(De)Constructing Slovak National Mythology
(De)Constructing Slovak National Mythology

Summary/Abstract: (De)Constructing Slovak National Mythology. The article argues for the semiological understanding of the myth as a specific type of speech, transforming political values into historical ‘facts’. Comparing nationalist narratives of one ‘mythical motive’ from the ‘golden age’ of Slovak history, it focuses on the narrative techniques by which the distant past is selected, rediscovered and appropriated to serve present nationalist ends. Through narrating the instrumentally selected medieval events and personages, appropriating them in a way, which makes them appear analogous with contemporary ones, the nationalist historians construct the ‘natural’, ‘characteristic’ and recurrent patterns of national history. They transform history into allegedly self-evident, unproblematic natural reality and thus legitimise modern events and persons. The self-confirming, tautological narrative structure of modern national myth, however, becomes controversial, when it overrides the discussion about the character of a modern wartime Slovak nation-state and its president. Sociológia 2002 Vol 34 (No 3: 195-208)

• Details
• Contents