I intend to present here the developments of the research of my PhD course in Arts Education, of University of Lisbon and University of Porto (Portugal), which I have been sharing with the academic community since 2017.

My topic revolves around collective identities, in particular Portuguese identity, but also Arts Education, as this discipline is going through an identity crisis, which the pandemic has exposed even more. Arts Education is taken here as a collective identity, gathering the tribes of Education and the Arts, but also the conflicting borders between erudite and popular art, art history and visual culture.

In order to organize ideas from the literature review on collective identities at a national level,  fourteen categories were established in the following bipolar axes, that have been updated since then: institutional / individual; past / future; inside / outside; essence / construction; pulse / reason; us / them; and sameness / difference. As we would expect sameness is a preponderant factor in the construction of collective identities, which hinders the construction of collectives based in difference.

It may seem contradictory to differentiate the various aspects of collective identities, just as much as addressing the national identities subject in a globalized world, because distinctions inevitably make place to hierarchization and marginalization (Kristeva, 1981; Popkewitz, 2009): take for example the sameness category. Nevertheless, these distinctions can be useful tools if we understand them in spectrum and always in tension/articulation of their inner and outer differences.

Researching how is Portuguese identity imagined and materialized in 21^st century Visual Culture, we realized that since the last century Portuguese identity has been used as a mean at least just as much as an end, deeply entangled with consumer logic, pursuing profit in some form.

In Portuguese dictatorship of Estado Novo (1933-1974) the image of the nation was tailored at the highest level in what was called the Policy of the Spirit (Ferro, 1932), no expenses spared. Investments in a more flattering image of Portugal were made by the government, reaching an U.S.A. major agency of public relations (George Peabody and Associates) in orderto build a seductive postcard for the main magazines and tourist guides that were circulating at the time (Ribeiro, 2018). In the 30’s and 40’s of 20^th century tourism served the nation’s propaganda, and both were intimately related with an educational rhetoric to teach the Portuguese about themselves and their country, but also the foreign visitors (Cadavez, 2017). It is appointed that the objective was ideological, but one can easily notice that the national branding of that time, and its touristic and cultural strategies, are still present. Why? Probably because it sells. This is the reason that is so important to not overlook these questions, for the language of ideology is the same of boosting economy, and both take advantage of images and representations imbued with an educational rhetoric aesthetically designed to be absorbed. “Discourses, whatever sets of meaning they construct, can only be effective if they recruit subjects” (Woodward, 2014 [1997]; 56), but we can think the other way around: in consumer logic, what is recruiting consumers is an effective, and therefore profitable, discourse.

No wonder that studies on nationalism point to the growing relationship between national markers and commerce or consumption (Skey, 2015; Mihelj, 2011; Castelló & Mihelj, 2018).

As it was showed before, the empirical field of this research could not be based on sameness, which is the reason that it crosses different settings, nature of objects and protagonists. Various images and objects loaded with meaning and pretension to represent Portugal, continue to be available for consumption, both in the Arts and in the economic circuit, thus perpetuating the logic of top-down constructions that, once on the hand of cultural elites, now has the signature of figures considered as true ambassadors of portugality: Joana Vasconcelos (artist), Nuno Gama (fashion designer) or Catarina Portas (creator and owner of The Portuguese Life stores). It is worth remembering that the market of tourist souvenirs may lack the recognition of its authors, but it also has iconic objects, such as the weather’s rooster of J. Dias Cardoso. I intend to present a skewer of visual representations, to remind the crossing of the empirical field, that range from the aesthetic aspects (Arts) to the functional ones (economic circuit). This skewer gathers examples like visual identities of international events, like Eurovision Song Contest 2018 or the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU 2021; artworks like ferry boat Trafaria Praia, 2013, by Joana Vasconcelos; or even the fashion show Lusíadas II, 2016, by Nuno Gama. Just as innocent as they are effective, these manifestations are clear flaggings of what Michael Billig (2004) calls banal nationalism, invading our daily life and conveying a discourse about Portugal and the Portuguese. The message is somehow anchored in the past, and still refers to the history of Portuguese as explorers of the sea. In this point of view I am concerned with the way how representations of Visual Culture give body to imagined communities (Anderson, 2006), fantasies that are appealing as much as binding, driven by mythical constructions aspiring to reality or truth and, let’s not forget, pursuing profit. This all happens under the veil of a harmless identity discourse, that aims simply to distinguish Portugal and the Portuguese, but we saw what happened when we tried to distinguish things. That discourse is not an end by itself, is a mean to achieve something, and that is perfectly acceptable as long as we are aware of it.

The sea theme, supported by the explorer past of the Portuguese, has an underlying discourse of bridging and connecting differences, and this is a political added-value: a way to possibly gain more diplomatic influence perhaps. Remembering this glorious past is always appealing, almost seductive, and people should be aware why they are lulled by the sound of these narratives. Not that the storytellers (Benjamin, 2006) intend to deceive anyone at the first place, but the story itself should be seen as mean to make any kind of profit: influence, popularity, money. These discourses are produced and put into circulation for (uncritical) consumption and can propagate without the slightest vigilance or awareness, because there is no educational area that devotes itself to the literacy of discourses. School has long abandoned, and rightly so, the rhetoric of national identity. Nonetheless, we must bear in mind the dangers motivated by the construction of essentialist collective identities, and emphasize Arts Education’s strategic positioning to address these challenges, pointing out its 'market niche' in this matter: adopting a critical stance; deconstructing the discursive strategies that are put into circulation; making use of languages of its own, aesthetic and symbolic; preserving, however, the historical cultural and material heritage, as well its techniques and traditions. This implies rethinking Arts Education itself, to the point of "ending with it" (Eça, 2008, p. 1, free translation), while assuring it a "dignified death" (Huerta & Domínguez, 2020, p. 9, free translation) which also presupposes its reinvention while taking into consideration that Visual Culture is a fundamental field of work. Therefore, the challenge of this research is twofold: to deconstruct Portuguese identity, re-imagining what the identity of Arts Education may become.

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