ABSTRACT
I end this work by looking at narratives that might figure as sites of resis-
tance to the ‘‘end of history’’ thesis, in the case of (Eastern) Europe to a
belief in its teleological emancipation and end of all trouble upon becoming
EUnionized. Parallel with the strengthening of the European Union and
especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a proliferation of
films that consider – and recreate, as it were – Europe’s imagined commu-
nity on a level that both intersects with and undermines official EU dis-
courses. A turn toward film here is not a simple question of genre, although, arguably, filmic narratives frequently cut across national boundaries more
easily than national literature or television shows, potentially fostering a
different ethics of intercultural, transnational communication, a more radi-
cal model of European collectivity than that offered by the EU. The films
that I have in mind also carry potential as an archive in Jacques Derrida’s
sense, as a reproduction, repetition of cultural memory which always opens
up to the future: ‘‘the question of the future itself . . . of a promise and of a responsibility to tomorrow’’ (1996: 36). The archive that arises through the films speaking to both East and West on an equal footing, carrying the
memory of Europe’s divisions, as well as Europe’s utopian desires, opens up
the question of Europe’s future, of the ‘‘to come’’ or ‘‘as if’’ rather than ‘‘as is.’’
