The nation has two `voices'

Abstract

This article explores the contemporary conditions of national self-presentation, inviting students of national identity to reconsider the nature of national self-narration through new conceptual tools. It is argued that contemporary nations have two `voices': one is addressed to their members, another speaks to the nation's external interlocutors. Both voices contribute to the performance of identity: for nations which are the product of colonial and `crypto-colonial' encounters, narration is characterized by a negotiation of the boundaries between private and public voices and slippage in utterance. The article introduces a new concept in the study of culture, `diforia', which accounts for both this split meaning of utterance and national performativity in public. The concept is mobilized to examine and deconstruct a recent case of Greek diforia enacted in the context of the opening and closing ceremonies of Athens 2004.