CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL LDENTITY: MECHANISMS APPLIED TO THE AUSTRALIAN ANZAC MYTH

Abstract

The article deals with Australia's participation in World War I, more particularly, with the infamous defeat of the Australian Anzacs at Gallipolli. This defeat was used in Australia's media discourse as historical background for the targeted and conscious imaginary construction of national identity. 1n accordance with the theoretical framework provided by Benedict Anderson, this identity was constructed by means of, among other things, specific use of language, mass distribution and democratization of the media, fictional amalgamation of the past, present and future into the same simultaneous level, as well as through the narrative reliance on the classical mythology of the Western world. The examples used in this article to illustrate the mechanisms of the imaginary construction of national identity are taken from The Anzac Book, a specific 1916 phenomenon of the Australian wartime propaganda. Finally, the article also addresses the questions of validity, authenticity and sustainability of the national myth as shaped and presented by the Anzac Myth, in the contemporary context of Australia's mass celebrations ofthe Great War centenary.