Nation and nationalism - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Nation and nationalismSlide2

nationalism

„

Nationalism

has been associated with the nastiest of wars in the history and looks like it’s back to haunt us like a bad dream. The unexpected rise of Trump; UK’s Brexit; France’s National Front’s newly energized principle of “national priority;” and the growing popularity of ethno-nationalism (India for Hindus) trend in India, all point towards a conservative political and national movement that has gone international”Far-right: UKIP in Britain, Jobbik in HungaryNationalistic rhetoric of centre-right goverments Britain First videoSlide3

Political postersSlide4

Structure of the lecture

The modern

nation

The historical discourse of nationalism studiesBenedict Anderson’s Imagined CommunitiesNation and GenderTransnationalismTransnational literatureSlide5

The modern nation

The term

Nation

: cultural and ethnic entity; ideology; state: geopolitical; nation-state: the two coincideWhen? A commonplace of our time: nation states are the products of modernity (Karen Kaplan) according to most interpretations: the end of the 18th centuryWhere? Western Europe

and the

United

States

, role of the American

(1775-83)and French (1789)

Revolutions Slide6

The historical discourse

Ernest

Gellner

, Tom Nairn, John Hutchinson, Ellie Kedourie, Anthony D. Smith, Benedict Anderson, etc.“Modernists”: the nation is the product of modernization, a shift from agrarian to industrial society (vs: perennialism before WWII)“Ethnicists”: nations are ethnocultural entitiesSlide7

The time of the modern nation

T

he

nation is “progressive”, the product of modernity, yet it appears to be “ancient” and timeless (Ernest Gellner)The nation is Janus-faced  one face gazes back into the primordial mists of the past, the other into an infinite future (Tom Nairn)Nationalism presents itself both as a modern project that transforms traditional attachments in favour of new identities and as a reflection of “authentic” cultural values revived from the depths of a presumed communal past.Walter Benjamin’s “Angel of History”: an allegory of this temporal paradox Slide8

Paul klee, “Angelus

novus

” (1920)

“There is a picture by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. His face is turned towards the past. Where a chain of events appear before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly to the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows towards the sky. What we call progress is this storm” (Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 1940). Slide9

Benedict Anderson: Imagined communities

Editions: 1983, 1991 (revised: 2 new chapters)

Significance of the

imagination (vs. Ernest Gellner: invention)Postmodern implications (impact on Homi K. Bhabha)Transdisciplinary discourseImpact on theories of the novel (Jonathan Culler, Helen McMurran, etc.)Slide10

main points

The emergence “the” modern nation is due to the following

factors

: Decline of religious communities and dynastic realmsPrint capitalismThe rise of the novel and journalismComplex new temporality, new concept of timeSlide11

Anderson and the novel

Novels

and newspapers

“provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation” (Benedict Anderson, 1983)Eighteenth-century novels have the unconditional ability to evoke a sense of communal feelingReading newspapers as a collective ritual“[. . .] the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop and residential neighbours, is continually reassured that the imagined world is visibly rooted in everyday life” (Benedict Anderson, 1983)Slide12

Criticism

Postcolonial:

Eurocentric

theory: idea of “modular” nationalisms (1st edition)Anderson has “colonized” the imaginary of the postcolonial world (Partha Chatterjee, Ania Loomba)2. Philosophical:Inconsistent theoretical framework; modernist or postmodernist?Misreads Walter Benjamin’s concept of “homogeneous, empty time”Slide13

criticism

Literary:

Anderson does not refer to a single18

th-century “Western” novel. The novel he explores are José Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere (1887); Francisco Balagtas Baltazar’s The Story of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania (1861); José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi’s The Itching Parrot (1816); and Mas Marco

Kartodikromo’s

Black Semarang

[1924

])

 19

th

and 20

th

century texts from

the

Philippines, Mexico, and Indonesia

He regards

the novel as “a formal condition of imagining the nation—a structural condition of possibility

” (Jonathan Culler) vs content of novels

He ignores

cross-cultural aspects

of eighteenth-century

fiction, such as translations

, transnational circulation, etc.

(Helen

McMurran

).Slide14

Nation and gender

Anne McClintock,

Nira

Yuval-Davis, George Mosse, etc.The seamless grand narrative of the modern nation makes the stories of women invisibleEngendering the discourse of nationalism studiesHow did women participate in the “imagined community”? Slide15

Nation and gender



The

Janus-faced nation is gendered“Women are represented as the atavistic and authentic body of national tradition (inert, backward-looking and natural) , embodying nationalism's conservative principle of continuity. Men, by contrast represent the progressive agent of national modernity (forward-thrusting, potent and historic), embodying nationalism's progressive, or revolutionary principle of discontinuity. Nationalism's anomalous relation to time is thus managed as a natural relation to gender” (Anne McClintock, 1995) Slide16

Nation and gender

The participation of women in the “imagined community”:

Nation

allegorized as feminine vs. exclusion of women from the political community of the nation (Nira Yuval-Davis); no real agency of womenWomen reproduce the nation symbolically, culturally, biologically (Nira Yuval-Davis); women as mothers, caregivers, etc.Slide17

Nation and gender

Eugene Delacroix,

“Liberty Leading

the People” (1830)The Statue of Liberty, USASlide18

Vietnam women’s war memorial, Washington dcSlide19

Transnationalism

Arjun

Appadurai

, Masao Miyoshi, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, etc.Transnational feminists: Donna Haraway, Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, etc.1990sDecline of national sovereignty Territorial boundaries lose significance Role of transnational corporations Migration, transnational literature, the national “paradigm” is inadequateImportance of transnational feminist networks Slide20

transnationalism



the

national “paradigm” is inadequate:“As Turkish guest workers in Germany watch Turkish films in their German flats, as Koreans in Philadelphia watch the 1988 Olympics in Seoul through satellite feeds from Korea, and as Pakistani cabdrivers in Chicago listen to cassettes of sermons recorded in mosques in Pakistan or Iran, we see moving images meet deterritorialized viewers. These create diasporic public spheres, phenomena that confound theories that depend on the continued salience of the nation-state as the key arbiter of important social changes” Arjun Appadurai, 1996)Chinatown in SydneySlide21

transnationalism



t

erritorial boundaries are insignificant: “In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow” (Hardt and Negri, 2000)Burger King in IndiaSlide22

Transnational literature

Postmodern

novels which narrate (and challenge) the concept of the modern nationNovels which have been produced under transnational conditionsOther terms

(

slightly

different

meanings

):

Postcolonial

Translocal

Hybrid

Homi

K

Bhabha

’s „

DissemiNation

”:

the

nation

as

address

,

pedagogical

vs

performativeSlide23

Midnight’s Children (1981)

The community of the midnight’s children as

national allegory

India as plenitude“Performative” vision of the nation vs the “pedagogical” national narrative of politicians (Bhabha)Nation as sound, voice, transgressionMidnight's ChildrenSlide24

Shame (1983)

No consistent national allegory, Pakistan as

palimpsest

Nation as lack, the main character feels the unfelt shame of othersThe pedagogical vision of Pakistan is repressiveNation as silence, silencing, repression  literary text engage with this discourse