Public Intellectuals and Nation Building in the Iberian Peninsula, 19001925
The Alchemy of Identity
By (author) Thomas S. Harrington
Publication date:
11 December 2014Length of book:
340 pagesPublisher
Bucknell University PressDimensions:
236x163mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781611485615
This book provides a detailed analysis of the core concepts of national identity articulated by Iberian writers during the period between 1900 and 1925. It is centered on four "pedagogical" essays written in these decades previous to the onset of authoritarian dictatorships in Spain and Portugal, works that are absolutely central to understanding the discursive architecture of collective identity in these same places today. They are as follows: Enric Prat de la Riba's La Nacionalitat Catalana (1906), Teixeira de Pascoaes' Arte de Ser Português (1915),Vicente Risco's Teoría do Nacionalismo Galego (1920), and José Ortega y Gasset's España invertebrada (1921).
The study consists of a discussion of some of the more important theoretical issues connected to social articulation of cultural identities, four chapter-long analyses of the textual manifestations of national identity within the major Romance-language communities of the Iberian peninsula, and a conclusion which underscores the key function played by these public intellectuals in establishing the parameters of the “Imagined Communities” with which they felt primarily identified.
On the most basic level, the study of these “catechistic” visions of national individuality provides a heightened sense of both the differences and commonalities inherent in the cultural traditions of these core nationality groups of the Iberian Peninsula. On another level, the study reminds us of the important pedagogical function of literature (understood here in the broadest possible sense) in the formation and maintenance of nationality identities then, as well as now.
The study consists of a discussion of some of the more important theoretical issues connected to social articulation of cultural identities, four chapter-long analyses of the textual manifestations of national identity within the major Romance-language communities of the Iberian peninsula, and a conclusion which underscores the key function played by these public intellectuals in establishing the parameters of the “Imagined Communities” with which they felt primarily identified.
On the most basic level, the study of these “catechistic” visions of national individuality provides a heightened sense of both the differences and commonalities inherent in the cultural traditions of these core nationality groups of the Iberian Peninsula. On another level, the study reminds us of the important pedagogical function of literature (understood here in the broadest possible sense) in the formation and maintenance of nationality identities then, as well as now.
Thomas Harrington's Public Intellectuals and Nation-Building in the Iberian Peninsula 1900-1925: The Alchemy of Identity, is a timely and important addition to current debates on nationhood and national identity in today's Spain and Portugal. Through a detailed historical treatment of the work of four preeminent nationalist "catechisms" of the early twentieth century, Harrington sheds much-needed light upon the architecture of competing discourses of national identity in today's Peninsula. Perhaps the book's greatest strength, however, is the way it allows us to observe the parallel and often surprisingly interconnected genesis of that region's supposedly radically distinct codes of collective belief.