When Does Language Become Exclusivist? Linguistic Politics in Catalonia

This article traces the development of linguistic policy in Catalonia over the last few decades and argues that language and linguistic policy continue to be crucial elements in the Catalan nation-building project. In addition, the growing politicisation of language has increasingly become a divisive issue amongst Catalonia's political elite. The Catalan linguistic landscape has moved from one based on linguistic 'normalisation' to a situation where bilingualism is the norm, but the degree to which one language predominates or should predominate over the other continues to be subject to intense public debate. Finally, the article argues that the linguistic consensus which prevailed among Catalan political parties for nearly two decades has slowly begun to disintegrate, accompanied by a growing debate on the use of language as an exclusivist mark of identity in Catalan society.     

Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism,Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe

This article explores the connection in the late eighteenth century between the invention of citizenship and the obfuscation of local, corporate or national identity under the guise of cosmopolitanism. The common premise in much recent writing on nationalism is that the nation, even if it is an 'imagined' community, provided the critical framework in which political identity and, hence, political participation first became possible for ordinary people. However, it is clear that in absolutist Europe, private subjects were often best able to make themselves into political actors on either the national or the continental stage by de-situating themselves rhetorically, that is, claiming to speak from no place, no position, and no name except 'friend of humanity' or 'citizen of the world'. Moreover, this literary strategy of insisting on one's fungible individuality—the notion that one was no more than a generic 'simple citizen' and no less than 'the plenipotentate of my own ideas' in a culture obsessed with social position and family name—ultimately helped to bolster an alternative (and often historically overlooked) way of thinking about relations among states and the individuals within them that marked an early challenge to the hegemony of national interest.     

Defence and attack: empire,nation and resistance in inter-war football in Malta

A nation's politics and socio-cultural identity can sometimes be best considered through the lens of Association Football (soccer). Examining football in the Mediterranean island of Malta in the inter-war years of 1920–1940 this paper focuses its analysis on the phenomenon that is the game of football and the epi-phenomena it provokes and sustains. In the tiny archipelago that constitutes the Maltese islands, the game as it was played and administered in this era had implications for the British colonialists, the refugees that fled Central Europe for Maltese shores and the indigenous Maltese peoples. In these years the game was played out amidst, variously, the island's unique party politics, intra-district rivalries, and historical considerations of reputation and social class. It was also to become integral to the contestations around anti-colonial sentiment and the debates over national identity. The game in Malta was thus a facilitator of both local and global processes and played an understated role in the pursuit of independence. This examination of the specific Maltese context may well shed light upon broader processes within the international game which lies at the intersection of the global and the local.     

Gendering a Language,Liberating a People: Women Writing in Afrikaans and the 'New' South Africa

I discuss contem porary South African women's writing in Afrikaans, particularly as produced by white women. Long overlooked, this body of work has quickly become the new avant garde of South African writing, reflecting (upon) as it presages dramatic transformations in the South African social fabric. Mapping the contributions of this writing in Afrikaans, I contrast them with the absence of engagement in South African writing in English with narrative techniques concerned with the nuances and ironies, the boundary and border transgressions of women's writing in Afrikaans- of traditional styles and themes, standard subjects and narrative technologies, of the gendered formation of language itself.     

National Rebirth as a Movie: Otto Preminger's Exodus

Although Exodus is not an Israeli film, it has become an inspiring model text for the heroic-nationalist genre in Israeli cinema. The promotion of Zionism as a liberation movement by Exodus was an imperative. When the film was released in 1960, the propagation of the myth of Palestine as 'a land without the people' prior to Zionist settlement was no longer tenable, thus creating a need to rewrite the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for the international community and the American audience in particular. Following a long colonialist tradition, the film presents Zionism as fulfilling a 'civilising mission' with regard to the indigenous Arab population (the 'Canaanites' of the biblical narrative). To further strengthen this reading, the film shows that the native Arabs actually welcomed the Jews and even gave them the land of Palestine voluntarily as an act of gratitude for the progress they brought to this undeveloped corner of the world.     

