Hi, not altogether sure what to say on this. The question of 'national' or 'cultural' identity has figured in my posts...
...it's such a huge topic - I guess 'nation states' as political entities in Europe developed from the sixteenth century onwards...and then we have the idea of nation as people, which seems a much more late eighteenth century notion that belongs to the Germans (who are, at that time, not yet a nation state) - then you have the 'people' who are grouped primarily by language, and this 'people' are supposed to come together in a united homeland (instead of being fragmented into different kingdoms and principlalities or being part of other states where they are a minority)...similar thing happening for Italy in the nineteenth century... European Nation States made Empires - when nations emerged from these empires they were determined more by Imperial geography than by the idea of a 'people' - hence much ethnic conflict in Africa - India's independence involved the formation of Pakistan - this was a religious division... I'm English, although I have a Gibraltarian mother - the Gibraltarians are not regarded as a 'people' either by the British or the Spanish - but I can imagine them developing a 'nationalist' movement if the British and Spanish insist on treating them as imperiously as they're doing at the moment... They're too small to have uch say in the world - but the fight is really over a militarily strategic base... ...but nationality is always impure for me... nations do have myths, however, and people embody their national myth in different ways, but people can never, for me, be reduced to their nationality... I'm happy to say I'm English, and say that part of this identity is a willingness to treat it as accidental rather than essential... And, because I have a Gibraltarian mother, I'm 'impure' from a 'nationalist perspective'... nationalists often depend on notions of purity because of the idea of 'the people' - perhpas that's what makes the English odd - the nation was one of the earliest modern ones to be formed, and it was already very mixed - there was no 'purity'... that's what makes the National Front people a little crazy - they're imagining some kind of purity that never existed - the English people were clearly constructed for political purposes - and just happened to be on an island - the struggles with the Scots and the Welsh are about the English attempting to assimilate these different groups, and the Scots and Welsh hanging on to their identity... ...I suppose that's the English disease - they tried to make everyone English in some way - you didn't have to be racially English - just part of the Empire (they called it being British, I know, but the British Empire was always an English Empire - and Scotland, Wales and Ireland were part of it)... the differences were smoothed over in order to construct a unity based on 'universal' principles of justice... which, of course, involved much injustice - but not in theory! And I think that's a seed americans took with them and let it grow... but as a 'universal' principle of freedom - which again hides differences and includes a lot of oppression... but we're all 'american' now - except that we're suposed to be the same but different ...someting for the pot - maybe worth cooking, maybe not best wishes Franc on 14/12/02 2:06 am, Susan Kocen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
