Memory,history and national identity in Vichy France

Vichy France mobilised memory-managers to explain that the Revolution was over, to promote a deeper understanding of the French past and to help find a place in a European 'New Order' invigorated by the Germanic peoples. They demonstrated that a time of elites, or of 'knights', had returned. New people of old stock would displace the rabble risen in the Jacobin Empire and renew France by re-rooting her in her authentic past and collective memories. As Pe´tain toured the revered places of France's memory, the Republican rites and rituals were displaced by older symbols and ceremonies. Jewish and Masonic over-representation under the Third Republic encouraged a serene consensus for their exclusion. Vichy's search for a people's rooted, communitarian identity and heritage mustered prodigious, selfless, energies. The French wanted to be who they 'really were' and so vigorously sought themselves in their traditions and their past, with pernicious results.     

Race,culture, and national identity

Wade, Peter. Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia. Baltimore, MD; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. xv + 415 pp. including appendices, references, and index. $58.00 cloth.

Wetherell, Margaret and Jonathan Potter. Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. ix + 246 pp. including appendices, references, and index. $45.00 cloth, $15.00 paper.     

The chimera of national identity

ABSTRACT. In both popular discourse and many academic works, the existence of national identity is largely taken as given. Although researchers disagree on whether national identities are modern or perennial, and how best to gauge the intensity of identification with a particular nation, there is near unanimity on the view that national identities are real and perceptible entities. In contrast to this view I argue not only that there was no national identity before modernity but also that there is little empirical evidence for the existence of national identities in the modern age either. While it is obvious that many individuals show great affinity for their nations and often express sincere devotion to the ‘national cause’, none of these are reliable indicators of the existence of a durable, continuous, stable and monolithic entity called ‘national identity’. To fully understand the character of popular mobilisation in modernity it is paramount to refocus our attention from the slippery and non‐analytical idiom of ‘identity’ towards well‐established sociological concepts such as ‘ideology’ and ‘solidarity’. In particular, the central object of this research becomes the processes through which large‐scale social organisations successfully transform earnest micro‐solidarity into an all‐encompassing nationalist ideology.     

Imagining Britain: reconstructing history and writing national identity in Englands Heroicall Epistles

ABSTRACT

The idea that in the Tudor era the English people became proudly conscious of their national language and history, has been challenged by critical interventions that suggest how England as a nation had to be “written”: the act of writing can construct imagined boundaries, both to appropriate and exclude. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, Drayton replaces Ovid’s mythological figures in the Heroides with specific well-known English historical personas who provide, through their letters, different perspectives on English history. I will contend that Drayton’s assertion of national identity and patriotism is done verbally and semantically, while his allegiance to oppositionist politics is rendered generically and subversively by a remarkable manipulation of the genre of historical poetry in the Heroicall Epistles: this in turn reflects his deep engagement with ideas of history and the construction of national consciousness in early modern England.     

War, suffering and modern German history

This introduction proceeds in five steps. First, it briefly considers the etymology of the term "suffering," as well as the way in which scholars from different disciplines have approached it conceptually and empirically. Second, drawing on the contributions to this issue, it raises general themes emerging from the study of the Thirty Years, Franco-Prussian and First World Wars, with particular attention to gender, the disabled, and Jewish-German veterans. Finally, it considers the most politically contested field of German suffering - the Second World War - and reflects on how that suffering can be narrated and understood without running into the intellectual dead ends of either self-pity or collective guilt.     

