| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The paper explores how creole categories of people who have constituted a small but influential minority in Guinea-Bissau for centuries contributed to a countrywide, integrated national culture since the eve of independence in 1974. Since independence, several cultural representations previously exclusive to creole communities have been - driven by the nationalist independence movement and the early postcolonial state - transformed into representations of a new national culture, crossing ethnic and religious boundaries. The fact that creole identity and culture had been transethnic - i.e. creole identity brings together individuals of heterogeneous cultural, ethnic and geographic descent - during the colonial period, has fostered in postcolonial times the countrywide spread of previously exclusively creole cultural features. I argue that this 'transethnicisation' of creole cultural representations has unified Bissau-Guineans across ethnic lines, causing a strong commitment with their nation 'from below'.
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