In the debate about the choice of national feast, it is being assumed that the immediate problem is overcoming partisan disagreement. A natural assumption but, I believe, a mistaken one. For what the last week has shown is that the immediate problem is caused by the three points on which Lawrence Gonzi, Joseph Muscat and several others are agreed.
The first point of regrettable agreement concerns where we should look to decide whether one feast is more appropriate than another. The implicit consensus is that we ought to look back at the past. It is history's archive, according to this view, that will settle which feast marks Malta's most important genetic event.
Yes, the past matters. So do historians who help keep the past safe from myth. The truth about the past, the significance of this or that event, is not the pure invention of our fancy.
However, the selection of the feast does depend in part on what we, not our ancestors, consider to be important; on our values, not theirs. For example, feasts like September 8 and June 7 would not serve us well as (single) national days because they would define us anachronistically, in terms of identities and boundaries that no longer exist. Moreover, the choice of national feast involves two genetic moments: not just a past event but also our act of choosing it.
A popular choice would resemble the creative act of naming, like baptism, the launch of a ship or marriage (which amounts to naming oneself a union with another person). Naming does not just lick a label into place. It brings about a change, a new identity.
Choosing one single feast to represent us would be an act of self-definition, rooted in what we understand ourselves to be today, a choice that steers our future-oriented ambition. Understanding this is important for understanding the nature of the choice we need to make.
The second shared-but-mistaken assumption concerns the identification of September 21 with the Nationalists and March 31 with Labour.
If true, then choosing between them (there is no other serious candidate) would amount to asking one political party to "deny thy father and refuse thy name", as Shakespeare's Juliet believed that either she or Romeo had to do if their union was to survive.
Whatever they may explicitly say, it is evident that Dr Gonzi and Dr Muscat share Juliet's analysis (if not her willingness to renounce her kin). Why else would Dr Gonzi, even while paying homage to all national events of importance, invoke the swallowing of pride? Why else would Dr Muscat suggest, as a first step, the uniform celebration of both feasts, as though he were negotiating Cold War detente?
Fortunately, the assumption is mistaken. We take away nothing from Giorgio Borg Olivier's statesmanship by recognising that a range of political movements contributed to the formation of national consciousness that propelled him.
Among others, the Labour movements were important for the constitution of solidarity along national lines, transcending more particularistic attachments.
If independence represents the realisation of a historic national aspiration, having long roots in the past (if not as long or as widely shared as sometimes made out), March 31 represents a different kind of event worth celebrating: a decision to break with the past.
True, so far it has been celebrated in terms that make it difficult to disentangle from one particular break - the renunciation of Malta's historic use as a military base. But there is something more generally valuable in a nation's capacity to renounce aspects of its past.
One can see the two feasts as respectively celebrating a long inter-generational project on the one hand, and a capacity for self-reinvention on the other. Neither of these meanings is under the control of any single political party or organisation. The PN has contributed to national reinvention and Labour to independence. Nothing prevents either of these two feasts being today invested with greater meaning by a political party not customarily associated with it.
To accept that argument is to renounce the third assumption that has so far informed the debate: that to celebrate both feasts is effectively to entrench the partisan divide by defining "national unity" as the sum of the parts, and not as a greater whole.
This would be true if the definition of each feast's meaning and power were under partisan control. But they are not. The two feasts are complementary not by pairing the two parties of government but by pairing inter-generational identity and difference.
There is, however, something to be said for the choice of a single feast out of those two. If we manage it, it would not be a simple matter of choice following national cohesion. A more profound, creative cohesion would also follow the choice. It would be a powerful denial of something many believe even while they resent it: that the bipartisan divide is our destiny. Choosing a single feast could well be, in itself, a genetic moment favouring cohesion on more substantial social and economic matters.
ranierfsadni@europe.com