science in power

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Marusa Pusnik

SCIENCE IN POWER

Representing the Slovene nation

through scientific work

Despite its image of an objective and neutral activity within society, science canalso be involved in the ideological production of nationalism and in the creation ofnations. This paper offers a critical cultural analysis of the mainstream Slovenescientific texts on national matters. It examines doctoral dissertations from variousdisciplines, all of which deal with Slovene national culture and its borders andwere produced in Slovenia in the period between 1985 and 2002. With this Ihope to disclose how they participate in the production of the knowledge about thenation. Such scientific representations signify the nation, provide meanings forthe national community and create a specific regime of truth that organizes thepopular national imagery. They penetrate the everyday reality as hard facts; theyproduce trustworthy knowledge and offer authoritative versions of reality. Theanalysis suggests that these scientific representations of the Slovene nation share afew nodal points that reproduce nationalist discourses. Almost all were writtenwithin the context of the dominant Slovene nation-building discourse andprivileged national purity as a norm while they either ignored the notions ofmythical national existence or failed to acknowledge the cultural diversity andhybridism.

Keywords science; doctoral dissertations; production of knowledge;nationalism; Slovenia

Introduction: scientific representations as politicalrepresentations

Science communicates about the world and with the world. It is a part of thehuman activities’ network that produces peoples’ perceptions of the world andgrants its social meanings. In this regard I will investigate how scientific textsrepresent and construct the system of nations and nationalisms as a part of oureveryday reality. It should be noted that in this paper the term science is usedto describe any organized body of knowledge on a specific subject that was

Cultural Studies Vol. 24, No. 5 September 2010, pp. 637�661

ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online – 2010 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502380903546927

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obtained through systematic studying. Although science is traditionallyunderstood as natural or physical sciences, the paper broadens the field andpredominantly focuses on social sciences and humanities. In this sense, theterm science does not include merely the explanation of the physical ormaterial world gained through observation and experimentation, but also thedescription and interpretation of the social and cultural worlds gained throughobservation, contemplation and analysis.

My aim is to analyze the representations of the Slovene nation in themainstream Slovene scientific works that are involved in the production andlegitimization of knowledge on the nation. For this purpose I will analyze thedoctoral dissertations on the topics of Slovene nation, its borders, andnationalism that were written in Slovenia within the scope of differentacademic disciplines in the period between 1985 and 2002. This period wasselected because it was the era of strong independence and nation-buildingmovements in Slovenia. There are a number of reasons why I chose to analyzedoctoral dissertations. Firstly, a dissertation as a scientific form is one of themost systematic and scrutinized academic works with an accepted universalstructure that includes exhaustive theoretical and methodological frameworkswhich define the author’s perspective on the studied matter. This universalform and standard processing enables comparisons to be made. Secondly, theanalyses of the nation and nationalism in the dissertations provide a goodinsight into the prevailing academic discussion on the topic. The dissertationsinclude various discourses on the Slovene nation and legitimize its findings alsoby past research, conducted by the thesis supervisors, committee members andother scientists. In this sense the texts function as representative spaces thatcontinue to reproduce the contours of academic disciplines and their ways ofdealing with their research topics. Thirdly, a dissertation is an initiation ritualthrough which an individual enters the scientific field and occupies theprivileged position of authoritative knowledge. Because the Slovene academicworld is so small, the PhD people who function as reference points oftengovern the field of knowledge about the nation and occupy important socialpositions in their areas of study.

In the culturally imparted experience of the western world science isbelieved to be the most trustful, objective, neutral, legitimate, non-ideological,as well as the most independent and promising practice of humankind. A numberof authors (Latour 1987/2001, Lynch and Woolgar 1990, Feyerabend 1999)argue that in contemporary societies science has slowly but persistentlyovershadowed the role of the religion. In Europe this shift started at thebeginning of the early modern period with the rise of the first universities,however it has intensified with the active institutionalization and secularization ofnatural and social sciences in the nineteenth century. Science is usually trusted bythe masses who do not question its work. It speaks with an authoritarian voiceand numerous researches (Bourdieu 2001, 2004, van Dijk 1993) have confirmed

6 3 8 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

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that science and those who speak in its name � the scientists � are nowadaysbelieved to be one of the most trustworthy sources of information. In Foucault’sview (1994/2000, p. 131), every society has its own general politics of truth thatincludes scientists, who are today understood as speaking the truth. In this viewthe scientific voice is heard as non-opinionated, objective and unbiased becauseneutrality, objectivity, impartiality, political independence, personal andemotional distance as well as non-involvement remain the most valued principlesof modern science. Such an understanding of scientific activity has beenconstructed over decades and stems from logical positivism and logicalempiricism (cf. Feyerabend 1999). It has the ability to grant its own speechwith the characteristics of transcendental voice and then transform thearticulated content into truth that can almost not be doubted. This is moredown to the effect of the position and image of science in modern societies thathas been achieved historically, and not so much due to the possession of someinternal or transcendental abilities that would make it closer to Truth than anyother human activity.

Scientists provide authoritative versions of reality and position science as‘fact-making’ (Latour 1987/2001, p. 26) that is embedded in a specificscientific rhetoric, the normal outcome of which is that ‘the reader believes theauthor’s claim and helps him to turn it into a fact by using it further with nodispute’ (Latour 1987/2001, p. 60). In this sense the relations between theresearchers and their objects of research are meaningful practices involved inthe processes of social constructions (Winch 1958/1990). Latour also suggeststhat science usually behaves as if its task of analyzing reality is given by natureand as if it is inherently objective: ‘Forgotten are the many people who carrythem [facts] from hand to hand, the crowds of acting entities that shape thefacts and are shaped by them, the complex negotiations to decide whichassociation is stronger or weaker’ (1987/2001, p. 133).

For this reason we should bear in mind that science is a human, social activityand cultural practice and as such is always merely a re-presentation of reality, nomatter how objective it claims to be. Like all cultural representations (cf. Hall1997, pp. 1�4) scientific accounts also produce meanings and make sense ofthings. Therefore, science is merely a way of portraying nature or reality and israther an articulation of the observed nature/reality than its reflection. Scientificpractice constantly fabricates and socializes its facts through language. In thisregard Latour (1999/2000, p. 15�16) provides the notion of ‘factish’ that iscentral for scientific activity and is a combination of the words fact and fetish. Hebelieves that modern science is based on the fetishist relation to facts which inturn adds objectivity and realism to scientific practice. To put it in other words,this means that science as a social activity can also have material politicalconsequences.

