Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-343). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The thesis defines and explores three different modalities of nationalism - diagnosis, activism and redemption - in the context of contemporary Bulgaria. Nationalists see a significant divergence between ‘who we should be' and ‘who we are'. This is accentuated by Bulgarian citizens' experiences of socio-political chaos and uncertainty. The thesis looks at the political rituals which aim to redeem the ‘ill' Bulgarian nation, conceived as both post-Ottoman and post-Soviet. It focuses the importance of affect for understanding the relevance of the nation for citizens' sense of self. I begin by examining the apparatus of production through which the Bulgarian national subject is imbued with a particular character. I consider how it has been constituted historically and how it continues to be moulded by contemporary discourses. I demonstrate that ‘being Bulgarian' is nowadays a primarily negative state of being, defined through the discourse of the ill nation. As far as nationalists are concerned, this illness can be cured only through attempting, out of the debris of historical contingency, to renew social structures so that they more closely resemble the ideal. My research focussed on one nationalist organisation in Bulgaria which attempted to fulfil this task: VMRO (or IMRO- the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Movement). I explore how the organisation creates and renews itself as a descendant of the national revival movements of the 19th and early 20th century, and thus as a valid form of contemporary nationalism, while at the same time it fills the role of a modern political party. To heal the nation, VMRO declares a need to be vigilant against further catastrophes and to address the consequences of previous ones. It thus interprets existing social grievances according to specific narratives about the nation's problems and prescribes redemptive action. VMRO addresses a public which has internalised a sense of being judged by ‘the international' (often imagined as ‘a dictate'). This is not the ‘real'international, but an imagined, power-laden domain. Nationalists engage with this domain by constructing illicit discourses which challenge this nexus of power. In the thesis, I explore how the traditional imperatives of a nationalist organisation - making claims for territories, populations and minority issues - are hybridized by the organisation's dialogic engagement with both ‘the international', with citizens' daily concerns and their affective states.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 422-433). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR11586

Inaug.-Diss.--Cologne. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 251-258.

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université Paris VIII-Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 699-726).

Inaug.-Diss.--Cologne. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 251-258.

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université Paris VIII-Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 699-726).

Today, Belgium is an oft-cited example of a “fabricated state” with no real binding national identity. The events of 1787-1790 illustrate a surprisingly strong rebuttal to this belief. Between 1787 and 1790, the inhabitants of the Southern Netherlands protested the majority of reforms implemented by their sovereign Joseph II of Austria. In ten independent provinces each with their own administration and assembly of Estates, a resistance movement grew and its leaders eventually raised a patriot army over the summer of 1789. This force chased the imperial troops and administration from all the provinces except Luxembourg, allowing the conservative Estates and their supporters to convene a Congress at Brussels, which hosted a central government to the new United States of Belgium. By November 1790, however, infighting between democrats and conservatives and international pressures allowed Leopold II, crowned Emperor after his brother’s death in February, to easily reconquer the provinces. This thesis investigates the moment in which “Belgianness,” rather than provincial distinctions, became a prevailing identification for the Southern Netherlands. It tracks the transition of this national consciousness from a useful collaboration of the provinces for mutual legal support to a stronger, more emotional appeal to a Belgian identity that deserved a voice of its own. It adds a Belgian voice to the dialogue about nations before the nineteenth century, while equally complicating the entire notion of a nation. Overall, the thesis questions accepted paradigms of the nation and the state and casts Belgium and the Belgians as a strong example that defies the normal categories of nationhood. It examines how the revolutionaries—the Estates, guilds, their lawyers, the Congress, and bourgeois democratic revolutionaries—demonstrated a growing sense of “Belgianness,” in some ways overriding their traditional provincial attachments. I rely on pamphlet literature and private correspondence for the majority of my evidence, focusing on the elite’s cultivation and use of national sentiment throughout the revolution.

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Thesis (doctoral)--İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1988. / At head of title: İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-202).