If this is in the internet and publicly available I imagine it can be published here.
NATIONS MATTER:
CULTURE, HISTORY, AND THE COSMOPOLITAN DREAM
CULTURE, HISTORY, AND THE COSMOPOLITAN DREAM
To recognize that there is a community of fate and responsibility at the level of
the entire world makes sense. But liberal cosmopolitanism does not provide the
proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can
be built. Nations are the most important of such solidarities. Moreover, while
cosmopolitan ethics may explain why it is good for individuals to give to global charities,
they do not adequately explain the obligations those who benefit from living in rich
countries have to those whose lives are limited because of the way in which capitalism
and the world system of states have organized the distribution of both wealth and the
“illth” that is created by many efforts to pursue wealth.26 This is so because the benefits
derive from the embeddedness of individual lives in national histories and contexts. If for
example Americans are to pay reparations to countries damaged by the slave trade or
other injustices, it will be because the very possibility of life as an individual American
today rests on the unjust historical background. The remedy will depend not merely on a
global idea of equality or justice but on the mediating solidarity. This alone will make it a
felt and actionable collective responsibility.
Approaches to liberal cosmopolitanism that do not take seriously the work
nationalism does in the modern era and that do not work with a strong appreciation and
understanding of solidarity and subjectivity, are as apt to be pernicious as progressive in
actual politics. For nationalism is not only deeply imbricated in the social arrangements
of the modern era, it is basic to movements to challenge and improve those social
arrangements.
the entire world makes sense. But liberal cosmopolitanism does not provide the
proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can
be built. Nations are the most important of such solidarities. Moreover, while
cosmopolitan ethics may explain why it is good for individuals to give to global charities,
they do not adequately explain the obligations those who benefit from living in rich
countries have to those whose lives are limited because of the way in which capitalism
and the world system of states have organized the distribution of both wealth and the
“illth” that is created by many efforts to pursue wealth.26 This is so because the benefits
derive from the embeddedness of individual lives in national histories and contexts. If for
example Americans are to pay reparations to countries damaged by the slave trade or
other injustices, it will be because the very possibility of life as an individual American
today rests on the unjust historical background. The remedy will depend not merely on a
global idea of equality or justice but on the mediating solidarity. This alone will make it a
felt and actionable collective responsibility.
Approaches to liberal cosmopolitanism that do not take seriously the work
nationalism does in the modern era and that do not work with a strong appreciation and
understanding of solidarity and subjectivity, are as apt to be pernicious as progressive in
actual politics. For nationalism is not only deeply imbricated in the social arrangements
of the modern era, it is basic to movements to challenge and improve those social
arrangements.
25 Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verson, 1997).
26 The useful concept of “illth” – the negative counterparts to wealth, like environmental degradation —
was introduced in 1860 by John Ruskin; see the title essay in Unto this Last and Other Writings (London:
Penguin, 1986). It remains inadequately integrated into economic thought. “Negative externalities”
addresses related problems but more narrowly from the perspective of the individual economic actor.
156
The necessity of nations in contemporary global affairs is not something in itself
to be celebrated. They are starting points, institutional mechanisms, and frameworks of
struggle more than indicators of ultimate values or goals. In one of the common meanings
of the word, indeed, nationalism refers to a passionate attachment to one’s own nation
that underwrites outrageous prejudice against others. But we should not try to grasp the
phenomenon only through instances of passionate excess or successful manipulation by
demagogues. For nationalism is equally a discursive formation that facilitates mutual
recognition among polities that mediate different histories, institutional arrangements,
material conditions, cultures, and political projects in the context of intensifying
globalization. Nationalism offers both a mode of access to global affairs and a mode of
resistance to aspects of globalization. To wish it away is more likely to invite the
dominance of neoliberal capitalism than to usher in an era of world citizenship.
Not least of all, nationalism is a reminder that democracy depends on solidarity.
This may be achieved in various ways. It is never achieved outside of history and culture.
Democratic action, therefore, is necessarily the action of people who join with each other
in particular circumstances, recognizing and nurturing distinctive dimensions of
belonging together. Nationalist ideologies sometimes encourage the illusion that
belonging together is either natural or so ancient as to be prior to all contemporary
choices. But liberalism conversely encourages neglect of the centrality of solidarity and
especially the cultural constitution of historical specificity of persons – potential subjects
of liberal politics. More helpfully, we can recognize that solidarities, including but not
limited to national ones, are never simply given but have to be produced and reproduced.