It can not be overlooked that science has been provoking significant andrevolutionary changes in nature as well as in the everyday social life. It has

S C I E N C E I N P O W E R 6 3 9

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brought important improvements to the material and social world. Never-theless, one should be aware that although science brings liberating andsubversive moments, it can also have oppressive potentials and damagingeffects. There were numerous occasions in the recent past when science was(mis)used for political, economic or other purposes; for example, the eugenicsand the following ruthless experiments on people in concentration campsduring World War II were allegedly carried out in the name of science.However, there are also less visible and more implicit ideological effects ofscientific work, which can have serious consequences for the future ofhumankind. They function on the level of structuring the world on a daily basisin the ways that are comprehended by people as self-evident. In my focus onthe mainstream Slovene scientific investigations of national matters, I observedthat there are specific ways of putting national matters into a scientific speech.Based on Michael Billig’s (1995/2001, p. 6) idea of banal nationalism as theideological everyday habit that enables the established Western nations to bereproduced, I argue that most of the Slovene mainstream scientific discoursesinvestigating the Slovene nation, its borders and nationalism are inherentlynationalist. My argument is that these invisible and taken-for-granted forms ofseemingly objective scientific texts on the Slovene nation can not becharacterized as extreme, exotic, remote nor emotionally charged, but thisillusion of normality and objectivity is exactly what makes them so efficientand crucial for the undisturbed reproduction and materialization of the Slovenenationalist ideas.

I believe that the basic question in studying the role of scientificrepresentations in the nation-building process, following Latour’s ideas(1999/2000, p. 24), should be how science packs the world into words.Or, to paraphrase Hall (1997, p. 5), science is a signifying practice throughwhich meaning is thought to be produced and constructed rather than simplyfound. Such scientific representations can have ideological effects and can turna nation into a transcendental category, into a natural instead of a socialproduct. When science places the nation in its seemingly objective scientificspeech, it starts to exist as an eternal material category. For example, whenprominent Slovene social scientists discover that the Slovene nation has existedat least from the early medieval times onwards and that it has developedthrough four main stages � ‘Slovenes from the tribe to the national state’: tribeuntil the tenth century, folk with the Christianization until the sixteenthcentury, when Slovenes turned to a nation with their first book and finally in1991 they became a national state � Slovenes started to exist already in thetimes they did not exist at all. In addition, when such scientific accountscalculate that today’s Slovenes are the 42nd generation of ‘proto Slovenes’who lived in the eighth century (Kos 1996, pp. 11�16, Makarovic 1997,p. 78), the nation and its tradition are materialized as natural, biologicalcategories. In fact, scientists become the inventors of national tradition and


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they ‘seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition,which automatically implies continuity with the past . . . they normallyattempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past’ (Hobsbawm1983/1993, p. 1). Consequently, such scientific representations turn thenation into a historical category. The nation is perceived in a very reductionistway; forgotten are all complexities and contingencies of historical contexts inwhich nations evolved. Instead, a nation is treated as a linear progressivecategory, going from its less civilized to its more civilized phases. This kind ofspeech can be characterized as a nationalist speech and when we presume that ascientific account is a manufactured product, it becomes necessary to examineall assumptions and agendas behind it, because only such an approach canreveal its ideological dimensions.

The nation in scientific representations

In Slovenia there is a historically close link between the institutionalization ofscience at the beginning of the twentieth century and the creation of the Slovenenation, which started in the nineteenth century when the territory of today’sSlovenia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The establishment of theSlovene university in 1919 and the following slow institutionalization of sciencein general were perceived as necessities for the national existence. In the earlyperiod Slovene science saw its mission as the preserver of Slovenianness and asafeguard against the Austro-Hungarian influences.1 The care for the Slovenenation and its preservation soon became one of the central scientific programs,although the Slovene national culture and its national borders were subjects ofsemi-scientific interest already in the nineteenth century. Such scientific agendaswere intensified after World War I when a new state � The Kingdom of Serbs,Croats and Slovenes � was formed and when a part of the Slovene populationbecame a national minority in Italy and Austria, outside of the borders of today’sSlovenia. This was also the time when the border between two states �Yugoslavia and Austria � was defined with the 1920 plebiscite in the provinceof Carinthia, as a result of which a larger part of Carinthia was annexed toAustria. The scientific interest in the Slovene nation was strengthened andofficially institutionalized with the formation of the Slovene Minority Institutein 1925, which was reformed into the Department of Border Studies at TheScientific Institute in 1944 and into The Institute for Ethnic Studies in 1948 (Sumi2000, p. 117).

The investigations of Slovenianness and Slovene people beyond the bordersof Yugoslavia/Slovenia have been since then dictated by the Slovene nationalpolitics and were based on the poly-historical and semi-scientific books writtenin the nineteenth or at the beginning of the twentieth century.2 The MinorityInstitute saw its main task in studying Slovenes beyond the borders of Slovenia


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for scientific, informative and propagandistic purposes, which depicts whatSumi (2000, p. 117) describes as ‘a total harmony of the expert program andthe interests of nationalist politics’. Even today a number of these researchesare carried out within the state funded national programs for the preservationof the Slovene national identity, and are based on the presumption thatSlovenia is a homogenous and nationally pure unity. Their findings are oftenused as a basis for political actions and as a source of political populism.

In this respect the reviewed doctoral dissertations that deal with theSlovene national culture, its borders and nationalism, were written byscientists who are today important figures in the Slovene academic sphere andinfluence the research agenda on the Slovene nation and its borders. They areeither professors at various Slovene faculties (Faculty of Arts, Faculty ofEducation, Faculty of Architecture, Faculty of Social Sciences), researchers atSlovene research institutes that deal with these topics (The Institute for EthnicStudies), important politicians, councilors, state representatives (the Ministryfor Foreign Affairs), significant figures in the local politics or members ofvarious boards, connected with the national life (or existence) of Slovenes.

In some cases parts of the dissertations were published as scientific articlesand many of them were published in full as scientific books. In a number ofcases when the authors are also professors they disseminate their knowledgeamongst their students. Furthermore, their academic positions grant themaccess to the educational discourse because they are involved in the creation ofprimary, secondary and high-school curricula. Scientific discourses govern theproduction of knowledge that is, through the educational system, disseminatedamong the masses of young people. In this regard, ‘the educational system is apolitical means of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of the discourse,with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it’ (Foucault 1991, p. 15).The educational system has been developing popular education since the end ofthe eighteenth century and has crucially influenced the production of imaginedcollectives. According to Hunter (1994/1998), the modern school is theproduct of the bureaucratic and administrative nation-state used to train anddiscipline its population and produce disciplined national subjects who can beself-governing and self-reflective. As Gellner (1997, pp. 21�25) reminds us,the rise of the modern nations is connected with ‘the extended training’ in theschools that took place in a specific capitalist context of industrialized societiesand developing technologies. Since we know that universal educability goeshand-in-hand with the dissemination of national ideas, as stated by Anderson(1983/1995), schools and classrooms should be thought of not only as ‘the sitewhere the child is imperfectly liberated, but rather as the environment wherechildren are positively constructed within specific institutional forms’ (Kendalland Wickham 1999, p. 123).

