ABSTRACT
Eric Hobsbawm’s monumental Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (1990) stands firm on its premise that nationalism precedes the nation. This, it seems, is justification for the study of nationalisms without nationhood, semi-fanatical nationalisms that ignite like a bonfire and then die down, or those whose heat increases slowly until everything is in smoke and it is difficult to control the conflagration. In particular, this is a discussion of some of the uses to which melodrama has been historically put in the service of nationbuilding. Here I look at two silent film melodramas, the first based on a case of dramatically failed effort and the second on a case of a somewhat misled attempt at nationbuilding: D.W.Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (US, 1915), and its South African equivalent, De Voortrekkers (South Africa, 1916). My interest is in the melodramatic mode in the service of the transmission of knowledge about sexual reproduction. In short, what I call sex education as nationalism and nationalism as sex education.
