Art and Nation-State

Abstract

Even in new theories of nation which claim that nations were invented in modern times by the intellectuals we still find some foundations for making the difference between »real« and »artificial« nations. This binarism usually introduces the »People« nations of the modernist first-corners, and »Volk« nations of all the others, as in »The Federalist Papers« introduction of representative democracy, and in Herder's »Ideas on the Philosophy of History of the Mankind«. In both cases, national art is treated as an artificial constructive pillar of the Nation and Nation-State. Comparing the case of Slovenia (the nation-founding story of »Martin Krpan« by Fran Levstik from 1858) with the cases of Greece as »the Dream Nation« and of new African nations, the author concludes that nations are not fictitious inventions of the intellectuals but necessary products of history, and that in their production art had an important position due to its aesthetic function. This function makes possible to bridge and to universalize on a territory without any certain grounds and limits, across the gap of any modernist binarism.