The analysis included the dissertations that directly or indirectly deal withsubject matters such as Slovene nation, national border, Slovenes abroad, national


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minorities, Carinthian Slovenes,3 national/ethnic identity, and nationalism. In theperiod between 1985 and 2002, at least 28 doctoral dissertations of this kindwere published and only three of them refused to reproduce the Slovenenation-building discourse while the majority argued, explicitly or implicitly,that the protection of the endangered Slovenianness is their fundamental goal.In order to analyze the characteristics of the contemporary mainstream Slovenescientific discourse on ethnic/national relations nine of these doctoraldissertations shall be dealt with in greater detail. The chosen texts arerepresentative of the scientific discourse on the nation that appears in almost allother dissertations. They also include perspectives on national questions fromvarious disciplines: geography, political sciences, anthropology, sociology,philosophy, ethnology, linguistics, history, and architecture.4

These dissertations share a few nodal points � the privileged discursivepoints or privileged signifiers in the scientific discourse on the national � thatfix the meanings of all other signifiers in this discourse and thus define thenature of the discourse. As Laclau and Mouffe (1985/2001, p. 112) assert, anodal point constitutes and maintains the identity of a specific discourse byconstructing definite meanings because every discourse attempts ‘to arrest theflow of difference, to construct a centre’. Science as a practice of articulationin a social space produces nodal points that have political implications and fixthe meaning of reality. These nodal points, around which the meaning iscondensed, structure the dissertations’ narrations, utilize certain nationalmyths and show the characteristics of the contemporary mainstream Slovenescientific tradition regarding ethnic/national relations.

Portraying and inventing the nation as a natural category

The most common characteristic of these doctoral dissertations is themythical, nationalist representation of Slovenianness as a natural category.Most of the dissertations are paradoxical; on the declarative level, they arguefor a nation as a socially constructed phenomenon, but on the practical/empirical level they ignore this argument and deal with the nation as anaturally given phenomenon. Their argumentation usually begins by referringto authors such as Benedict Anderson (1983/1995), Fredrick Barth (1969/1998), or Eric Hobsbawm (1983/1993), but subsequently reproduces ideasthat these authors criticize and deconstruct. The physical and mental bordersof Slovenianness are represented as naturally grounded. The most frequentargument is the long historical presence of Slovenianness in this territory. Forexample, Zupancic’s work on socio-geographical processes and the preserva-tion of the Slovene identity in Austria legitimizes the existence of Slovenes inAustria:


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Of all Slovenes who live outside the territory of Slovenia, the ones inAustria have been present there for the longest time. This is theconsequence of historical processes that began with the constitution of themedieval state on the wider area. When Karantanija was forced to allywith the Bavarians due to the threat of the Avars and after they jointlydefeated them, Karantanija came under Bavarian and later underFranconian supremacy. This involuntary cohabitation lasted for over1000 years. By that time the processes of homogenization in this state andsetting up the political framework have already started. (Zupancic 1996,p. 16)

The territory of Carinthia is represented as Slovene territory as early as thetime of Karantanija.5 This image is constructed through the use of the wordsthat are perceived as synonyms � the author alternately uses the termsKarantanija/Karantanians and Slovenia/Slovenes to denote the same entities. Suchrepresentations shape the common perception of blood ties and make Slovenesperceive themselves as the direct descendants of the ancient Slovenes �Karantanians. In this sense the Slovene minority in Austria is � according toits natural ties with the old, proto-Slovenes � pictured as an ‘autochthonnational minority’ (Zupancic 1996, p. 40), and is described as the peoplewho live in the territory that naturally belongs to the Slovenes. Zupancic(1996, pp. 83�84) embraces the common view of numerous other historiansand denies the existence of Austrian nationhood, since, in his view, it onlyconsists of different German-speaking residents of Austria and the variousminorities (Slovene, Croatian, Czech, or Roma). In his opinion, the Sloveneswere first of all a cultural nation that was shaped on the basis of a commonlanguage and culture, while the Austrians missed out on this evolutionaryphase. The description of such differences between the Austrians and Slovenesdefines the language and culture of the Slovenes as something that naturallybelongs to the Slovene people. The outcome of this is that Slovenianness isperceived as a natural category in opposition to Austrianness, which is seen asan artificial category since, as Zupancic states, it appeared only later.6

There are also a few dissertations that label specific national characteristicsas an intrinsic and natural property of Slovene nationhood. These character-istics are pictured as primordial and are identified in art, architecture, cuisine,or customs. The Slovene nation is represented as a folkloristic entitycharacterized by different habits, arts and buildings as if they reflectthe natural character of Slovenianness. In this regard Igor Kalcic (1992,pp. 64�66) defines the intrinsic national elements in housing architecture,which, as he represents it, by itself reflects their inner Slovenianness. Thespace of architecture becomes a space where national identities are createdthrough the constitution of borders between different national architecturalstyles. His entire research project aims to prove the Slovene originality of


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different artifacts since he argues that only those national communities thathave their own national cultural originality and are founded on ‘nation’sauthentic persistence’ can survive (Kalcic 1992, p. 26). He searches for ‘theSlovenianness in Slovene architecture’ (1992, p. 65), and argues that this ispossible, as it is possible to search for Slovenianness in Slovene music: ‘Slovenemusic exists and is created because, and until, we have Slovene composers whoare capable . . . of autochthonous composing’ (1992, p. 64). Architecture issimilarly perceived as a space to which Slovenianness is immanent andautochthonous, and a space that reflects the Slovenianness of the Slovenepeople and the Slovene ethnic territory:

Until the twentieth century Slovene architecture was completely non-national, exclusively in the hands of foreign masters . . . home architectsappeared a bit later, and they started to create the Slovene way. . . .Macek’s works, although they were mostly sacral, were in a specific waytypically Slovene. . . . Macek’s buildings are something special, they arenot big, arrogant and important, but modestly homelike. (Kalcic 1992,pp. 65�66)

With the invention of ‘building the Slovene way’, architecture becamerepresented and admired as a national space of special importance. Kalcicpresents this as a mere uncovering of Slovene originality that is alreadyinscribed in architecture. The hay-rack, which is ‘probably the most Slovenepart of our architecture’ (1992, p. 210), and the works of Plecnik, who ‘grewup on the native soil’ (1992, p. 78), are the ones that are built ‘the Sloveneway’, which means they are built in a simple and rustic style. Kalcic (1992,p. 78) wrote: ‘If I attempt to reveal the national identity in Plecnik’s creation,his small object designs made from wood, stone, metal, and artificial stoneprove to be the most important’. Such scientific inventory works continuallyto construct the Slovene national identity as a natural possession of the peopleand at the same time create national differences as something natural. WhenKalcic identifies Slovene originality, he at the same time also sketches thosearchitectural styles that are not naturally Slovene, but are evidently works offoreign � German architects. The oppositions between rustic and urban,modest and arrogant architectural styles signify the two opposing nationalcultures, each with its own naturally inscribed national originalities.

