History is the Mirror of Our Character : National Character in Greek Teachers Speeches on National Day Commemorations

The paper analyses some aspects ofthe speeches that Greek teachers give at schoo l on national days. A view of the nation as a "natural unit" becomes the basis for the a l l eged "national character." The nation's past struggles are presented as the natural consequence of national character. In this way national character becomes destiny. At the same time, though, heroic behaviour may influence fate and succeed in altering that destiny, when it is felt as unjust. Speeches given on national day commemorations (a) confirm and consecrate a model of thc world as consisting o f discrete nations, each with a distinctive set o f moral qualities constituting its national essence, and (b) urge each individual member to make themselves the embodiment of national character.


Introduction
Images ofthe nation and national character are produced, reproduced and propagated in social interaction, both in everyday life and on "special days" such as national days. Mt er discussing the romantic model ofthe nation and the concept of national character, the paper proceeds to a description and analysis of some aspects of the rhetoric of speeches that teachers give at school on national days, drawing specifically on examples fr om Greece. A view of the nation as a "natural unit" becomes the basis fo r the alleged "national character." This in turn leads to a particular reading of history where the concept of destiny has a major part. At the same time, though, heroic behaviour may succeed in altering that destiny, when it is fe lt as unjust.

Conceptual Framework
The Romantic Model of the Na tion Developed after the French revolution, the Romantic movement dominated European culture, especially in Germany, Britain and France, roughly until the revolutions of 1848. By the middle of the 19th century the ideas of German romantic nationalism had become widespread all over Europe. In what is con sidered the typical Romantic view, humankind consists of nations-natural solidarities, corresponding each to one people and one culture. Each of these concepts -nation, people and culture -refers to a whole in which the single individuals are not important in themselves but rather as instruments of the national destiny. The Romantic view of history revolves around the concept of nation (in Greek, ethnos).1 For Herder history is the interplay of nations -rather than individuals -each of which represents an unchanging category of people and a unique side ofhumankind (Breuilly consists of attaching meaning to events. Depen ding on ihe standpoi nt one takes, one and the same event may have different meanings attached to it.

Metaphors of" the Na tion
Metaphors translate something indefinite into something more comprehensible, and the body, the self and the fa mily are the most immediate signs available as vehicles for metaphor. The nation is often metaphorically represented as an organism, with a body, a heart and a soul (Thalassis 1993). Offering images that seem natural, these metaphors provide the fo undation fo r claiming that the nation is a natural sub division of humankind (Herzfeld 1992: 75-76).
Unlike membership in a state or a socio economic class, membership in a nation, when perceived as grounded in common kinship and common ancestry, sustains the idea of continuity, i.e. sameness through time. The fa mily metaphor has been very common and fairly productive, as testified e.g. in English by terms such as f"a therland, motherland and homeland. If the discourse of the nation conflates biological and cultural essentialism, this is largely due to the fa mily metaphor, inasmuch as, through the idea of race and common blood, culture comes to be seen as biological inheritance. Human beings fr equently define kin groups in biological terms, and then attach "cultural" attributions to these biologically defined relationships; by extension, when the nation is defined using kinship 44 metaphors, aspects of national characte r arc phrased in terms of "natural" and "inn:: aic" attributes (Herzfeld 1992).

Na tional Character
Acting within history, nations manifest their national spirit (Volksgeist). The concept of Vo lk and the related notions of national spi rit and national character (Kiriakidou-Nestoros 1978), were first elaborated by the German humani sts, and fu rther developed by Herder and the German romanticists (Brcuilly 1994). In this tradition nations, peoples and cultures tend to be viewed as organic beings endowed with certain qualities immanent in the groupphysical qualities that arc charged with a moral value (Herzfeld 1992). It is the view of the nation as an organism that makes the construct of national character "thinkable": like indivi duals, nations, as well as peoples and cultures, have a character -a unique character, an essence -that is as old as the nation itself and that remains unchanged through time. In this view, national character is not seen as the product of common life in the same place and common experiences. Rather, it is innate, given fr om above, "natural" to the individual or group (Dumont 1983(Dumont /1988Eleftheriadis 1999;Kiriakidou-Nestoros 1978).
Deviations fr om the original order of nature, e.g. fr om the natural character, are unnatural and therefore bad. They require return to the "natural" situation and to the "spirit of that past" (Breuilly 1994: 108). Character is said to be inherited, and therefore predictable. It is clear however that "inheritance" stands here for "retrospective reconstruction" (Herzfeld 1992: 137-139). The view of the nation as an organism with its own character brings with it the concept of national destiny. The set of characteristics traditionally attributed to the nation marks the boundaries of a moral community, becoming "the basis for action, or at least of after the fa ct justifications" (ibid. : 78).
Within the view of the nation as meaning it would be superfluous to ask whether national character really exists or not. Inasmuch as the idea of national character exists fo r people and affects their behaviour, then it is real as a social category. 2 contributed to "prove" th at nations are "obvious and natural divisions of the human race" (Kedourie 1994: 53). Billig shows how discourse about national ch aracter and national stereo types is produced, reproduced and propagated in everyday interaction (Billig 1995). Formal education makes its own contribution to this proces::;, both through the teaching and learning activities ofthe official curriculum and through the informal learning situations of school rituals and celebrations.
Discourses about national character "are simultaneously descriptive and normative" (Neiburg & Goldman 1998: 69 ). Bourdieu's (1986Bourdieu's ( / 1991Bourdieu's ( , 1992 concept of rite ofinstitution3 may be used to illustrate the normative aspect. The process of institution consists of a naturalization of properties of a social nature. The rite of institution contributes to this process inasmuch as it creates discontinuities out of the social continuum and "consecrates the difference," thereby legitimating an "arbitrary boundary." Due to the "social magic" brought about by the rite, social, economic and cultural boundaries come to be experienced as natural boundaries by the people involved (Bourdieu 1986(Bourdieu /1991(Bourdieu , 1992. We can view public ceremonies about the nation (or any instance of use of a national stereotype) as rites of institution in that they create (or re-create) discontinuities out of the continuum of humankind, "consecrate the difference" across human groups and legitimate the arbitrary boundaries between them. By taking part in rites of the nation, young group members are consistently exposed to the view that nations arc the building bl ocks of human kind.
Behind every rite of institution the message is "Become what you arc." The constraint::; that the rite imposes on the individual (Bourdieu 1992) are part of its normative character: "Behave like a Greek." Rituals of the nation discourage individual members fr om courses of action that do not correspond to the "national character" that is believed to be peculiar to their national group. On the other hand rituals encourage individuals to realize their own "nature" as members of the nation. Since behaving according to nature is "good," it would be morally condemnable for a Greek, for example, to fail to behave "like a Greek."

