Marcello Potocco, Nacionalni imaginariji ... - Pedagoški inštitut

246Nacionalni imaginariji – Literarni imaginarijiing material and symbolic elements (language, ethnosymbolic tradition,common mythology, territory, etc.). However, national identificationscan be primarily understood as narrative identifications. Paul Ricœur’sidea of identification as a narrative identity thus serves as a link for interpretingthe junction of national identification and literature as oneof the possible agents of national self-representation. Although severalsocial and material practices may serve as a basis for (self)representation– that is, for the production and dissemination of national myths(e.g., the school system, as Althusserian theories imply) – literature maybecome one of the dominant practices in this process because it is itselfconstructed as a narration. However, literature may become such anagent mainly if the nation is constructed on the basis of common ethnicand cultural heritage instead of the principle of jus soli, because in suchcases the principle of mythological narration overpowers the principleof common territory.In the section “Literature, Ideology and the Imaginary,” the elusiverelation between literature and ideology is analysed. The notion of the“social imaginary” – as developed by Castoriadis – brings the possibilityto reconsider the relation between the literary structure, its reception,and ideology. While ideology is seen as a radical expression of the socialimaginary in modern society, it can only manifest itself through the ideologicalfunction, which does not necessarily destruct the aesthetic experience.In a literary structure, elements may exist that enable a strongidentification with the extra-textual world, but this involves primarilyidentifications with significations of the social imaginary. In an ideologicaltext, affective elements play a secondary role, while conceptualrational,and subject-material elements provide the basis for the reader’sidentification. An ideological structure retains a largely conventional,“pragmatic” relation between the signifiers and the signified, linkingthem to the social imaginary and, possibly, a uniform interpretativecode. Nevertheless, the (non-)realization of the ideological functionwithin a text always depends on the social, extra-textual codes of interpretation,since ideology can only interpellate as a socio-historical forceimposed by the reader on a text.The second part of the book starts by discussing narratives of the socalled Canadian founding myth. In the Canadian literary history, twoopposing theses may be discerned in regard to space as a basic agent ofCanadian national self-perception – especially as represented in the literarycorpus. Even 30 years after their rise, one cannot ignore the influencingassumptions made by Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood in