National Myths Research Articles

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

The Republic of Türkiye and Ukraine: Using the Crimean Tatar Question in Foreign Policy after 2014

In historical retrospect, the use of national issues and contradictions has repeatedly become the weakening mechanisms for some great powers in regard to others. In this case, various technologies to construct national myths and ideologies based on tribalism and national exclusiveness and superiority were applied. After the “Crimean spring” in 2014, the Crimean Tatar issue gained a new level of relevance. The Republic of Türkiye and Ukraine are actively using the Crimean Tatar factor to oppose the reintegration of Crimea into the Russian Federation and, consequently, to weaken Russia’s positions in the Black Sea and Mediterranean region. In the article the authors analyze the peculiarities of the influence of the Republic of Türkiye on the Crimean Tatars, as well as the Ukrainian initiatives in relation to the Crimean Tatars and joint Turkish-Ukrainian projects, with the target group consisting of the Crimean Tatars. The methodological basis of the research is system-based, geopolitical, civilizational and institutional approaches, which are implemented both directly and by using a number of general scientific and political science methods. The current policy of Türkiye and Ukraine on the Crimean Tatar issue has common features. Firstly, it is currently topical for the policy elites of these states, both at the domestic and international political levels. Under these circumstances, if the Crimean Tatar issue is an opportunity for Kiev to re-establish its jurisdiction over Crimea, then for Ankara the Crimean Tatar population helps to enlist the electoral support, as well as to consider Crimea and the Black Sea region as a Turkish sphere of influence. Secondly, the conditional Turkish-Ukrainian alliance presents itself as a “protector” of the Crimean Tatars from “Russian aggression.” Thirdly, Türkiye and Ukraine are projecting a positive state image by demonstrating protection of interests and observance of the Crimean Tatars rights on the territory of Russia. Fourthly, the actions of Türkiye and Ukraine in terms of the Crimean Tatar can be characterized as a double standard policy. This thesis is confirmed by the national policy of the Republic of Türkiye, and the approaches of Ukraine to the solution of the Crimean Tatar issue before the reunification of Crimea with Russia.

The Trypillia in the historiosophy of Yury Lypa

The purpose of the article. Elucidation of the views of the Ukrainian publicist, historiographer, geopolitician Yury Lypa (1900–1944) on Trypil archaeological culture, which were formed mainly under the influence of the Ukrainian archaeologist, ethnologist, and art critic Vadym Shcherbakivskyi (1876–1957). The research methodology involves the application of the principles of critical analysis and comparison. Scientific novelty. Borrowings and innovations regarding the interpretation of Tryplian archaeological culture in Lypov historiosophy are taken into account. Yuri Lypaʼs reasoning regarding the significance of the culture of painted ceramics in the ethnogenesis, character, traditions, even in the forms of social organization and political actions of Ukrainians, as well as the social significance of the results of Trypilian researches, is clarified. The Tripoli component of Yuri Lypaʼs concept in his book «The Destiny of Ukraine» (1938) is singled out, the relevant terms and concepts used in the concept are identified and interpreted. The conclusions of modern Tripille studies are given incidentally. Conclusions. The proposed article is one of the attempts to answer the question: Was Yuri Lypa a scientist or a creator of a national myth?

LITERATURE OF EMIGRATION. EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICAL PROSE IN THE FIELD OF FOREIGN CULTURE

Historical novel, as a special genre formation born of Romanticism, has become an artistic tool for the reproduction of the past, its discovery and invention. Historical prose is the literary space where two worldview narrative strategies intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide: these are history that (in its academic sense) seeks to recreate the ‘true past’, and literature, which is a particular representation and development of the world. Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration appears as a fairly integral literary and aesthetic phenomenon during two interwar decades of the 20th century and ends at the border of the 1990s — aft er Ukraine gained its independence. For nations that lost their statehood, the return of the past, its glorification is an important means of forming national identity and self-consciousness. The historical novel of the Ukrainian emigration is a relentless attempt to root its next generations in the national tradition of collective memory.
 In general, for societies in which the state tradition has been interrupted, historical prose can be an essential factor in restoring / maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past into modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving national traditions. The historical prose of the Ukrainian emigration was actually focused on these aims, taking responsibility for the nationalist and philosophic perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future. The aspiration and experience of Ukrainian emigration in other countries carries a number of tasks that it set for itself. Th ese were, in particular, the preservation of the native language, culture, and creative activity, including historical prose on the themes prohibited in the mainland literature, the formation of the strategy of collective memory through historical prose.