Romantic Na tionalism in Greece
The idea of national identity, which had been cultivated by Greek intellectuals throughout the Ottoman period, was systematized and politicized during Greek Enlightenment, between the second half of the 17'11 century and the start of the revolution. The Romantic conception of history and national character was thus "un herderisme avant la lettre," ex pression of an "indigenous Romanticism" that developed independently of European Roman tic nationalism (Kiriakidou-Nestoros 1978).
Widespread among the intellectuals, even the most progressive and radical promoters of Enlightenment ideas, this conception coexisted with views such as fr eedom fr om arbitrary power, anticlericalism, equality and in general with the liberal principles that had inspired the Greek revolution of 1821 and the first constitu tions of the new state (Kitromilides 1990;Kokkonas 2000;Pizanias 2000).
Since then, and in spite of the postwar shift towards issues of social justice, political romanticism has been a fe ature of Greek political thought, both within the "traditional Right" and within the "populist Left" (Eleftheriadis 1999: 4 7). According to Dimaras, "Greece [is] one of the nations that ... may be characterized as Romantic par excellence" (Dimaras 1985: 473). The organic conception of the nation as a "transcendent holistic entity" that served the creation of the Greek state in the 19th century has fo ssilized, and Greek society remains 45 attached to it, in �pite of' the f'act thut both �ocicty and hi�toricul know led g e have chun g ed (Liako::;2001a, 2001b. Greek ::;ociul �cientist::;, politician::; and people in the ::;treet ulike do::;cribe the Greek� in term::; of' eternal and u n changi ng "characteristics of' the race/ nution" ( Paparizos 2000)'1• The National Day Com memoration s In Greek school::; there arc two main national celebration::;. One of' them commemorates the ::;tart of tho struggle f(>r i ndependence from the Ottoman Empire, conventi onally dated 25 March 1821, which eventfully led to the founding of the Greek nation -state. Th is is also the date of celebration of a major Ch ristian religious fe stival -the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. The other major celebration relates to Mussolini's attempt in 1940 to occupy Greece as part of the expansionist campaign of the Axis Powers. At that time the Prime Minister of Greece was Joannis Metaxas. On the night of 28 October 1940 the Italian ambassador delivered to Metaxas an ultimatum: as a guarantee that the Greek territory would not be used by fo reign powers as the basis of war activities against Italy, the Greek government was asked to allow Italian troops to occupy strategic positions in Greece. The Greek govern ment refused, and the people threw itself with enthusiasm in the struggle. This event and the battles which fo llowed between Greek and Italian troops on the Albanian border, known in Greece as the "Albanian epos" (Alvaniko epoS' 5), are commemorated every year on 28 October, a date and celebration known as "the No" (to Okhi). Some speakers, though not all, combine this occasion with remarks about the German Italian occupation that fo llowed in 1941, and with a celebration ofthe movement of National Resistance.
An acquaintance pointed out fo r me that there might appear to be problems fo r speakers on Okhi Day, which are not fa ced by speakers on 25 March. The War of Independence had a successful outcome inasmuch as it led to the fo undation of an independent Greek state. But after October 1940, and the struggle of Greek troops, under appalling conditions in the winter of 1940/41, to fo rce back the Italian troops,

46
Germany invaded Greece in April 194l . Even if' one wanted to ignore tho long term result ofthe Greek Civil War, the 1940 campaign, in which the Greeks could not eventually prevent their land being occupied, would seem more a fai lure than a success. An outsider might conclude that there is not much to celebrate. Ye t the celebration does make sense.
First, the speakers place emphasis on the short-term victories on the Albanian front and on the Greek soldiers' heroism in a struggle th at from the very beginning showed so "u neq u al" (in most speakers' words). Furthermore, as Greek scholar Koulouri (2003) explains, "the decision of Greece to resist Italian and German fasci sm goes fa r beyond the defence of national independence and is associated with the defence of universal values, such as fr eedom and democracy" (Koulouri 2003: 78). According to two non-Greek scholars "the Greek victories had a wider significance than their modest military results. At a time when England alone fa ced Germany and Europe was prostrate, the Albanian campaign was the first defeat suffered by the Axis. The sympathy and admiration of the fr ee world was consequently unstinted" (Campbell & Sherrard 1968: 171). These views are emphatically expressed in the speeches too.

The Research Questions
How are the celebrated events (revolution and resistance respectively) presented in the speeches? Why and how, according to the speakers, did the Greeks struggle? What fo r? And how, according to the narrator, did they manage to reach the results that are the object of the commemoration?

The Sample
The paper is based on a corpus of speeches that were not written fo r the purpose of contributing to this study. In this sense, I can claim that I adopt a nonreactive method (Brewer & Hunter 1989) inasmuch as I had no part in the production of the speeches, and the speechmakers were "unaware of being parties to research" (ibid.: 128).
The speeches examined in this paper, thirty-eight in n umber, have been collected in secondary schools in a provincial town in northern Greece between 1998 and 2003. I collected part of them at the end of the relevant school celebrations that I attended either as an outsider or as a teacher, by simply asking the speaker for a copy of the speech . Since commemorations are held at the same time in all schools, fo r each com memoration I could attend the relevant celebration in one school only. Therefore I asked acquaintances in the teaching profession to hand me th eir own speech after the celebration.
This means that the data consists of written texts, or, better, oftexts that were written fo r the purpose of being delivered in public.
Having attended these celebrations fo r several years, I have the impression that usually these speeches, rather than strictly individual creations, are individual enactments of a widely shared social memory-widely shared, in some general lines, at least fo r the purpose of celebrations. Though each speech has its own style and emphasis, whole (groups of) sentences can be met, in exactly the same fo rm, in more than one speech. As to the status of these speeches, though they are materially written and delivered by individuals, only to some extent can they be considered individual products.
Teachers often write their speeches with the help of history school textbooks. Alternatively, they may consult one or more of the several books of speeches commercially available. Moreover, teachers often borrow speeches fr om one another, sometimes adopting them as they are, more often cutting something and/ or adding something else, or combining different speeches in various proportions. To some extent, individual preferences do come into the picture, and this is why most times each speech has a high degree of coherence. At the same time, though, because of what I said above, each speech may better be viewed as a collective creation.
It fo llows that details such as the gender of the speechmaker or the type of school a certain speech was delivered at are not relevant. Moreover, being interested in the language used rather than the people generating the language, I do not repute important to specify how schools or teachers were selected. It might be important, though , to mention the political situation at the time the speech was delivered. Actually, around 197 4 there was an important shift in the way of dealing with the October commemoration (Koulouri 2000), but this issue, which has important implications for a particular aspect of the October speeches, is not within the scope of thi s paper. The socialist party was in power almost uninterruptedly from 1981 until May 2004 (with the exception of a fo ur-year period between 1989 and 1993), and the political climate has not changed so as to lead us to expect a change in the type of speeches delivered in school.

