Marcello Potocco, Nacionalni imaginariji ... - Pedagoški inštitut

Summary245The book National Imaginary, Literary Imaginary is structured asa series of separate, but intertwined studies on the topics of imaginary,national ideology and their role in the Slovenian and – primarily– in the Canadian literary system. The author tries to cover both literaryphenomena as well as their socio-historical basis.To begin with, the author focuses attention to the imaginary as acommon ground of social identification. Following Cornelius Castoriadis’theoretical basis, the imaginary is understood as a capacity to produceimages. The radical imaginary must be limited by entering intosymbolic relations if the individual is to conceive one’s own identity, thelatter being limited by the institution of society. While each historicalsociety tends towards the closure of imaginary significations and theirfluidity, the “post-platonic” societies seem to be characterized by a particularlyforceful fixation. The study suggests that such a society is deeplyrelated to the emergence of the autonomous subjectivity, as well as to themodern way of conceiving one’s own social identity and identifications.The following essay focuses on the problem of national identificationand starts by evaluating studies by several Slovenian philosophersand literary historians (Dušan Pirjevec, Tine Hribar, Ivan Urbančič,Dimitrij Rupel and Janko Kos). It also focuses on some key aspects, aswell as the disadvantages of constructivist theories of nation and identity.Based on the theories of Anthony Smith and Adrian Hastings, it arguesfor a definition of the nation that takes into consideration both itsconstructed nature as well as the relative stability and continuity of nationalidentifications. These are inevitably constructed by using exist-