NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE LIGHT OF ITS DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION

Dr. Milena Pešić

Abstract

The central interest of this paper is the investigation of the phenomenon of national identity from the point of view of its constructional character. With this aim, a synthetic presentation of key modern and postmodern theoretical starting points and ideas that support this line of his conceptualization is given first. Instrumentalist approaches to national identity are observed, which treat it as historically situated and socially and politically constructed, through connection with the phenomena of modernity and the role played by state political projects and state elites in its formation (Hobsbawm, Gellner). Developed on the same basis, national identities were observed through looking at the building of feelings of belonging, solidarity and togetherness, through collective practices of reception and interpretation of common cultural and historical references (Tijes, Renan). As particularly relevant to the topic of this work, we focused on ideas about the imaginary in identity affirmation in settings (Bajar, Anderson), because we consider that line of conceptualization to be the basis of modern understandings of national identity as a primarily mental construct. As an instrument and medium of the nation’s imagination, culture is apostrophized, developed with the emergence of “printed” language. We also find the primacy of culture in Smith’s statements of national identity as constructed on ethnic grounds, based on the concept of cultural configuration. We tried to present contemporary approaches to national identity (Hall, Bhabha, Matrin, Vodak) in the light of their basic common features – the operationalization of modernist concepts in a new constructionist and discursive key. By moving the study into the area of discourse and the process of meaning generation, these approaches deconstruct the metanarratives of the nation, through (linguistic) analysis of their constituents, and seek to explain how national identities are socially constructed through discourse, using language in systematic ways. With this presentation of the development of a complex of ideas and analytical positions, we tried to point out the key assumptions for the creation of modern conceptual-analytical models. At the same time, the scientific basis of the model of discursive construction of national identity created within the framework of the contemporary discourse-historical approach, whose presentation is the second thematic centre of this paper, was demonstrated. This three-dimensional analytical model (macro-theme content, strategies and linguistic means) offered systematic ways of viewing national identity as a product of specific strategies of expression in specific historical and institutional locations, with specific discursive formations and practices. The fact that it is widely used in contemporary case studies best confirms its analytical productivity and indicates the scientific relevance of its theoretical elaborations.

References

Пешић, Милена. 2012. „Национални идентитет: између континуитета и променљивости”, Српска политичка мисао 3 (32), 103–132, Београд: Институт за политичке студије.

Пешић, Милена. 2012а. „Национални идентитет у дискурзивној пракси: једно промишљањумуe лтидисциплинарном кључу”, Политичка ревија 2 (32): 1–26, Београд: Институт за политичке студије.

Anderson, Benedikt. 1998. Nacija, zamišljena zajednica, Beograd: Plato.

Bajar, Žan Fransoa. 2009. „Imaginarno u identitetskoj afirmaciji”. Identitet(i), ur. Halpern K.,     Ruano- Borbalan, K. 384 – 391, Beograd: Cliо.

Bhabha, Homi Kharshedji. 1990. “Narrating the nation”. Nation and narration, Ed. Bhabha, Homi Kharshedji, London: Routledge.

Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal nationalism. London: Sage.

Chilton Paul and Christina Schäffner. 2002. “Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis           of political discourse”. Politics as Text and Talk, Analytic approaches to political          discourse, Eds. Paul Chilton, Christina Schäffner, 1–41, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John         Benjamins Publishing Company.

Fairclough, Isabella and Fairclough, Norman. 2012. Political discourse analysis: a method for advanced students. London: Routledge.

Formozo, Bernard. 2009. „Rasprave o etnicitetu”. Identitet(i), ur. Halpern K., Ruano-Borbalan,        K., 295 – 312, Beograd: Cliо.

Gellner Ernest. 1983. Nations and nationalism. New York: Cornell University Press.

Hall, Stuart. 1996. “The Question of Cultural Identity”. Modernity: An Introduction to Modern           Societies. Eds. Hall, Stuart, Held, David, Hubert, Don and Thompson and Kenneth Mass,           595–634, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Hearn, Jonathan. 2006. Rethinking nationalism: a critical introduction, Basingstoke and New    York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. [1990] 1992. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1996. “Ethnicity and nationalism in Europe today”. Maping the nation, (Ed.)   Gopal Balakrishnan, 255–266, London, New York: Verso.

Hol, Stjuart. 2001.  „Kome treba ‘identitet’?”. Reč. 64 (10): 215–233. Beograd: Fabrika knjiga.

Kordić, Snježana. 2010 „Ideologija nacionalnog identiteta i nacionalne kulture”. U čast pera    Jakobsena, ur. Ajdačić Dejan, Lazarević Di Đakomo, Persida, 225– 239, Beograd: Slovo Slavia.

Martin, Denis-Constant. 1995. The choices of identity, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 1:1, 5–20, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.1995.9959423

McCrone David and Frank Bechhofer. 2015. Understanding National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mežnarić, Silva. 1998. „Bivanje nacijom danas”. Nacija, zamišljena zajednica, Beograd: Plato.

Radenović, Sandra. 2006. „Nacionalni identitet, etnicitet, (kritička) kultura sećanja”. Filozofija i društvo 3/2 Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju.

Reisigl, Martin 2018. “The Discourse-Historical approach.” The Routledge Handbook of Critical            Discourse Studies, ed. John Flowerdew and John E. Richardson, 44–59. Oxon and New           York: Routledge.

Renan, Ernest. [1893] 2018. New York: Columbia University Press.

Smit, Antoni D. 1998. Nacionalni identitet. Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek.

Storm, Eric. 2018.  “A New Dawn in Nationalism Studies? Some Fresh Incentives to Overcome       Historiographical Nationalism”, European History Quarterly (48:1), 113–129. Sage        Publication.

Tijes, Ana Mari. 2009. „Kulturna proizvodnja evropskih nacija”.  Identitet(i), Ur. Halpern K., Ruano- Borbalan, K , 298–309, Beograd: Cliо.

Wodak, Rut. 2001. “The discourse-historical approach”. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, Eds. Wodak, Ruth, Michael, Meyer, 63 –94 London: Sage Publications.

Wodak, Rut. 2002. “Fragmented identities: Redefining and recontextualizing national identity”, Politics as Text and Talk, Analytic approaches to political discourse, Eds. Paul Chilton, Christina Schäffner, 143–169, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Wodak, Rut. 2006. “Discourse-analytic and socio-linguistic approaches to the study of nation(alism)”. The Sage handbook of nationsand nationalism Eds. Delanty, Gerard. & Kumar, Krishan, 104–117 London: Sage.

Wodak, Ruth and Markus Rheindorf.  2022. Identity, Politics, Past and Present. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

Wodak, Ruth, de Cillia, Rudolf., Reisigl, Martin. & Liebhart, Karin. [1999]  2009. The Discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wodak, Ruth.  [2009] 2011. The Discourse of Politics in Action.  New York:  Palgrave Macmillan.