Basque Historical Positionality

Perhaps the biblical story of Babel could be a suitable starting point for a discussion about Basque culture and globalization. On the threshold of modernity, as Latin fragmented in romance languages, many authors resuscitated the biblical story of Babel to account for the more general linguistic breakup that ensued and led to the formation of nation-states. Today, in the era of full-blown globalization, linguistic fragmentation has not disappeared; on the contrary, it is increasing. It is no longer a phenomenon solely circumscribed to the European and Western world; it is affecting the entire globe. The new emergence of minority ethnicities and cultures is intensifying their Babelic effect to the point that one could speak of ‘micro–fragmentation’, at the sub–state level, as in the case of Basque language. Nowadays, the survival of a language or culture is not necessarily connected to the formation of a nation–state. Likewise, this putative micro–fragmentation is not incompatible with the new macro status of English. Regarding language as well, globalization poses again another interesting conundrum, the outlines of which Fredric Jameson has thoroughly detailed.1 This is thus the Babelic paradox of globalization in which Basque is caught. But then again, Babel is an old myth in Basque culture, one with a very old discursive history of its own.