Sectarian identity and national identity in the Middle East

This article looks at modern sectarian (here referring to Sunni/Shi'a) identities and their interaction with nationalism in the Middle East. In doing so I make three interrelated claims: 1) the term ‘sectarianism’ is distortive and analytically counterproductive. A better understanding of modern sectarian identity requires us to jettison the term. 2) Once discarded, our focus can then shift to sectarian identity: how it is constructed, perceived, utilized and so forth. A holistic understanding of sectarian identity must recognize the multiple fields upon which it is constructed and contested. The model adopted here frames sectarian identity as simultaneously operating on four fields: doctrinal, subnational, transnational and, crucially for our purposes, the national dimension. 3) Thirdly, this article challenges the assumptions regarding national and sectarian identities in the modern Middle East. Contrary to conventional wisdom, modern sectarian identities are deeply embedded in the prism of the nation‐state and are inextricably linked to nationalism and national identity. The article will rely primarily on the example of modern Iraq but, as will be seen, the Iraqi example is significantly echoed in the cases of Bahrain, Syria and Lebanon.     

The 1911 International Exposition in Rome: architecture, archaeology, and national identity

This paper discusses the 1911 International Exposition in Rome and illustrates how this patriotic celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian Sate utilized symbolic landscapes of architecture and archaeology to promote nationalist sentiments of italianità and romanità centered on the young capital of Rome. Through modern art exhibitions at the Valle Giulia, scientific conferences at the Castel Sant’Angelo, archaeological exhibits on the Roman Empire in the Baths of Diocletian, and regional Italian pavilions in the Piazza d’Armi, exposition officials offered a complex representation of Italian national identity that was modern yet ancient, cosmopolitan yet bucolic, European yet regional, and imperial yet developing.     

Place, national identity and post-socialist transformations: an introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to this theme issue on the topic of post-socialist identity politics surrounding nation building, national identity and nationalism. It presents an overview of the key processes of post-socialist identity formation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) in order to contextualise this collection of papers. This introduction outlines the key processes of identity formation and the treatment of nationalism under conditions of state-socialism, and then identifies the main processes of identity formation which have emerged in discourses surrounding nations and nationalities in post-socialist CEE and the FSU. A short account of each of the papers in the theme issue is then presented to identify the common strands of their analyses of post-socialist nationalisms.     

The historiography of nationalism and national identity in Latin America

ABSTRACT. This article surveys the current state of research on nationalism in Latin America, focusing on the large body of work produced from the 1990s onwards in a wide variety of disciplines (history, the social sciences and cultural studies). Covering work on both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it takes as a starting point the impact of Benedict Anderson's work, Imagined Communities, on Latin Americanists. It discusses the ways in which Latin Americanists have applied his ideas, and their critiques of many of his claims about Latin American nationalism. It goes on to outline major recent developments across the field, within the context of an argument that it is important for all scholars of nationalism to incorporate Latin American experiences into their debates on the history and theory of nationalism. The references have been selected to guide readers to key relevant works; regrettably, the article cannot, for reasons of space, offer a fully comprehensive bibliography.     

Illuminated addresses,national identity and Irish sport, 1880–1901

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the cultural significance of illuminated sporting addresses in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. Illuminated addresses were used in civic society as a means of commemoration, celebrating retirement and relocation for instance, and they were also physical expressions of public sporting events in Ireland. Illuminated addressees are documents which provide an insight into the cultural histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish sport. This essay pays particular attention to illuminated addresses sponsored by members of the Gaelic Athletic Association and also considers the significance of a late 1890s example which was funded by supporters of the Irish horse-racing which sheds light on the sub-culture of the Irish turf. Illuminated addresses are meaningful documents and this essay recovers, for the first time, some of their hidden history.     

Cultural policies and national identity in Catalonia

This article looks at the general trends regarding identity in Catalan cultural policy. National identity is not a new issue in Catalonia, since language and culture have been key factors in constructing the Catalan nation throughout its history. Nevertheless, the increasing flow of immigrants from other countries, particularly since 2000, has resulted in a strengthening of identity issues. The article examines how this social change has affected the definition of cultural policies and describes the measures implemented by the Catalan government. We conclude that considerable progress has been made in terms of the promotion of national identity through cultural policies, although some questions remain regarding the social use of the Catalan language and the consumption of cultural products in Catalan.