Identity, Banal Nationalism, Contestation, And North American License Plates*

Abstract

Abstract. In the early 1900s, U.S. state and Canadian provincial governments began to register automobiles and issue license plates to their owners. Within several decades of the first issuance of license plates, state and provincial governments began to use these plates for advertising purposes, such as promoting local economies and tourism. In recent decades, however, governments have used license plates to promote national identities and nationalist ideals. Using examples from the United States and Canada, I examine how governments have used such banal signifiers of place as license plates to craft and promote these identities and how drivers have contested that usage.

Space and Social Theory in Geography

“…Issues of immigration and citizenship loom large in this respect (Staeheli, 2011). As a result, popular culture has also received pride of place in this school, including comics and religious fundamentalism (Dittmer, 2005(Dittmer, , 2008(Dittmer, , 2012 and the broader phenomenon of banal geopolitics (Leib, 2011).…”

Flagging the nations: Citizens’ active engagements with everyday nationalism in Patagonia, Chile

“…And that by not noticing them, they are making us compliant national subjects?” (, p. 29; author emphasis). Moreover, flags are constantly deployed by citizens (and states) in more deliberate, mindful and blatant ways (Benwell, ; Dodds, ) that are not limited to the extreme nationalistic expressions associated with separatist movements underlined in Billig's original text (see Leib, ). National symbols can play important roles in protests or actions that challenge the “ideological concepts, memories, and beliefs associated with one's nation” (Butz, , p. 787) and while states might like national subjects to think otherwise,

Flags are also eminently breachable: they can be desecrated (an act of protest), inverted (a sign of distress) or manipulated in countless ways for commercial or other purposes in ways that sometimes jar our otherwise settled notions of the nation.

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Situating banal nationalism, the culture wars, and civil religion: governing localized geographies of national identity in Indiana

“…2 Because In God We Trust is the official motto of the USA, we assume that this proliferation of God and country license plates at the sub-national or state scale was one of many material displays of a renewed national identity conjoining two powerful flexible representations of national identity on a single and small sized space that invites a local and active individual construction of national identity anchored in specific cultural values. Indeed, because automobiles in the USA embody the national ideologies of movement, individuality, and freedom (Sheller and Urry 2000: 738), they provide ideal platforms for reproducing national identities through a mobile form of public discourse (Edensor 2004(Edensor , 2002Leib 2011;Sculle and Jakle 2008). The IGWT license plate first appeared in Indiana in 2007 and its design includes a muted American flag background coupled with the In God We Trust motto ( Figure 2).…”

“…Important to our particular research, Brunn (2011) makes the germane observation that the visual images on stamps and currency become especially important to identity construction during periods of economic and political transition. Focusing specifically on automobile license plates in North America, Leib (2011) harnesses the banal nationalism and automobility literatures to examine the construction and contestation of national identity through the use of this most banal signifier, and briefly describes the contestation of the IGWT license plate in Indiana and South Carolina. While the literature addressing issues of the changed post-9/11 political culture and identity has now become extensive, and a handful of geographers have theorized these changes (Coleman 2004;Dalby 2004;Ó Tuathail 2003), these contributions have not conceptually imbricated the culture wars and civil religion with banal nationalism in the American context.…”

“…Texas is the only state offering a license plate with all three symbols of the flag, a bald eagle, and God Bless America, and also offers a plate with the localized phrase God Bless Texas. 3Leib (2011) claims that IGWT license plates in many states is indirectly connected to the national-level conservative American Family Association who first lobbied state legislatures to require the posting of In God We Trust signs in public schools to inform students of the essential historical role of God in the nation's cultural fabric. 4 Within months of the issuance of the plate, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana (ACLUI) filed a failed lawsuit on behalf of an individual.…”