Munda Hirnok’s (1996) and Zigon’s (2000) researches are also based onthe folklorization of Slovene national culture. The first work registers theinventory of the national identity characteristics of Slovenes in HungarianPorabje, while the second deals with Slovenes in Argentina. The aim of theseresearches is to preserve the Slovene national identity for the youngergenerations. The ideological effect of such folkloristic representations ofSlovenes is not only the transformation of the Slovene nation into a natural


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category, but also into an eternal category. Slovenianness is internalized andthe images of folklore culture as an eternal category foster the imagining of anation that appears as if it has existed from time immemorial. Furthermore,such scientifically institutionalized inventory works treat the Slovene nation asa static and unchangeable category, represented as a mere reflection of the pastand certain prehistoric Slovene characteristics that are only reflected in thenation’s folklore. According to her own words, Munda Hirnok (1996, p. 2)‘expertly analyses’ the various ethnologic essays, documents, performancesand other artifacts that have been preserving the Slovene national identity andreveals her goals:

With this ethnological discussion on the Slovenes in Porabje . . . I wish tocontribute to the exhaustive documentation, presentation and compre-hension of the folk culture of the Slovene people, as well as to thestrengthening of national consciousness of Slovenes in Porabje.

With the help of such scientific works, folk culture can be divinized andreinvented for national purposes. Folk culture is pictured as if it reflectsthe Slovene natural characteristics. Munda Hirnok (1996, p. 77) wrote that shesearched for those elements of folk culture ‘with which we can characterizeSlovenes living along the river Raba as the Slovenes in Porabje, their characteras a Slovene character and their folk culture as Slovene culture’. Rather thananalyzing how the elements of folk culture have been reinvented for thenational purposes and for the construction of the national identity, shereproduces the nation-building discourse by picturing Slovenianness assomething that naturally exists within the people, objects or practices andneeds to be preserved within the norm. She explains that she analyzed‘the important witness of national identity of the Slovenes in Porabje’(1996, p. 147) or ‘the mediators of folk culture and, thus, of national identity’(1996, p. 165).

The natural character of Slovenianness is also reproduced through thescientific representations of mixed marriages of Slovenes who live abroad.Zigon (2000, p. 176) presents a table of all Slovene and mixed marriageswithin the Slovene community in Argentina. This table shows that the numberof all Slovene marriages has been on the decline since the beginning of thecentury, while the number of mixed marriages has been on the increase, thusthe share ‘is changing in favor of mixed marriages’. There are also numeroussimilar findings and calculations with similar shares for marriages within theSlovene minorities in Italy and Austria (cf. Susic and Sedmak 1983). In thisregard mixed marriages are usually pictured very negatively, as something thatdangerously weakens the Slovene national consciousness. The authors who talkabout mixed marriages usually do this in the context of assimilation and losingthe national identity which can lead to ‘national alienation’ (Zupancic 1996,


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p. 71, Zigon 2000, p. 176, Susic and Sedmak 1983, p. 7). Their studies do notmerely present statistical data that shows the distribution of marriages ofSlovenes abroad, but also continually represent Slovenianness as a natural andbiologically indivisible category based on blood ties, which can be spoiled,denaturalized and denationalized by mixed marriages. Such scientificrepresentations signify mixed marriages as acts that lead to assimilation, since� in the first phase � they produce ‘intermediary people, who are alreadyhalfway through their transition from one national membership to another’(Susic and Sedmak 1983, p. 7). In the second phase they already becomemembers of a dominant, majority national group (Zupancic 1996, pp. 98�99,Zigon 2000, p. 176). Mixed marriages are pictured as morally problematic,since the national in these cases begins to connote the moral � and suchtheories suggest that to marry a Slovene is morally more appropriate than tomarry an Austrian/German/Italian/Argentinean � while mixed marriages arecharacterized as factors of ‘coercive or silent assimilation’ that have adenationalizing character (Susic and Sedmak 1983, p. 71). Gender basedmeasurements of minority members’ national affiliation indicate that there aremore women than men who speak Slovene and at the same time identifythemselves as Austrian citizens (cf. Zupancic 1999, p. 124). Consequently,such studies suggest that women are morally responsible for the survival of thenation and, thus, also for the assimilation and the fading of the Slovene nation.Along with the family, they are continually mentioned as a (silent) ‘assimilationfactor’ (Susic and Sedmak 1983, p. 80). Because they shape their scientificinterpretations within the dominant nationalist discourses none of these studiesoffer an alternative explanation or allow for the possibility that mixedmarriages could positively serve as a link in hybrid societies. In such cases evena rhetorical tool, like the use of the words mixed marriage, creates an impressionthat a mixed marriage is not natural and pollutes the pure ethnic community/identity that is preserved only by pure Slovene marriages. Mixed marriages arerepresented as the ones that disturb the naturalness of the Slovene community.This perception is built on the myth of Slovenianness as a natural category,sustained by unique and pure genetic material that can be polluted by the bloodof the members from other communities. Such mythical representationssustain the image of a process in which Slovene genes have been transmittedfrom generation to generation � unspoiled.7

The psychoanalytic research by Juric-Pahor (1998, p. 2), who deals withnationally minded Carinthian and Trieste based Slovenes in order to analyzetheir expressions and experience of the ethnical-national identity, is alsogrounded on the perception of inherited ethnic identity, which, as she argues,‘relates to the primary binomial mother�child relation that begins already inthe uterus’. Although Juric-Pahor shows that the ethno-national identity is aproduct of tradition and collective experiences, she still pictures it as a naturalingredient of the human mind, which is installed already in the uterus and


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remains as such for the rest of life. She pictures it as ‘the deepest base ofthinking’ because, as she borrows from the Slovene poet Niko Grafenauer,natura and nation derive from the same Latin lexeme natus (born). Shecontinues, ‘the nation is an ethnically (by birth) connected community, whichis united by way of the same source of existence’ (1998, p. 43). In Juric-Pahor’s (1998, p. 161) search for common matrices in their consciousness,Carinthian Slovenes in Austria are pictured as being connected by birth, ascoming from the same origin, or as being of the same ethnos on which the firmand natural basis of the nation can be built. As Juric-Pahor (1998, p. 174)asserts, ethnic identity ‘comes from within’. Such representations produce andsustain national borders as natural, because the birth-given ethnic identitiesmake these people naturally distinctive.

Representing the nation as an ethnically pure andhomogenous unity

The second common nodal point in the analyzed dissertations that signifiesSlovenianness is the representation of the Slovene nation as an ethnically pureand homogenous unity. Similar to other European nationalisms the Sloveneone also has ‘difficulties in recognizing the possibility of hybridism. Even whena mixed origin is acknowledged, something is added to it in order to make thefeature look more nationally or ethnically original’ (Starc 2005, p. 67).

