Baroque collective memory as a component of Maltese national identity

Abstract

'(T)he individual is instituted as homo nationalis from cradle to grave at the same time as he or she is instituted as homo oeconomicus, politicus, religiosus ... '. Moral and political French philosopher Etienne Balibal pursues this statement with pertinent questions: what makes a people a people? How are individuals nationalized or, in other words, socialized in the dominant form of national belongings?' If ever there was a phenomenon that inspired and influenced the Maltese people both in the harbour area as well as in the countryside and helped them construct their identity this was indisputably the period during which they co-habited these Islands with the eminent Order of St John ( 1530-1798), after the 1565 Great Siege officially re-designated by Grandmaster de Valette as the Order of Malta.