par Paone, Martina
Promoteur Jeandesboz, Julien ;Christou, George
Publication Non publié, 2018-12-01
Thèse de doctorat
Résumé : This research intends to explore the reverberations of the colonial experience in the European Union (EU) peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In particular, it aims at reconstructing the link between the European colonial past and the EU, in order to address to what extent such historical heritage is manifested in the discursive practices of EU peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo.Thus, the thesis seeks to answer to the following research question: “How does the EU address the European colonial legacy in peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo?” To do so, the research position itself in a critical conversation with EU Studies and Postcolonial Studies, and mobilises Discourse-Historical Approach influenced by Colonial Discourse Theory as a methodological tool. After having gathered interviews with EU Officials working on peacebuilding policies, having conducted archival research in the Historical Archives of the European Union and having undertaken participant observation at the European External Action Service, the results of this research are mainly twofold. Firstly, this study shows that within EU peacebuilding policy-makers the colonial legacy is hardly addressed. Yet, the EU relies on a dehistoricised regime where selective historical events are mobilised to the objective of legitimising EU peacebuilding actions. Secondly, the research identifies discursive strategies that reproduce colonial discourses in EU peacebuilding policy-making. These strategies, mainly based on racial stereotypes, connote an unchanging order based on a fixed donor/recipient binary. Such pervasive discourses tend to perpetuate dependency, instead of reaffirming an independent peace process that is supposed to be the final goal of EU peacebuilding policies.

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