Abstract

NUNEZ REGUEIRO, M. Clara. The House Divided? Dynamics of the National Identity Construction Processes. Andes [online]. 2008, n.19, pp.29-63. ISSN 1668-8090.

This article rejects the notion of national identity as a fixed concept. Instead, it assumes all collective identities as palimpsestic processes. In the nineteenth-century United States, population control, commercial, and nation-planning projects constituted important stimuli for the formation of these identities. Alongside the design of the nation's legislation, economy, power distribution, and place in the world market, the creation of a national identity became paramount. Territorial expansion, urbanization, immigration, Indian removal, civil wars, slave emancipation, and subversion to patriarchy, fluidly intertwined thus creating and constantly reshaping, national, regional, gender, and ethnic identities. As a result of these exchanges, different groups built national experiences and memories in diverse ways. Sometimes communities were stripped of any national feeling and adopted a new nation with relative agility. Others reinforced ties that allowed them to maintain their group identity more or less intact to this day despite their physical removal, the dispersion of the group, or the incorporation of a new national identity. In all cases, these processes were -and remain - negotiated and constantly re-written.

Keywords : Nation; Migration; Identity; Collective memory.

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