The Nation as a Problem Historians and the National Question

8/8/2019 The Nation as a Problem Historians and the National Question

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-nation-as-a-problem-historians-and-the-national-question 1/24

Wesleyan University

The Nation as a Problem: Historians and the "National Question"Author(s): Elias Jose PaltiSource: History and Theory, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Oct., 2001), pp. 324-346Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677969

Accessed: 08/07/2009 17:48

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Wesleyan University and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend

access to History and Theory.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677969?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677969?origin=JSTOR-pdf



History and Theot-y(October2001), 324-346 ? WesleyanUniversity 2001 ISSN: 0018-2656

THENATIONAS A PROBLEM:

HISTORIANSAND THE"NATIONALQUESTION"

ELIAS JOSE PALTI

ABSTRACT

How is it that the nationbecame an object of scholarlyresearch?As this article

intends to show,not until whatwe call the "genealogicalview" (which assumes

the "natural" nd "objective"characterof the nation) eroded away could the

nationbe subjectedto critical scrutinyby historians.The stalling point and the

premise for studies in the field was the revelation of the blind spot in the

genealogicalview, that s, thediscoveryof the "modern" nd"constructed"har-

acter of nations. Historians'views would thus be intimately tied to the "antige-

nealogical"perspectives of them. However, this antigenealogicalview would

eventually reveal its own blind spots. This papertraces the differentstages of

reflection on the nation,andhow the antigenealogicalapproachwould finallybe

renderedproblematic,exposing, in turn, ts own internal issures.

"How can one avoid sinking into the mireof common sense, if not by becominga

stranger o one's own country, anguage,sex andidentity?"

Julia Kristeva

"He found the Archimedeanpoint, buthe used it againsthimself; it seems thathe was

permitted o find it only underthis condition."

Franz Kafka

The "nation"has recentlybeen the object of an enormousnumber of studies,

with widely differing approaches.Despite theirdifferences,however,historians

today seem to agreeunanimouslyon the "modern"and "constructed" haracter

of nations-in contrastwith what nationalistshave normallyaffirmed. Such a

historicizationof the conceptof "nation"s not ideologically neutral.This "anti-

genealogical approach,"as I shall call it, is aimed to counter nationalisttrends:

by revealingthe blind spot in nationalistdiscourse(thatis, the contingentorigin

and character of modem nations), nationalism is deprived of its intellectual

grounds.

However, this last statementcalls for two qualifications.First, the "modern"and"contingent" atureof nationsrepresentsa blindspotonly for a specificform

of nationalistdiscourse, namely, the "genealogical approach" hat dominated



THE NATIONAS A PROBLEM 325

nationalist hinking n the nineteenthcentury.As we will see, this is not the case

for other forms of nationalistdiscourse,andespeciallynot for thoseradically in-

goist andxenophobicversionsthat emerged n the course of the twentiethcentu-

ry. Second, and even more important, he historicizationof nationalistthinkingtends to obliterate he fact that antigenealogicaldiscourse also rests on a number

of assumptionsand indeed contains its own blindspots. Ultimately,the antige-

nealogical conceptis, as is its opposite, a contingent ormation; t has had its own

epistemic and historical conditionsof possibility. This leads me to the topic of

thispaper,namely,how the "nation"became a subject or historicalanalysis, that

is, what were theconditionsfor its constitutionas anobjectof scholarlyresearch.

If the emergenceof nations is a relatively recentphenomenon, t is even more

recent as a topic of study. The first systematic studies of the phenomenon

appearedafterWorldWarI, and it becameconsolidatedas a subjectof scholarly

debateonly afterWorldWarII. Infact, studiesof nationsandnationalismrequire

certain preconditions that were not present until the twentieth century. Die

Nationalititetenfrageund die Sozialdemokratie 1924), by OttoBauer,which is

probablythe firstsystematicwork on the subject,provides some clues to under-

standingthe circumstances hat allowed him to turn the nation into an objectof

study.The openingwords areparticularly evealingin this regard.

National character s not an explanation; t is something to be explained.In establishing

the variationof nationalcharacter, cience has not solved the problem of the nation,but

simply posed it. How that relativecommunityof characterarises,how it happensthatall

members of a nation,for all their individualdifferences,still coincide in a series of fea-

tures,and for all theirphysicalandmentalidentitywith otherpeople still differfromthe

membersof other nations-this is preciselywhatscience has to grasp.1

The nationfirst hadto cease to appearas a "natural"or "quasi-natural")he-

nomenon in order to become a matterof critical scrutiny.This did not happenbeforethebeginningof the twentiethcentury.Until then,nationalnarrativesim-

ited themselves to relating the assumed origins of the respective nations; to

establishingthe distinct featuresidentifyingeach one, as well as the principles

thatpresidedover their evolution andexplainedtheireffective, historicalcourse.

In short, these narrativesarticulated he "genealogical"conceptof nationality.

As the quotationfrom Bauerclearly shows, questioningthis assumptiondid

notnecessarilyentailrejecting he idea of the existence of distinct"national har-

acters."Yet it did involve the assumption hat,whatever hese "characters" ere,they did not have to be as they were in a given momentof their historicalevolu-

tion;thatis, such characteristicswere not prefiguredn the originof nations,nor

did they form a partof theirvery essence. This perspective openedthe first fis-

surein the "genealogical" onceptof the nation,pavingthe way for reflectionon

an object (the "nation")which, havingthus lost its shroudof "naturalness," ow

came to containa questionto be addressed.As Bauersaid, the "nationalcharac-

ter,"far from being an explicatory principle, had itself to be explained. The

1. Otto Bauer, "The Nation," in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan London: Verso,

1996), 41.



326 ELiAS JOSE PALTI

explanans was converted into an explanandumthat itself called for a new

explanans.

This article seeks to trace the different phases in the thinking of historians

about he "nationalquestion." t is organized n two parts,each exploringthe two

successive thresholds hroughwhich, in my view, the process of problematization

of the ideaof "nation" rossed. The firststagecorresponds o a seriesof remark-

ableessays, which, in the second half of the nineteenthcentury,beganto put the

genealogical conceptof the nation underquestion,revealing some of the aporias

it contained. will concentrateon two of them,writtenby LordActon and Ernest

Renanrespectively.As we will see, even if they did not articulatea consistent

antigenealogical iew, they provided he basison which historians n thepast cen-

tury beganto critically approach he "nationalquestion."The second stage refers

to recentstudiesin which, as I will try to show, the antigenealogicalconcept is

itself undermined, evealing some of the contradictions o which the criticism of

the genealogical conceptconduces. It is at this point thatthe "nation" urns into

a true"problem," omething that criticismcan neither accept nor ignore.This is

so becauseof reasonsrelatingnot only to defacto issues (the actualvitalityand

influenceof nationalism hroughoutmodernhistory-a factwhich, seen fromthe

perspectiveof the antigenealogicalview, appearsas irrational),butalso, and fun-damentally, o conceptualones: reflection on the topic of the "nation" nded up

revealing fissures inherent n the antigenealogicalview-which, as we will see,

condemn t to remain nextricably iedto its opposite, the genealogicalconceptof

the nation. Before exploringthe process by which the genealogicalconceptwas

to be renderedproblematic,however,we mustbrieflyreviewthecontextin which

it emerged.

I. THEGENEALOGICALCONCEPTOF THE NATION

The idea of the existence of distinct "nationalcharacters" inges on the assump-

tion that behind the events shapinga given nationalcourselies a particularprin-

ciple of evolution.This principle providesthata nationis an identityrecogniz-

able throughoutts changesas a single unitydifferentfrom all othernations.As

has been frequentlyremarked, he philosophicalsubstratumor this conceptwas

provided by the "organicist" deas of a Romanticmatrix,which emerged at the

end of the eighteenthcenturyas a reactionagainstthe "mechanicist" deas of the

Enlightenment. n formulatingan "organicist" iew of society for the firsttime,

Johann Gottfried Herder is, according to most authors, the key figure. He

allegedly opened a geological fault thatdivided the historyof modernpolitical

and intellectualhistory into two contendingsides.

Such a dichotomousview, whichregards"organicism" nd"mechanicism" s

the two poles in a kind of eternalor quasi-eternalopposition, is, actually, very

simplistic.Itrests on anunwarranted remise,namely,that there is one andonly

one idea of "organism,"whose meaninghas been uniformandconsistentlyused

throughouttime-and that the same can be said of the "organicist" dea of




"nation."Yet, the idea of "organism" nderwentn thecourse of the last two cen-

turiesa numberof successive and fundamental edefinitions.Thus,beforeinquir-

ing whetherHerderand the nationalistsheld an "organicist" iew of society,we

should firstask ourselveswhat they understoodby "organism."2The opposition between "organicism" and "mechanicism" dates from

Herder's ime,with the emergenceof the idea of thepresence, n animatedorgan-

isms, of a vital, active principle,the so-callednisusformativusthatradicallydis-

tinguishesthemfrom unanimatedbodies. This nisusformativus providesorgan-

isms with their characteristicaculties:the intrinsiccapacity for self-generation

andself-development. n the emergenceof this concepttwo mutuallycontradic-

tory doctrines of the classical period converged: the preformationistand the

vitalist.

