‘Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project’ w/ Hans Kundnani

Join us for this event in which the speakers will discuss Hans Kundnani’s latest book, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project.

Hosted by the European Institute and Law School

The European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism. Yet the idea of Europe has a long, problematic history—in medieval times, it was synonymous with Christianity; in the modern era, it became associated with ‘whiteness’. Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Narratives of European integration emphasise the lessons of war and the Holocaust, but not the lessons of colonial history. The EU is about power as much as peace—and civic ideas of Europe are being displaced by ethnic and cultural ones. Since the 2015 refugee crisis, whiteness has become even more central to European identity—a troubling new turn in Europe’s long civilisational project. It is time to confront the relationship between ideas of Europe and ideas of race.

About the speakers

Gurminder K. Bhambra (@gkbhambra) is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, and a Fellow of the British Academy (2020). She was previously Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.

Hans Kundnani (@hanskundnani) is an associate fellow and former Europe programme director at Chatham House, and the author of Utopia or Auschwitz; The Paradox of German Power; and Eurowhiteness. Hans writes regularly for The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman and Foreign Affairs, among others.

Helen Thompson (@HelenHet20) is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the political economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century.

Mike Wilkinson, Professor of Law at LSE, studied at University College London, the College of Europe, Bruges, and completed a PhD at the European University Institute, Florence. Prior to taking up his post at LSE in 2007, Mike was lecturer at Manchester University, EU-US Fulbright Research Fellow at Columbia and NYU and was called to the Bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 2000.

Simon Glendinning (@lonanglo) is Head of the European Institute and Professor in European Philosophy at LSE. He is the author of Europe: a philosophical history – beyond modernity.

About the book

An alternative account of the EU as a racialised project.

The European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism. Yet the idea of Europe has a long, problematic history—in medieval times, it was synonymous with Christianity; in the modern era, it became associated with ‘whiteness’.

Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Narratives of European integration emphasise the lessons of war and the Holocaust, but not the lessons of colonial history. The EU is about power as much as peace—and civic ideas of Europe are being displaced by ethnic and cultural ones.

Since the 2015 refugee crisis, whiteness has become even more central to European identity—a troubling new turn in Europe’s long civilisational project. It is time to confront the relationship between ideas of Europe and ideas of race.

‘Hans Kundnani has been on an intellectual journey over several years, close to the heart of the European mythmaking machine… What has emerged from this slow disenchantment is a clear, elegantly written polemic. Some people won’t like it, which is probably why they should read it. … Kundnani’s book is more than an insightful one, it is a necessary one.’ — Financial Times