Роль устных и письменных памятников в изучении мифологии татар

The aim of the research is to determine the composition of the main oral and written sources and their role in the study of Turkic mythology in general and Tatar mythology in particular. The authors systematise the available source base directly related to Tatar mythology in the aspect of identifying the function of national myths in the process of recreating the ethnic history of the people. The paper examines oral sources containing information passed down from generation to generation and preserved in the memory of the people, as well as written sources of different times including both historical documents and literary texts. The research is novel in that it is the first in Russian literary studies and folklore studies to provide a detailed description of oral and written sources, to involve narratives that have not been used previously as material for the study of national mythology in the analysis. The research findings have shown that secondary sources of different genres ranging from ancient written monuments to modern literary works provide rich material for a holistic study of the system of mythological views of a particular people.

TO THE QUESTION OF ETHNIC AND CIVIL POLITICAL IDENTITY OF CITIZENS OF MODERN KAZAKHSTAN

Aim. To analyze the civil component in the political identity of modern Kazakhstan.Methodology. The civil ("Kazakh") and ethnic ("Kazakh") models of the formation of the political identity of the Republic of Kazakhstan are analyzed. The main approaches were constructivism and a systematic approach, which were used in relation to the analysis of political practice of modern Kazakhstan. The method of political modeling was also used.Results. The study revealed that in the process of constructing civil identity in Kazakhstan, a national myth is being created that employs several universal historical and political imperatives: the assertion of the the people and the Kazakh statehood’ antiquity, the imperative of the "age-old traditions" of the people, spiritual colonialism, and autarky. In the course of the study, the problems of the formation of a civil Kazakh nation were identified: the substitution of certain national components with ethnic and national ones).Research implications. The results of the study can be used both in the comparative analysis of the nation-building processes and the construction of political identity in other countries of the former USSR, as well as in predictive research regarding the political development of Kazakhstan.

Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature

Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature

Independence and Constitution: The Spanish Nationalization of Personal Experience During the Peninsular War and its Aftermath

The deconstruction of the ‘War of Independence’ (1808–1814) as a Spanish nationalist myth was a necessary step in advancing our knowledge of the history of the Age of Revolutions in Spain and of Spanish nation-building itself. However, it set aside those who had in fact experienced those events through a genuine Spanish nationalized lens. Using a corpus of autobiographical sources written between the 1780s and the 1830s, this paper argues that political concepts of Spanish nationhood were already available before the liberal revolution unleashed by the French invasion, that anti-liberals used the language of nationhood in their ego-documents too, and that ideas of independence and constitution pervaded social cleavages and ideological divides. Arguably, then, the War of Independence had both mythical and real dimensions in terms of the history of national identities. Therefore, the great issue in nineteenth-century Spanish nation-building would have not been a congenital ‘lack’ or ‘weakness’ of nationhood but an intense cultural war for its definition along political lines.

The Jewish Historical Institute and the 1968 antisemitic campaign in Poland

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the relentless attacks on the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; ŻIH) in Warsaw in 1967–1968 against the background of two narratives. The first narrative, focusing on the murder of Jews during the German occupation by Polish antisemites, was utilized by German revisionists connected with the Göttinger Arbeitskreis in order to assuage German guilt for the Holocaust. It operated in a manipulative manner, selectively choosing and distorting Jewish testimony and combining this with elements of Cold War-style anti-Communism. The second narrative was embraced by the nationalist faction of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) and offered the myth of the Polish nation as heroic saviors of the Jews. It, too, was based on selectively chosen Jewish testimony, with the goal of whitewashing Poles of involvement in antisemitic violence. ŻIH was caught in the middle, forced to defend itself against attacks coming from proponents of both narratives.