On the one hand,the theoryof the nisusformativus ook fromthe "natural is-

tory" of the Enlightenment the preformationistidea of "organism,"which

explainedthe developmentof the embryoas a mere"growing"of reconstituted

characters nd forms. The discoveryby Jan JakobSwammerdam1637-1680) of

the butterfly's complete preformation n the caterpillarwas seen as empirical

confirmationof this theory.Only this theory allowed the systematicstudy of the

orderof the universe of livingbeings,

since it alone permitted he exclusion of

the idea of supernatural ntervention in the generation and development of

species. But this madeinconceivablethe ideaof "evolution" in thecurrent ense

of the word).3

On the otherhand, in the first decades of the nineteenth century,a series of

new developmentscame to challenge the preformationist dea, leading to the

"rediscovery" f FriedrichWolff's Theoriagenerationis(written n 1759but for-

gottenfor almosthalf a century).As Wolff observed,in the developmentof the

embryonew forms andorgans appearedwhich were not originallypresentin it.The break with the preformationistheories coincided with the emergenceof a

numberof new disciplines,such as chemistry,animalmagnetism,galvanism,and

physiology, which began to redefine classical vitalist doctrines.This, in turn,

allowedthe reconciliationof the conceptsof "preformation"nd"evolution" in

the modem sense of the word).Based on the ideas of GeorgeStahl(the authorof

thephlogistontheory),classical vitalistshad conceivedof "life"as a kindof fluid

thatmerelycirculatedthroughbodies, preventingtheirdecomposition;the new

sciences yielded a notion of vitalfluid as an active principle,a "material-imma-terial" (imponderable)substance (like electricity, magnetism, and gravity) or

Kraftthatwas both fixed andplasticenoughto generatea diversityof formsand

organs.Accordingto this concept, what was preformed n the embryo was no

longer a series of visible features,but a logical and mutually coordinatedorder

2. Onthe connections between Herder'sphilosophy of history and the natural ciences of his time,

see Palti, "The Metaphorof Life: Herder's Philosophyof History and Uneven Developmentsin the

NaturalSciences of His Time," Histoty and Theory38 (1999), 322-347.

3. See Helmut Muller-Sieves,Self-Generation:Biology, Philosophy, andLiteratureAround1800

(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1997).



328 ELfAS JOSE PALTI

of successive transformationssomething similarto what we call a "genetic pro-

gram") 4

The "genealogicalconcept"of the nationwas historically orged on the model

of the preformationist-evolutionist iew of "organism."Herder's work clearly

revealsthe intimateconnections between these developments n late eighteenth-

centurybiological thinking andthe Romanticconcept of the nation. His idea of

Volksgeistwas precisely the sociohistorical translationof Wolff's concept of

Kraft or vital force ("inexplicable and unerasable,as ancient as the nation

itself').5 "This principle," he believed, "is innate, organical, genetic: it is the

basis of my naturalpowers, the internalgenius of my being."6"Everyexternal

form in Nature,"statedHerder,"is an index of her internaloperations."7 All the

genealogical views of the nation hinged on this assumption.This allegedly

explainedwhy, even thoughnations underwentchanges over time, no transfor-

mationcouldbe introduced n a given nation fromwithoutif this transformation

was not already somehow inscribed within it as one of its possible, potential

developments. In the work cited above, Otto Bauer later synthesizedthis per-

spective in the idea of "nationalapperception," ccording to which "no nation

adoptsforeign elementsunaltered; ach adapts hemto its whole being, andsub-

jects themto a changein the processof adoption,of mental digestion."8Knowing the conceptual ground of the genealogical conception of "nation"

allows us to underline hreeaspects of it that mustbe clarifiedto avoid some of

the simplifications hatsometimesappear n the specializedliterature.First,con-

trary o whatmany authorspoint to in orderto refutethe "nationalist-genealogi-

cal" idea, the nationgenealogicallyconceived is not necessarily"exclusionary."

As Bauerindicatesin his definitionof "nationalapperception,"t does notreject

the possibility of "digesting"elements alien to it; rather t claims thatnational

particularities ntailspecificconditions of appropriation.Whatis excludedin thenationalist-genealogicaldea is thepossibility of adopting oreignelements with-

out firstadapting hemto the nation's"organicconstitution.'

Second, in the genealogicalview the samepatternof relationshipbetweenthe

"inside"and the "outside"of the nationcan be found replicated n the connec-

tionbetween the whole and its constituentelements(nationandindividualwill),

with the formerindicatingonly the field and necessarylimit conditions for the

unfolding of the latter. In this understanding,nations are, no doubt, objective

entities, predatingand existing independentlyof the will of their subjects.Yet

4. See Lester King, "Stahland Hoffmann:A Study in Eighteenth-CenturyAnimism,"Journal of

the History of Medicine 19 (1964), 118-130; OswaldTemkin,"GermanConceptsof Ontogenyand

History around 1800," in The Double Face of Janus and OtherEssays in the History of Medicine

(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Shirley Roe, Matter;Life, and

Generation:Eighteenth-Century iology and theHaller-WolffDebate (Cambridge,Eng.:Cambridge

University Press, 1981); andCharles W. Rodemer,"Regenerationand the Decline of Preformism n

Eighteenth-Century mbryology,"Bulletinof theHistory of Medicine38 (1964), 20-31.

5. Herder,Outlines of a Philosophy of the Historyof Man (London:Luke Hanfard,1803), II, 42.6. Ibid., 1, 320.

7. Ibid., I, 139.

8. Bauer, "The Nation," 68.




this objectivist concept does not necessarily contradict the idea of individual

"free will" per se, but only the idea of an "unconditionedwill." The genealogi-

cal concept of the nation actually raises an anteriorquestion to that of "individ-

ual will," a questionthat refersto the preconditionsof "freechoice."The ques-tion is, even if everyone may choose whateverthey want, whatdetermines hese

very wants? The implicit answer is, to put it in ReinhartKoselleck's words, that

the nationalcharacterconstitutes that space of experience that explainsan indi-

vidual's practicalorientations his or her "horizonof expectations"),and thereby

provides the framework or the individual's"freechoices" to be articulatedand

to become socially meaningful.

Finally, the national dea was not necessarily"reactionary" r "conservative'"

Certainly, he associationof nationalist deas with conservative political forces

hasprecise historicalgrounds;however,such a relationshipbetween nationalism

and conservatismwas not logically determined,but was the result of a number

of contingent developments and events. The point is that, although typically

"atomism" is identified with "liberalism," and "organicism" with "conser-

vatism," there is no logical relationshipbetween these philosophical concepts

("atomism"and"organicism") ndtheir ideological consequences.A process of

translation mediates between these concepts and consequences, one that is

always open to alternative nterpretations.This translationprocess necessarily

involves both theoreticaland non-theoretical actors.

A considerationof these nuances in the genealogical concept of the nationis

necessaryto comprehend t correctly.But even more importantn the context of

this article,it is crucialto avoid simplisticviews regarding he process by which

the genealogical conceptionof the nation was eroded so as finally to collapse.

Accordingto whatwe have seen, the Romantic, "objectivist"dea of the nation

could not be refutedsimply by attributing o it reactionary deological implica-tions (since it actuallydid not have specific political implicationsor containdef-

inite ideological consequences),or by holding againstit the rightof individual

self-determinationsince it did not necessarilyexclude or contradict his right).

Moreover,as we will see, the nationalistclaimof the need for anobjectivefoun-

dation (culturallysubstantivecollective identities)for the constitutionof every

political orderor social communitycould not be disregarded. n short,consider-

ation of the intricaciesof the genealogical concept of the nationpermitsus to

comprehend he vicissitudes in the process whereby antigenealogicaldiscoursedeveloped.

II. THEFISSURES IN THEGENEALOGICALCONCEPTOF THENATION

The erosionof the "genealogicalconcept"of the nationbeganin the secondhalf

of the nineteenthcentury.Two well-known texts by Lord Acton ("Nationality,"

9. Herder himself would be an example of this. According to FrederickBeiser, far from being

proto-fascist, Herder held radical and even anarchist political ideas (see Beiser, Enlightenment,

Revolution, and Romnanticismn:he Genesis of Modern German Political Thog/ght,1790-1800

[Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1992], 201-215).