The Analysis
I first grouped answers to the research questions in two categories that I called in-order-to and because-of. These terms were originally used by Schutz in the context of a theory about the motives for people's actions. Whereas because of motives lie in past experience, in-order-to motives point to a fu ture state of affairs that the actor wishes to bring about (Schutz 1971) In this paper, by the terms "because-of motives" and "in-order-to motives" I mean explanations/ justifications of actions, respectively (a) in terms of cultural fe atures, fe elings or beliefs, that, according to the speaker, made those actions necessary and possible, and (b) in terms of something the action was directed to bring about, i.e. goals and objectives.
Why these categories and not others? Be cause, after repeatedly reading the speeches, the two categories seemed to emerge fr om the material and produce an interesting reading key. Mt er sorting the instances in the two categories above and re-reading the speeches, I noticed repeated terms, concepts and statements that suggested that the two categories could and should be combined again, and I fo und that this made sense fr om the standpoint of the Romantic paradigm.
More or less this is the way I dealt with the rest of the analysis. I read and re-read the speeches many times in a kind of continuous dialogue with the material. The categories of fa te and destiny, fo r example, stood out at once. When I came across words/ phrases/ points of view that differed fr om the mainstream ap-proach, 1 took note or them. The:-;e instances helped me :-;ee what the mainstrea m speeche::; did not say. In tact, absence is not le::;s meaningful th an pre::;ence (Bate::;on 1.972).

A Fe w Wo rds about My self"
Born in Italy, I moved to Greece in 1979 when I got married to a Greek citizen. I worked as a teacher in state school::; in Greece from 1987 to 1992 and again from 1998 to 2000. Until then I had a ttended national day commemoration with some special interest, and ::;ometi mes I even fel t moved to tears, but without planning to write any paper about that interesting aspect of school life yet. Since 2000 I have been a lecturer at a Greek un iversity and I have started developing an academic interest in teachers' speeches.

The N ational Day Commemorations at School
On the two national days, shops and public services are closed. Commemorations arc held in all schools, fo llowing th e procedure stated in the relevant presidential decrees and circulars of the Ministry oflnterior. In towns, celebrations in schools are held on the day before, where as on the day of the commemoration school staff and students gather at a church in the school neigh bourhood. There, during the liturgy, a teacher delivers a speech. Mt er that, the army and the pupils parade in the centre of the town. Each school contributes to the parade with a group of students. The top student fr om each school parades carrying the national flag. Parades attract a great number of inhabitants -not just the parents of the pupils parading -who stand at the sides of the street, watch and applaud every now and then. From a platform set up for the occasion, representatives of the local political, military and religious authorities attend too, together with a delegate sent by the government.
At schools, commemorations are held in the celebration hall, when there is one, or just in the school hall, which usually is large enough to host the public. It is mostly pupils and teachers who attend, but sometimes parents attend too, especially at primary schools and especially on Okhi Day, when the commemoration includes 48 th e award ing of prizes to the pupils who h ad achieved the best grades at the end or the previous school year. A commemoration always starts with a speech, usually delivered by a teacher who reads out of a written copy. Usually the speechmaker is one of the teachers who teach Greek (ancient and modern) and history (f'ilologi). One reason is that these teach ers are expected to have, by definition, the necessary historical knowledge for writing a speech as well as for choosing the relevant poems and songs. Another reason is that these teachers are perceived as generally more skilled at writing. Sometimes, especially in upper-secondary schools, the speechmaker is an elder student, though even then the speech may have been written by (or with the help of) a teacher. A commemoration also includes songs, poems, readings fr om school anthologies or other texts. At the March commemoration one may also see one or more sketches that dramatize events related to the theme of the celebration. A com memoration always ends with the participants standing and singing the national anthem. A detailed description of these celebrations is provided by Bonidis (2004).

