Published: 2007-11-27
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
The article highlights the impact of agency and context in analyses of the theme of identification in texts produced on the levels of aesthetics; ethnic mobilisation; region-building and the European project. The connection between cultural heritage and identity is discussed with examples which elucidate the role of literature in nation-building in the period of modernity and industrialisation. Texts by the Tornedalian author Bengt Pohjanen are foregrounded as part of the ethnic revival emerging in the nineteen-eighties. Swedish examples of the use of history are contrasted against the discourse of the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes which is part of a supranational project aiming at the construction of a European identity in the political project of preparing the ground for European citizenship. The conclusion presented is that it is not viable to produce a “European identity cultural package” which runs the risk of conflating differences related to aspects such as language; ethnicity; gender; worldview and religion. Identities are fluid; they exist on various levels and shift in response to changing contexts. Sometimes they develop in overlapping discourses. One way of dealing with this is to think of identification as a constant negotiation of symbolic and concrete borders.
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