Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies

Editors Note

This article traces the historical evolution of two disciplinary trends in the field of Basque studies in a global context. While the scholars who promoted the multidisciplinary approach espoused an ethno-historicist vision, committed to the study of Basque language and culture, they nevertheless failed to provide the field with internal coherence and defended its putative homeland roots. The Sociedad de Estudios Vascos adopted since the 1990s a more interdisciplinary vision, imposing on the field a purpose of practical application for Basque society, but paying little attention to the Basque diaspora. This article proposes a transdisciplinary approach—and “trans” perspectives in general—cultivated by social scientists in area studies, ethnic studies, and other fields that, without compromising the concerns of either trend, can help build a shared and internally coherent conceptual framework that transcends the specific perspectives of the constitutive disciplines of Basque studies.

Basque Studies, with reference to its transnationality, have so far faced a certain unintended limit of range: on one hand, Basque Studies outside the Basque homeland are primarily conducted in the Basque diaspora communities, and on the other hand, even if they are not, a majority of those engaged in Basque Studies at some point in time until now share a cultural or religious background of Christianity. To stretch this limit of range, the author illustrates the perception of “Basque” as an idea in modern Japan and its use as a vehicle of a travelogue by the Japanese novelist Yaeko Nogami (1885–1985) in her journey to the Basque Country in the days leading up to World War II. Then, the author argues that Nogami’s non-orientalist, realistic description and level-headed insight into the Basque Country at that epoch can undoubtedly be considered an eclectic, pluralistic contribution to transnational perspectives in the early days of Basque Studies.

Albeit young disciplines, Migration and Diaspora Studies are gaining momentum and presence in the post-pandemic world due to the disruptive event of the pandemic itself having a twofold effect: on the one hand, the privation of travelling and lock-down effects assured a collective awareness of autonomy and mobility; on the other, and in the process, virtual and online environments seemed to stabilize as long-haul side-effects created points-of-contact that were not considered before. Within this context, minor/small cultures also had the chance to review their practices and policies. In the case of the Basque Diaspora, the main frame that problematizes the discipline remains, namely, displacement. Yet, it seems that a “before Paul” diaspora still exists, in the term Alain Badiou uses to refer to the biblical figure of Paul the Apostle as a foundation for universalism. By erasing the differences between Jews and Gentiles, Paul—according to Badiou—overcomes the political issue of salvation by enabling the higher condition of truths. Something similar might be said about the traditional arrangement of diasporas as mirrors of “original” repositories of identity markers. This paper discusses the before/after pandemic possibilities and the re-arrangement of cultural and identity references by posing the notion of deferred identities as a conceptual unit to explain and elaborate further explanations to the problems of the traditional Basque Diaspora

The article analyzes the ‘Basque violence’ as a case study of the transdisciplinary investigation approach of cultural narratology. The phenomenon of violence, complex in both social and psychological terms, requires symbolization and linguistic-narrative forms, tobecome a socially and culturally significant reality. Departing of this idea and starting from a reconstruction of the basic theoretical-methodological assumptions of cultural narratology, the article explores images and narratives, which represent the violent past of the Basque conflict. While the debate about the violent past associated with the activity of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) is full of controversies, there can be observed at the same time a strongpresence of the subject of violent past in literary and filmic narratives. The article reconstructs different lines of the historical interpretation of this so-called ‘boom of memory’, focusing the aesthetic, mediatic and narratological dimensions.

This article analyses the social praxis of ‘erronka’ aiming to contribute to the promotion of a transdisciplinary perspective for Basque Studies. In the Basque setting erronkas are typically understood as challenges and defies leading to betting and gambling, associated with games, sports, and physical and ingenious endeavors. Drawing from my long-term ethnography of Basque contemporary grass-root mobilizations for rights to self-determination, I inquire about the transdisciplinary approach in the search for answers about the role erronkas play in prefiguring political projects. The article proceeds in three steps. the opening section offers a brief theoretical framework of the broader issue of Basque studies and the transdisciplinary approach. The second and third sections are oriented to adopt such an approach to organize the analytics of erronkas examining respectively erronkas in general and a particular case of political erronka by focusing on Korrika, a popular and massive footrace to promote Basque language. Finally, it argues that a transdisciplinary perspective is needed to shed some light onto the collective role of erronkas, particularly those attached to sovereigntists claims and the realizations of political imagination.

In this stimulating contribution to Indigenous philosophizing, Burkhart promotes the elaboration of Indigenous metaphysics and epistemology in a tradition he locates both with his mentor Vine Deloria, Jr. and in the land. Simultaneously, in an assessment spanning from Thales and Aristotle to A. N. Whitehead and Arne Naess, Burkhart identifies some limitations of Western philosophy in comparison to Indigenous philosophy, particularly when Western thinkers are hampered by the narratives of coloniality that they reiterate.