National identity and the politics of memory: Remembering Bruce and Wallace in symbolic space

In this paper, I examine the different and competing practices through which symbolic places, and the events and figures they commemorate, are woven into national memories. By exploring the semiotic, commercial, expert, narrative, and bodily practices of remembrance that centre upon Bannockburn and the Wallace Monument, in Stirling, Scotland, I highlight the complex ways in which forms of remembrance are currently proliferating and fragmenting. I then move on to discuss how the common themes in these shifting politics of social remembering have been echoed in popular responses to the Hollywood film Braveheart, which celebrates Wallace. I conclude by looking at how these practices of remembrance indicate the contemporary unstable and contested condition of national identity.