The Context
People who attend a school commemoration are aware that other people in other schools sing the same anthem on the same day, at more or less the same time, using the same language (Anderson 1991), and that this happens within the boundaries of that portion of the world called Greece. Moreover, the people gathered at a celebration may be aware that for decades in the same school, and in the very same ceremony hall, past generations of pupils and teachers have met for the same purpose, recalling the same events and concluding the rite with the same anthem.
As to the school context in which these speeches are embedded, recent studies show that textbooks, produced by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, teach the pupils to think in rigid representations and national characteristics. On the whole Greek education has a strong ethnocentric character. The history taught at school, revolving around the idea of the nation as an eternal and natural essence, is to a large extent mythology. Th e basic categories ofthc discourse about the nation arc continuity, preservation, resistance, homogeneity and superiority. Teaching is heavily ba::;ed on the textbooks and little margin is left for teacher initiative (see individual chapters in Dragona & Frangoudaki 1996; sec also Avdcla, 1996a; Avd cl a 1998; Frangoudaki 2001). Interviews with teachers serving in primary schools with a high percentage of pupils fr om a non-Greek, non-Orthodox background show that those teachers believe that a fu ndamental part of their task is to preserve Greek heritage and shape the pupils' national consciousness (Inglessi 1996).
What did the Greeks struggle fo r? They struggled fo r preserving honour and dignity, for defending their "holy land," their glorious historical past and the ideals of the fa therland, which grant the nation's survival. They struggled fo r the liberation of the ethnos, for fr eedom, democracy, independence and peace. They fo ught against obscurantism, violence and subjugation. A few speeches, though not the majority, take into account -to a lower or higher degree -a social dimension to the struggle. Thus some speeches mention a "struggle with a social content against any oppression," though without fu rther devel oping the analysis, while in one case a class approach constitutes the very backbone of the speech. To the above goals, most March speeches add the struggle for the "holy fa ith of Christ" and the attempt to "urge upon the whole of Europe the righteousness of our [the Greeks'] claims." Attributing a universalistic dimension to the revolution, some speakers say that the struggle took place for "pure ideals and the basic values of the civilized world" that "were being threat ened by crude and open violence." This theme is overwhelming in the October speeches.
Because-of ... Why did the Greeks struggle? And why/how did they win? They struggled because they have a high sense of honour and deep love of the fa therland; because they have patriotism; because the flame of freedom has never quenched within th e Greek strugglcr; because fi1r th • Greeks th e struggle f(>r freedom and democracy is a way oflife. In addition to "the fr ee Being of the Greek:;" and their "hate fo r the enemy," March speeches place stronger cmphasi::; on fr eedom, something -they state -that Greeks have never given up fighting for. They struggled and won because for the Greeks "freedom is a way of life"; because they have "strugglencss"n, because "Jesus Christ and Greece were vibrating -within the Greek soul and they did not let it accept the idea of subjugation." Next to the Greeks' "faith in God," which urged them to revolt, there sometimes appears another kind of faith that adds a universalistic dimension to the struggle. It is the fa ith in the "noblest human ideals," the "eternal moral values," and the "universal, panhuman claims for fr eedom, peace and dignity." "History is the Mirror of our Character" In both the March and the October speeches it is claimed that each people has a distinctive attitude towards life: "The history of a people is substantially the history of a few moments in which it confirms its will to either live actively, autonomously, and in accordance with its peculiar attitude to life or to die." The struggle is explained by the "essence" that the Greeks "had carried within them for centuries." Their "noble deeds" are a demon stration of that essence, which consists of a number of distinctive marks. Also referred to as "gifts" and "virtues," these distinguishing fe atures consist of"our values as a nation" and the "imperishable ideals of our race" (see N ote 1 for the term "race"), but also include the "perennial bad sides of the race." In fa ct, in this model nations have not only innate gifts but also innate bad sides 7• A speaker states: "History is the mirror of our character"8 (Emphasis added). The fo llowing quote summarizes most of these values and ideals: "With the struggle of 1940 all those distinctive values that define our Nation were brought out -the adoration and the infinite love of the your sword ." (. .. ). The RCnRC of dignity, the nationoJ!' and individual :-;cnse of honour (/ilotirno), the sense of good and the strcn1,>th of imagi nation arc additional distinctive marks jewel::; -of the Greek race. " Further "distinctive feature::;" of tho "race" arc determination, courage, audacity, an indomit able soul, e ndurance, a strong sense of duty towards the fatherland, greatness, strength and "struggleness." One oft he most quoted "national virtues" is "love of freedom," which is de::;cri bed as "created by the Greek race" (or "naturally Greek"; in tho original, "yen nima th rem ma tis Ellinikis fi lis"). Th e Greek nation "proves to be unique among all the peoples on th e earth ." Those unique characteristics, the "virtues of the race" constitute the nation's "compass" in her navigation through his tory. Th ese moral qualities are "distinctive marks (. .. )of the Greek race, (. .. ), of national and personal conscience." Thus when the Greeks carry out their duty as Greeks they feel proud: "And we are proud because we had been born Greeks and we had fo ught like Greeks." This unique set of ch ar acteristics is glossed as "our Being" or "Greek soul," "indomitable and proud," "perennial and imperishable," "created to live fr ee and in dependent." The continuity stressed in the speeches is not only material and biological, but cultural as well: "Not only did the Greek people manage not to die out and disappear, but kept its national consciousness unpolluted." The continuity is fu rther stressed by suitable time words: the fa therland "never" surrenders, the Greek people's desire for fr eedom is an "everlasting yearning," their ideals are "eternal," and their "passions inspired by God" date back to the "very beginning" (the beginning of what is not specified), just as the Greek soul and Greece itself are immortal. Similarly, the word "our Being," which in Greek is expressed with the infinitive fo rm of the verb (to ine mas), places the nation out of time. This Being, this soul, seems to contain its fu ture in itself: "The Greek soul cannot possibly ever live in slavery. Greek blood is destined to flow in the veins of fr ee human beings." In a school, a poster in the central corridor read: "Greek child, don't fo rget 50 that you're a Greek, and within you shines indomitable the soul ofth oyenos"(soe Noto 1 f(>r th e term yenos).
Though one speech notes how during "cen turies ofslavery" the people gradually de veloped national consciousness, most speakers seem to subscribe to the theory of national awakeni ng: after four centuri es duri ng whi ch the ethnos was in "coercive hibernation," the "Teachers of the Ye nos !early supporters of Greek in dependence, N.o.A. I managed to awaken and activate the latent national consciousness."The categories nation, race and people are not used with the same fr equency in the two groups of speeches. In the October speeches the term people (Gr. laos) is the most common to refer to the in-group (almost seventy per cent of the occurrences). In a very few occurrences it is used in the sense of"the ones who do not have power in society. " In all the others it means "Greek national body." The categories nation (Gr. ethnos) and race (Gr. fi li) occur much more seldom but with roughly equal fr equency (about fifteen per cent each). However, the particular context in which each term is embedded is often (though not always) different, as showed by the fo llowing examples: "And the struggle of our people (Gr. laos) against fa scism started" vs. "the bowels of the nation quake." In the March speeches the cultural category ethnos 'is the most common. The cultural cate gory yenos is used too, but mostly, together with race , in those March speeches where the religious element is given prominence. The term is often capitalized and used without any qualifier, as in e.g. "the resurrection of the Ye nos" (See note 1 fo r the capital initial of Ye nos). Race, though, appears also in October speeches. He llenism is occasionally used in both groups of speeches. There are individual variations across speeches as well. For example, some ofthem place greater emphasis on the concept of race. A few speeches refer to the categories that make up the nation e.g. town-dwellers, farmers, and so on, but usually only to stress the universal participation in the struggle, e.g. "all classes gave their blood and soul." In most speeches unity is simply taken for granted in the categories of ethnos, yenos and race. Some speeches explicitly stress it: "The creator of the 1821 Revolution is the whole elhnos."111 Th e em phasis on u n ity i:-; con:-;i::;tent with the metaphor of the nation as a livi ng organism, either a tree/ plant with "root::;" and a "national trunk" or a body: the "nation-wide alert" makes "the bowels of the nation q u ake ." Accordingly, nations are m ad e the grammatical ::;u�jcct of verbs th at are literally used fi>r organisms: they "go into hibernation," and even tual ly "awaken"; they may die and resurrect, or be born again; final1y, they may manifest their own "will". What i::; the place of each individual in the organism? One speaker states that "all of us constitute particles of a whole, and all of us arc indispensable to the task of achieving the prosperity of this country." The ethnosl Greece (Elladha, feminine in Greek) takes sometimes the shape of a female body or of the most female part of a female bod y: a "uterus where the seed of fr eedom [has grown fo r centuries] ." The boundaries of the territory of the nation are the boundaries of a female body: "A whole empire would rape our national boundaries in the most cruel way." The fa mily metaphor (mother, children, brothers) and the blood metaphor are used, though not to a large extent.