O zapomnianej czeskiej prowincji. Próba krytycznej refleksji nad filmem „Mistři” Marka Najbrta

In this article, we introduce readers to the works of the Czech director Marek Najbrt, unknown in Poland, using the example of the film Mistři (2004, Champions). The artist in his work tells about unemployment, contemporary national myths, illusions, love, and hockey. It is a movie addressing issues of Czech national identity, mentality, and the situation in which the Czechs found themselves after 1989. After fifteen years of experience with political independence, market economy, openness to the world, providing new challenges, and enabling comparisons and recapitulation, the artist takes up a story, created from fragments of the history of the “abandoned” inhabitants of certain devastated border areas. In the reflection on the Czech director’s work, we will pay attention to the message about the features of “forbidden narratives” and previously unnoticed narratives. The discourse on the Czechs and Czechness presented in Champions is also developed through the specific creation of film space and applying specific meanings to it (or resulting from it). The authors of the script offered the viewers a bitter tragicomedy about emotional emptiness and human littleness.

The Role of Ideology in Nation Building

The society we live in is a complex one, and is called in the specialized literature the "postmodern society", based on knowledge, technological development and other such traits, a society that emerges from Modernity. Modernity is based on a series of "founding myths" or "legitimizing structures", such as: "the myth of reason", "the myth of progress" or "the myth of the superhuman". In the modern era, an important place is occupied by the "myth of nations", because this legitimating structure was the reason why the biggest revolutions and wars fought throughout history took place.

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's Gardiennes d'images

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's <i>Gardiennes d'images</i>

MEMORY, HISTORICAL PROSE AND FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Historical prose as a component of national literature is an essential part of the cultural life of modern nations. One of its tasks is to form the cultural memory of large groups that create national communities, structure the past and preserve its integrity and uniqueness.&#x0D; The historical prose of Ukrainian emigration eloquently demonstrates mutual projections of memory and the formation of national conscience and identity. The prose of emigration as an exile can serve as a relief and expressive evidence of the formation and interpenetration of the main ideas and concepts, ideological and aesthetic figurative paradigm, formed on the border of memory, history, and literature. This is how historical prose is seen as a purposeful policy of memory.&#x0D; For societies where the state tradition was interrupted, historical prose can be considered an important factor in restoring/maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past on the modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving the national traditions.&#x0D; Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration had these tasks in mind, taking responsibility for the national philosophical perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future. The idea of self-discovery through one’s own history is, in particular, an important element in the existence of Ukrainian emigration: in this case, we talk about national self-knowledge in a community that tries to preserve its national identity and fix it not only in oral tradition but also in scholarly historical research and historical prose.&#x0D; Historical fiction of the 20th-century Ukrainian emigration was a means of discovering the sources of traditions in the past that directly influences modernity, and an attempt to build a historiosophical literary model that would reveal the forgotten past, show the causes of current problems, and point out the way to future.

Absence and Presence: Nona Faustine and the Black Body in the National History of the United States

How should the history of Black Americans be included in the physical landscape and memorialised? What new visual vocabularies are needed to expand the idea of the nation? Nona Faustine’s White Shoes series (begun in 2012) provides a compelling counternarrative to stereotypical and racist representations of Black Americans in public spaces. With her body, Faustine explores the links between colonialism, racism, and capitalism that continues to be celebrated in public monuments in the United States. Her works invite viewers to participate in and interact with the built environment in new ways that acknowledge these public spaces as sites of nationalism intimately connected to the history of US racism – slave labour, Jim Crow, and police violence. In White Shoes, Nona Faustine contests dominant and entrenched national myths through the materiality of her body – her Black body. Her interventions in public space re-inscribe a neglected history onto the urban landscapes of New York City. Faustine’s work challenges white patriarchal dominance through mediated images of Black bodies by creating presence where there is absence.

Decolonising Adamastor: From The Lusiads to Thirteen Cents

In 1999 and 2000, two texts appeared that aimed to grapple with post-apartheid South Africa as a new nation, and that doubled back on national myths of origin. One of these, a massive painting entitled T’kama Adamastor by Cyril Coetzee, commissioned for the William Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand, focused on the figure of Adamastor that had been created by Luís Vaz de Camões in his epic poem The Lusiads (1572), but as reinterpreted by André Brink in his novel Cape of Storms: The First Life of Adamastor (1993). In 2000, another text appeared that re-examined and reimagined creation myths, and also referenced the Adamastor story. This was K. Sello Duiker’s award-winning debut novel Thirteen Cents. As I argue, Thirteen Cents presents a radical break with the ways in which the Adamastor story has been imagined by white writers and artists. Part of the aim of the essay is to revisit and assess Andries Walter Oliphant’s critical interventions on the question of a national South African culture, and on the Adamastor story itself.

