VII.

Towards “Post-Nationalism”?

Convinced that the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, and the unprecedented violence unleashed by World War II, would spell the end of nationalism, many scholars and statesmen were surprised and unprepared for the eruption in the 1960s of “neo-nationalist” movements striving for ethnic autonomy in the secure, wealthy, and stable democracies of North America and Western Europe. Québécois, Scots, Welsh, Flemish, Catalans, Basques, Corsicans, as well as Slovenes and Croats, marched and rioted for greater autonomy within the states in which they had been incorporated on unequal terms. These political movements were supported by cultural revivals, in which the quest for roots and authenticity, also expressed in the student, ecology, and feminist movements of the time, provided a nationalist critique of market exploitation and the regimentation of the bureaucratic state. Two decades later, similar grievances could be heard after the explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and the experience of glasnost in the Soviet Union. Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and Armenians, among others, seized the chance of independence in the name of just those ideals of national identity, unity, autonomy, and authenticity that have resonated across two centuries and in every corner of the globe. Further east, in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, as well as South East Asia, national states and ethnic or ethno-religious communities have often been caught up in intense and protracted conflict, whether between the Kurds and Turkey, Israel and the Palestinians, Sikhs and Hindus, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and the Moro and the Filipinos in the Philippines. Analogous conflicts can also be found in Africa, in Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola, antagonisms that, in several other states, are only contained by a precarious balance of “ethnic arithmetic”.

Despite this unpromising background of ethnic violence and national conflict, many scholars argue that the processes of globalization, such as growing economic interdependence, supranational political association, mass communications, and consumerism, are increasingly rendering national boundaries porous and national states and nationalism obsolete. Thus William McNeill, the eminent world historian, claims that after a brief period of attempted nationalist homogenization, often more mirage than reality, human society is once again reverting to its habitual polyethnic structure, as national elites find that, with the massive effects of globalization and especially mass migration, a viable economy requires an educated and diversified labour force and hence the creation of an ethnically heterogeneous society. In similar vein, Homi Bhabha and other cultural critics argue for the growing “hybridization” of national identities as a result of massive immigration and the rise of multiculturalism in place of received narratives of national traditions.

In this context, many scholars predict the early demise of nationalism, as “post-modern” structural conditions and the spread of sceptical, deconstructive, “post-emotional” attitudes replace the earlier, passionate romanticism and politicized cultures of the nation-state. For Eric Hobsbawm, surveying the scene in the early 1990s, it is disillusion with the failure of socialism, fear of the vast changes induced by globalization, and the influx of immigrants coupled with anxiety over the drying up of family roots, that has thrown people back into the arms of religious fundamentalism and an ethno-linguistic nationalism. Erecting barricades against the pace and scope of change will be of no avail. Nationalism will remain on the political agenda, as a secondary and complicating factor, but no longer can it serve as a major vector of the movement of history.

Much of this analysis extrapolates from the recent experience of the West. Outside this narrow, if dominant, core area, nationalism, as ideology and movement, appears to be on the increase, both in terms of its extent and its intensity, as post-colonial national states are locked in conflict or struggle to accommodate a variety of ethnic movements. In the West, too, nationalism has by no means run its course. Mingling with Christian fundamentalism, the missionary national ardour of the United States has been reinforced by recent threats and wars, fuelling the strong anti-American nationalism of the French, which in turn tends to pit them and their German ally against other national states within the European Union. Besides, the pressures of migration on employment and welfare in Germany, Italy, Belgium, and other Western states have produced strong counter-movements equating national identity with an indigenous national culture that can slide into racism. As we move east and south, the recent wars in Yugoslavia (see Bosnian-Croatian Serbian War), and the ethnic problems in some of the successor states of the former Soviet Union, remind us of the precarious balance of forces reining in nationalist passions.

At the same time, the persistent drive for European integration suggests that in some national states, at least, supranational identification can act as a counterbalance to centripetal ethnic tensions. Though the European Union, aiming for unity in diversity, does not seek to supplant national loyalties (except for a small ultra-federalist wing), it hopes to create a harmonized economic and communicative space on which a viable political community can be built, one that can gradually transfer some of the existing national attachments to the wider Union. If so, that project remains in its early stages. The “democratic deficit” in the institutions of the European Union, coupled with widespread scepticism towards projects of closer constitutional and political union, suggests that, while desirous of the economic benefits of accession to the Union, most people remain wedded to their national states and cultures.

Similar arguments pertain to the idea that a global culture will supersede nations and nationalism. The problem is twofold. On the one hand, a global culture, unless it be a form of Americanised consumer culture, is likely to be a patchwork of motifs and styles from many different cultures, created in a detached, ironic spirit, and inspiring neither passion nor mass commitment. Affectively neutral, memory-less, tied to no time or place, such a pastiche “electronic culture” is the antithesis of the many vivid and distinctive historical cultures that have been shaped by, and have in turn shaped, human experience, and on which nationalists have drawn for their political projects.

On the other hand, contemporary processes work as much for the retention of national cultures and nationalisms as for their transcendence. One can point to the political and cultural pluralism that underpins the international order, that is, the recognition and drive for cultural and political autonomy, and often sovereignty, in the creation and expansion of the inter-state order. Moreover, despite the much heralded decline of the national state, what we are witnessing is not so much a diminution as a shift in its powers and functions—away from economic and military powers and towards internal law and order, health and social welfare, and educational, media, and cultural functions. Equally important is the uneven distribution of ethno-historical cultural resources, the fact that different peoples can draw on very different cultural and historical repertoires, some of them “thick”—rich, deep, multifaceted—and others relatively “thin”—shadowy, and sparse in relics and documentation—differences which, when politicized, create rivalries and antagonisms in and of themselves. Finally, we should note the functions that nationalisms continue to perform in rooting peoples in particular ethnoscapes, authenticating their distinctive cultures, restoring dignity to the downtrodden, and endowing them with a sense of collective history, continuity, and destiny. These are functions that are unlikely to be fulfilled by a truly supranational, let alone a global, culture and association.