Book, National identity, A: an enigma[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. In 2007, a European nation decided to create a ministry of national identity. As familiar as they may seem, the notions of identity and nation reveal a complexity that arouses the curiosity of History and Anthropology. Thus, combining the two disciplines, Marcel Detienne puts into perspective some radically different ways of conceiving what seems to be part of “common sense”, namely, what we are together and what others are not. These manners are diverse fictions of the past and present: the pure Celtic of Padania in Italy; the Hindu-Hinduist with Vedic roots, in contemporary India; the Japanese born from the land of the gods without other predecessors; the Athenian who wants to be a pure offspring of the native land; the historical German of yesterday, more Greek than the Greeks, of the time of Heidegger and Hitler; the Native American, on a continent open to immigration, and the traditional French, once again rooted.