Search

Building on the view of biographical writing as a cultural practice and expression, this article adopts identity and narrative theories to discuss the interconnection between national character and identity construction in political autobiographies. It employed Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom [LWF] (1994) and Olusegun Obasanjo's My Watch (2014) as primary texts. It identifies prejudice against black South Africans as the national character in LWF and postcolonial political disillusionment in Nigeria as that of My Watch. It further demonstrates how the personalities of Mandela and Obasanjo are rooted in role-based identity and the respective saliences that activate this identity type. Additionally, it discusses the modes of narration in the two texts. The article concludes that national character is a sociocultural and psychological indicator that influences identity construction in political autobiographies. KEYWORDS: national character; self-image; identity construction; modes of narration, INTRODUCTION This paper, in furtherance of existing discourses on postcolonial Africa, attempts to delve into a predominant concentration in critical and scholarly studies in biographical literature, which is the image [...]

The study of popular support for unification of Europe raises issues about the role of identification with national interests versus support for postnational identity in determining attitudes across countries and over time. It also raises issues about the roles of traditional cleavages in class position and partisan ideological views versus differences in postmaterialist values in determining support for unification. Using data for individuals sampled within member-states of the European Community in 1982, 1986, 1989, and 1992, the analyses show persistent differences between countries in their support even after equalizing for national differences in sociodemographic, ideological, and value priority variables over the 10-year time span of the study, which favors theoretical arguments for the continued importance of national identity., With the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by the member-states of the European Community in 1993, the countries of Europe have moved toward reshaping the design of Europe and, in [...]