Nationalism(s), Island Version: Vernacular Languages of Statehood in Conflict

Abstract: Clashes between ethnic and civic nationalism are not the turf of high politics but everyday currency in the formation of the citizenry's relation to the state in postcolonial communities. A focus on the hyphen (-) in the nation-state nexus works to unpack how vernacular forms of nationalism take shape in a post-conflict, postcolonial polity. In Cyprus, two opposed vernaculars are used by the Greek-speaking population to engage with statehood and thus with the Cyprus Problem. Certain Greek-Cypriots adhere to a non-nation-bound loyalty, κυπριωτισμός (cypriotism) , that supports the state's bicommunal nature. Sociohistorical formations have informed a conceptual distance between nation and state, a condition nurturing everyday vernaculars of civic belonging. Among other Greek-Cypriots, ethnonationalist rhetoric operates in favor of divisionism . The Cyprus case contributes to an understanding of the political vernacular in postcolonial contexts by highlighting from below the local "languages" that underpin post-conflict statehood.