Fa te and Destiny
Especially in the March celebrations, speeches often mention fa te and the "destiny1 1 of the race." Through the centuries, the race has been "on a march along the road of its destiny,""as the fa te of the race dictates." Fate has set out a written plan for all the peoples, and fo r each people separately: "And the peoples try to devoutly fall into line with their history and traditions as if out of a biological, organic need. For the Greeks this need is not only biological but national as well." Poems and songs, chosen by teachers and read by pupils during cel ebrations, reiterate these views. Sometimes complaints are voiced because Greece has got from fate less than she deserved: "The unjust fate of centuries (. .. ) condemned the Greece of philosophy and democracy to endlessly embroil herself in wars and fights." According to one speaker, many times fate, jealous of Greece, opposes her plans.
The concepts of fa te and destiny give one more answer to the question of why the Greek:-; stru ggled : "It's the destiny of the Greeks that their bones should crush and be blessed in ::; tru ggl e::; and ::;ucrifice::; in wh ich the only rewards arc immortality and glory." The re volution is described as "thc {atal outcome of the clash between just and unjust, between national p ride and oppression and domination" (Em phasis added). The idea of destiny is echoed in phrases such as "the blessed time had come, the time of the proclamation ofthc revolution ." Thc Greeks had lost neither courage nor hope, and "in the fitllness uf" time their anger broke out" (Emphasis added).
The term "will" and related verbs arc mentioned several ti mes in relation to the Greek people. In the March speeches, the Greeks"' iron will" becomes "unbridled like the lion's will" because it is sustained by their love offreedom.
The strong will of the Greek people, together with self-confidence and "struggleness," yearn ing for freedom, courage and strength "created in the Greeks the fe eling that sooner or later their destiny must be changed." It is possible for a people to "change its historical course" and "escape fr om its unwanted destiny." Eventually the Greeks' struggle, conducted against all odds, does not leave fa te indifferent: "And the fa te of Greece, which had kept her enslaved, regretted her own behaviour. And she [fate] ran to Mount Olympus and to Parnasus, to the Pindus and the Agrafa, to Mani and Souli and to other mountain tops, and suckled with her milk the heroes who fe d the tree offreedom and brought about the resurrection of the fa therland".
The concepts of fa te and destiny are used only in a fe w of the October speeches, usually to explain why the Greeks struggled: it is the destiny of the Greeks to have to face enemies, push back conquerors and always be present in great events. liberation on the one h a n d , und the No a n d the "epos of Al ban in" on the other hand? The why, how and what fur que::; li ons about the struggles can be answered with u doublc:oerie:o ofmotive:o/ exp l anation s : (a) the Greeks acted in order to ach iev e, among other th i n gs , free d om and ind epen dence ; (b) they did so because th ey have always had a deep l ove of the fath erl and , yea rning for freedom a nd hate for tyranny. The beca use-of" category includes several traits that arc presented us uni que features of G reek national character. An individual i:o born Greek, and from th is :oimple biological reality spri ngs behaviour. Cultu re i:o a consequence ofbiology: "We had been born Greek::; and we had fought like Greeks." "Grcekness" is an unch anging essence, the timelessness of which is stressed through the usc of suitably chosen time words: "never," "always," "from the begi n ning" and "perennial" reinforce the stress on the continuity of the nation. Th at is, (a) th e Greeks acted like that in order to achieve certain objectives, and (b) the Greeks acted like that because th ey are Greeks. Action is explained as both politics and meaning.
However, they had set those goals because they were/ are Greeks and so it was in their nature to set such goals. The actions performed by this people/ nation are the product of its national character, its essence and its nature: they fo ught in order to obtain fr eedom because it was in their n � ture to yearn fo r fr eedom. Ultimately, action as politics is reabsorbed into action as meaning. The example that best shows the circularity of the argument is maybe the statement that the Greeks fo ught, died, sacrificed themselves etc. because they have "struggleness"; that is, they struggled because of their "struggleness." Action is explained resorting to something contained in the per fo rming organism rather than to a property of the interactive system of which the organism is part. This is not too dissimilar fr om what people do when they attribute e.g. an individual's act of aggression to their "aggressiveness." An October speech states that "the No of that day was an act commensurate to all the noble deeds that witness to the unity and continuity of our race." First, who "we" are is used to explain what "we," i.e. our ancestors, did; second, 52 our behaviour is judged consistent with the an cestor::;' beh aviour a n d b rough t as a proof" or the contin uity of the race through what can be called a :oclf-s u staini ng argument. Like all stereotypes, statements about national ch ar acter are self:.sustaini ng inasmuch as they resist regardl ess of disconfi rming experiences. Ac cording to Dan iel Goleman (1995), a sclf:.sus tai ning way ofthinking is one of the features of the emotional mind.
A Mea ning in the Na tion �<; Hist01:y Greece is perceived as having lost a great part ufher past greatness. This constitutes a de vi a ti on from the natural order of things and must be corrected. It is "written" that Greece will recover her past glory and become great again if she recovers her past. When a teacher says that "the peoples who remember their history repeat it at higher levels, in superior spheres," he points to a process that consists at the same time of repetitions and progress. In this conception of progress the fu ture depends on the past. The journey ofthe nation may be described as going back to the past in order to be able to go ahead into the fu ture. It is like looking ahead to the past, or looking back to the fu ture. It is said that "the peoples try to devoutly fall into line with their history and traditions (. .. )," as if a nation's history and tradition had an existence inde pendent fr om the existence of the nation itself. It is as if a nation's history existed on a higher level of abstraction. This is reminiscent of Kroeber's conception of culture as "existing" in the area ofthe "super-organic," at an autonomous level of reality, independent from individual action and control (Cuche 1996(Cuche / 2001. The nation's "life" seems to be perceived as the attempt by each generation to imitate a super organic model of the nation itself: "Let the destiny of the nation be our goal." The march of the nation through time takes on a teleological character. In a teleological reading of events the past takes on meaning according to the way it is approached in the present and according to the kind offuture that is perceived as desirable. It is as if the fu ture influences the past and the present, producing a backward reading of events: it is the "magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny" (Anderson 1.991 : 1 0), or"to reca::;t the contingent as th e eternal and inevitable" (Herzfeld 1.987: 84). Marxist philosophy and Christian th inking have viewed hi::;tory a::; directed toward::; a goal that had been set as its end (F'rfin , Gr. telos) and its completion. Both have seen a meaning in history: in the fi:�rmcr case the mean ing (F'r. f'in) of thc process is in the perfection of th is world, in the latter case the mean ing is somewhere outside this world (Le Gofl' 1986.
From th e standpoint ofthi::; nation, the meaning of hi::;tory seems to be in the attai nment of glories comparable to her past glories -that is, the re-establishment of the "natural" order. In one speech the fi nal solution of the war of liberation is defined as the "the f' atal outcome of the clash between just and unjust, between national pride and oppression and domination." This seems to point to a cosmology where not only everything is "written" fr om beforehand, but where Good always wins. History is the progressive realization/ triumph of Good. Since the nation is the incarnation of everything positive, Good is identified with the national group.

