ABSTRACT
The conjugation of nation and state is already a problematic relation. Adding woman to this conjugation, presents not so much a marriage but a troika of terms restlessly pulling in different directions. Deniz Kandiyoti (1991a) has evoked the contradictory character of nation-state formation in postcolonial societies. On the one hand it appears as a ‘modern project that melts and transforms traditional attachments in favour of new identities’, on the other hand it calls for ‘a reaffirmation of authentic cultural values culled from the depths of a communal past’ (1991a:431). This Janus face between modernist transformations and archaist reaffirmations was arguably present in the formation of nationstates and citizen-subjects in Europe. Creating Italians or French from the congeries of regional identities, required a modernist eclipsing and at times a forcible suppression of regional identities and languages but it also entailed archaist redrawings, a culling from the depths of an imagined past community an allegedly more authentic national boundary for cultural differences.
