Specificity and independence of the literary game

In developing his theory of the “literary field,” Pierre Bourdieu essentially had in mind the case of France from the second half of the nineteenth century, the use of which as a case undoubtedly contributed to his marginalizing numerous aspects of the national microcosm. Among its unstated and unrecognized particular qualities, France is mono-national (rather than multinational) and monolingual (rather than multilingual), and occupies the dominant position in the international Francophone world (much as Germany is at the heart of the German-speaking world). A state, a nation, a language, a territory, a literature – all of these make one unit and prevent one from considering situations more complex or tangled, such as those of many minority literatures. These allow the tackling of issues – among others, problems of their “autonomy” in relation to realities outside of literature such as the political, religious, linguistic, and economic. Rather than imposing constraints on a research agenda, the study of minority literatures allows one to shed light on the complex and contradictory relations between the political (the national, the communal, and sometimes the state), the market, and the literary game.     

Moroccan Diaspora in France and the February 20 Movement in Morocco

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the links between the so-called 20 February 2011 Movement in Morocco and the Moroccan migrant organizations in France. The research examines how the 50-year-long history of these organizations shapes Moroccan migrants' political experiences and their ties to homeland in order to explain why they do not play a significant role in the events unfolding in Morocco in 2011. To this end, concepts such as diaspora and transnationalism are mobilized to grasp how activists are connecting to places and territories and reducing the distance between them, while preserving a certain unity in their collective action.     

“A river is not a boundary”: interplays of national and linguistic citizenship in Pulaar language activism

This article examines the interplay of linguistic citizenship and national citizenship within a trans-border language movement. Since the late 1950s, language activists from among the Haalpulaar’en of Senegal and Mauritania have practiced forms of literacy teaching, literary production, theater and journalism in promoting their language, known as Pulaar. These activists’ trans-border collaborations and their emergence from two distinct national contexts – where, in both cases, Pulaar is spoken by a minority of the population – must be understood in relation to one another. Tracing the biographical itineraries of several key activists, this article illustrates how Senegalese and Mauritanian Pulaar militants have collaborated when it comes to language promotion yet frame their grievances within their respective national political arenas. More than a form of local resistance based on trans-border linguistic and cultural ties, Pulaar language activism has emerged thanks to opportunities presented by forms of post-colonial state-building, including the creation of national radio.     

Language and identity in a post-Soviet world: language of education and linguistic identity among Azerbaijani students

Azerbaijan's complex history has weaved a tapestry of linguistic, cultural, and national identities among Azerbaijanis through centuries of political, social, and linguistic integration. In the current post-Soviet era, this identity is undergoing another period of change, with influences from intra-state ethnic, religious, and sociopolitical institutions as well as from regional and international powers. This article centers on linguistic identity among Azerbaijani youth at three types of schools: Azerbaijani-medium, Russian-medium, and English-medium. The authors seek to discover whether and to what extent the language of instruction in each type of school affects linguistic identity, which in turn has implications for national identity. The article first discusses the existing literature on language and identity in second language acquisition and socio-educational linguistics. It then examines Azerbaijan's linguistic and political history through the lens of the latter framework, as a context for an analysis of the data from surveys and focus groups. The article analyzes the relationship between medium of instruction in school and students' perceptions of language and identification with various language groups, and discusses the findings of a significant correlation between language of instruction and linguistic identity, with its implications for national identity.     

Emergence and equivocal autonomization of a Kurdish literary field in Turkey

Drawing on field theory, this paper aims to shed light on the development and functioning of the Kurdish literary world in Turkey, characterized, in particular, by the use of a non-official language. It argues that this “small literary world” is to be understood in relation to a “double macrocosm”: the sphere of Kurdish politics and the national Turkish sphere, which provide specific constraints and resources. The paper argues that in such a context the emergence of a literary field, autonomous from other social fields and independent from political stakes, follows an unpredictable path, and will not always be achieved political dimension of the literary act stresses its dependency on political stakes and the field of politics. This however does not impede the emergence of autonomous literary institutions. The multilingualism of the actors involved drives also toward another heteronomy: this small literary world is also to be understood in relation to the Turkish literary field. The paper first presents the macrocosms in which Kurdish literary activities developed. It then examines the progressive integration of a field freeing itself from political constraints. Lastly, it focuses on the trajectories of a few writers, the analyses of which show the intertwining of the different worlds.     