330 ELIAS JOSEPALTI

first publishedin The Home and Foreign Review in 1864) and Ernest Renan

("Qu'est-cequ'une nation?,"a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne in 1882) are

particularlyllustrativeof this process.They are not only very early worksren-

dering the conceptof the nationproblematic,but they also set the fundamentaltopics that subsequently hapedlater antigenealogicaldiscourse.

LordActon's pamphletwas aimedat countering he impulse given to nation-

alist ideals in Europeby the ItalianRisorgimento. n it he explored the origins of

the principleof nationality n orderto undermine ts ideological foundations;he

elaborateda narrative,which subsequentlybecamecanonical,aimedat showing

the "modernity" f the conceptof "nation."As he remarked, he Enlightenment

lacked such a principle,as was made manifestduring the 1789 Revolution.The

dogma of the individual'sfree choice, assertedLordActon, was "in apparent

contradictiono thenational heory, hat certainnatural orces ought to determine

the character,he form,and the policy of the State by which a kindof fate is put

in the place of freedom."10

Acton thus intended o defeat nationalistargumentsby revealinga conceptual

contradictionbetween the notions of nationandfreedom:while nationalidenti-

ties indicatedobjective,necessaryfacts, freedom referred o normsand will. As

he stated,belongingto a nationwas a natural,spontaneoushappening; reedom,instead,required he institutionof a legal framework a state of right),that is, it

was apolitical construction.

The second aspectof LordActon's contentionconsisted of a historicalaccount

aimed at exposing the contingent(and recent) origins of the nationalconcept.

The idea of the nation,he asserted, originally emergedprecisely as a reaction

againstthe FrenchRevolution,and particularlyagainstNapoleon's attemptsto

expand t. The Frenchoccupationof Italianand German erritories,as well as the

partitionof Poland, gave birth to the first outlines of a "nationalist" deal.However,the modern dea of "nation" in the "genealogical"sense of the word,

thatis, as giving expressionto a nationalitywhich precedesit, andexplains and

justifies its actual, empiricalexistence) had a double origin. It turnedin short

orderfrom its antirevolutionary rticulation nto one thatwas antimonarchical.

The Vienna Congress, given its desire to preserve dynastic legitimacies, was

unresponsive o the emergingnationalistprojects.The resultwas that these pro-

jects, in order to flourish, had to struggle against the reigning monarchies.

Europeannationalismthus became the strongholdof liberalismand social pro-

gressivism ("thesame spiritserveddifferent masters,"said Acton)."1The ideo-

logical ambiguityof nationalismwould thus be inscribed n its very origins.

In this fashion, Acton tried to show-against the common view of his time

(which still identified nationalismwith liberalism)-that nationalismwas not

necessarily progressivistand liberal. On the contrary, nsofaras it pretended o

foundthe political-orderon supposedly"natural" ases (such as language, race,

and so on), it contradicted he principleof individualfreedom of choice, which,

10. LordAction, "Nationality,"n Balakrishnan, d., Mapping the Nation, 25.

11. Ibid., 28.




for him, could only be conceived of as a human(and, therefore,"artificial") re-

ation.

However, we shouldnote two aspects of Acton's perspectivethat separatehis

discourse from the antigenealogical views developed in the twentieth century.First, althoughhe insisted on the recent origin of the idea of nation,he did not

question its "natural"oundations.Actually,by founding the State and political

institutions on groundsother than the "natural" ne providedby the nation, he

preservedthe antinomybetween "nature"nation) and "artifice" political insti-

tutions),thatis, he ultimatelyendorsedthe nationalists'view of nations as "nat-

ural"entities. Second, the preservationof thatantinomy s what allowed him to

refuse the revolutionary principle (for him, necessarily "anarchical")of an

absolute andunconditional ndividualfreedom. But, at this point, he needed to

moderatethe oppositionbetween the poles of the antinomy.His line of reason-

ing can be describedas follows.

If political institutionswere purely artificialformations,that is, if they were

founded exclusively on individualwill, there would be no way of constituting

political units at all. What we would miss in the process is that additionalele-

ment,theplus factor that confersstabilityto the regularorderof the statebeyond

thechanging

andparticular

needs and desires of itsindividualmembers.And, inthis fashion, the principle of individual self-determinationwould also be

deprived of meaning since individualchoices always presupposea framework

within which they may make themselves manifest (for example, to become a

"majority" r a "minority" f something).In short,in Acton's view, the idea of

the constructedcharacterof the State, if completely detachedfrom any natural

ground, is ultimately self-contradictory.Thus, the opposition between artifice

andnature, ubjectivewill andobjectivegrounds,determined heperpetualoscil-

lation betweenanarchyanddespotism.LordActon's conclusion is that truefree-dom could not be opposedto the nation(thatis, nature),an exclusively political

constructionwith no naturalgrounds (thatis, pure artifice).Truefreedomrather

conjugatednature and artifice;that is, it was the result of the combination of

minorpolitical units rootedin spontaneous ormsof community(the "nationali-

ties") and organizedinto more comprehensivepolitical units (thatis, "plurina-

tional"states). In this fashion, he stated,"inferiorraces are raisedby living in

politicalunion withintellectuallysuperior aces.Exhaustedanddecayingnations

are revivedby the contact with a youngervitality."2Implicitin this conceptis a certaintelos: the idea that humankindhistorically

advancestowards its progressiveunification.Thus, the principleof nationality

would representonly a kind of intermediary tage in the marchtowardsthe final

goal, which is the assimilationof minor political units into superiorforms of

organization.Such a view was very clearly influencedby Great Britain'spluri-

nationalconstitution.Even moredecisive, however,was theprocessof imperial-

istic expansionthatwas taking place in those years:LordActon's article s clear-

ly a translation or anticipation)of Kipling's idea of the white man'sburden.As

12. Ibid., 31.



332 ELIASJOSEPALTI

a matterof fact, thereis an evident correlationbetween the first questioningsof

nationalistdiscourse and the emerging era of imperialism(somethingwhich, as

Benedict Andersonremarks,students of nationalism permeatedby the antige-

nealogicalapproachvery often prefer to ignore').ErnestRenan's article, which moves one step forwardin the erosion of the

nationalistprinciple,has at its startingpointa very differentcontext of problems.

Renan's seminalwork was elaborated n the light of the conflict generatedafter

Germany'sannexationof Alsace andLorraine,as a resultof the Franco-Prussian

War (1871). Those bordering provinces representeda peculiar case, since,

althoughthey were basically German-speaking,heir populationwantedto be a

part of France.And this explains, in turn,the peculiar characteristicshat make

Renan'san extraordinary ocumentat its time.

The reflection on the Alsace-Lorraine ase led Renanto discoverthat nations

not only were recentcreations,as Lord Acton had already argued,but also that

they lacked "objective"grounds.In his review of the developmentof modern

nationsin Europe,he clearly demonstrated hatnone of the assumedfactors on

which nationalitiesare allegedly based (race,language,religion, geography,and

so on) can account for how they were formed and delimited from each other.

Given any criterionused to "objectively"define a nation,Renanfound a histor-ical counterexample hat refutes it-that is, existing nations, that nobody ques-

tioned as such, that did not match the propoundedcriterion.Renan cited, for

example, cases of single nations lodging a pluralityof races and languages;or,

conversely,cases in which racesandlanguageswere commonto severalnations

which, nevertheless,remainedclearlydifferentiated.

Renandrew two conclusions. First, the lack of objectivecriteriareveals, not

the arbitrary, ut indeed the constructedcharacterof the nation:in order to be

articulatedas a homogeneousand distinctwhole, every nation must first fill itsinternalfissures and "forget"the antagonismthat historically tore it apart.In

Renan's first famous maxim:"forgetting, would even go so far as to say, his-

torical error, s a crucial factorin the creationof a nation,which is why progress

in historicalstudies oftenconstitutesa danger or [the principleof] nationality."'14

This, in turn,entails the idea of the "subjective"natureof the nations.The fact

thata nationis historically"constructed"mplies that,even thoughits roots are

clearly in the past, it is not a mere emanationfrom that past; its articulation

requiresa subjectivemediation,the manifestationof a present will, which, to

perpetuate tself, must be continuallyrenewed (hence Renan's second famous

maxim that the nation "is a daily plebiscite"5).

Accordingto historians'currentnterpretation,Renan's textsmarked he emer-

gence of what Bauer denominated he "psychological-voluntaristic"oncept of

the nation (which, following the traditionaldichotomies of intellectualhistory,

13. Anderson,"Introduction,"n Balakrishnan, d., Mappingthe Nation, 5.14. Renan,"What s a Nation?,"in Nation and Narration,ed. Homi Bhabha(London and New

York:Routledge, 1991), 11.

