Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will examine the current complexity of the issue of subsidiarity as it pertains to the experimental means by which the European bureaucracy and members of civil society attempt to manage/negotiate "culture" and exclusion under a real and imagined crisis. Since subsidiarity is often invoked by EU bureaucrats in terms of respecting cultural differences and presently seen as a limit to what the EU could put forth as cultural policy due to the members states' prerogative over culture, my aim is to understand how that limit was understood and practiced by European bureaucratic actors. What is born out of attempts to manage subsidiarity are three discursive modes often discussed by EU bureaucrats and members of civil society: the cultural, the moral, and the temporal. I use these discursive modes to further understand the notions of competence and shame as modes of belonging and exclusion within the EU.