Между банален и сигнален национализъм: българските банкноти след 1991 г. ч. 2
Between Banal and Signal Nationalism: Bulgarian Banknotes after 1991 (Part II)

Summary/Abstract: The first and second parts of this article offer an anthropological analysis of the Bulgarian national currency during the 34 years of post-socialist democratic governance, focusing on the period from the first post-1991 banknote issues to the latest series of 2020. It examines how the iconography of the lev reproduces a shared value system and a national narrative centred on the Revival (Văzrazhdane) and its canonical heroes, while tracing the shift from money as an almost invisible medium of banal nationalism to its recent mobilization as a vehicle of hot or “signal” nationalism. The analysis is contextualised in fears of loss of sovereignty, wider global insecurities and the politicisation of Eurozone accession. In addition to the iconographic and discursive analysis, the article draws on some of the data from a sociological survey conducted in September 2024 among 409 adult Bulgarian citizens via CAWI. The survey documents changing everyday uses of cash and digital payments, the declining visual attention to banknote imagery, and ambivalent public attitudes toward replacing the lev with the euro. The article shows how the nationalist party “Văzraždane” has strategically “flagged” the lev in its populist, Eurosceptic rhetoric, transforming a routinised monetary symbol into a contested boundary marker of national identity and economic sovereignty. In doing so, it highlights the dynamic interplay between banal and hot nationalism and the conservative value orientations reinforced through discourses of fear, nostalgia and ontological insecurity.

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