15. Ibid., 19.




would be tantamount to a return to an Enlightenment idea)."6 And, certainly, his

view is at the limit of the genealogical idea of the nation. However, Renan's "vol-

untaristic" idea still remains within the confines of the genealogical concept.

In effect, as Martin Thom has underlined in a recent work, "as inspection of[Renan's] earlier writings would show, he was less committed to the 'voluntaris-

tic' argument than his lecture suggests."17 Renan's 1848 study of the origin of

language clearly reveals the imprints of a preformationist-evolutionary social

concept. The following quotation is its best synthesis:

Languages,as the organizedproductsof nature,are subjectto the law of gradualdevel-

opment;but such a development is not a gross concretion, operated from the exterior.

Languages ive the same way as man andmankind hatspeakthem, that is, in a continu-

ous fieri;they areendlessly composed and decomposed througha kind of internalvege-tation,a circulationcoming from within.The sowed seed potentiallycontains everything

the being will eventuallybe.18

No doubt, one may allege that Renan subsequently modified his view. However,

the point is that the very text of the 1882 speech contains elements that oblige

one to question, or at least to introduce some nuances in, the interpretation that

his was a "voluntaristic" view. Although he himself did not draw any conse-

quence from it, Benedict Anderson has already called attention to the complex

and peculiar syntax of Renan's expression affirming the necessity of "forgetting"

in order that the nation could be articulated. He said that the French people doit

avoir oublie (must have forgotten), instead of, as was more logical, doit oublier

(must forget). Renan thereby implied that "forgetting" was at once the condition

for the existence of the nation (a "must") and the proof of its existence as such

(a fact). The "nation" constitutes itself in and through the very act of "forgetting"

its internal antagonisms; yet, for "forgetting" to be possible, there must already

exist a subjectthat forgets. As John Breuilly has affirmed,

If one takes Renan's view in this way [that s, as advocatinga merevoluntarism]his case

becomes meaningless.The constant reiterationof the statement"I am French" s empty

unless it is linked to some notionof whatbeing Frenchmeans.In turn,thatmeaningcan

becomepoliticallysignificantonly if sharedby a numberof people witheffective organi-

zation. It is this sharedmeaningand their political organization hat constitutea form of

nationalismrather han the purely subjectivechoices of individualFrenchmen.'9

Indeed Renan himself insisted on this double character of the nation:

A nation is a soul, a spiritualprinciple.Two things,which in trutharebut one, constitute

this soul or spiritualprinciple.One lies in the past, one in the present.One is the posses-

sion in common of a richlegacy of memories;the other is present-dayconsent,the desire

to live together, he will to perpetuatehe value of the heritagethat one has receivedin an

undividedform.Man, Gentlemen,does not improvise.The nation,like the individual, s

the culminationof a long pastof endeavors, sacrifice,anddevotion20

16. Bauer, "TheNation," 71.

17. Martin Thom, "Tribes within Nations: The Ancient Germans and the History of Modern

France," n Bhabha,ed., Nation and Narration,23.18. Renan, El origen del lenguaje (BuenosAires: Albatros,1946), 67.

19. Breuilly,Nationalism and the State (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1985), 8.

20. Renan, "What s a Nation?," 19.



334 ELIAS JOSEPALTI

In sum, this firstperiod of reflection on nationsandnationalismcomes to its

close leaving a contradictionopen: the impossibility of setting objective para-

metersfor thedefinitionof thenation ed to lodging it in the subjectivewill; how-

ever, subjectivewill presupposes he existence of substantive,objective forms ofsocial organization-which, nevertheless, cannot account for their own origin

and constitutionwithoutresortingto a subjective factor, and so on ad infinitum.

In the last instance,it is not Renan'sassumed"Enlightenment oluntarism,"but

this circularity,his oscillationbetween subjectand object,between past and pre-

sent, that ends up opening a first fissure in the genealogical discourse of the

nation,revealing the aporiaswithin.

This circularitywouldbecome the distinctive traitof the antigenealogicaldis-

course thatemerged afterWorld War I. As we will see in the next section, the

antigenealogicalcurrents which in the past century have turned the topic of

nations and nationalism into a subject of scholarly researchwould effectively

detach the concept of the nation from its genealogical framework,settingaside

the assumptionof its natural,objective character and foundations. Yet, they

would thus endup replicating heoscillationbetweensubjectandobject, pastand

present,observed in Renan, now projectedonto a higher(second-order) evel of

analysis:the representations f the nation.

III.THEANTIGENEALOGICALDISCOURSEOF THE NATION

Only afterWorldWarI did nations andnationalismbecome an objectof system-

atic investigation.The new approachesnow clearly hinged on an antigenealogi-

cal argument.The historiographicalraditionwas initiatedby CarltonHayes and

Hans Kohn, who in the 1920s began the reactionagainstthe emergenceof the

contemporary orms of nationalism,debunking he "organicist"dea of it as "thenatural orm of community."'21They alreadyhad as theirpremisethe assumption

of the"modern" nd"mentallyconstructed" haracter f thenation.22In theirper-

spective, the "nation"was an invented category, a product of quite modern

processeslike bureaucracy,ecularization, evolution,andcapitalism.For them,

the past to which nationalistsappealedwas mythical; it existed only in their

minds.Followingtheir ead, laterthinkershave systematicallydenouncedduring

thepast century heanachronism f the"genealogicalapproach."As Boyd Shafer

has noted,"Anoftencommittederrorof studentsof ideas is to teargenericwordslike "nation"and "nationalism"rom their historicalcontext, to read theircon-

temporary ubstance n the past, and thus to see in the past the generalitiesand

universalsactuallyevidentonly in contemporaryife."23

21. Kemildinemcalled them the "twin fathers of academicscholarshipon nationalism."See Aira

Kemildinem, Nationalism: Problems Concerning the Word, the Concept and Classification

(Jyvdskyld:Kustantajat,1964).

22. In Theories of Nationalism,Anthony Smith traces an interesting review of the studies onnationalism n this present century(Smith, Theories of Nationalism [New York: Holmes & Meier,

1983]).

23. Boyd Shafer,Nationalism,Mythand Reality New York:Harcourt, raceandCompany,1955),5.




This shift in perspectivewas clearly influencedby the excesses of nationalism.

Seen retrospectively,Romanticideologies now appeared o containthe seeds of

all the evils occurringin the twentieth century.For authors like Max Rouche,

Herder's historical concept "prefigured the Hitlerian theory of Blut [ndBoden."24The rejection of the genealogical, romantic conception consolidated

the dichotomousperspectivethatregardedall of modernpoliticalandintellectu-

al history as a kindof eternalor quasi-eternal trugglebetween two antagonistic

forces: Enlightenment/Romanticism, ationalism/irrationalism,ndividualism/

organicism,cosmopolitanism/nationalism.25 This dichotomous(and simplistic)

perspective, which lay at the basis of a typically "whiggish"historicalperspec-

tive, soon permeated other forms of conceiving of history, such as those of

Marxism,26 nd,as we will see in the following section, still is widely accepted

among historiansof very differentpersuasions.

Yet, the antigenealogicalview reveals more than the ideological tendencies

prevailingamong historians.Moreimportant, he ways in which therejection of

nationalism was articulated llustratewider conceptual transformationshat in

the early partof the centuryweremodifying Western hinkingas a whole, includ-

ing nationalistdiscourse.Particularly elevant n this context is the breakwiththe

preformationist-evolutionarydea of "organism" aking place at the turnof the

century.

In the field of biological thinkingthis transformation egan in 1883, when in

a series of writingsAugustWeismann irstpostulated he hypothesisof the radi-

cal discontinuitybetween thegermandthesoma (the adult ndividual),which led

to discarding he possibility of acquiredcharactersbeing passed on from mature

individualsto theirprogeny.27 his, in turn,threwsome doubts on the models of

gradualevolution.Finally,in 1900 Hugo de Vries dealt the last blow to the pre-

formationistconcept by formulating he principlethatevolutionaryphenomena,on the phylogenetic level, resultfrom sudden transformations r randomglobal

mutations. The notions of "evolution"and "totality"thus came to be distin-

guished from that of "finality":mutationswere now reducedto unpredictable

happenings, nternallygeneratedbut with no perceptibleend or goal.28

Thesenew scientificdevelopmentsarerepresentative f the new orientationof

Western hinking hatgave birth n thoseyearsto a new paradigm egarding ime.

