Reflexivity or orientation? Collective memories in the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national press

Abstract

With regard to the notion of ‘national reflexivity’, an important part of Beck’s cosmopolitan outlook, this article examines how, and in what ways, collective memories of empire were reflexively used in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national newspaper coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Games. In contrast to Beck, it is argued that examples of national reflexivity were closely tied to the history of the nation-state, with collective memories of the former British Empire used to debate, critique and appraise ‘the nation’. These memories were discursively used to ‘orientate’ each nation’s postcolonial emergence, suggesting that examples of national reflexivity, within the press’ coverage, remained closely tied to the ‘historical fetishes’ enveloped in each nations’ imperial past(s). This implies that the ‘national outlook’ does not objectively overlook, uncritically absorb or reflexively acknowledge differences with ‘the other’ but, instead, negotiates a historically grounded and selective appraisal of the past that reveals a contingent and, at times, ambivalent, interplay with ‘the global’.