Paper short abstract:

Do national identities have their own ‘oral histories’? Can these ‘oral histories’ of identity construction be radical? And how is this radical element of identity construction reflected upon foreign policy discourses? These are the question that this paper seeks to address.

Paper long abstract:

Do National Identities have their own 'Oral Histories'? Can these 'Oral Histories' of Identity construction be radical? And how is this radical element of identity construction reflected upon Foreign Policy discourses? These are the question that this paper seeks to address. By adopting a conceptual framework that considers identities as discursively constructed, this paper will focus on three key issues. First, it will analyse the oral construction of national identities in the Andean states. Then it will focus on the oral representation of patterns of amity and enmity, as represented in the regional official foreign policy discourses. More precisely, it will analyse how the identities of the state as the Self and the enemy as the Other are represented within the discourses of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and their representatives abroad. Finally, this paper will assess the impact that ideological radicalism and the rise of Pink Left had upon the discursive construction of the Andean identities. The paper builds upon my personal research with regard to the discursive construction of identities in the Andes, and evolves to raise the methodological concerns with regard to interviewing diplomats as State representatives. Thus, an important element of the paper is the contextualised reflection upon definitions of notions such as state, identity, security, justice, development etc.