24. Rouch6, La Philosophie de ihistoire de Herder (Paris:Facult6de Lettres de l'Universit6 deStrasbourg,1940), 25 and91.

25. These two views were supposed to be incarnatedn Kant and Herder,respectively.A. Gilles

opens his classical Herder(Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1945) affirming hat "his functionseems to me

to be the counterpartof that of Kant, his great opponent, in the making of the mind of modern

Germany" v). We must remember hat Gilles's words werewritten n June, 1944.

26. On the transformationn the Marxistperspectivesof nationalism, ee EphraimNimni, Marxism

and Nationalism: TheoreticalOrigins of a Political Crisis (London and Boulder:Pluto Press, 1991),

andPalti,"Liberalismvs. Nationalism:Hobsbawm'sDilemma," Telos 95 (1993), 109-126.

27. Weismann,Essays Upon HeredityandKindredBiological Problems(Oxford:ClarendonPress,

1891).28. See Nicolas Rasmussen, "The Decline of Recapitulationism n Early Twentieth-Century

Biology: DisciplinaryConflict and Consensus on the Battleground f Theory,"Journal of the History

of Biology 24 (1991), 52-89.



336 ELIAS JOSE PALTI

Movements, said Bergson, are "self-sufficient and do not announce those to fol-

low."29 Non-teleologically-oriented processes, insofar as they involved sudden

recombinations of elements, broke with the idea of linearity in the evolution of

matter. Each moment in a sequence of transformations introduces a true novelty,

a new and specific arrangement of the whole. This new concept of temporality

determined, in turn, the emergence of a new view of discourses30 that distin-

guished them from their referential or expressive functions.31 These conceptual

transformations also provided a new ground for the figuration of the origin and

meaning of social formations in general, and of nations in particular.32Especially

symptomatic of these changes are the displacements that occurred in nationalist

thinking, which abandoned its genealogical foundations. Mussolini clearly

expressed the new concept of the nation in 1922:

We have createdourmyth.The myth is faith;it is a passion. It is not necessarythat it be

a reality.It is a reality by the fact that it is a good thing, a hope, a faith; that it is courage.

Ourmyth is the Nation; our myth is the greatnessof the Nation! And to this myth, to this

grandeur,hat we wish to translate nto a complete reality,we subordinateall the rest.33

Although he still invoked the national past and traditions,34 what mattered here

was not history, but the constructed mage of it. For Mussolini, the myth could

not contradict reality because it itself was a reality qua myth, that is, an effective

historical force. The ideological factors then were detached from the cognitive

component. It was not truth that the myth could contain that mattered, but the

very myth as such; not the said, but the saying, and the social effects it could gen-

erate. As the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg stated in The Myth of the

TwentiethCentury:

The life of a race,a folk, is not a philosophythatdevelops logically nora processunwind-

ing accordingto natural aw, but is the expressionof a mystical synthesis,an activityof

the soul which can neitherbe explained by rationalprocesses, normadecomprehensible

by the analysis of causes and effects.... In the final analysis every philosophy going

29. HenriBergson, Timeand Free Will Essai sur les donn~es mmtndiatese la conscience) [1889]

(New York:Harper& Row, 1960), 12.

30. Hence FriedrichKittler's observation hat "in the discourse networkof 1900, discourse is pro-

duced by RANDOM GENERATORS" Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, transl. Michael

Meteer and Chris Cullens [Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, 1990], 206).

31. In Kittler's words, "the discourse network of 1800 played the game of not being a discourse

networkand pretended nstead to be the inwardnessand voice of Man; in 1900 a type of writing

assumespower thatdoes not conformto traditionalwriting systems but ratherradicalizes the tech-

nology of writing in general" Kittler,Discourse Networks,211-212).

32. See Palti, "Time, Modernity,and Time Irreversibility,"Philosophy and Social Criticism 23

(1997), 27-62.

33. Benito Mussolini, "Speech delivered at Naples, October 24, 1922," in Le Van Baumer,Main

Currentsof WesternThought New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1978), 748.

34. As a matterof fact, the fascist discourse never gave up recourse to the genealogical concept,

which thuscoexisted with the new orientationsof nationalist hinking.In this way, the new national-

ist thinking nternalizedandmademanifesta problemwhich is common to all kinds of antigenealog-

ical approaches.As we will see, just as the genealogical view could never get ridof the "subjective"

aspects involvedin the constitutionof the nation,the antigenealogicalview of the nation would never

be able to disregard he issue of its objectivefoundations.




beyond formal rationalcriticism is less a knowledge than an affirmation;a spiritualand

racial affirmationof the values of character.35

The new tone adopted by nationalism seems to lend support to the antige-

nealogicalview of thenation as merelyan"ideologicalconstruct."However, this

convergence is, in some respects, paradoxical.Ironically,this shift places the

nationalistdiscourse out of the reachof the kindof criticism historiansattempt-

ed. As Adorno has alreadynoted,the revelationof the contingentfoundationsof

the nation leaves untouched what he called the "cynicalreason"of twentieth-

century nationalism,which no longer claimed for its concept anythingbut the

status of a myth, of an ideological construction.36Ultimately, antigenealogical

discourse tends to miss the profound transformations f nationalist thinkinginthepast century.Evenmore important,he apparentplausibilityof the arguments

propoundedby historiansof nationalismhelped to obliterate he deep conceptu-

al links communicating heir own antigenealogicaldiscourse to the view of their

opponents,the nationalists,links that reveal broaderconceptual displacements

takingplace in Western ocial (and scientific) thinkingatlarge.But all this would

not become manifestuntilthe antigenealogicaldiscoursebegan to expose its own

internal issures.

IV.THEFISSURES IN THE ANTIGENEALOGICALCONCEPTOF THE NATION

Three texts by Hobsbawm, Habermas,and Bhabha especially illuminate the

problems antigenealogical discourse faces nowadays, revealing the aporias it

contains.The most fundamental ransformationshat can be perceivedin recent

studies of nations and nationalismare linked to an almost unnoticeddisplace-

mentproduced n the objectof study.Renan'soriginal questionwas: "How is it

that Switzerland,which has three languages, two religions, and three or fourraces, is a nation,whenTuscany,which is so homogeneous,is not one?"37As he

discovered,sucha questioncouldnot be answeredon the basis of purely "objec-

tive"considerations;why Switzerland s a nation,andnot Tuscany,depended n

parton theirsubjects'beliefs andself-identities.This answer, n turn,eventually

raiseda new question:Whatleads certainsubjectsto imaginethemselves as con-

stitutingone single "nation"?To put it in KatherineVerdery'swords,"How are

identitiessocially constructed,and how arepersonsmade who have identities?"38

Once the premisethat the nation (in the nationalistsense) is an "invention" s

established,it is appropriateo re-orientthe focus to the processes and mecha-

nisms that generateand diffuse such myths, that is, the objective and material

conditions for the formationof "illusory," ubjectiveidentities such as national

identities. In sum, what now becomes the object of study is not the nation,but

35. Rosenberg,The Mythof the TwentiethCentury, n Baumer,Main Currentsof WesternThought,

751.

36. Theodor Adorno, "Society,"Salgamundi, 10-11; quoted by Slavok Zizek, Sublime Object of

Ideology (London:Verso, 1989), 30.

37. Renan, "What s a Nation?," 12.

38. Verdery,"Whiter Nation'and 'Nationalism,"' n Balakrishnan, d., MappingtheNation,228.



338 ELIAS JOSEPALTI

the social constructionof that "subjectof forgetting" on which the nation is

founded,andwhich Renan simply presupposedas given.

Hobsbawm'sreflectionon the subject contributes o the general reorientation

of the focus of studies towardswhatwe may call a "second-orderevel of analy-sis," that is, the representationsof the nation.For him, such a reorientationof

focus towardsthe symbolic dimensionof nations would allow us to fix what, at

a first-orderevel of analysis (the nationas such), appearedelusive. As he states

in his article, "Some Reflectionson Nationalism,""In approaching he 'national

question' t is more profitable o begin with the concept of 'the nation' (i.e., with

'nationalism') han with thereality it represents.For 'thenation' as conceivedby

nationalismcan be recognizedprospectively;the real nationcan only be recog-

nized a posteriori."39

At this point, Hobsbawmtakes up the enterprise nitiatedsome years earlier

by ErnestGellner40 ndMiroslav Hroch,4'which intendedto classify systemat-

ically the diverse formsof nationalismand the contexts in which they appeared

historically.However, it is not the classificatory mpulse that led Hobsbawmto

appealto these authors.As a matterof fact,by the time Hobsbawmaddressed he

issue, the discussions thatthe works of his predecessorshad motivatedand the

proliferationof theories on the issue had already erodedthe belief in the possi-bility of classifying nationalism (thus renderingproblematichis assertionthat

nationalisms,unlike "thereality they represent," ould be "recognizedprospec-

tively").42Nevertheless,the core idea on which Hobsbawm'sentireworkon the

topic revolves remains valid. Even thoughthere is no consensusamongspecial-

ists regarding he categoriesinto which the varietiesof nationalistthinkingcan

be catalogued and their contents pigeonholed (varying according to circum-

stancesin which the classificationsaremade),all the differentapproachesassert

the existence of two basic, opposite forms of nationalism,one integrativeandprogressivist, he otherexclusionistand reactionary.

