The Political and the ENP: rethinking the EU relations with the eastern region

Drawing on Jenny Edkins’ post-structuralist interpretation of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, this chapter offers a new conceptual account of the stagnated relations between the European Union and the eastern region. Part of the difficulty, as this chapter argues, is the EU’s failure to imagine a new social order, which would give a relational value to the Other, and become more accommodating of the neighbours’ diverse and different world views. The chapter problematizes power relations as a process of ‘othering’ in order to re-conceptualize them via the key notions of ‘differentiation’, conceived as distinction rather than deviation, and ‘normalization’, seen as the interplay between different normalities. It argues for bringing ‘the political’ back in as an opportunity to imagine and legitimize contesting social orders.