Įtvirtinant monokultūrinį tautiškumą transatlantinėje erdvėje : etnokultūrinio atgaivinimo ir diasporos nacionalizmo atvejai Lietuvoje ir JAV

LTStraipsnyje nagrinėjamas etnonacionalizmo fenomenas totalitarizmo ir imigraciniuose kontekstuose. Pagrindinis tikslas – paanalizuoti du lietuviškumo įtvirtinimo atvejus: XX a. 7–9 dešimtmečio etnokultūrinio atgaivinimo judėjimą bei XX a. 5–9 dešimtmečio diasporos (tėvyninį) nacionalizmą. Abiem atvejais tautiškumą siekta įtvirtinti įprasminant nacionalistinį sentimentą ir įveiksminant (etno)kultūrinį bei (etno)nacionalinį identitetą politikose, kurių epicentre atsiduria monokultūrinis – viena tauta – viena kultūra – tautiškumo modelis. Šis modelis sėkmingai priešpriešinamas tiek sovietinio totalitarizmo, tiek ir homogenizuojančio amerikietiškojo „išlydančiojo katilo“, o vėliau ir daugiakultūriškumo atžvilgiu. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Emigrantų nacionalizmas; Etniškumas; Etnokultūrinis atgaivinimas; Etnonacionalizmas; Identiteto politika; Migracija; Diasporic nationalism; Ethnic nationalism; Ethnicity; Ethnocultural; Ethnocultural revivalism; Identity politics; Identity politics, ethnicity; Migration; Revivalism.

ENThe focus of the article is on revivalist and diaspora nationalist ways of the accommodation of (ethnic) cultural (ethnic) national identity as well as politics of identity in two societies of rapid change: Lithuanian transitionalist (from Soviet into post-Soviet), marked by the totalitarianism hegemony which was encountered by the non-conformist (ethnic) national revivalism, and the US assimilationist politics of "melting pot" homogeneity as well as politics of multiculturalism and both of them encountered by the diaspora (homeland) nationalism. The research (based on the fieldwork in the Midwestern States of the US in 2002–2007 and data obtained from a participant’s point of view of my personal involvement in folk culture heritage protection and advancement activities of the late Soviet regime in Lithuania) shows that (ethnic) nationalist sentiment was forged by the Soviet period’s non-conformist revivalists and diaspora nationalists in the monoculturalist culture–nation and nation–culture pattern. Such a construction has been imagined as the master symbol, the dominant narrative and a shared value, which had to be revived and retained, reproduced and promoted as a shared tradition and the essence of Lithuanian-ness.In both revivalist and diaspora nationalist cases, it echoed the nineteenth-century spirit of the Central / East European nation-building period with its primary goal of invoking culture traditional for the nation. It turned to be even more – single ethnicity and one culture – centered during the Soviet era as a revivalist strategy reaching its climax in the late 1980s with the "Singing Revolution". The issue of Lithuanian-ness, manipulated and articulated in the United States, appears as a practice of retaining the singularity of nation–culture and culture–nation as a repository of the moral imperative and nationalist mission rooted in the Lithuanian Charter as the moral constitution. Despite the "post-ethnic" American reality, such a deep-rooted ethnic homeland-focused sentiment is fundamental among most of the first- and second-generation diaspora Lithuanians who are the strongest bearers of Lithuanian transnationalism. [From the publication]