The Na tion is an Organic Whole
The nation as a collective individual IS the protagonist ofhistory. Individuals are "particles in the whole," all ofthem "indispensable" fo r the "prosperity of this country" -a functionalist explanation in character with the organic met aphor. In most speeches the nation (ethnos) is a unit with a biological continuity, expressed in the concepts of race and yenos, and a cultural continuity consisting of national consciousness, values, ideals, and so on. Like an organism, the nation has within it fr om the "very beginning" all the information that will allow it to become what it is destined to become, though the question of the "beginning" is usually left in the mist. In fa ct, if one allows fo r the existence of some beginning of the nation, at the same time one recognizes its historicity, thus denying its necessity and its being part of the nature of things. This kind of cultural DNA reveals itself within the course ofhistory. It is as if the fu ture of a nation had always already been present (already written) within the nation itself In this view, talking about the fu ture requires resorti ng to th e notions of fa te and destiny. Just a::; in th e concept o f race, bi ol ogy is desti ny, ::;o in the concept of fa te, culture is destiny (Herzfel d 1987;. 1' he concepts of tate and destiny arc closely interwoven with the notion of national character as well. National character becomes destiny. Ritual is there to remind individuals of' who they are and to confirm the classification that culture has imposed on the social world: "Greek child, don't forget that you're a Greek ( ... )." To what extent do the speeches really legiti mate images of national character? The reply to this question is beyond the scope ofthi::; paper. However, some of the views about national character expressed in the speeches may be heard in everyday conversation. More than once, during informal conversations with young Greek people (mostly students), I have been told that the Greeks have certain characteristic fe atures among which they usually mentioned love of fre edom first. As to my remark that probably all peoples love fr eedom, usually they did not seem to see my point. It was as if they heard something out of their universe of meaning. Certainly these rites are likely to have the effe ct of confirming a certain social and moral order. At the same time, though, one should have in mind that (a) besides these commemorations and related speeches, other institutions act in the same direction, and (b) in the social sciences causality is not line.ar as in the natural sciences but rather circular (Bateson 1972): to the extent to which such rites really confirm and reproduce a certain social and moral order, they are also the product of such order.
"Fa te Regretted Her Own Behaviour": The Na tion Shapes its Own Destiny In the statement "the peoples try to devoutly fall into line with their history and traditions ( ... )" it is as if peoples acted on the scene of the world as actors in a theatre, enacting a script that had been written long before they started acting and to the writing of which they have not contributed. The image of a writing fa te is a fe ature of everyday discourse in Greece (Herzfeld least some degree of agency. Th is is most evident in two speeches in which th e roleoff'ate become::; su rprising: "The fate (mira) of Greece, which had kepi her enslaved, regretted her own behaviour," eventually taki ng the side of the Greeks and helping them in their struggle.
Initially hostile to Greece, fa te feels compelled to ch ange her mind because of the Greeks' heroic behaviour. This image docs not match the image of the fa talist Greeks (or in general the fa talist Mediterraneans) thai one can en counter in several ethnographies of the past.
Fatal ism, which means a "passive and total resignation to fu ture events," has been attributed to Greeks by nations that have dominated them.
Rather than being an indicator of fatalism, the invocation offate -both in the speeches and in everyday speech in Greece -serves to rationalize damage af�er it has happened . Herzfeld (1992) points out the similarity between the resignation to fa te usually attributed to oriental peoples and (Western) Calvinist notions of predestina tion. The "West" seems not to able to perceive the "other within the self" Against charges of fatalism, several ethnog raphies of Greek villages show that struggle is a moral obligation and a leading concept in everyday life: "anyone who does not do his best in this sense is unintelligent and deserves to lose the battle. Those who try may still fail, and then the villagers turn to fa te or to God's will as an explanation. But an appeal to fa te or to God is never an excuse for neglecting actions which are humanly possible" (Friedl 1962: 75).

Me taphors
Metaphors often point to a type of relationship among members of the nation that is natural and necessary. The metaphor of the body, fo r example, portrays the nation as an organism: "The body of Hellenism." The total sum of its members is often referred to as "the Greek" in the speeches. For certain purposes the body of the nation is a fe male body, for example in memories of past dangers or visions of possible fu ture ones where conquest by fo reigners is equated to rape12 • Both the family metaphor and the body metaphor in some way convey the 54 idea of continuity, which is a key idea in the textbooks, too. Any organism changes through time though remaining the same organism. As concerns the family, the idea of continuity is contained in the family name and, in some cultures, in the custom of naming children after their grandparents -a custom widespread in Greece. Wh en infa nts arc named after deceased relatives, new members come to replace the dead and this allows the family to take on a kind of immortality (Campbell 1964;Esposito 1989: 92-94).

