Abstract

This article traces the “silent inscription” of (former) colonial relations in the European integration project to their re-inflection in an EU-sceptical medium. To do so, this contribution draws on a corpus of data comprising news-coverage, commentaries and readers’ letters published in Austria’s largest newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung, whose reach, influence and leanings are well-known. The analysis considers the Krone’s representations of, and discursive references to, “the Balkans” during the crises-littered period between 2009 and 2017. For analytical purposes this discussion focuses on a sub-sample of invocations of “the Balkans” in the Krone, which have appeared with growing frequency since 2015. Conceptually, the discourse-analytical notion of the topos, or argumentative structure, and anthropological literature on “identity grammars” inform the analysis. The discussion reveals continuities with Austria’s historically long-established representational regimes of South-Eastern Europe, and novel discursive features. A contemporary paternalism is shown to re-appropriate the nineteenth-century topos of Austria’s alleged “civilizing mission” and what André Gingrich (2005) has described as Central Europe’s “frontier Orientalism”. Further, preoccupations with “the Balkan-route” and its closure articulate a topos of external threats tied to recent migration flows. The article reflects on an “amnesiac nationalism”, and its post-imperial entanglements, that are currently re-shaping the European Union.