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romantic documents and political monuments: the meaning‐fulfillment of history in 19th‐century Czech nationalism
Author(s) -
LASS ANDREW
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1988.15.3.02a00030
Subject(s) - nationalism , forgetting , meaning (existential) , romance , politics , aesthetics , czech , hegemony , power (physics) , sociology , literature , epistemology , history , philosophy , art , law , linguistics , political science , physics , quantum mechanics
Nineteenth‐century Czech manuscript forgery and the production of cultural monuments inspired by the texts illustrate the relationship between invention and erasure that underlies the notion of selective tradition. The success of nationalist movements depends on meaning‐fulfilling acts through which tradition is concretized as part of the everyday spatiotemporal world. The process is paralleled by the forgetting and dismantling of these concretizations. This suggests that history, in spite of its concern for continuity and factuality, is by definition self‐destructive and that there exists a close relationship between literal‐mindedness and the hegemonic power of selective traditions.