History and citizenship : sinews of Europeanity in the Maltese experience

Abstract

History is central to citizenship; but the discourse on belonging and identity is, perhaps increasingly, in a state of flux. So is the approach and "the methodology, as mobility and technologies change rapidly, with such means as IT, TV, cinema, museums, orality, locality and regionality competing with the more traditional archival sources of information confined to books and journals, and that in a seemingly unstoppable globalizing world.l Citizenship can hardly exist outside of a framework of trust, born of an internalization of legitimacy, but the nurturing of such a disposition can no longer depend on set norms or value-systems, other: perhaps than citizenship itself, and even this, as it is a-changing. Citizenship, however, presumes "a nationhood, some kind of affiliation to nationality or statehood, otherwise it would be no more than a travel document. To make fun of a sense of affinity and belonging, of being, of place, of time and context, is to be too smart by half, or to be simply, perhaps unconsciously, the product of an utterly colonized or globalised mind. Of course identity would presume some roots. Were it simpfy preserved in a jar, its water would have dried up a rong time ago. Like citizenship, identity is dynamic; it is not a goldfish. In not being static, however, it does not thereby cease to exist.