Nation, a Symbolic Discourse of Modernity

Abstract

The present paper advances a discussion on three fundamental issues: nation, national identity, and race. Starting from the study by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture, the idea of a nation as cultural narration is affirmed, which bears a double temporality (past and present) and a discontinuous one (modern, colonial, native, masculine, etc.), revealing the cultural identities of a group by means of a struggle among such diverse times. Race and cultural difference enter such a theoretical context as a means for understanding the discourse of modernity.