Summary
A specific conception of the nation and history is propagated more or less consciously by sec ondary school teachers in Greece. Th e two national celebrations keep alive the memory of two important struggles in which the nation opposed foreign conquest. Since conquest is always disruption of natural development, resistance to conquest always marks the highest points in the "life" of a nation (Breuilly 1994). The struggles that are fo cus of the celebrations are presented as the natural result of a double series of motives: in-order-to motives and because-of motives. The in-order-to motives refer to goals that the members of the nation wanted to achieve, e.g. national fr eedom. The because of motives refer to a set of distinctive traits immanent in the national group and as old as the group itself, that constituted the "natural resources" that made the celebrated action both necessary and possible. Given those national fe atures, fa ced with the subjugation to the Ottoman Empire and Mussolini's invasion, the Greeks could only act as they acted: they revolted, fo ught and struggled because they are Greeks. Culture is used as an explanatory concept. The set of fe atures, among which an immense love of fr eedom and a willingness to struggle are the most outstanding, amount to what within German Romantic thought is known as "national character." History, as one speaker states, "is the mirror of our character." The in-order-to motives are eventually re absorbed into the because-of motives that constitute national character.
Given these presuppositions, history could not have developed but the way it did develop. In a wny, events wore written from bofilrehnnd, and nctually th i::; idea i::; conveyed through the concept::; of Lute and destiny, repeatedly men tioned to expl a in the how and why of the main events. Fate is jealous of Greece and that is why she ::;ometimes erect::; ob::;tacles on tho n ation's path. However, on th e basis ofthese speeches it is not pos::;ible to charge the Greek::; of fa talism. This is apparent especially in two speeches where, fa ced with the courage di splayed by the Greek::; in their struggle and with their determination against all odds, fate regrets her behaviour and take::; th e side of the Greeks.
That is, the Greeks win fate to their cause.
Therefore, (national ) destiny can be affected by behaviour.

Concluding Remarks
Speeches may be viewed as social texts: they do not simply reflect the social and natural world, but actively construct a version ofthe social and natural world. In th is sense they have social and political implications. Through teachers' speeches, school rituals on national celebrations contribute to the production, reproduction and propagation of ideas about national character.
Rites of the nation create discontinuities out of the continuum of nature and "consecrate" the resulting classifications imposed on the world. They "consecrate differences" and legitimate the "arbitrary boundary" (Bourdieu 1986(Bourdieu / 1991 that divides the nation fr om other nations, thus confirming a model of the world according to which the continuum of humankind is com posed of discrete, bounded and homogeneous nations. Once the "arbitrary boundaries" around each nation are consecrated, the socially constructed order comes to be experienced as natural by the individual. Within this scheme nature (i.e. what is thought to be nature) is perceived as the highest moral order. The normative dimension of ritual is a consequence of the fa ct that the nation is fe lt to be part of the natural order. Like acts of institution, rituals of the nation invite each of the participants to become aware of the nature that they, as members of the national group, share with the other members, and to make their individual life the embodiment or national ch a racter.
Most of the speeches analysed in this paper pre::;ent a model of tho world as consisting of nations, with emphasis on the unity and homogeneity within each nation. Such an account proves problematic both as a model o/" and a model fo r society (Geertz 1973). As a model of society, like the models presented in textbooks, it gives an inexact picture of Greek society : besides concealing the existence of social d if"fcronces and inequalities, it does not take into account the fa ct that people with a non Greek, non-Orthodox background keep migrat ing to Greece. For the same reasons, as a model for society, the cultivation of the "nationalist mythology of the 19Lh century" (Frangoudaki 2001: R07) does not offe r viable prospects fo r the integration of all these people who live within the boundaries of the Greek state and intend to stay. At school, celebrations that propagate such models of/ for the world are not easily conciliated with democratic demands for the integration of immigrants' children in Greek schools, which is a necessary step for their fu ture integration as adults in Greek society. Maybe it is time to invent alternative ways of cultivating memory.

The historical knowledge produced today in the
Greek academic and public discourse is based on the concepts of"nation" (ethnos) and "race" (fili) (Karakasidou 1994). Ethnos conveys both the concept of ethnic group and nation (Karakasidou 1993, in Triandafyllidou 1997.2), ethnicity and nation (Herzfeld 1997: 78). Also, according to Tsatsos (as cited in Christopoulos & Tsitselikis 2003), in the Greek Constitution (art 1, par. 3) the term ethnos ("nation") seems to be related to the concept of yenos, in the sense of "race." Fili is used in the sense of"race" and also "people" (in a cultural sense). According to Herzfeld (1982: 133), it is a synonym for ethnos. The term yenos, which could be rendered as "lineage," is widely used by Church represen tatives in public speech. Va siliou & Stamatakis (1992) define yenos as a blood-related group or the whole of individuals descending fr om the same first ancestor (yenarchis), fo refather, and who constitute a group on the basis of particular social and religious rules. Zakythinos (1976) glosses yenos as "race," and Herzfeld ( 1992) defines 55 it a::; sing-le, enormous kin group. IL seems that t here is some ove l'lapping in the way these terms arc used . As po inted out by Hendeld (1987), the term::; et/1 1ws, flli and _yetws all imply co mmon descent. Though until the fa ll of Constantinople re ference had been made to the ':yenos of the Greek::;" n nd "ou rye nos, " nt ::;o me point in t.i me t.he tcr·m started appearing without any qualifier, alone-the _yenos par exc·elh•nc·c•. Th i::; ha::; been interpreted as a sign thai ihe idea of_ yerws had taken s u ch p roporti ons in "Greek consciousness" that adding any quali fi e r would only weaken iis meaning: ii was not nny longer the _yenos of ihe Greeks or "our· _yenos": it had becom e the Ycm os, w i th a capital initial, and ii came io be attached a strong moral content (Dimaras 1989;Ki riakidou-Ncstoros 1978). Something com parable holds for the term {ili, which in oilicial Greek rheto ri c is used w i thout quali fiers io refer to the Greek people (i f/.li, or even i Fi li, "the Race," with capital initial). As pointed out by Herzfeld, this usage testi fies to the "absolute finitude" with which such ideas are articulated (1987: 214; 1997: 40). 2. Fo r examp le, national fr ontiers, socially produced, "'generate eflects by acting on the self� perceptions of' the co m mun i ties they divide, and cause the fo rm ation, as time passes, of ways of being and feeling, ways oflife and moral patterns" (Neiburg & Goldman 1998: 66). 3. Bourdieu (1992) proposes the term "rite of institution" as a substitute fo r"rite of transition." In this context, institution means establishing in a position or o/Tice, investing.
4. The fo llowing quotation is taken fr om the work of non-Greek scholars: "The legacy of Greece's unexpected resistance to the Italians was the confirmation of the personal and national virtues which some, especially fo reigners, had begun to doubt any longer existed" (Campbell & Sherrard 1968: 173). 5. The transliteration of Greek terms and phrases (based on Herzfeld 1982Herzfeld , 1987 fo llows a modified phonemic system (real pronunciation).
"Struggle" is a key word in the speeches, especially in the March ones. The war ofliberation, which is the object of memory on March 25, is often referred to as simply"the Struggle," with a capital initial -like "the Ye nos" and "the Race" (see Note 1). Therefore, I chose to make up a word such as "struggleness"rather than using e.g. "combative ness." Also "a love for struggle" seemed too weak, maybe because consisting of several words. Gregory Bateson narrates how the word "ethos", which he was using in fieldwork in New Guinea, revealed rather troublesome to work with, due to the fa ct that it is "too short." Thus, he tended to fo rget that he was dealing with an abstraction,

