Rahvuste tegemine: Humanitaarteaduslik vaade
Making the nations: A humanities point of view

Summary/Abstract: This essay aims to offer a framework for discussing relations between nationalism and humanities. Nation-creation is a constant process, even if its intensity can vary over time. In this essay, four aspects of the process of nation creation from humanities perspective are examined: how nations are made through narration, performance, visualization and research. Inspiring stories help create nations and keep them together. A nation is intrinsically a narrative community, whose identity is largely based on “stories to live by”. Narrative patterns allow a nation to see itself as continuous, and agglutinate separate events into a meaningful whole instead of seeing them as a chain of coincidences. All sorts of collective practices also play an important role – we could call these practices performing the nation. The backbone of the performance of nation is the calendar of national holidays, which lets people regularly recall and commemorate the past events considered the most important for the national identity. Besides texts and performances, a third aspect is the major role of symbols in the process of nation-making. Particularly significant are the visual representations of the nations. The role of visual artists is to translate the abstract idea of nation into an accessible, emotionally laden symbolic language. Finally, nations are made also through research, especially by the so-called national disciplines (rahvusteadused). The concept was introduced in Estonian around 1920s and taken probably from German or from Finnish. The cultivation of national disciplines, including the study of Estonian language, literature, history, folklore, archaeology, was considered highly important in 1930s, but the term was made popular also in post-war years during the early period of Soviet annexation. After falling into quasi-oblivion in late Soviet period, the concept of national disciplines made a surprising return in early 2000s, at the initiative of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research.

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