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Abstract :
[en] As other countries’, the Belgian political landscape is marked by a series of “crisis” – starting with a now traditional “governmental formation crisis” after each general election. Although urgency is normalized in a large array of policy management, party programs and publications shows that a portion of the political force is mobilized towards the longer-term effort of building identities.
Interestingly enough, identity processes have been rather contrasted since Belgium’s independence: most Flemish parties were created (or obtained their independence from national-wide parties) in order to gain more sovereignty for the Flemish nation whereas most French-speaking representative only started to work on subnational identities in reaction to Flemish claims. Therefore, Flemish nationalist movements were morphed into state-governing parties whilst French-speaking representatives are – still – periodically testing for identity policies – whether based and Wallonia and Brussels’ region or other the whole French-speaking community.
In this communication, we will raise a question about a scarcely discussed tool in the hands of the communities: how does museums contribute to the construction of majority nationalism in Belgium and therefore intend to tackle identity crisis? Following Antichan (2016), we believe that museums and commemorations are social venues and may constitute a precious way to obtain material on identity processes in Belgium. Namely, the visit and interviews of curators in a Flemish nationalist gathering in Diksmuide commemorating the French-speaking domination during World War I ; a royal museum in Brussels and a industrial history museum of Wallonia in Liège will other comparative insights of a portion of identity-making policies in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia.