Resumen de Fathers of the Nation: Barack Obama Addresses Nelson Mandela
This essay analyzes Barack Obama�s Nelson Mandela Memorial speech together with other seminal texts of Obama�s political and personal creed, such as his book Dreams from My Father (1995) and his speech �A More Perfect Union� (2008). This reading becomes helpful to understand Mandela�s transnational power, which Obama uses to comment on the United States by comparing Madiba to other American �fathers of the nation.� Thus, he uproots Mandela�s from a specifically South African legacy, expands his figure, and addresses him as a transnational father of his own nation, whose power, influence, and example transcend South African borders. As a consequence of this enlargement and transnational validation of Mandela�s figure, the speech delivered at the Memorial becomes an occasion to tackle American past and future, while the memory of Madiba and his driving example in Obama�s life serve to reinforce previous positions conveyed in other discourses by the American President, such as the �A More Perfect Union� speech delivered in Philadelphia in 2008.
