Introduction: Discursively Doing and Undoing Europe

On 7 July 2015, writing in the German paper Die Welt, columnist Thomas Straubhaar warned that following Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ surprise call of a referendum leading to Greeks’ resounding ‘no’ to more austerity, Tsipras was ‘not to be trusted’. The latter, Straubhaar postulated, was a tactically astute radical seeking to install a neo-Marxist regime within the European Union (EU), which would, so Straubhaar continued, embolden the far left across the continent and could purportedly threaten Europe – or, more accurately, Europe as seen and defined by the journalist in question and with him, undoubtedly, significant sections of the German public. A few days earlier, Alexis Tsipras had left negotiations with his Eurozone partners, shortly before calling the referendum, declaring that ‘the European Union was founded on principles of democracy, solidarity, equality and mutual respect’, not on ‘blackmail and ultimatums’, and that no one, especially ‘in these crucial times’, had the right to compromise Europe’s values (e.g. Maltezou & Ponthus, 2015). In the period between the Greek referendum and ‘last-minute’ talks widely seen to ‘decide Greece’s fate’ whether inside or out of the Eurozone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel invoked the notion of a ‘good European’, suggesting that the latter ‘respects the European treaties and national laws’ and helps ‘ensure the stability of the Eurozone’ (e.g. Levine, 2015).