Remapping American-ness: Heritage Production and the Staging of the Native American and the African American as Other in 'Historyland'

The American tourism industry in the 1950s helped to produce certain notions of America, or what it meant to be American, at a time when these identities were in flux. Visitors to 'Historyland', an attraction that reconstructed a nineteenth-century Wisconsin logging town, could experience a living lumberjack community, as well as an 'authentic' Indian Village and a dining car restaurant with black waiters. The Native Americans and African Americans, by performing their 'historic' roles, were staged as examples of 'the other' which European American tourists could encounter, and against which they could define their own sense of American-ness.     

The Vernacular International: Heimat,Modernism and the Global Market in Early Twentieth-Century Germany

This article proposes a reconceptualisation of regionalism, nationalism and globalisation as simultaneous and causally connected phenomena, which first peaked in the early decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher and others active in the Deutscher Werkbund, it examines how competition in the global market inspired a search for modern yet uniquely national forms that derived their 'authenticity' from vernacular culture. Yet paradoxically, the visual vocabulary of Heimat was frequently inspired by English and American models. This article interprets the aesthetic and political translations which the peripatetics of localism entailed, and shows how consumer goods 'made in Germany' came to be invested with a sense of cultural mission.     

Imagining Métissage : The Politics and Practice of Métissage in the French Colonial Exposition and Ousmane Socé's Mirages de Paris

Je demeure cependant persuadé, malgré les dangers d'une possible confusion, qu'il faut 'oser la métaphoreé … C'est-à-dire entreprendre de poser une question qui est und des fondements de l'interprétation, de la critique, un des modes de la connaissance: comment un homme, une société, choisissent-ils de 'se représenter par la meétaphore', comment trouvent-ils des formes, des objets particuliers devant lesquels ils se disent dans un élan d'imagination ou de conformisme: 'je suis ça'? [Nonetheless, I remain persuaded, in spite of the dangers of a possible confusion, that one must 'dare to take up the metaphor' … That is, to undertake asking a question which is one of the foundations of interpretation, of criticism, one of the modes of knowledge: how a man, how a society, chooses to represent itself through metaphor, how it finds forms, particular objects, before which it tells itself, in a burst of imagination or conformity, 'that is me'?] (de Baecque, 1993, p. 15) Aimer, c'est pouvoir s'imaginer. [To love, is to be able to imagine oneself.] (Socé, 1964 [1937], p. 91)     

Historiography and National Identity among the Eastern Slavs: Towards a New Framework

The article surveys Tsarist, Soviet and Western historiography of Russia and how this affected the national identities and inter-ethnic relations among the three eastern Slavs. Western historiography of Russia largely utilised an imperialist and statist historiographical framework created within the Tsarist empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although this framework was imperialist it was gradually accepted as 'objective' by the Western scholarly community. Yet, this historiography was far from being 'objective'. After 1934 Soviet historiography also reverted to the majority of the tenets found in Tsarist historiography. Within Tsarist, Western and Soviet historiographies of 'Russia' eastern Slavic history was nationalised on behalf of the Russian nation which served to either ignore or deny a separate history and identity for Ukrainians and Belarusians. In the post-Soviet era all 15 Soviet successor states are undertaking nation and state building projects which utilise history and myths to inculcate new national identities. The continued utilisation of the Tsarist, Western and Soviet imperial and statist historiographical schema is no longer tenable and serves to undermine civic nation building in the Russian Federation. This article argues in favour of a new, non-imperial framework for histories of 'Russia' territorially based upon the Russian Federation and inclusive of all of its citizens.     

