of Mikhail Bakhtin.

Keywords: European Union, Hungary, power, knowledge, interstate relations, identity, communication, Bakhtin, Ginzburg