Literatures at the intersections of national territories: Iranian-Azerbaijani ethnic entrepreneurs in a transnational historical space

This article is an attempt to explore the territoriality of languages in the context of ethno-national mobilizations. It maps the transnational interplay between linguistic spaces that overlap national frameworks. This makes it possible to scrutinize the horizontal and vertical differentiation processes that contribute to the definition of a distinctive literary field. In order to study these processes, we favor a strong empirical anchorage by referring to the notion of transnational historical space, defined as a configuration which covers both spatial and temporal dimensions, bringing territories into contact and linking various temporalities. Our case presents a large geographic space formed by Turkey, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azerbaijan. This unusual scale of analysis helps in understanding how ethnic entrepreneurs can capitalize symbolic resources in their strategies to make their ethnic idiom into a national language and to invest the political field with ethnonational claims.     

The Moroccan system of labour institutions: a class-based perspective

Abstract

The relevance of workers’ mobilisations in the 2011 Arab uprisings and – more recently – in the Algerian movement for democracy and social justice has encouraged a renewed interest in labour–state relations in the region. This article presents a class-based perspective on labour institutions, taking Morocco as a case study. In contrast to institution-based approaches, this research argues that it is problematic to treat the trade unions as analytical proxies for the working class, because this heuristic move conceals how class struggles – from below and from above – can transcend and transform labour institutions. The article proposes a framework to study labour–state relations, highlighting the relative autonomy of union officials from workers and vice versa. In this way, it shows how, in the neoliberal phase, the Moroccan state increased inducements to the unions while decreasing those to the workers and maintaining significant constraints on workplace organising. To use a simplified formulation, the regime included the unions to exclude the workers. In such a context of low union representativeness, the dangers of reducing the working class to the trade unions emerge clearly.     

Taking Murals Seriously: Basque Murals and Mobilisation

The purpose of this article is to take the admonition of taking the visual seriously into the realms of murals. It will present empirical data on contemporary murals in the Basque Country with a view to examining why murals are important to the abertzale-left, the broad left-wing nationalist movement in the Basque Country which includes but ranges far beyond the armed group ETA. The struggle for Basque autonomy from Spain has its roots in a nationalist awakening in the late twentieth century. It has developed through the struggle with fascism; the prolonged authoritarian, centralist state; and the transition to democracy after the death of Franco. Central to this development has been the definition of Basque identity in terms of culture rather than birth. Language has been key, but there has also been a visual strand to the struggle. The article will examine the state of that visual strand currently by examining murals on a range of themes: language and culture, independence and socialism, armed struggle, political prisoners, torture and repression, martyrs and heroes, women and environmental issues.     

Power relations? What power relations? The de-politicising conceptualisation of development of the UNDP

The UN′s Sustainable Development Goals agenda points far into 2030, which shows that its post-war development endeavour is not functioning effectively. This article implements a discourse analysis of the UN Development Programme′s (UNDP) Human Development Reports (HDR) and exposes their internal contradictions. This analysis enables a critical reflection on the UNDP′s political position: its reports conceal the political causes of underdevelopment. By concealing the antagonistic/conflictual dimension of social issues – poverty, inequality, and exclusion – the UNDP naturalises the actual neoliberal order. The HDR turns political problems into technical issues; according to this approach, no power relations have to be changed in order to overcome underdevelopment.     

From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over “language frontiers” such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste’s Italian identity or “Italianità.” Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of “Italianità,” this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the “unredeemed” land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime’s ambitions of “fascistization” of the Slavic population living in the region.     

The politicization of education: Identity formation in Moldova and Transnistria

This article examines how education, linguistic and citizenship policies have influenced the development of Moldovan identity and relations with the breakaway region of Transnistria. The article explores the influence of three specific education policies (Russian language instruction, an integrated history course and Romanian language school closures in Transnistria) on the debate concerning Moldovan identity and ultimately Moldovan statehood. The Romanian language school closures in Transnistria demonstrate that education is not only an important agent of identity formation, but also that such crude political tactics as school closures ultimately affect other education policies, reinforce negative stereotypes and make meaningful dialogue impossible. The larger issue than the school closures in Transnistria is whether devolution of authority on issues such as education policy is possible no matter how autonomy is granted.     

The relationship between religious and national identity in the case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944)

Hitler's coming to power in Germany had its key consequences upon the fate of the German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. The German community in Romania constituted no exception. After 1933, a process of radicalization can be noticed in the case of the Transylvanian Saxons, one of the several German-speaking groups in Romania. The phenomenon has already been analyzed in its political and economic dimensions, yet not so much in its social ones. This article looks at the latter aspect, its argument being that the Nazification of the Transylvanian Saxon community can be best comprehended by using a conceptual framework developed by political scientist Donald Horowitz in the early 1970s. The analysis uses a series of contemporary sources (diaries, issues of the official periodical of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania, Kirchliche Blätter), but also a wide range of secondary sources, academic and literary. Consequently, the article shows that especially after 1933, the Lutheran affiliation, highly relevant for the production and reproduction of the traditional model of Transylvanian Saxon identity, shifted from the status of a criterion of identity to a mere identification indicium. At the same time, the attraction of a (Pan-) German identity, with its Nazi anchors, became stronger and the center of gravity for Transylvanian Saxon identity radically moved towards German ethnicity, in its National-Socialist understanding.     