'Race', Racism and Anti-racism: Challenging Contemporary Classifications

This argues for the revisiting of classificatory concepts currently in use in the study of 'race', racism and anti-racism. It examines the proposition that racist movements no longer promote discrimination on the grounds of a belief in biological differences but espouse a 'differentialist' racism based on a conviction in the fixity of culture, paradoxically 'borrowed' from culturally relativist anti-racist arguments. A critique of the differentialist thesis developed by Pierre-Andre Taguieff is presented based upon the writings of Etienne Balibar and Paul Gilroy. The former, by grounding modern racism in the ideological universalism of the European Enlightenment project, argues that the apportioning of blame to anti-racism for abetting the advent of culturalist racism is unhelpfully conceived from a perspective which seeks to deny the legitimacy of black and ethnic minority led alliances as a basis for anti-racist struggles. The novel connection is made between these arguments and those of Paul Gilroy (1998) who proposes the redundancy of the term 'race', even from pragmatist perspectives, in the revitalisation of anti-racism as a viable opposition to contemporary racist discourses. The argument is made that in order to dissect normative understandings of 'race' it is necessary to follow the historical trajectory taken by racism in becoming an inextricable component of the modern project. Anti-racism, thus, must be seen as a multi-layered conflict and, therefore, separate from its anti-fascist, anticolonialist, leftist and institutionalised forms. Evidence from recent interviews with anti-racist activists points to their rejection of both 'culturalist' and 'biological' approaches to racism and towards broad alliances of community-led activists against overt but also covert, institutionalised racist discrimination.     

No Community is an Island,Every Intellectual is an Island: The Story of Bobby O'Malley

This article explores a number of anthropological themes -- specifically suburbanism, the island nature of socio-cultural milieux, and intellectualism -- by way of a novel, The Story of Bobby O'Malley , which narrates the tale of an intellectual boy growing up in a Newfoundland suburb. Intellectuality may be described as a condition of neither leadership nor followership, but of displaying a certain disengagement. It is in this way that Edward Said distinguishes 'the intellectual' from 'the expert', the latter being concerned with giving answers to questions out to him by others while the former exiles himself from the domain of conventional questions as such, in order to pose his own. The intellectual condition, Rapport argues, tells of an interactional-cum-cognitive displacement, an eschewing of the conventions, the habiti, of expression and exchange. To put it differently, the intellectual may be said to make for his vantage-point upon everyday life a certain 'island-ness', an 'elsewhere': intending, in Philip Larkin's words (1990, p. 104), that 'elsewhere underwrites my existence'.     

Self Portrait: The Sense of Self in British Documentary Photography

This article investigates notions of 'Britishness' as articulated in British documentary photography from 1936 to 1989. It argues that documentary photography is richly revealing of not only its overt subject matter, but also, more interestingly, of the latent cultural attitudes encoded therein. Particular attention is paid to the work of Bill Brandt in comparison with British documentary photographers of the 1980s. This latter group provide both a contrasting and, it is contended, more dependable sense of 'Britishness' than their more celebrated predecessor.     

Arrivals and Arrivals: Royal Travel at Botany Bay

This article looks at how the sites of the beach and the airport have functioned as chronotopes of 'arrivalism' in Australian history. I suggest that narratives surrounding Queen Elizabeth's 1970 royal tour of Australia, initiated and terminated at Sydney Airport, drew on existing structures of primitivism and modernity at the site of the beach. A re-enactment of Cook's landing at Botany Bay on Australia Day 1970 thus re-inscribed the nation within global space: it showed aboriginal people bearing witness to the (re-)arrival of the colonists. This narrative of national progress linked the British colonial project and Australian economic development — just as Cook 'discovered' Australia, the Queen's flight 'discovered' anew the international space of air travel and trade. A second re-enactment by trade unions and environmental protestors nearby on Australia Day 1976 contested this narrative, and offered an alternative nationalist vision at the site of the beach.     

The Search for the National in Canadian Multilateral Cinematographic Co-productions

According to opinions expressed in the trade literature, international co-productions-made to appeal to a wide audience - are less likely to be identified as 'national productions' than domestic films. Yet in the past, co-productions not only helped the emergence and guaranteed the very existence of national film industries but, in some countries, they have also been seen as 'a mechanism for nation building'. The concepts of 'nation' and 'identity' have become increasingly problematic but, as a close examination of the reception of Canadian films made under the co-production agreements with France and the UK in the last decade shows, in the age of commercial mediation, even internationally-made cultural products can be turned into symbolic bearers of national identity.     

