RISULTATI RICERCA

The authoress outlines the subject and methods of her current anthropological study on identity and biographical self-representation in the boundary areas of Piedmont and the French departments of Savoie and Haut Alpes. During the 19th and 20th Centuries, these areas passed through several political changes which rendered national self-identification of individuals particularly complicated. Ample anticipations from the interviews with two elder female habitants of the area, Emma and Julia, prove the openness of selfidentification processes. National belonging tends to be seen as an exogenous imposition by ‘grand’ historical event, whereas the more ‘authentic’ We-group is described in terms of cross-border biographies and family relations, and of local and regional communities in which co-exist cultural, confessional, and linguistic, diversities.

The process of building of a regional identity can sometimes present some of the features of a national phenomenon. That means that borders between symbols and political strategies supporting nationalism and regionalism can be very thin. This essay aims to analyse and compare two local cases of region-building systems that go back to national ones: the cases of Valle d’Aosta and the one of South Tyrol. First the European context referring to the relationship between nationalism and regionalism is shortly provided. After that the case of Valle d’Aosta is introduced, drawing the pattern of its building-process. However, the main topic is the explanation of the example of South Tyrol. In this province the political elites of the German minority have focused so far their strategies on elements which are typical of nationalism: the common language, common heroes, the sense of unity and a strong catholic faith are just some of the features of their identity.

Since the late nineteenth century the regions along the north-eastern Adriatic Sea, characterized by a complex pattern of Italian, Slovene, Croatian and other ethnic groups, have been a major battleground of opposing national movements. During the last decades of the Dual Monarchy the German speaking element no longer presented any particular danger to smaller groups of people in the region. Angelo Vivante wrote in 1912 that the only real ethnic conflict was the one between Italians and Slaves. Relations between Italians and Slovenes were characterized by collaborations well as by rivalry and confrontation, depending on which region and which period one may examine. Although it might be difficult to know the real weight of literary imagines and national stereotypes, one may find them in a lot of occasions along the clash between Italians and Slovenes in the 19th and 20th centuries. When in 1920 in the Treaty of Rapallo the former Austrian Küstenland was accorded to Italy; structural multilingualism and spontaneous assimilation processes were in contrast to various programs of ethnic cleansing or bonifica etnica. At first, it was the fascist movement in particular which proceeded with terror directed against Slovenian organisations, parties, clubs and newspapers. The systematic denationalisation campaign of the fascist regime began in various social areas with a certain delay. The political programmes of Italian and Slovene partizan-movements provided new national identities for inhabitants of the border region who had not assumed any particular national attitude or who had suffered by fascist denationalization campaigns accepting the italianità as their only national orientation. In the period after the second World War, subsequent to the assignation of Istria, Fiume and Zara to Yugoslavia, some hundred thousand Italians abandoned their homes and left. The abandoning of the Adriatic region by one of its principal ethnic-national components must be placed in the context of a fierce clash between opposed nationalisms, of rivalry between nation-states, and of the growing importance of national-totalitarian ideologies at the level of the individual state, upon which were superimposed the new divisions of the Cold War. Although in most cases the Italian’s decision to abandon their homelands was not a direct consequence of measures of expulsion, the decision to leave must be seen as the result of specific pressures which make it possible to describe this event as an example of mass expulsion.

The supposition that there would be a gap between the civilisations of the German west and the Polish (or Slavic) east, which helped legitimise the Prussian domination in the 19th century, should be challenged. The Prussian province of Posnania highlights the contradictions that could sometimes exist between different national views. Indeed, at the time of social and economic achievements by the local Polish minority, the negative image of Polish anarchy and the need for German culture could seem to be refuted. This essay attempts to show how the idea of a social frontier eventually failed to strengthen the German population’s identification with its eastern Heimat-lands. Thomas Serrier is maître de conférences for German history (19th-20th century) at the Institut d’études européennes (Université Paris VIII). He is the author of Entre Allemagne et Pologne. Nations et identités frontalières 1848-1914, Paris, Belin, 2002 and Günter Grass. Tambour battant contre l’oubli, Paris, Belin, 2004.

The article discusses constructs of collective identity among German speaking groups in two Polish-German border regions prior to the mid 19th century. It examines, on the one hand, the different contexts in which the notion of ‘German’ had been used as a marker of territorial, social, or religious identity from the 16th to the 18th centuries. On the other hand, it outlines the emergence of patterns of national segregation in the first half of the 19th century. The author em phasises the discontinuity between pre-modern and modern concepts of ‘German identity’ in both regions: Until the end of the 18th century, ‘German’ was understood to indicate a specific social, linguistic, or confessional profile of individuals or groups, but never implied the idea of ‘national diversity’. Even in the early 19th century, German speakers maintained a marked sense of regional identification, and reacted weakly to national mobilisation processes.

In his introduction to the issue, the editor stresses the recent emergence of post-nationalistic approaches to the history of nationalisation of European border regions. The essays offer an imperfect, but nevertheless significant, perspective on subjects and methods. They range from the early modern times to presence, from German-Polish to Italian- Slovenian and French boundary regions, involving historiography as well as anthropology. The author points out that they can particularly well demonstrate the contingencies in (re-)construction processes of national, ethnic and linguistic identities. They show furthermore that ‘progress’ and ‘civilisation’ are frequently used, in Europe, as a legitimating tool of borderline drawing. National delimitation of territories shows however to be most of times imperfect. Previous and co-existent loyalties may be integrated to support national self-identification, but can not be prevented from persisting and living their own lives. In some cases, the gap between the imaginary and the political distribution of space between the Us and the Other shows to be resistant to all attempts of national propaganda and pedagogy. Borderlines are needed to re-assure the national Self in being existent and consistent. At the same time, they remember the Nation that her existence continues to be contingent, temporary, and open to further changes.