In Hobsbawm's version, "progressivist"nationalismis that which accompa-

nied theprocessof centralizationandaffirmation f the nationalstates,while the

"reactionary" ppeared ater,as a reaction against the former, n which the latter

adoptedan eminentlydivisive, and, finally,"irrational"thatis, with no material

basis to sustainit) character.As AnthonySmith remarks, he basic assumption

*underlyingthis version is a teleological view of history,accordingto which the

purportedultimate goal of mankindis its progressive integration,a goal that

"smallnationalisms" ome to subvert.

In his recent series of essays on the issue of nationalism,Jirgen Habermas

elaboratedthis concept in a more systematicway in orderto oppose it to the

39. Hobsbawm, "Some Reflections on Nationalism," 387, quoted in Hobsbawm,Nations and

Nationalismsince 1780 (Cambridge,Eng.:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990), 9.

40. ErnestGellner,Nationsand Nationalism(Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1983).

41. Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of NationalRevival in Europe (Cambridge,Eng.:

CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985).

42. See Smith, "Nationalismandthe Historians," n Balakrishnan, d., Mappingthe Nation, 175-

197.




claims of self-determination by "national minorities." Habermas bases his

premises on the Rousseaueanconcept of the individual'sself-determination,n

order to distinguish the principle of citizenship from that of nationality.

Following the antigenealogicalconsensus,he states that "the national state hasbeen founded only transitorily on the close connection between ethnos and

demos .. .; betweenrepublicanismand nationalism here is merelya contingent,

not a conceptualnexus."43 or him, the introductionof the modernnotionof cit-

izenship came to break the substantivemodes of identity, characteristicof pre-

political forms of social organization,and to definea new, more integrative,and

hitherto unknown,mode of social conviviality articulatedon a purely formal

politico-juridical ramework.44 hus,for him, nationalismand citizenshipdo not

presupposeeach other;on the contrary,n the long run they are mutuallycontra-

dictory,since they rest on two competitiveforms of defining subjective dentities

(culturaland factual, nationalism;formal and normative, citizenship). In this

way, the affirmation f republicanism ends to abolish nationaldifferences;"cit-

izenship (Staatsbtirger)and cosmopolitanism (WeltbUrgerschaft),"e states,

"forma continuumwhich is nowadays becomingbroadlyoutlined."45

As we can observe,Habermasbelieved that the era of nationsandnationalism

was coming to its end, as did Hobsbawm. However, immediately after these

works appeared,a series of new events in Europe,beginning with the Bosnian

War, plainly contradicted this belief. This obliged both Hobsbawm and

Habermasto modify their views. Hobsbawm thus turns his former prediction

regarding hecomingfutureupsidedown:46 xenophobia," e statesnow,"seems

to be becomingthe ideology of the masses at the 20th centuryfinde siecle. What

holds humanity ogethertoday is the denialof whatthe humanrace has in com-

mon."47On this basis Hobsbawmdenouncesthe idea of individual self-determi-

nation regardingnational dentities,which he now identifies with the Wilsonian-Leninist principle-expressing a genealogical matrix-of "one state for each

nation" (the corollary, for him, of the "Austro-Marxist ystem of nationality,"

which understandsnationality"as an individualchoice, which every citizen has

the rightto make at the age of 16 whereverhe or she comes from"48).

Forhis partHabermasclaims that whathappened n those yearswas the frac-

ture between legitimacy (subjectivewill) andvalidity (objectivenormativity).At

this point, with reason and will having partedways, the rejectionof the claims

for national self-determination ame necessarilyto entail also the denial of the

43. JUrgenHabermas,"Cittadinanza IdentitANazionale,"Micromnega (1991), 127.

44. "In a pluralistsociety," affirmedHabermas,"constitutions xpress a purely formal consensus.

... Democraticcitizenship has no need to be rooted in the people's national dentity.It leaves out the

multiplicity of diverse cultural orms of life and it requiresthe socialization of every citizen within

the common politicalculture" Habermas,"Cittadinanza IdentithNazionale,"127 and 132].

45. Ibid., 146.

46. "Theowl of Minervawhichbrings wisdom, saidHegel, flies out at dusk. It is a good sign that

it is now circling roundnationsand nationalism" Hobsbawm,Nations and Nationalism, 183).47. Hobsbawm, "Ethnicityand Nationalism in Europe Today,"AnthropologyToday8 (February

1992), 8.

48. Ibid.,5.



340 ELiAS JOSE PALTI

rights of individualself-determination, hat is, the sovereignty of individualwill

in mattersof national dentity.

In this way antigenealogicalreasoningcomes full circle: beginning by appeal-

ing-against the nationalistallegation-to the principle of individual self-deter-mination, and ending by denying it. Paradoxically, he denial of the ("liberal,"

"subjective")principle of individual self-determinationnow appears to be the

only meansof preventingproliferating laimsof nationalself-determination.4 n

"TheEuropeanNation-State-Its Achievements and Its Limits,"Habermas ries

to account for this paradox, underlininga fact that in his previous work had

passed unnoticed.As he discovers now, the nationis the opposite term to repub-

licanism, and, at the same time, its necessary complement.Thus the ethnos finds

its places in a breach presentin the formalist concept of the State (the demos),

which cannot account for its own limits andfoundations.As he recognizes,

There s a conceptualgapin the legal constructionof the constitutional tate which invites

a naturalistnterpretationf the nation to be filled in. The scope and bordersof a repub-

lic cannot be settled on normativegrounds.In purely normative erms one cannot explain

howtheuniverse f thosewhooriginallyoinranks n order o formanassociation f freeand equal persons,and to regulatetheir common life by means of positive law in a fair

way, should be composed-who should or should not belong to this circle. From a nor-

mative point of view, the territorial nd social boundariesof a constitutional tate are con-tingent.... Nationalism found its own practicalanswer to the issue which remainsunre-

solved in theory.50

In this fashion, that which to Habermasrepresentsthe opposite term to the

concept of the modem State (the forms of collective identities rootedin "natur-

al," "objective"social ties) now reveals itself as constitutingthe condition of

possibility for its articulation.Habermas's esponseto this dilemma is moresub-

tle thanHobsbawm's,but bothultimately eadto the sameconclusion: the denial

of the individual'srightto self-determinationn mattersof national dentity.This

responseintendsto follow the example of the nationalists and convert the for-

malist constitutionalprincipleinto the basis of a substantivepolitical tradition.

Democraticcitizenship,Habermas ays, mustbe "more han ust a legal status; t

must become the focus of a sharedpoliticalculture.""Onsuch a basis,"he states,

"nationalism anbe replacedby what one mightcall constitutionalpatriotism."'5'

Habermas hereby ries to overcome the limitationsof a strictlyformalistconcept

of politicalorder.Nevertheless, the reformulationof the idea of "democraticcitizenship"in

termsof "constitutional atriotism"will not suffice to fill thatgapthatHabermas

himself identifies as the fundamentalbreach in the formalistic concept of the

state.In effect, the assumptionunderlyingHabermas'sproposalto turn"citizen-

ship" nto the basis for a substantivemode of collective identity s thatonly with-

in theframeworksof actuallyexistingnation-states an individualsbecome bear-

49. See Palti,"Liberalismvs. Nationalism:Hobsbawm'sDilemma."50. Habermas,"The EuropeanNation-State-Its Achievements and Its Limits: On the Past and

Presentof Sovereignty and Citizenship," n Balakrishnan, d., Mapping the Nation, 287-288.

