‘Europe and the Rest’ in Official EU Discourse: Legitimising ‘Geopolitical Europe’ Through the ‘Jungle’ Analogy and Beyond
本文批判性地分析欧盟高官（冯德莱恩、米歇尔、博雷利）2019-2023年的讲话，揭示他们如何用‘花园-丛林’等文明二元对立来为欧盟转向强权政治辩护，并指出这种话语带有新殖民主义色彩。
Abstract This article critically assesses how the European Union (EU) constructs the identities of ‘EU‐Europe’ and ‘the rest of the world’ to legitimise the formation of a ‘geopolitical Europe’. It draws on poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives within the spirit of scholarly allyship, deconstructing texts produced by key EU officials – Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel and Josep Borrell – between 2019 and 2023. The article manifests how civilisational binaries are employed to justify the EU's transition from normative power to power politics. It problematises the ‘EU versus the rest of the world’ framing and, particularly, Borrell's ‘garden–jungle’ analogy, exposing their neocolonial underpinnings. Through an intertextual second reading, it shows how depicting the EU as a peaceful and civilised ‘garden’ and the rest of the world as a conflictual and disorderly ‘jungle’ reinforces civilisational hierarchies. The article argues that these binaries not only legitimise the EU's increasingly securitised foreign policy but also reproduce colonial‐era tropes of the mission civilisatrice , perpetuating a Eurocentric worldview.