Imagining Basques: Dual Otherness from European Imperialism to American Globalization

Abstract

This article maintains that Basque reality was constituted first and foremost by 19th-century European imperialism and then by the American globalisation of the 20th century as a dual identification that is related with identitary and political anxieties of both geopolitical events. In the 19th century, Europe deploys Basque identity in the fields of colonialism and orientalism, from which Basque nationalism is finally derived. In the 20th century, the United States re-imagine Basque identity as situated within the field of the Hispanic Third World and in response to the threat of communism and terrorism, from which Basque terrorism emerges as an identitary and essentialist response to that identification.