In this regard Slovenes in Slovenia or elsewhere are represented as a partof the same pure ethnic unity, of ‘the Slovene ethnic body’ (Zupancic 1996,p. 16; cf. Kalcic 1992, p. 62, Zigon 2000, p. 225), which is clearly defined.Those who can be parts of this body are often defined in great detail, forexample Zupancic’s (1996, p. 16) descriptions of Slovenes in Austria: ‘Apartfrom the mother nation, Slovenes in Austria come from all groups of Sloveneethnic body: minorities, emigrants and migrant workers’. This connotes theunity and deep ties between the three connected parts of the Slovene body, ofall people of Slovene descent. In Zupancic’s case Slovenianness is pictured as apure ethnic unity that can come into contact with other nationalities but cannever really transform into another. Zupancic (1996, p. 20) defines one of themain aims of his dissertation as the estimation of the influence of variousgeographical factors on the assimilation of ‘the Slovene ethnic body’ in Austria.Although he acknowledges that Slovenes in Carinthia can become assimilatedinto the Austrian society, he denies the possibility of Slovenes ever becomingAustrians. In his view, the Slovene identity is an ethnic identity which isinherent, pure, homogeneous, and cannot be altered, while the Austrianidentity is a national identity with a merely administrative function (Zupancic1996, p. 87). For him, even the most assimilated Slovenes who claim to beAustrians are ethnically still Slovenes. In this way scientific texts do not deal


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with actual people’s identifications but rather instill them in the hegemonicnational identity positions, which are in accordance with the idea of pureethnic unities. In this sense the possible crossovers between the twoideologically prescribed national identities are not scientifically inventoriedand are thus not legitimate identifications.

This scientific technique of investigating a ‘Slovene ethnic body’ producesclearly defined borders.8 It precisely marks where the Slovene nation ends andother nations begin. Such control of the ethnic population is not only theproject of scientific works, but is also the central concern of the nation-building discourse. The more the ethnic body is dispersed, the more thenation-state tries to introduce order within it and the more likely it is tomobilize measuring techniques and classificatory apparatuses of such scientificresearches. For example, Zupancic (1996, p. 79) measures the ‘Slovene ethnicbody’ in Austria according to five degrees of Slovenianness in Carinthia (thenationally conscious Slovene who is politically active, the nationally consciousSlovene, the one who switches between the two cultures, the assimilated, theradically assimilated). He finds the last two degrees to be ‘the most disputable’(1996, p. 80). The discourses that operate through such scientific accounts canalso be found in the everyday lives of Carinthian Slovenes in Austria. Theyoften identify themselves as not being only Slovene or Austrian, but as beingboth. In one situation they might function as Slovenes while in a differentsituation they might function as Austrians. However, in the eyes of such ascientific discourse this shifting is inadmissible and is characterized as an act ofbetrayal of the mother nation. Neither the nation-building discourse nor suchscientific accounts can see the possibility of constant mixing and negotiating ofthese two national/ethnic identities. The contested national/ethnic identitiescan thus be disputable only from the moral perspective, driven by nationalistdiscourses. In this sense the scientific texts legitimize the structure of nationalidentities that are built according to homogenous and clear-cut ethniccategories.

Mapping the nation as an ahistorical category and a productof linear evolution

The third frequent nodal point signifies the notion of the linear evolution of theSlovene nation. These works retrogradingly construct Slovenianness as datingback to the time when it did not actually exist as such. But the fact of non-existence is blurred by the natural ethno genesis of Slovenes from a culturalcommunity to a politically conscious community, or from tribe to nation[narod] and to nation-state [nacija].9 These scientifically constructed evolu-tionary stages depict the development of national consciousness, whereby thenation-state is pictured as the highest stage of Slovene evolution. Almost all of


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the analyzed dissertations perceive the development of Slovenes as anevolutionally progressive process that enabled them to become morenationally conscious and more civilized in every stage.10 Markes’s disserta-tion (2000), which evaluates the political and philosophical attitude of theSlovene nation, presents the linear evolution of Slovenianness from a nationto a nation-state as the highest stage, which is � unlike the nation �grounded in a political, rational debate and consciousness: ‘A nation-stateis ontically less than a nation. A nation-state does not originate innature (as does a nation), but in spirit, so it is not something physical,but something metaphysical’ (2000, p. 49). In this sense Zupancic (1996,p. 83) questions whether ‘the Austrians are a nation-state, a nationor both’. This question actually asks whether the Austrians represent atrue ethnic category since they did not go through all the phases andthey could not achieve appropriate national consciousness. This isadditionally emphasized when Zupancic (1996, p. 78) places the develop-ment of the Slovene identity in opposition to the Austrian and describesthat in the case of Slovenia ‘ethno-genesis occurred in a relatively unified andsimultaneous way’. In this way, according to Zupancic (1996, pp. 83�84),Austrians are nationally problematic since they lack the phase of a culturalnation.

Such scientific endeavors implicitly construct the image of civilization,which is posed as being inherent to the development of the nationalconsciousness. Such texts, like the one by Zupancic’s (1996, p. 14),hide the nationalism of their own nation behind the ‘developed democratic’state and present it as an innocent national feature. They represent Slovenenationalism as a natural feature of the processes in which Slovenes becamenationally aware and this makes our nationalism positive.11

The majority of the analyzed dissertations reproduce the myth of theancient Slovene nation, according to which the Slovene nation has been linearlyevolving since the times of Karantanija in the territory of today’s Austria.When presenting ‘the historical connectedness of Slovenes with the territoryof today’s Austria,’ Zupancic (1996, pp. 101�102) outlines not only the linearevolution of Slovenes, but also their ‘national faith’ and makes them appear asa nation for centuries:

Gospa Sveta was the church administrative centre that significantlyinfluenced the further Christianization of Slovenes or Karantanians alreadybetween the eighth and the tenth century. . . . At the same time the morethan a millennium long era of cohabitation and reciprocal influencing ofSlovenes and Germans (i.e. all those who came from the Germanlinguistic and cultural milieu) began. . . . At the end of the colonization,the northern border of a condensed settlement of Slovenes has beenstabilized for a few centuries.


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With this linear ethno-genesis Zupancic invents a border between theSlovenes and Germans as if both nations had existed already in the medievaltimes. Interestingly, he classifies all those who spoke Slovene as one and thesame community, while the Germans are represented as those who only spokeGerman but did not necessarily belong to one and the same community. Suchscientific images of a linear evolvement of Slovenia and its borders invent animaginary national prehistory.

Creating the beliefs in the disappearance of the nation and inthe endangering Others

The signifying chain of Slovenianness, created by the majority of doctoraldissertations reviewed in this paper, also contains the representations of acontinual fading of the Slovene nation, caused by the constant threats posed bythe endangering Others. They reproduce the myth of martyrdom of theSlovene nation. The estimation of the assimilation of Slovenes abroad andsimilar assimilation theories are most commonly presented as a black and whitepicture of national relations � We are always the helpless victims and They arealways the cruel conquerors. For example, Zupancic (1996, p. 18) reproducesthe border by implicitly representing all Austrians as enemies, when hepictures the Carinthian Slovenes as the victims who ‘paid a high price in theform of intensive assimilation’. ‘Vigorous assimilation’ (1996, p. 40) isrepresented as a lively all-encompassing Austrian threat: ‘There is no otherterritory of Slovene settlement that has been assimilated as fast as the one inAustria’ (1996, p. 16).

