Slovenia Blog Post 1
Blog Post 1 February 4, 2026 The National Self When Slovenia made their first ever appearance in the Eurovision stage in 1993, they were a newly independent country making its voice heard on a European cultural stage. That was not a musical voice, but a symbolic one. Slovenia, which had just gained its independence from newly broke-up Yugoslavia in 1991, had to assert itself as a unified and national entity. Firstly, we have to define National Identity. National identity is the way a community can visualize itself as a nation by having a common culture, values, symbols, and stories. Nations are not objectivities of people, nor are they permanent but are instead imagined communities, whose membership is constituted by people telling stories together, symbolically and reinforced by institutions (Anderson, 1983). Anthony D. Smith builds on this by pointing out that national identity is created by common myths, memories, values, and symbols that enable individuals to identify themselves as...