51. Ibid., 289.




ers of a legitimate will. As Habermasasserts in his last major work, Faktizitdt

und Geltung, self-legislation must be, and can only be, realized throughthe

medium of law.52This means that, for those who dissent from the given, estab-

lished legal system, the only right they conserve is, he concludes, the right torenounce their membership n the given community.53n order to sustain this

view theoretically, Habermasends up identifying that which in his theory of

communicativeactionhe definedas the normativecontentspresupposedand pre-

figured n every communicativeexchange, with thepresent nternational rder.54

Habermas'sargument hus reintroducesLordActon's idea of the precedence

of the legal frameworkover individual will, but now detaches that framework

from any"natural"oundation. nthis way antigenealogicaldiscourserevealsthe

deep relationshipsthat link it to its opposite, the genealogical concept of the

nation: for Habermas, he "international rder" s, as the "littlenations"are for

nationalists,an objectiveorder, hat s, one whose legitimacy must be established

independently rom-and, eventually, mposedagainst-the manifestwill of its

members.55This breaksthe double equationin which natural= objective, and

artificial= subjective.The paradoxherelies in pretending o consecrate he order

createdby the Letterof Helsinki, which intendedto settle the map of the nations

as it had emergedat the end of WorldWarII, attributing non-contingentvalid-ity to it, preciselyat the moment n which that order has collapsed (and, in part,

by the very actionof those presumably n chargeof preserving t). Thus, the rev-

elation of the contingentfoundations of the existing internationalorderraises,

once more,the questionof how to establish the limits and extension of national

communities.Thisnecessarilyre-opensthe gapHabermasdiscovered n the anti-

genealogical discourse. Deprived of the materialgroundsfor an "objectivity"

which could be opposedto the"objectivity" f thenation,sucha gapnow reveals

itself as intrinsic o that discourse.This revelation s thus devastating o it.A different ine of reasoninghas been followed by those authors ess torment-

ed by the immediateconsequencesof the nationalistrevival in Europe.This line

of thought goes back to the original questionof the antigenealogical nterroga-

tion of the means by which national identities are constituted.As we saw in

Hobsbawm,this questionresolves itself in the postulateof the "invented" har-

acter of nations, in the sense that they are merely "ideological constructions."

However,authors ike John BreuillyandAnthonySmith show that this interpre-

tationstill does not respondto the questionof why, being all mere"inventions,"only some nationalistmovementsget massive supportand not others.Up to now

no theoryseems to providea fairly acceptableaccount of this phenomenon.

52. Habermas,Between Facts and Norms: Contributionsto a Discourse Theoty of Law and

Democracy, transl.William Rehg (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 126.

53. Ibid., 124-125.

54. Palti, "Patroklos's Funeral and Habermas'sSentence: A Review-Essay of Faktizitcitusnd

Geltung,by Habermas,"Law & Social Inquiry23 (1998), 1017-1044.55. This allows himeven to justify the massive bombingof the civilianpopulation n Iraqon behalf

of the defense of that order (Habermas,The Past as Future [Lincoln and London:University of

NebraskaPress], 14-15).



342 ELIAS JOSE PALTI

ForHobsbawm,the elusiveness of the issue ultimatelyderives from the very

"irrational" atureof "littlenationalism."But, in this way, Hobsbawmonly re-

introducesthroughthe rear window thatwhich he had thrown out by the front

door. Thatis to say, he now expands to a second-order evel of analysis (that ofnationalism)the kind of indetermination hathe perceived as inevitable on the

first-order evel of analysis (that of "the reality that this [nationalism] repre-

sents"),andthathe triedto overcomeby shifting focus fromthe "nations" o the

"representations f nation."BenedictAnderson's idea of "imaginedcommuni-

ties" comes-at least in Gopal Balakrishnan's nterpretation-to explain pre-

cisely thatwhich for Hobsbawmis inexplicable.The "imaginaryconstruction"

of a community would be anterior o any other"ideologicalconstruction."This

would provide,in the last instance,the grounds or the viability of nationalisms,

determining, n each case, the plausibility or implausibilityof the nationalists'

ideologicalappellations. n short,the idea of an"imaginedcommunity"does not

referto the nation qua ideological construction,but to the very subject of such a

construction(which, for Renan, "must have forgotten"),trying to account for

how it is formed.We have here the objective modes of the constitutionof the

(illusory)subjectof national llusions.PaulPiccone definedthe point in termsof

doxa,or "informal

networks held together not by mere contractualobligationssubject to renegotiation . . . but by irrevocable pacts rooted in realities tran-

scending individual wills and involving transgenerational xiological transmis-

sions.'56 Piccone thus distinguishes the "nation" (qua "ideological construc-

tion")from the "national ubject" qua"imaginedcommunity").He identifiesthe

latterwiththe"organiccommunities" hat,he states,logically precedetheformal

constitutionof every legal orderandfound it. As he says,

The two obtain n qualitativelyifferent oetic dimensions.One [the"nation,"r the

"nation-state"]s amereconceptualonstruction,hiletheother the"organicommu-nity"] efers o a precategoricalimensionogicallyprior o thedeploymentf conceptsinterms f whichexperiences structured.hefirst s contingent,thesecond s necessary

forthere o be socialexperiencetall.7

This providesa framework o understandbetter some recentcriticalperspec-

tives of nationalism,such as Homi Bhabha'sdeconstructionist-multiculturalist

approach.This approachmust be seen as an antigenealogicalview addressed o

the level of the "noeticdimension"the precategorical onstitutionof subjective

identities-seeking to "deconstruct" ndexpose the aporiason which the narra-

tives of national dentity,as such, rest.As Bhabhastates,"theverypossibilityof

culturalcontestationbetweenoppositionalcontentsdependsnot only on the refu-

tation or substitutionof concepts.The analyticof culturaldifferenceattempts o

engage with the 'anterior' paceof the sign that structureshe symboliclanguage

of alternative,antagonisticculturalpractices."58ForBhabha,this space depends

56. Paul Piccone, "TheTribulationsof Left Social Criticism:Reply to Palti,"Telos 107 (1996),

163.57. Ibid., 164.

58. Bhabha,"DissemiNation:Time,Narrative,andtheMarginsof theModernNation," n Bhabha,

ed., Nation and Narration, 313.



THENATION S A PROBLEM 343

on the very ambivalenceof the nationalistdiscourse we have hithertodiscussed:

the postulation of the "nation"as at once something "objective"and as some-

thing "constructed."This ambivalence leads nationalist discourse to endless

oscillation, continuallyslippingfromthe symbolic to the system of signification,from the constative to the performative, rom the object to the subject of narra-

tion. ForBhabha, t is this slipping that,as we will see, opens the space of "lim-

inality" n which that discourse becomes dislocated.

The essential point that differentiatesBhabha's perspective from that of the

other antigenealogicalauthors we have discussed lies in his recognition that

nationalistdiscourse does not exhaust tself in its genealogical moment (whichis

the homogeneous ["pedagogic"] ime of narration),but that it also contains an

element of constructivity "performativity")which is inherent n it. In orderto

"repress" in the Freudiansense) this inherent ensionnationalistnarrationmust

projectan illusion of homogeneity,the idea of a "nationality" hatpredatesits

effective constitution(the genealogical moment). But, at the same time, in con-

ditions of modernity,emptied of its traditional oundations of legitimacy, and

"deprivedof the visibility of historicism," n orderto be articulated he nation

needs a differentspace, one in which it makes manifest its present capacity to

sustain substantivehorizonsof life (the performativemoment).5 In this fashion,The nationturnsfrombeing the symbol of modernity nto becoming the symptomof an

ethnographyof the "contemporary"within culture. Such a shift of perspectiveemerges

fromthe acknowledgementof the nation's interrupted ddress,articulated n the tension

signifyingthe peopleas an a priori historicalpresence,a pedagogical object;andthe peo-

ple constructed n the performanceof narrative, ts enunciatory"present"marked n the

repetitionandpulsationof the nationalsign. The pedagogicalfoundsits narrativeauthor-

ity in the traditionof the people.... The performativentervenes n the sovereigntyof the

nation'sself-generation. 60

However,the revelation of the contingentmomentof its constitutionobliges,

in turn, nationalist discourse to raise the issue of the subjects to which its

"homogenizingnarrative"s addressed, he "people"as a subject (andnot only

as an object)of narration.So nationalistdiscourseis trapped n an ever-flowing

cycle in which it appealsto an objective entity-"the nation"-to serve as the

frameworkand basis of individual members'identity,and also appealsto indi-

vidual members'subjectivechoices as the creatorof the nation.

The introductionof the performativedimensionas constitutiveof nationalistdiscoursethustends to confront t with its own limit-notion, hatblindspotwhich

is inherent n thatdiscourse.This reveals how this discoursefinds itself obliged

to permanentlyoscillate between its two moments(the pedagogicaland the per-

59. "We then have," he stated,"acontestedcultural erritorywhere the people must be thought n

a double-time;the people are the historical 'objects' of a nationalistpedagogy,giving the discourse

an authority hat s based on thepre-givenor constitutedhistoricalorigin or event;thepeople are also

the 'subjects'of aprocessof signification hatmust eraseany prioror originarypresenceof the nation-

people to demonstrate heprodigious, iving principleof the people as thatcontinualprocess by whichthe national life is redeemed and signified as a repeating, reproductive process" (Bhabha,

"DissemiNation:Time, Narrative,and the Marginsof the Modem Nation," 297).