The Slovene theoretical apparatus and the assimilation measuring tool areprobably among the most sophisticated scientific apparatuses for assessing theposition of Slovenes abroad. In their effort to comply with the nation-buildingdiscourse, scientists try to outline the borders as clearly as possible. Since theyoperate within a framework of one particular nation-building discourse theyusually limit the range of possible results from the outset. In this respectthey fail to transcend national differences despite their fundamental belief thatthey are objective and above any ideology. This entanglement in the nation-building discourse directs the research programs and their interpretations, aswell as the results and possible suggestions for political actions.

Zupancic (1996, pp. 98�100) uses the tool for measuring the assimilationof Slovenes in Austria and ‘objectively’ estimates to what extent arethe Carinthian Slovenes still Slovenes and to what extent have they becomeassimilated. He invents ‘the index of Slovene communication’12 to showthe degree of the preservation of the Slovene identity in Austrian Carinthia. Hesupports his methodology with the idea that ‘since language and linguisticcommunication are among the most important and at the same time the most


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concrete elements of identity, the analysis of the communication is of vitalimportance for the assessment of the conditions of national or ethnic identity’(1996, p. 98). This index explains that zero represents exclusive use ofGerman language and the supremacy of Austrian/German identification, whileone represents exclusive use of Slovene language and the supremacy of Sloveneidentification. Thus, the number demonstrates how much of the Sloveniannesshas been lost in Austrian Carinthia. By making the readers aware of the difficultand endangered position of the Slovenes in Austria and by making them feelresponsible for the preservation of the Slovene identity, such scientific theoriestry to persuade the readers to take sides with the victims.

The interest shared by the studies of Slovene minorities in Austria, Italyand Hungary is the estimation of the remaining Slovene population.13 Thisturns scientific debates into a struggle for the preservation of national identitiesas prescribed by the state. They produce picturesque images and scenarios ofthe disappearing ‘Slovene ethnic body’ in Austrian Carinthia, which isthreatened by the Austrians who decompose and corrode it. The scientifictexts supply and sustain one of the most popular and oldest commonsensicalimage of Carinthia as a ‘cancer of the Slovene national body’ whereby the‘German cancer’ (Pogacnik 1976, p. 7) signifies the Carinthian Germans andAustria as a whole. The minorities are described as the limbs torn from thenational body and forcibly taken away from their mother nation. They are inconstant danger of assimilation that is achieved by mixed marriages (amongother things), because of which the Slovenes have been losing their identity(Zigon 2000, p. 176). Even the personal choice, based on mutual consent andfeelings of affection, for instance, marriage, is in this sense perceived as a partof a large foreign conspiracy that tries to erase the Slovenianness. Assimilationas the greatest threat to the Slovene nation is furthermore identified even inthings such as people’s idleness. For example, in their assimilation researchproject Susic and Sedmak (1983, p. 92) hypothesize: ‘The more spare time amember of the minority has, the more problematic this can be from theethnical point of view’. Practices such as socializing with friends who aremembers of the majority nation, watching majority television, visiting leisureactivities organized by majority associations become nationalized and nationallyhazardous.

Some of these dissertations represent Germans as a threat that has beenendangering Slovenes throughout their history. Matic (2001, p. 4) describesthe historical role of Germans in Ljubljana in the nineteenth century andinstead of putting these processes in the historical context of the constructionof national communities, he exhaustively strives ‘to expose the mission ofGermanness in Carniola’. Similarly, Kalcic (1992, p. 62) shows that ‘theexistence of Slovenes has been threatened on a number of occasionsthroughout history. Their territory was gradually shrunk to its present size’.In these accounts the national differences and borders are treated not as


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something that has appeared through specific historical conditions, but as anaturally conditioned phenomenon. The Germanization processes are de-scribed exclusively from the Slovene nation-building point of view whichmakes all Germans appear as tyrants. Matic’s concluding thought (2001,p. 296) offers the image of a continual German threat when he � in the style offatalistic national poetics � creates a clear opposition between good and bad:‘Despite that [fading political influence of Germans in Carniola] it seems that atthe end of the Monarchy the Carniolan Germans were slowly rising again. Wecan only guess where this rise would have stopped if the Austro-HungarianEmpire survived’. The scenarios and guessing of what could happen if fosterfantasies and intensify the image of the endangered Slovene nation and theGerman enemy.

Even the works that explicitly claim to deal with a socially constructednational identity often reproduce the narratives of the hegemonic nation-building discourse. In her otherwise deconstructive dissertation, BogliunDebeljuh (1991, p. 190) switches to the implicit picturing of the threateningother, who can seriously endanger the minority and foster its demise. Theassimilation processes are represented as those ‘to which the members of theminority ethnic groups are subjected’ and which loosen their identity (1991,p. 107). The rhetoric suggests that a person can lose his/her identity, but itdoes not explain that the loss of identity is possible only from the perspectiveof the hegemonic nation-building discourse that does not allow for the positionin-between. The minority members’ cooperation in the majority’s institutions,marrying a member of the majority, or displaying some cultural features of themajority nation (Bogliun Debeljuh 1991, pp. 107�109) do not necessarilyimplicate the level of assimilation, but can implicate the inadmissibleborderland identity, by which one is at the same time a member of bothnations or distinct from both of them.

In the perspective of scientific picturing of the disappearing Slovene nationthe use of language is put in the sphere of national politics. Slovenes who liveabroad are perceived as being under constant pressure of the majority language(Bernjak 1998, p. 1). Bernjak’s dissertation that deals with the contact ofmajority languages and minority nations excellently analyses what is happeningwith the language of the minority. Bernjak (1998, pp. 30�35) presents thedifferent effects of code-switching and code-mixing, such as the appearanceand growth of an intermediate language, hybrid language forms, interferences,transferences. However, in the interpretation she succumbs to the hegemonicnation-building discourse and treats the hybrid forms of language as mere‘linguistic errors in the languages of bilingual speakers,’ as ‘the loss of thelanguage of the minority . . . the abandoning of the language of the minority’and consequently as ‘the reduced linguistic capability of bilingual speakers’(1998, p. 1). The problematic point of such linguistic analyses is that theyanalyze the ‘language anomalies’ from the linguistic norm of the standard


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Slovene language that serves as a tool for the control and homogenization ofthe national population. In the Slovene nation-building discourse, the standardSlovene language is perceived as a closely fitting skin to the Slovene ethnicidentity, while the hybrid languages, which are in many cases a mixture of bothnational standards and regional dialects, are from this perspective unable toreflect the purity of a homogenous ethnic group. Viewed from the perspectiveof the national linguistic norm they become problematic since they endangerthe purity of the Slovene minority’s ethnic identity. The fear of language loss ispossible only from the perspective of the norm, which is � according to thenation-building discourse � perceived as the only possible variant ofthe Slovene language for all those who are to be identified as members ofthe nation.

