**Communities and Their Representations**

58 Social Sciences and Cultural Studies – Issues of Language, Public Opinion, Education and Welfare

Varela, Francisco J. (1979) *Principles of Biological Autonomy.* The North Holland Series in General Systems Research 2. New York & Oxford, Appleton & Lange. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958) *Philosophical Investigations*. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 194.

**4**

*Spain* 

**The Significance of Intermediality**

**Republican Nation (1789-1799)** 

Montserrat Martínez García *Complutense University of Madrid,* 

*Qui meurt pour le peuple a vécu. Vous êtes vaillants, nous le sommes Guidez-nous contre les tyrans Les républicains sont des hommes, Les esclaves sont des enfants.* 

*De Barra, de Viala le sort nous fait envie Ils sont morts, mais ils ont vaincu.* 

*Le lâche accablé d'ans n'a point connu la vie:* 

*Le Chant du Départ 1794* (Dauban 1869: 428)

**in the Immortalization of the French**

Never before 1789 had the political education of a great nation like France been ruled by writers and artists (painters, sculptors, musicians, engravers and architects), the ones who probably gave the Revolution its peculiar attributes, besides infusing an unrivalled vigor into this event (B. de Huszar 1960: 1-18). The intellectual elite grew in Western Europe after the Reformation and countless generations of rational thinking culminated in France´s radical political ideas during the 18th century, marking nineteenth-century politics. This social category, a class apart, was devoted to mental activity, culture and the preservation of the current order (Seton-Watson 1960: 41-50), at the same time that legitimately held power and authority through six distinct strategies: backing of beliefs and specific principles, naturalization and universalisation of a selective credo, disapproval of opposed ideas, exclusion of alternative lines of thought, and finally, the masking of reality to adjust it to the

These minorities, or national prophets according to Hans Khon, were decisive in fixing inclusion and exclusion criteria within the community in order to restrict the access to power and decision making, subjugate the majority and interpret the national history with

Consequently, intellectuals were the driving force capable of fostering the nation reconstruction and redefinition. This fact entailed two points: firstly, the nation State was

**1. Introduction** 

bias (Kohn 1946).

dominant interests (Eagleton 1997: 24).
