The mioritic nation - an alternative approach to Moldovan national identity

Abstract

Moldova has been widely argued to be a failed nation-building project, with two national identity discourses coexisting within Moldovan society and amongst Moldovan elites: Romanianism and Moldovanism. Challenging the dominance of these discourses in the literature, this article argues that in spite of its absence from the nationalism debate in Moldova, the ballad Mioriţa is a key element for the Moldovan articulation of national identity. The analysis employs a discursive approach focused on language as a constituting phenomenon and draws from Mioriţa's appeal to the grass roots level, its banality in day-to-day life, and, more importantly, its promotion by Moldovan cultural elites. This latter part focuses specifically on the writings of novelist Ion Druţă. Druţă places Mioriţa at the very center of his construction of Moldovan national identity. He highlights its links with Moldovan history, culture, religious thinking, and geographical space, both reproducing a structure similar to the two national identity discourses, Romanianism and Moldovanism, and building on their similarities. But more importantly, Druţă's representation of national identity sheds light on the possibility of an all-encompassing Moldovan identity, overcoming the existing cleavage, and a series of mechanisms that can be employed to achieve this.