Introduction: Critical Approaches to the Nation in Galician Studies

Abstract

Questions of identity, and especially national identity, have always been the driving force in Galician culture and the related discipline of Galician Studies. As we might expect in a stateless nation such as Galicia, the focus of Galician culture since the nineteenth century and of Galician Studies since the second half of the twentieth has been on national identity and the formation of a strong national culture and institutions. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this seems to be changing: some of the most dynamic cultural discussions in Galicia at the moment are happening on the margins of institutionalized forums and identities, perhaps most markedly in the case of gendered identities and sexualities, but also in the case of Galician identities whose national identification is inflected by other geo- and bio-political markers such as race, ethnicity, class, language and location. There is an increasingly tangible gap between how identities and critical standpoints are valorized within and by Galician institutions on the one hand, and how they are expressed by individuals and popular discourses on the other.