Deconstructing and defining EULEX

Hailed as the greatest European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mission to date, the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) has been oscillating between fulfilling its mission statement crafted in Brussels, while managing the controversial ethnic expectations of the local population in Kosovo. Because of its imposed “status neutral,” in its three years of deployment in Kosovo, EULEX is considered to have been preoccupied with keeping a low profile, remaining invisible and not taking stances in an otherwise politically unsettled territorial entity amid acute ethnic cleavages. While it is considered as an important example to test the EU’s vertical and horizontal consistencies, EULEX’s ambiguous legal status has had its own implications; how EULEX seeks to maintain its coherence within Kosovo with its headquarters in Brussels. With most of its work dedicated to its Press and Information Office, in articulating and setting forward communication in three different languages and aiming three different (to say the least) audiences, its journey is still that of seeking legitimacy and popular support. This work examines EULEX from a critical perspective

MetaKosovo: local and international narratives

This article examines local narratives on Kosovo and their role in crafting and articulating interpretations of Kosovo and international missions. Using the concept of ‘home’, as used and conceptualised by Jacques Derrida, the article reverses the order of who is ‘guest’ and ‘host’ in Kosovo and how that defines the local narratives on the subject. In the first part, attention is paid solely to letting local narratives deconstruct themselves, while in the second part we let them deconstruct the international narrative on Kosovo. The aim of the article is to present Kosovo as a battleground of division and commonality among the narratives and at the same time as an ‘impossible’ ‘home’ of all its narratives. In conclusion, some thoughts pave the way for the idea of ‘renegotiating’ the concept of ‘home’ with particular focus on ‘home’ in interventions and missions and its ultimate influence on the ethics of intervention

The international missions in Kosovo: what is in a name?

This article problematizes the concept of ‘mission’ in international interventions, who is entitled to missionize and how the missionized subject is conceptualized. By looking at the international missions in Kosovo (those of the UN and particularly the EU), we problematize how the EU mission in Kosovo is entrenched in a trajectory of ‘missionizing’ that makes it bear the stigma of a structure non-responsive and non-sensitive to the local. Employing Derrida’s deconstruction, we explain that the criticism (academic, dogmatic, ideological and empirical) of international missions relates not so much to how they operate in their host countries, or to the policy choices they make. Rather, looking at the path dependency of missions in the Western historical and civilizational trajectory, we maintain that the problem derives from the idea and very concept of ‘mission’ as intervention in itself

A post-structuralist account of international missions : the case of Kosovo

This thesis offers a Derridean perspective to the notion of international interventions and missions by focusing on the case of Kosovo. It argues on a reconceptualization of ethics as foreign policy, interrogating questions of how to rethink ethics as justice and how to rethink the notion of (non)intervention. The structure is built around four primary questions that are dealt with in four consecutive articles utilizing four of Derrida’s concept: deconstruction, hospitality, autoimmunity and home respectively. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is dedicated to the introduction of the thesis, a theoretical and methodological discussion, data generation and interpretation and an overview of thesis’ structure. The second part is reserved for the four articles, each employing a particular concept of Derrida, to shed light on the dynamics of Western/EU missions in Kosovo. Part three provides a summary of main issues covered in the thesis, concluding remarks and a debate for further research. In its final part, the thesis calls for de-missionizing of the spread of democracy, be that as an aim to civilize, modernize or, Europeanize, others. De-missionizing is essentially related to de-pathologizing the other as something intrinsically corrupt and de-objectifying the other as a structure in need for intervention. This would in turn lead to a more democratic way to construct relations with others

The EU and the Balkans: Shifting Meanings after the Crisis

This article discusses to what extent meanings and discourses on ‘EU membership’ on the one hand and on the ‘Balkans’ on the other, have shifted within Western Balkan countries in the past few years as a result of financial crisis in the European Union. Focusing on Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article uses Derrida’s deconstruction to problematize the return of terms such as ‘Balkan’ and ‘Balkanized’, as a way to explain failures of the economic system. The article concludes that in the case of BH and to a lesser extent in Kosovo, there has been a de-mythicization of the EU

Mediation through recontextualization : The European Union and the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia

The EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina has been hailed as a major achieve- ment for the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy as well as for the ‘European future’ of Kosovo and Serbia, since it started in 2011. Looking at EU discourse – speeches, statements and press releases – this article problematizes the logic of the dialogue, its aims in the process and its outcomes. Using the framework of ‘recontextualization’, developed by Van Leeuwen and Wodak, we explore how the EU is substituting elements of the dialogue and adding elements that are not intrinsic to the process, which then create ambiguities which we problematize. We argue that ambiguities are not limited merely to the outputs of the dialogue, such as agreements, but they also obscure the very meaning of the dialogue for the EU, for Kosovo and Serbia, as well as for EU’s relations with both countries

Of Love and Frustration as Post-Yugoslav Women Scholars: Learning and Unlearning the Coloniality of IR in the Context of Global North Academia

This collective discussion brings together six women scholars of and from the post-Yugoslav space, who, using personal experiences, analyze the dynamics of knowledge production in international relations (IR), especially regarding the post-Yugoslav space. Working in Global North academia but with lived experiences in the region we study, our research is often subjected to a particular gaze, seeped in assumptions about “ulterior” motives and expectations about writing and representation. Can those expected to be objects of knowledge ever become epistemic subjects? We argue that the rendering of the post-Yugoslav space as conflict-prone and as Europe's liminal semi-periphery in the discipline of IR cannot be decoupled from the rendering of the region and those seen as related to it as unable to produce knowledge that, in mainstream discussions, is seen as valuable and “objective.” The post-Yugoslav region and those seen as related to it being simultaneously postcolonial, postsocialist, and postwar, and characterized by marginalization, complicity, and privilege in global racialized hierarchies at the same time, can make visible specific forms of multiple colonialities, potentially creating space for anti- and/or decolonial alternatives. We further make the case for embracing a radical reflexivity that is active, collaborative, and rooted in feminist epistemologies and political commitments

On Structural and Latent Violence

Where does violence hide? A reflection on invisible and epistemic violence that we have receive