Abstract: This paper aims at attempting an analysis, by force partial, of white Europe as such a metaphor in the light of recent critical work on whiteness within a European context. Quite obviously, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 strongly impacted upon the numerous and often conflicting discourses related to the construction and reconstruction of global and European identities which followed that momentuous event; I refer here to the lacunar mythical roots Luisa Passerini finds in the idea of Europe itself (2002), to the shadows of the Shoah, but also to studies of European post-socialism in its unpredictable and still underrated connections with post-colonialism and the aftermath (and vampiric debris) of the Cold War.
Keywords: Eastern Europe; Australia; European identity; whiteness studies; Shoah; Christos Tsiolkas
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