Poverty and HIV/AIDS in Apartheid South Africa

This article constitutes an attempt to put forward some suggestions towards constructing a framework of understanding the processes of social construction of sexuality and gender identity within the context of the ethnic conflict, and of nationalist/ populist politics in former Yugoslavia. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which masculinist discourse is articulated to the politics of ethnicity in former Yugoslavia, by examining the definition and treatment of women as 'biological reproducers of the nation' through the discourses and policy proposals of moral majority nationalist and pro-life movements in Croatia and Slovenia, and of the nationalist movement and regime in Serbia, and the use of rape and sexual assault against women as 'weapons' in the ethnic conflict in Bosnia and other republics of former Yugoslavia.     

Shanghai Baby : Negotiating Youth Self-Identity in Urban China

Shanghai Baby has been dismissed as another example of the grunge and shock literature genre emerging from modern Chinese writers. Detractors have described it as 'decadent', 'debauched' and 'pornographic' with the author labelled as a 'slave to Western culture'. However, a closer examination of Zhou Wei Hui's controversial semi-autobiography reveals an adroit social commentary on youth's ongoing negotiation of self-identity in China's complex and rapidly changing social structure. Using the sexual licence found in Western and European literature, Wei's work confronts traditional views on sex, women, family, and youth development. As a result of claims by Wei to speak for the new generation, the book was banned in China, with authorities burning 40,000 copies and instructing the State-run media to never mention the author or the book again because of its sexually charged content. Shanghai Baby highlights a peculiar form of impotence associated with a 'one country two systems' policy with youth willingness to push the parameters of 'acceptable' behaviour and the accompanying guilt (and retribution) when they do. This type of duality affects youth the most because of their willingness to embrace functional individualistic values, which provide them with the basic survival skills in a materialistic world, and their underlying collectivist values, which defines how they should act. As a result, youth have no clear model to follow with the Government encouraging them to be individualistic in some aspects (entrepreneurial and competitive) but not others (self-expression and empowerment). Wei's book is a metaphor for this struggle, highlighting how Chinese youth live their lives somewhere in between, precariously at times and brashly at others, feeling their way towards a functional coexistence of individualistic and collectivist value systems.     

Not at Home in the Empire

ABSTRACT

The distaste for the work of a colonial official, so clearly expressed in George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant', is often seen as reflecting a straightforward liberal commitment to freedom. This interpretation misrepresents both Orwell's standpoint and the character of liberal political reason. As a doctrine of government, liberalism is indeed committed to ruling over, and as far as possible to ruling through, the activities of free individuals. But it has also taken the view that substantial portions of humanity consist of individuals who are not -- or not yet -- capable of acting in a suitably autonomous fashion. This view results in a division of the world into settings in which individuals can normally be trusted to conduct themselves as autonomous rational agents and other settings in which they cannot be trusted to behave in this fashion. Examination of the consequences of this view for the practice of colonial government suggests a different interpretation of Orwell's account: it reflects a cultivated liberal's distaste, on the one hand, for working with and living among people he clearly regarded as inferior and, on the other, for the dirty work of paternalistic rule. A short concluding section considers the post-colonial liberal condition.     

The Socio-Spatial Making and Marking of 'Us': Toward a Critical Postmodern Spatial Theory of Difference and Community

The modernist surveillance of strict, arbitrary borders between 'real space' and 'imagined space' both produces and hides 'Othered' spatialities. While assuming that spatialities are simultaneously real-and-imagined,postmodernspatial theory seeks to recover the identities that emerge in relation to the veiled, lived realms of 'social space'. Furthermore, critical postmodern spatial theory privileges the lived spatialities of left-margined communities as sites of socio-spatial critique. A postmodern identity politics enacts critical postmodernspatial theory by nurturing the developmentof, and solidarity between, 'counterpublics', which are subaltern community spaces where private spatialities of alienation are brought to public discourse.     

Playing Away from Home: Identity in Northern Ireland and the Experience of Derry City Football Club

This article explores aspects of the history of Derry City Football Club in the period 1968-1985, and the effect that the Northern Irish troubles had on the soccer club. The whole question of identity within Northern Ireland has always been contested between those pursuing an Irish nationalist agenda, and those wishing to remain within the Union. This article locates Derry City within this struggle, and demonstrates how far reaching the effects of the contest between identities have been, even on something so 'normal' as a soccer club. Soccer clubs, it is argued, are an important location for the creation and sustaining of identities that are reflective of wider issues within society.