Becoming Catalan: Narrative Cultivation of Self among Catalan Nationalists
- Autores: Mark F. Hau
- Localización: Pulling together or pulling apart?: Perspectives on nationhood, identity and belonging in Europe / coord. por Susana Bayó Belenguer, Nicola Brady, 2020, ISBN 9781789976755, págs. 177-201
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
This chapter offers novel perspectives on how Catalan national identity, rather than beinga predetermined, passively assigned ethnic category, is socially constructed through activechoices and technologies of the self. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered amongactivists of the pro-independence, left-wing party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya,and employing ethical self-transformation terminology previously used primarily inthe study of religious behaviour, it explores the construction of contemporary Catalannational identity, cultivated and embodied through daily communicative practice andshared narratives. As national senses of belonging become inextricably linked with realpolitik,political constructions of ‘the good life’ increasingly take Catalan independenceand Catalan national identity as the starting point, linking the political and the moral.Catalan nationalist activists attempt to align personal and communal narratives bydiscursively equating a Catalan ideal-self with morally correct behaviour, contrastingCatalan virtues with Spanish vices.