The Black European Women's Council: ‘thinking oneself into the New Europe’

With the continuous political shift to the right in many European countries, exclusivist constructions of the nation and concepts related to national identity – issues which are immersed in and often conflated with biology and culture – the necessity for mobilization and political activism among women, migrants, and minorities in Europe has become all the more acute and timely. Organized within the framework of the ‘European Year for Equal Opportunities 2007’ and initiated by Béatrice Achaleke, AFRA (International Centre for Black Women's Perspectives in Vienna, Austria, and co-organized by Helen Felter, Director of Tiye International (The Netherlands); the Black European Women's Congress (26–29 September 2007) culminated in the formation of the Black European Woman's Council (hereafter BEWC). Employing a mix of discourse analysis, social movement and intersectional theory, I address the issues of Black female subjectivity, political agency, and strategies in relation to the socio-political empowerment of Black women across Europe. Based on qualitative data, I argue that the cross-border network of the BEWC exhibits the potential to serve as a structured political force not only on local and national levels, but also within the sphere of the European Union; and to possibly assist Black European women activists with the task of ‘thinking themselves into the New Europe’.     

Hungary and the European Union: The political implications of societal security promotion

Hungary's constitutional commitment to support kin-nationals beyond its borders (nation policy) has been a central feature of its post-1989 foreign policy and highlights a particularly important national security concern—the societal security of national identity, culture, language and tradition. This article examines Hungary's societal security concerns and the policy methods it utilises, including its EU membership and the promotion of minority rights at the European level, to help combat these concerns. It is suggested that Hungary has found it somewhat difficult to balance its societal security policy objective with internal economic demands on its welfare system and its external foreign policy objective to maintain good neighbourly relations. This article also notes that Hungary's attempts to Europeanise, or rather ‘EU-ise’, minority and ethnic rights issues as a means to enhance societal security for the Hungarian nation has certain political consequences for the EU. This suggests that societal security provision is an issue that cannot be overlooked when trying to understand the longer-term implications of EU eastern enlargement.     

Building the Human Bomb: The Case of the 16 May 2003 Attacks in Casablanca

The terrorist attacks that took place on 16 May 2003 in Casablanca were a result of internal factors. These factors include the terrorists" view of their faith, poverty, and under-education. The links between the terrorists in Morocco and the Al Qaeda network, despite their ideological similarities, are not of a “command and control” nature. The relationship can be described as a franchise operation. The attacks resulted in the alienation of the population from movements attempting to use Islam in politics. Consequently, the attacks backfired on the Moroccan Islamist movement.     

Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

Nationalism,masculinity and multicultural citizenship in Serbia*

In Rossettiren obsesioa (Rossetti's Obsession), a short and explicitly meta-literary novel published in 2000, Ramon Saizarbitoria presents a Basque writer wrestling a formidable lover: the Spanish readership. The question that Eugenia, the woman from Madrid, constantly asks the writer, “¿Qué os pasa a los vascos?” (“What's wrong with you Basques?”), encapsulates the ambiguity of the relationship which unites these two indisputably allegorical characters. The difficult interaction between the powerful Spanish literary field and the emerging Basque literary field, doomed to coexist and moved by reciprocal feelings of fascination and irritation, becomes the novel's subject matter. Is translation – and its corollary, an access to a larger literary market – a pure and neutral instrument of liberation for the writer who expresses himself in a minority language, or could it become, in certain circumstances, a threat to his autonomy?     

The birth of modern Circassian nationalism

This article focuses on problems of the national movement of the Circassians – a small nation in the Caucasus, most of whose population is dispersed all over the world. The paper researches the development of the Circassian movement from 1989–2000 and its contemporary structure since 2005. The modern Circassian movement as a whole has never been approached from a political science viewpoint. This research aims to answer several core questions: What are the different strands of the movement? What principles are they based on? Who are the participants? What political forces support them? How do these political forces interact with each other?     

Russia's perceptions and misperceptions of the EU Eastern Partnership

This article is devoted to the problem of the reaction to the Eastern Partnership by Russia's both the political establishment and the expert community. The question of reactions to the Eastern Partnership in the target countries has been extensively posed in academic literature. However, the question of Russia's reaction to the Eastern Partnership, one of the most important actors of the region, has been rarely raised by the academic community. A wide array of factors impacted Russian elites' perception of the Eastern Partnership – from problematic issues in the EU-Russia relations to the post-Soviet states' political and economic transformation. Studying the dynamics and peculiarities of Russia's perspective on the Eastern Partnership makes it possible to draw meaningful conclusions on the nature of Russia's phobias that fuel its domestic and foreign policy.