Although Slovene linguists often argue that language is a constantlychanging living organism, this idea is ignored when it comes to nationalidentity. The language of the minority group is denied the right to be aliving organism. However, their language is transformed and adapted to thesociocultural context, because its hybridism helps them to function in theirsociety more efficiently than they would be able to if they only used onlyone of the standard languages. The image disseminated by the scientificaccounts depicts the hybrid forms only as ‘the loss of language’, caused bythe all-pervading influence of other languages. The structural patternsand needs of those people, who produce and use such languages in theireveryday lives, are rarely even mentioned. In most cases these scientifictexts do not question the norm of the standard language; they do notsee its construction and they reproduce it as a signifier of national/ethnicpurity. In this sense the scientific politics of language are turned into nationalpolitics.

Constructing and strengthening the need for the nation’sstruggle for survival

The fifth scientifically produced representation of Slovenianness is the strugglefor the survival of the Slovene nation. The mere language and titles of thesedissertations suggest a continuing struggle for the preservation of Slovenianness.The preservation of the Slovene identity is a common goal of these scientifictexts, which implicitly or explicitly produce the sense of the endangering Others.In Zupancic’s, Matic’s, Munda Hirnok’s, and Zigon’s case these are Austrians,Germans, Hungarians, and Argentineans, respectively. They all create theimpression of the need for the Slovene nation to constantly struggle against itscontinuing disappearance.

For example, Matic’s historical work (2001, p. 4) describes the nationalstruggle of the Slovenes against the Germans:


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It’s true that in a particular era the survival of the Slovenes was put to a sterntest. But it is also true that, as Nietzsche says: ‘What doesn’t kill us strengthensus’. In their angry struggle with the German identity, the Slovenesconstantly learned from their opponents, followed their example and oftenalso imitated them. The learning era was hard and the Slovene mistakeswere punished with severe blows. Luckily, thanks to the change ingovernment politics, this era was relatively short, but long enough forSlovenes � who learned from their bitter experiences � to find out how totake advantage of their new role as governmental allies and stop the deadlyraid of Germanization.

The analyzed dissertations offer scientific arguments for the existence ofnational differences and through these arguments they legitimize thenational struggles. Consequently, they create images that foster collectivedefensive positions, with which various users/readers of these researchworks can identify easily. In this regard Slovenianness is representedas a museum specimen that should be handled with care and be eagerlydefended.

Even the inventory methods in some of these dissertations signify theirinvolvement in the survival struggle project. They function more as nation-building apparatuses than as scientific apparatuses because they turn to thequestion of how the investigation of folklore can help the preservation of thenational identity. As Munda Hirnok (1996, p. 2) explains: ‘I also devoted greatattention to associations, organizations, the mass media, etc., which in theirprograms strive to cherish and preserve folk culture of the Slovenes inPorabje’. She explicitly emphasizes that the main aim of her inventory of folkculture is to ‘strengthen the national awareness of the Slovenes in Porabje’(1996, p. 2). The constant struggle for the nation is visible also in Kalcic’sdissertation (1992, p. 26), which stresses that only the awareness of theSlovene originality will help the Slovene nation to survive in the future and this‘essentially means to preserve our unique language and culture as well as ourethnic territory’.

Parts of such a survival struggle are also representations that call forcontinual remembrance of the individual’s national roots. Regarding thetripartite structure of Slovenianness, Zigon’s work (2000, p. 226) occupies anactivist position:

The idea of three Slovenias � three dimensions of Slovenianness (mothernation, minorities, emigrants) or the awareness as regards the necessity ofpreserving Slovene culture also outside the state borders is present only inexpert circles. We would therefore need a mental breakthrough into awider public sphere, onto the various levels of state institutions and civilsociety.


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Through such approaches the scientific works try to preserve Sloveniannesswhile at the same time constructing Slovenianness and national differences.They effectively mask nationalism since they picture their goals as merecontributions to Slovene national culture.

Conclusion: how science produces and disseminates facts onnational reality

All five mythical representations evident in the doctoral dissertations provide thesignifying chain of Slovenianness with content matter. These texts scientificallytestify as regards the national order in Slovenia: Slovenianness is pictured as anatural and ethnically pure category that evolved in a linear process, while theborder between Slovenes and others (e.g. Austrians/Germans) is mainlysustained through the images of endangered Slovenes, of their disappearance andtheir continual struggle for survival against the endangering Others.

This mainstream Slovene scientific discourse, which deals with thequestions of national matters, produces specific scientific representations ofthe Slovene nation that signify Slovenianness in a peculiar way. These textsdisseminate facts about the national and narrate the stories about the nationthrough a reproduction of various voices of the nation-building discourse.Once these scientific accounts enter the speech they begin to produce anddisseminate authoritative versions of national reality through various channels,be it lectures, books, newspaper commentaries, research programs or politics.Although they claim objectivity and act as if they measure national identity inobjective, universal terms, the results of such scientific works are always theproducts of articulatory practices (cf. Howarth 2000, p. 126). One shouldkeep in mind that scientific researches can also be driven by emotions, personalbeliefs, personal experiences of the researchers, their position in the academicor broader sociocultural context, their anchorage in the specific paradigm, andby the limitations of this paradigm. All these conditions influence theirperception of nationhood. However, the significance of the presented doctoraldissertations for Slovene national culture lies in their legitimizing status. Theyposses the power to privilege certain modes as Slovene, while marginalizingothers as being foreign. In this regard it should be remembered, as warned byKincheloe and McLaren (1998, p. 263), that ‘mainstream research practicesare generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproductionof systems of class, race, and gender oppression’. Instead of opening up thespace of the national and fostering the understanding of diversity andhybridism, these scientific texts reproduce nationalism and are extremelyreductionist. They do not embrace the questions of the nation in all itscomplexity and contingency. For this reason we need new scientificapproaches that, as Grossberg (2006, p. 2) suggests, are able to


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. . . construct a political history of the present, but to do so in a particularway, a radically contextualist way, in order to avoid reproducing the verysorts of universalisms (and essentialisms) that all too often characterize thedominant practices of knowledge production, and that have contributed(perhaps unintentionally) to making the very relations of domination,inequality and suffering that cultural studies desires to change.

Scientific speech on the national should place hybridity as the norm for theongoing transformational conditions of all human cultures. For this purposescientists need to become sensitive about (and aware of) the specific historicalcontexts in which different kinds of ideologically prescribed nationalsubjectivities appeared. The emergence of a nation system was not a necessaryproduct of the historical development, but one of the many possible contingenteconomies of organizing social relations in which national citizens�subjectshave been produced through the incessant national training of the population.This is something that the mainstream Slovene academic discourse still fails totake into account and in many cases it continues to function as a legitimizerof populist politics, xenophobia and other social injustices, based on forms ofsocial exclusion.

