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Seeing a State: National Commemorations and the Public Sphere in India and Turkey

Through a comparative discussion of public rituals of national commemoration in India and Turkey, this essay examines the relationship between the formation of the public sphere, the production of national identity, and the establishment of state sovereignty. The central organizing principle is the notion of the “creation of the public” as a historically specific political and cultural project. This departs from the evolutionary understanding of the public sphere as a derivative byproduct or “unintended, rolling effect”1 of social, economic, and political “structural transformations” that took place in the course of the longue durée of European history.2 By theorizing the formation and reproduction of the Indian and Turkish public spheres as deliberate projects or strategies of nationalization and étatization,3 I draw attention to several significant aspects of political modernity that have been obscured in prevailing theories of public sphere formation and transformation.