Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In May of 2018, the EU took Germany and five other states to court over nitric oxide levels. The rise in air pollution within the EU has killed half a million people in 2014 according to the European Environment Agency. The interesting position Germany is in, however, is a conflict of identities. German identity politics have taken great pride in their environmentalist efforts. But along with that is the reputation of the automobile industry. Though these two identities could stand in opposition when constructing national identity with a unifying historical mythology, internal and external historical guilt force Germany into a place where the only option is to examine national history from a critical lens and focus on the present. Using “Germany as an Environmentalist Nation” and the diesel crisis as starting points, I hope to address how the paradox of these two national identities don’t work because of the cultural roots of nationalism as a concept as we see a resurgence of pre-WWII nationalist ideals. In addition, I address how semiotics (particularly the semiotics of Umberto Eco) can be used practically to examine the relationship between cultural and political changes and creating meaning in new constructions of unity.