With us, or against us
- Wits University
World famous Italian historian speaks about how nationalities and nation states can be forged by excluding others.
“If you are not one of us, you are part of ‘them’.”
That was the message of Italian historian Professor Alessandro Barbero’s lecture at Wits University, where he traced how communities first defined themselves by excluding others. That instinct, eventually, helped shape nation states that we know today, and, to an extreme, political systems that was forged on extreme nationalism.
Speaking on Building National Identities, Barbero described how people living in ancient communities have often seen themselves as “the real human beings” and others as somehow different. Many of the names for these communities often meant “human”, so, in other words, if you are not part of the community, you are not “real human”.
The ancient Greeks, for instance, used to define themselves in opposition to barbarians, he said. They built their whole national identity on that opposition “with a huge emotional investment”. In that world, anyone who did not speak the Greek language was inferior, or not Greek. “The very word barbarian,” Barbero said, was a mocking of the way other people sounded when they spoke, as their languages sounded like “bar bar bar bar”
Barbero said national identities did not emerge naturally or innocently. It was built, strengthened and often deliberately shaped over time, with substantial emotional investment. “Successful identities can be invented,” he said. “To have an identity you need the past, and if you haven’t got a past, you can forge it.” He described how peoples wrote histories for themselves, claimed ancient roots and created stories of common belonging in order to turn groups into nations.
The lecture drew a full audience of students, academics, diplomats and guests to the Wits Senate Room. Hosted in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute in Pretoria and supported by Wits partners across the humanities, languages and engineering, the event reflected a growing academic and cultural relationship between Wits and Italian institutions, and a shared interest in bringing international scholarship into conversation with South 第一吃瓜网 audiences.
Italy’s Ambassador to South Africa, Alberto Vecchi ,said cultural and academic ties between South Africa and Italy form “the most important fabric of the bilateral relations”, adding that agreements between universities in the two countries have been reinforced and expanded in recent years. Wits Humanities Dean Professor Mucha Musemwa said the exchange is “meant to enrich our people”, including students and staff, and expressed hope that Wits would deepen its links with more universities in Italy.