56
and was handli ng the word as if ii referred to som et h i ng concrete and "causally act. ivc" in shapi ng native behaviour ( Ba teso n 1972: 8�).
For similar ( and nt the Rame time oppo::;ite) reason s a p h ra se like "a l ove for struggle" would have been ioo weak in the context of this paper: 1 needed to express th is emic term in one word only, so ihai ii would sound as "ca usally active" as possible .
7. In the ::;peechcs the mosi quoted G reek bad sidP is d i scord (dich.onia), which th e textbooks condemn as harmful for the nation. The ideal ized i mage of homogene i ty ihai emerges fi·orn Uw textbooks docs noi make pupils u sed io ihe idea ihai ::; oc i eiy hosts con fl icting interests. Thu::;, instead of being presented as the nor ma I condition , political struggle is morally condemned (Frangoudaki 1996a). 8. " O ur character": The use ofihe pronoun "we" (us, our), meant io include all ihe Greeks of all Limes, can be called the "historically expanded we" (De Cillia, Reisig! & Wodak 1999). 9. Next to the adjective eth. n ilws ( n ation a l ), which refers to the political boundary (Cowan 1998), in the 1980s th e adjective et h. notilws (ethnic) has come into use to refer to the cultural boundary (Angelopoulos 1997). The two adjectives derive fr om ethnos that conveys both the concepts of nation and ethnic group (see Note 1). A th ird adjective, the Greek ethnik, has lately appeared in phrases such as "ethnic music," "ethnic food" and "ethnic accessories," the last one used in ihe field of fashion.

Recent studies show that the textbooks used in
Greek schools do not train pupils to distinguish between peoples and governments, or between citizens and political representatives (Fran goudaki 1996b(Fran goudaki , 2001. No reference is made to ethnic, cultural and religious differentiation within the national body, nor to social differences and conflicts (Avdela 1996b(Avdela , 1998. As national homogeneity is a highest value and a necessary condition for group preservation, the image of homogeneity must be maintained. For the purpose of inclusion in history textbooks, the selection is operated so as to leave out events that could raise doubts about the image of unity and patriotism (Askouni 1996).
11. Fa te and destiny: In the speeches three different words are used for concepts that belong to the semantic field offate and destiny: mira,peprom eno and imarmeni. Mira refers to "the hypo thetical and unexplainable fo rce that is consid ered responsible for what happens to each human being." More specifically, it refers to (a) the personification of fa te and (b) what fate has established for each human being. Imarmeni, which comes fr om the same root, means "the superior fo rce that directs and influences the whole world, as well as the fo rtune of each human being." Pep rome no is the fa te of each person. The p l u ra l , la fWfJrtlfllf'IW , means "the mission and a s p i rations of a h u m an g-rnttp, a s they have been s h aped within the fm mewor·k of historical c! evelopment" (lc!hrima 1998). In f�ng-lish the te rms f' ate and deslin.Y are often used as synony ms, b u t it is po::;sible to draw a distinction between them. ln this paper, fi>llowing McArthur (1981), I usc f:ttc for "the ( imag-in a ry) cnu se beyond human control that decides events," anc! destiny in the sen se of"that which must or has to happen." However, McArthur also suggests /' ale as a synonym of destiny. Due to the partial overlapping of t h e two terms in b oth languag-es, I h ave tra nslated each occu r·r·ence with the E ngl ish te rm that seemed in each case more suitable to the context, without trying to establish a fixed correspondence between a G reck and an English tc rrn. 1 do not refer to f�tte using the neuter fo rm of't he pronoun because fate is cl early personilied in the speeches. I use a femin ine pronoun because, since "fate" (mira) is fe minine in Greek, this choice allows me to keep closer to the original, includ ing the case in which fa te is portrayed as suckling the heroes of the revolution. 12. In a comparative study of Greek and Turkish novels, the selected sam p le provid ed around 200 cases of inter-group romances or love stories between i n divid uals bel ongi n g to the two communities. In almost all the cases the man is always "ours" (that is, Greek in Greek novels and Tu rk in Turkish novels) whereas the woman always belongs to the "other" category. According to the author, this is because women have traditionally been spoils of war: fr om a sem iological standpoint, the husband is the winner in a strife (Millas 2001). I suggest considering the hypothesis that within the discourse of the nation, even when, like in love stories, the relationship between the partners is not antagonistic, the idea of boundary remains crucial. The boundaries of the territory of the nation are the boundaries of a fe male body. The woman's body is vulnerable, by nature exposed to "invasion": its boundaries are never safe. Though the love relationship does not take place within a conflict fr amework, in an inter community love story each author probably unconsciously "chooses" to identify their group with the male partner, which may be taken as a sign that she or he is still on the defensive, in spite of all.