Notes

1 The Republic of Slovenia, which is nowadays an independent state and amember of the European Union with approximately two million inhabitants,is historically tightly connected to the Balkans and Central Europe. After thedownfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovenia joined the coalition ofSerbia and Croatia and in 1918 a new state was formed � The Kingdomof Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was later renamed into The Kingdomof Yugoslavia. After World War II the new socialist state of Yugoslavia wasformed. This was based on the discourses of brotherhood and unity of allYugoslav republics. In the late 1980s Yugoslavia was flooded with variousethnic nationalisms and in 1991 Slovene citizens opted for independence.The gap between the different discursive structures in the Yugoslav republicswas growing bigger and the ideology of brotherhood and unity could nolonger prevent the downfall of Yugoslavia.

2 These poly-historical books about Slovene lands are today perceived as thefirst scientific accounts of the Slovene national culture. Such are for exampleLinhart’s (1788�1791/1981) attempt at presenting the history of Carniolafrom 1788�1791; Kozler’s map of the Slovene nation from 1853, which ‘asprecisely as possible shows how far the Slovene language stretches’ (1854/1974, p. 1); Matko Potocnik’s (1909) poly-historical book on Carinthia asSlovene land; Anton Beg’s (1908) marking of the Slovene-German border inCarinthia; or his national cadastral register of Carinthia (Beg 1910).


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3 Carinthia is a province that has been divided between three nation-states,Slovenia, Austria, and Italy since 1920. At that time a plebiscite was held,the result of which was that the major part of it became a federal Austrianprovince, its southern part became a part of Yugoslavia/Slovenia, and asmall part was annexed to Italy. A substantial part of Slovene-speakingpopulation lives in Austrian Carinthia and ever since Carinthia became a partof Austria the images of Carinthia as ‘the lost Slovene land’ and ‘a grief ofSlovenia’ have dominated the Slovene people’s perceptions of Carinthia andthe national border with Austria.

4 These works are: Jernej Zupancic’s Slovenci v Avstriji [Slovenes in Austria]defended at the Faculty of Arts/Department of Geography in 1996, MarijaJuric-Pahor’s Narodna oz. narodnostna identiteta Slovencev na Koroskem terSlovencev v dezeli Furlaniji � Julijski krajini [The National Identity of the Slovenesin Carinthia and the Slovenes in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region] defended at theFaculty of Social Sciences in 1998, Loredana Bogliun Debeljuh’s Etnicnaidentiteta kot tip socialne identitete [The Ethnic Identity as a Type of Social Identity]defended at the Faculty of Social Sciences in 1991, Zvone Zigon’s Politicnostkot polje ohranjanja etnicne identitete v izseljenstvu [Politics as a Field of thePreservation of Ethnic Identity in Emigration] defended at the Faculty of SocialSciences in 2000, Janez Markes’s Princip neliberalnosti in vrednostne podlageslovenske nacije [Principle of Non-liberal and Value Grounds of the Slovene Nation]defended at the Theological Faculty in 2000, Katarina Munda Hirnok’s Vlogain pomen ljudske kulture in nacina zivljenja pri opredeljevanju in ohranjanju narodneidentitete porabskih Slovencev [The Role and Importance of Folk Culture and the Wayof Life in Defining and Preserving the National Identity of Slovenes in Porabje]defended at the Faculty of Arts/Department of Ethnology and CulturalAnthropology in 1996, Elizabeta Bernjak’s Jezikovnosistemski razlogi primanjkl-jaja v slovensko�madzarskem jezikovnem stiku [The Linguistic-system Reasons for theDeficit in the Slovene-Hungarian Language Contact] defended at the Faculty ofArts/Department of Slavic Languages and Literature in 1998, DraganMatic’s Nemci v Ljubljani 1861�1918 [Germans in Ljubljana 1861�1918]defended at the Faculty of Arts/Department of History in 2001, and IgorKalcic’s Narodna identiteta v slovenski povojni stanovanjski arhitekturi [NationalIdentity in Post�War Slovene Housing Architecture] defended at the Faculty ofArchitecture in 1992.

5 Today the ancient state of Karantanija is perceived to be the first Slovenestate-like formation in the eighth century. Its administrative centre waslocated on Gosposvetsko polje, which is today a part of Austrian Carinthia.

6 This is a very common view that is often emphasized by other authors.Austrians are often denied their nationhood with the argument that theirhistory does not go back more than a hundred years and that they do nothave their own national language. In their analysis of the discursiveconstruction of the Austrian national identity, Wodak and othersillustratively show that the imagination process of the Austrian nation wasparticularly intensive during the last 50 years. They claim that because


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Austrians use the German language and lack their own, the language couldnot serve as a distinctive national feature of the Austrians. Furthermore, inproving their national authenticity, Austrians had to separate themselvesfrom the Germans and this process of de-Germanization is especially strongsince the establishment of the Second Republic of Austria in 1955.‘OsterreicherInnen’, as Wodak and others describe the self-standingAustrian national community, was established through the myths of theAustrian nation existing over a period of one millennium or throughpicturing Austrians as the victims of the Germans in World War II (Wodaket al. 1998, pp. 164�90).

7 In order to legitimize the politics of Slovene national identification, scientificworks usually mobilize the people’s commonsensical perceptions ofgenetics.

8 In this sense Anderson (1983/1995, p. 7) argues: ‘Even the largest of them,encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic,boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.’

9 The Slovene scientific discourse invented the difference between narod andnacija (the closest words/concepts in English might be nation and nation-state, although this is not quite similar because neither the English languagenor the Anglo-Saxon academic milieus distinguish this difference as strictlyand they do not have the words that signify it) that operates on the level ofnational consciousness; the first represents nationally conscious people whoare not yet politically conscious and organized, while the second represents apolitically organized and conscious national community.

10 When these dissertations place the Slovene nation into a historical context,they usually sketch it within the Slovene declaration of independence in 1991:‘Slovenes achieved the peak of their national development, the nation-statewith all its institutions necessary for the existence and development of Sloveneoriginality. This concluded the process of political emancipation, which wasbeing prepared and which ripened throughout many centuries . . . Sloveniastarted searching for its place amongst the developed democratic Europeanstates and nations, where it belongs according to its historical and culturaltradition as well as its economic and spatial structures’ (Zupancic 1996, p. 14).

11 The majority of such scientific endeavors still rest on the idea of negative andpositive nationalisms. The scientific perception of the benignity of Slovenenationalism is in this sense problematic especially because of the doublestandards according to which the scientists measure the characters ofdifferent nationalisms. According to these standards, the identical nationalistmechanisms are characterized as negative if they are traced in Austrian orGerman nationalisms, and as entirely positive if they are identified within theSlovene nationalism.

12 Zupancic (1996, pp. 98�99) calculates the degree of the preservation ofSlovenianness in Austrian Carinthia according to the coefficient whereby thepoints of Slovene language are divided by the points of German language. In


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the next step the sum of all points of Slovene communication are divided byfour times the number of all responses.

13 For example, in the title of his article, Zupancic (1997, p. 167) asks: ‘Howmany Slovenes are there in Austria?’

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science in power

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