The 'Myth of Zero-COVID' Nation: A Digital Ethnography of Expats' Survival Amid Shanghai Lockdown during the Omicron Variant Outbreak.

This study presents a digital ethnography of expats’ survival amid the Shanghai lockdown during the Omicron variant outbreak. This study drew insights from studies on resilience and secondary coping within the context of global migration to comprehend the diverse emotional challenges faced by expats in a series of lockdowns and persistent nucleic acid amplification tests. Thus, this study asks what the major emotional challenges expats faced and what sources of social support they could draw from citizens in their host country during the Shanghai lockdown. Accordingly, this study collected WeChat group conversations to draw empirical findings, promoted scholarly conversations about fundamental survival necessity, and traced the process for establishing intercultural collective resilience with citizens from their host country. Overall, this study emphasized the significance of host country members who can promote certain coping mechanisms for their visitors in the specific regional and geographical context of China.

Az Aranybulla útja a történeti mitológiába

The Road of the Hungarian Golden Bull to Historical Mythology The study focuses on the first steps of the road that lead the Golden Bull, issued by King Andrew II (1205–1235) in 1222, to the world of national myths. The Golden Bull was drafted primarily in order to solve an actual political crisis, yet it was understood in modern history as the strongest bulwark of a “thousand years-old Hungarian constitutionalism”. The memory of the Golden Bull did not fade after the death of King Andrew II. This study, based on an example from the 14th century, illustrates how the provisions were incorporated into the legal practice of the Middle Ages. As early as 1318 the Golden Bull was conceived as a general privilege, that was meant to regulate the basic questions of the relations between the monarch and his subjects. This perception was corroborated by King Louis I (1342–1382) in 1351, when he inserted the text of the Golden Bull in his own laws. The interpretation of the Golden Bull changed decisively in the modern era. Thanks to the collection of medieval Hungarian customary laws by István Werbőczy, the so-called Tripartitum, the notion spread that the nobility had the right to call the ruler to account in case of any grievance they suffered, a claim based precisely on the Golden Bull.

The Cultural Orientation: The Spatial Construction of Yi Nationality-themed Films

Yi Nationality-themed films create a unique cultural scene through the selection of traditional/modern living space in the process of creation. In the films, the space has become a metaphor for the identity of the Yi nationality, a concrete expression of "national unity" and the identity of The Times. And to a certain extent, it has been a reflection of national culture and adherence and a replica of national myth and epic tradition. However, the unique aesthetic style of Yi Nationality-themed films is not presented in the construction of space. To create a unique aesthetic style, we must use national symbols to construct a unique audio-visual space, pay attention to the construction of image cultural space to create a unique aesthetic style, and then realize the rapid development of Yi Nationality-themed films.

Rethinking the multiple meanings of the Mediterranean through Lawrence Osborne’s Beautiful Animals (2017)

Lawrence Osborne’s Beautiful Animals (2017) thematizes the arrival of refugees on Europe’s shores and the division of Europe into core and peripheral regions. The psychological thriller tells the story of two young wealthy white women whose daily routines of swimming and sunbathing are interrupted when they meet a Syrian refugee on a secluded beach. In this article, I argue that the novel overlays geographies of forced migration with those of Greek national history, myth, travel, crime, and violence. The murder committed on a Greek island compels readers to examine what might be considered the larger ‘crimes’ of Europe – exclusionary refugee policies, the meddling in Greek affairs, and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. In doing so, the novel asks us to rethink the multiple meanings of the Mediterranean as holiday destination, deadly outer border, and Southern Other, both intra- and extra-European at the same time.

Banners and Memes

This article compares two waves of protests that have taken place in Poland: one related to the reform of the judicial system (2015) and the other to the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal that limited the right to abortion (2020). The analysis of banners, memes and photos documents new forms of expression of civic dissent and a generational shift in the visual rhetoric of citizenship. The analysis reveals the persistence of specific cultural and political patterns and new forms of protest resulting from different sources of collective imagination and oppositional readings of national myths and symbols. The juxtaposition of the visuals from 2015 and 2020 shows fundamental differences in using history and popular culture motifs in slogans and memes expressing the collective identity of the protesters. In 2015 conflict concerned specific legal solutions, and in 2020 displayed deep generational, gender and cultural disagreement. Concepts of social performances and deliberative democracy explain how demonstrations reflect the transformation of the Polish public sphere.