60. Ibid., 298-299.



344 ELiAS JOSEPALTI

formative).In sum, Bhabhadiscoversat this second-order evel of analysis (the

representations f the nation) the same type of ambivalenceandcircularity hat,

a centuryearlier,Renanhad found lodged in a first-orderevel of analysis (the

nationas such). For Bhabha,Anderson'smistake lies in secluding the performa-tive dimension of the nationalistdiscourseinto its "originary"moment,in which

the nationalsubjectwould have supposedly become constitutedqua "imagined

community";Anderson'sapproachmisses thefact that, in truth, heperformative

moment is thatpermanent oundation on which collective self-identities rest.

This revelation explains why, in order to articulate tself, nationalistdiscourse

must continually re-actualizethatresidue of "irrationality"which is inassimil-

able to the "homogenizing"narrativeof its genealogical moment.In short,it is

in the articulationof these two moments (the performativeand the constative)

thatthe "people" s discursivelyconstituted,butalso the pointat which it is dis-

located.The performativedimensionis exposed as both the conditionof possi-

bility of nationalistdiscourseand,at the sametime, the conditionof its impossi-

bility to become fully constitutedas such. In the same way that the "nation,"

accordingto Habermas, s the visible mark of the uneliminablegap in the anti-

genealogicaldiscourseof the nation, the "people"stigmatizethe spaceof fissure

in the idea of the "nation" as a discursive construction)."The subject," states

Bhabha,"is graspableonly in the passage between telling/told,between 'here'

and 'somewhere else,' and in this double scene the very condition of cultural

knowledge is the alienationof the subject.'

The challenge here is to avoid the "moment of transcendence"n which the

basic antinomiesare "overcome."This means it is necessaryto resist projecting

an objectivereality (the "people")as existing beyonddiscourses,therebyreduc-

ing the performativemomentto the constativeone. Required s a ("contestato-

ry")discourse that stays in the tension. Such a contestatory multicultural)dis-coursecan emerge only by placing itself at the exact point in which the national

narrativesbecome dislocated,in the momentof the "unisonance" f the consta-

tive and the performative.However, the question that this discourse raises is,

again: what are the objective conditions of possibility of multiculturalistdis-

course, or,moreprecisely,whatis the "subject" o which it interpellates?

Classicalinterpretationsf multiculturalist iscourseprovidean answerto this

question.LloydKramer's s anexample.Onhis readingof this discourse, romthe

multiculturalisterspective"thehistory[of nationalism]s a historyof contestationbetweenthose who seek a fully coherentnarrative f the community'sexistence

and those whosepresence, deas,color,orcultureunderminehepossibilityof that

coherence."62These are the "minorities"within nations.) But this construal

assumes the existence of pre-constituted ubjects (minorities "whose presence,

ideas, color,or cultureundermine he possibility of that coherence").The "color"

and "culture" f minoritieswould not be themselvesnarrative onstructions.

61. Ibid., 301.

62. Lloyd Kramer,"HistoricalNarrativesand the Meaningof Nationalism,"Journalof theHistory

of Ideas 58 (1997), 537.




This is definitivelynot Bhabha's ntendedconclusion. Forhim, subjectsdo not

pre-date heir own discursiveconditionsof existence (the performativemoment).

However, Kramer'sreading of Bhabha's work is not at all arbitrary. n order to

be articulated,multiculturalist iscourse n fact needs at the sametime as it denies

"momentsof transcendence":he "minorities" s pre-constituted ubjective den-

tities. Hence, as we can observeat the end of Bhabha'sclassic text on the issue

("DissemiNation:Time, Narrative,and the Margins of the Modem Nation"),he

endsup finding n the"marginal ubjects" forminga "relativelynarticulated ox

populi") the historical, objective incarnationof "liminality."63his "liminality"

appearsas an "emptyplace" (thatwhich transcends he establishedsocial order

andhasno site in its organicconstitution)having,atthesametime,a proper ocus

in society-the "marginal ubjects."And, once converted nto living incarnations

of liminality-the expressionsof whatHabermas alls "transcendencerom with-

in"64 these "marginal ubjects"can be projectedas historical agents, forming

both the subjectsandobjectsof multiculturalist arratives.

In this fashion, Bhabha's enterpriseof "deconstructing" ationalistdiscourse

replicatesthe same kind of slippingbetween the constative and the performative

thathe denouncesas inherent n thatdiscourse, therebyundermining he foun-

dationsof his "deconstructionist"roject.The paradox s thatonly in this way,in its own incapacity to avoid the "momentof transcendence" hat reduces the

performative o the constative, may multiculturalistdiscourseprevent the con-

stative reduction hat assimilatesdissonantvoices to the homogenizing discourse

of national narratives.Ultimately, only the permanentoscillation between the

subjective andthe objective would permit multiculturalist iscourse to carryout

its vocation to avoid (as Kristevademands n the quotation hat servesas the epi-

graph of this paper) "sinkinginto the mire of common sense"by becoming "a

stranger o one's own country, anguage,sex and identity."65However,the con-dition for findingsuch an Archimedeanpoint is to use it, as Kafka'scharacter,

against oneself.

63. "At this point," says Bhabha at the end of his work, "I must give way to the vox populi: to a

relatively unspoken traditionof the pagus-colonials, postcolonials,migrants,minorities-wander-

ing peoples who will not be containedwithin the Heim of the nationalcultureand its unisonantdis-

course,but are themselves the marksof a shifting boundary hat alienatesthe frontiersof the modern

nation.... They articulate he death-in-life of the idea of the 'imagined community'of the nation"

(Bhabha,"DissemiNation:Time, Narrative,and the Marginsof the Modem Nation," 315).64. That is, "how the validityclaims raised hic et nunc and aimed at intersubjective ecognitionor

acceptancecan, at the same time, overshoot local standards"Habermas,Between Facts and Norms,

15). For Habermas, he instance incarnating"transcendencerom within"is the law; for the decon-

structionists hat instanceis, instead, the one that challenges the existing legal order.

65. Kristeva,"ANew Type of Intellectual:The Dissident," n The KristevaReader,ed. TorilMoi

(Oxford:Blackwell, 1986), 298. Fora criticismof the "substantialist" iew of "minorities," ee Judith

Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

RegardingKristeva'sview, Butler remarkshow she also reproduces he kind of slipping observedin

Bhabha.As Butler says, "Kristevadescribesthe maternalbody as bearing a set of meanings thatare

priorto culture tself. She thereby safeguards he notion of culture as a paternalstructureand delim-its maternityas an essentially precultural eality.Her naturalisticdescriptionsof the maternalbody

effectively reify motherhoodand precludean analysis of its cultural construction and variability"

(ibid., 80).



346 ELIAS JOSEPALTI

We reach here the end pointof ourstory.The deconstructionist-multicultural-

ist approach o the nation, although intended to contend with the nationalists'

views and projects, s actuallythe finalterm in the processof erosion of the anti-

genealogical consensus on which reflection on the nation has rested since its

inceptionone centuryearlier.Just as the end of thenineteenthcenturymarked he

collapse of the genealogicalview of thenation, the beginningof this presentcen-

tury seems to be witnessing a crisis of the antigenealogicalapproach,once its

premises and foundationsbecame eroded and its own blind spots were laid bare

by the convergenceof recentpolitical phenomenawith a numberof conceptual

transformationsn the field.What are the new orientations hat historianswill or

should embraceafterthe crisis of the antigenealogicalview? Accordingto what

we have seen, this question cannot have an unequivocal answer.If this paper

yields a conclusion, it is thatconceptual ormationsarenever fully, logically inte-

grated,butarealways precariouslyarticulated, he result of contingenthistorical

phenomenaand processes.Thus, insofar as both theoreticaland extra-theoretical

factors take partin every conceptualdevelopment, t is impossible to determine

a priori the ways by which the currentcrisis of the antigenealogicalperspective

will eventually be resolved, or predict the paths that future elaborations n the

field will traverse.The only thing that seems certain s that,whateverthey maybe, reflection on nations and nationalism has now crossed a new threshold

beyondwhich a mereregressionbecomes unthinkable. ustas the collapse of the

genealogicalview rendered mpossible the restorationof the type of certainties

on which it hadpreviouslyrested,it is hardly maginabletoday thatthe histori-

ans'approaches o thenationmay nowadaysblindlyor unproblematically ely on

the assumptionsof the antigenealogicalview, one whose internalfissureshave

alreadybeen exposed.

UniversidadNacional de Quilmes

Argentina

The Nation as a Problem Historians and the National Question

Documents

Transcript of The Nation as a Problem Historians and the National Question