Skazana na imperium? Lęki i dyskurs imperialny w procesie samoidentyfikacji Rosji poradzieckiej

The goal of the article is to indicate the reasons why formulating a new Russian non-imperial identity has failed. Applying the Ontological Security Theory shows the fall of the USSR as a critical situation that undermined the so-called fundamental questions of the Russian identity. The return of the imperial discourse was triggered by ontological anxiety connected to two fundamental questions: social relations with the significant Other and the finitude. The article discusses in detail the latter. Pending anxiety has activated imperial habitus, which is illustrated by the case of the Russian Geographical Association.

Imperial Identity Seen Through Art. The Case of Maria Theresa – Considerations

During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) a reassessment of the role women played in a closed society occurred. The main question this article aims to answer is how one can identify these changes by analysing images with high symbolic value, which celebrated and presented Maria Theresa in instances of official relevance, images produced in a period when nations were designing themselves. The present article seeks to underline some of the most representative ideas on how the monarchical identity of Maria Theresa was constructed in art to serve political and propagandistic functions, in an age considered the richest in formal expressions, that is the Baroque, or the ‘Late Baroque’. Hereditary successor to a long line of Holy Roman emperors, Maria Theresa changed the perspective on monarchy and constructed a different identity, that of female agency. Metaphorical images and realism define the analysed portraits in order to demonstrate how the political and the natural body of the monarch combined to illustrate power and aristocratic descent. In my study, the theoretical works on the role Maria Theresa played as female heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire (rex femineus) are to be viewed as main sources of the imagery surrounding her natural and political body. What I propose is an inquiry into the iconographic representations of Maria Theresa’s body of state, which was public and eternal, and thus privileged as a site of discourse for absolutist statehood.

Historical Aspects of the Imperial Identity: Perspectives of Interdisciplinary Research

The article attempts to identify new opportunities for studying the role of the imperial factor in British foreign policy, which are opened up by using the category of imperial identity, which the authors present as a variant of a more universal category of regional identity. In order to find out the complex nature of regional identity, the authors make a comparative analysis of the existing ones in modern regionalism. (A. Paasi) and “humanitarian geography” (D.N. Zamyatin) definitions of the region as a way of political, historical and cultural organization of space. The methodological postulates of these concepts create the basis for an interdisciplinary approach in the framework of the “new imperial history” and allow us to consider the British Empire at the height of its power in the 19th — first half of the 20th centuries as the most significant region in world politics. Awareness of its special role in the prevailing international system was at the heart of the imperial identity and foreign policy ideas of the British political elite, which, in turn, makes it possible to draw a clearer line between identity and imperial ideology. The authors come to the conclusion that such a formulation of the problem forms a new discussion agenda both on imperial issues and on issues of identity.

Oceans and Empire

This chapter explores how Woolf’s frequent writing about the ocean highlights both her opposition to and her enmeshment in the British Empire. Woolf scholarship has emphasized Woolf’s portrayal of oceans and empire as naturally antithetical, demonstrating the various ways in which Woolf’s oceans oppose patriarchal imperialism. The chapter argues that, in portraying this antithesis, Woolf’s writing subverts a central tenet of British imperial ideology during her lifetime: the belief that oceans and empire were naturally connected and that, because of the critical importance of maritime trade and sea power to British imperialism, the sea was in fact an agent of empire, foundational to British imperial identity. The chapter shows how Woolf’s subversion of this naturalized connection between oceans and empire both augmented her anti-imperial critique and, by amplifying her blind spots regarding race and the representation of non-European peoples, significantly constrained it.

The Home, Nations and Empires, and Ephemeral Exhibition Spaces

This book explores ephemeral exhibition spaces between 1750 and 1918. The chapters focus on two related spaces: the domestic interior and its imagery, and exhibitions and museums that display both national/imperial identity and the otherness that lurks beyond a country’s borders. What is revealed is that the same tension operates in these private and public realms; namely, that between identification and self-projection, on the one hand, and alienation, otherness and objectification on the other. In uncovering this, the authors show that the self, the citizen/society and the other are realities that are constantly being asserted, defined and objectified. This takes place, they demonstrate, in a ceaseless dynamic of projection versus alienation, and intimacy versus distancing.

Idea of the Supranational Identity in Österreichischer Plutarch by Joseph von Hormayr

This paper considers an attempt at forming imperial identity in Austria in the early nineteenth century by means of constructing historical memory. The re-interpretation of the past for the sake of promoting dynastic patriotism can be most clearly seen in Joseph Hormayr’s Österreichischer Plutarch, a work which was aimed at creating an “All-Austrian Pantheon” and contributed a lot to mobilising the peoples of the empire to fight against Napoleon. Цsterreichischer Plutarch and its role in forming the historical memory and supranational identity of the Habsburg Empire between 1804 and 1815 have not been studied closely in Russian historiography. The author of the paper attempts to analyse the concept of Austrian history as a multinational state provided in the work. Besides, he assesses the influence of the work on the political discourse of the Habsburg monarchy paying close attention to the formation of identity by means of historical memory, and the methods for multinational state image integration into historical context. The analysis helps establish that Hormayr’s narrative became a means of constructing the supranational identity in the Habsburg monarchy, and the basis for the formation of conservatism and romanticism in Austria. Österreichischer Plutarch became a turning point for common historical memory touching upon the identity of all peoples living in the Habsburg monarchy. The concept found its place in conservative propaganda and education in the Empire. The image of Austria as a “family of peoples” found in the work is presented as historically motivated, having its own logic and the purpose to counter external threats. These results retained the same meaning even after Hormayr changed his political views.