This means they are subject to change; this change may be pursued in collective struggle.
Women and minority groups have been integrated into the political life of many modern
states not simply despite nationalism (though certainly despite certain versions of
nationalism), but through the transformation of nationalism. Nationalism then becomes in
part the history of such struggles.
Nationalism also underpins social institutions created in the course of historical
struggles, such as public schools, health care, and other dimensions of welfare states. It
may underpin struggles to defend such institutions – and the very idea of the public good
–against neoliberal privatization. The institutions differ from each other, and struggle is
necessarily about improving them not simply protecting them. The same is true of culture
and structures of social relations. These are constitutive for democracy, but they are also
subject to democratic action and change. For these reasons, the cultures of democracy
necessarily differ from each other. National solidarities are resources for democracy and
also arenas of democratic struggle.
157
CONCLUSION
26 The useful concept of “illth” – the negative counterparts to wealth, like environmental degradation —
was introduced in 1860 by John Ruskin; see the title essay in Unto this Last and Other Writings (London:
Penguin, 1986). It remains inadequately integrated into economic thought. “Negative externalities”
addresses related problems but more narrowly from the perspective of the individual economic actor.
156
The necessity of nations in contemporary global affairs is not something in itself
to be celebrated. They are starting points, institutional mechanisms, and frameworks of
struggle more than indicators of ultimate values or goals. In one of the common meanings
of the word, indeed, nationalism refers to a passionate attachment to one’s own nation
that underwrites outrageous prejudice against others. But we should not try to grasp the
phenomenon only through instances of passionate excess or successful manipulation by
demagogues. For nationalism is equally a discursive formation that facilitates mutual
recognition among polities that mediate different histories, institutional arrangements,
material conditions, cultures, and political projects in the context of intensifying
globalization. Nationalism offers both a mode of access to global affairs and a mode of
resistance to aspects of globalization. To wish it away is more likely to invite the
dominance of neoliberal capitalism than to usher in an era of world citizenship.
Not least of all, nationalism is a reminder that democracy depends on solidarity.
This may be achieved in various ways. It is never achieved outside of history and culture.
Democratic action, therefore, is necessarily the action of people who join with each other
in particular circumstances, recognizing and nurturing distinctive dimensions of
belonging together. Nationalist ideologies sometimes encourage the illusion that
belonging together is either natural or so ancient as to be prior to all contemporary
choices. But liberalism conversely encourages neglect of the centrality of solidarity and
especially the cultural constitution of historical specificity of persons – potential subjects
of liberal politics. More helpfully, we can recognize that solidarities, including but not
limited to national ones, are never simply given but have to be produced and reproduced.
This means they are subject to change; this change may be pursued in collective struggle.
Women and minority groups have been integrated into the political life of many modern
states not simply despite nationalism (though certainly despite certain versions of
nationalism), but through the transformation of nationalism. Nationalism then becomes in
part the history of such struggles.
Nationalism also underpins social institutions created in the course of historical
struggles, such as public schools, health care, and other dimensions of welfare states. It
may underpin struggles to defend such institutions – and the very idea of the public good
–against neoliberal privatization. The institutions differ from each other, and struggle is
necessarily about improving them not simply protecting them. The same is true of culture
and structures of social relations. These are constitutive for democracy, but they are also
subject to democratic action and change. For these reasons, the cultures of democracy
necessarily differ from each other. National solidarities are resources for democracy and
also arenas of democratic struggle.
157
CONCLUSION
Acceleration of globalization in recent years has been greeted alternately, and
sometimes simultaneously, with hope and panic. It has brought pursuit of human rights
and pursuit of terrorists. Democracy has made headway in some settings, but hardly
everywhere as some hoped after 1989. Humanitarian emergencies have exacted a brutal
toll, though on the positive side they have also brought forward a considerable response.
Migration has been one force furthering global cosmopolitanism, but it is also met with
reinvigorated border controls and immigration restrictions. While it has sometimes been
portrayed as movement beyond the state, the growth of new nonstate global governance
institutions has been uneven and in some domains halting, and if many states are indeed
in crisis, states remain central political actors. The importance of the state is evident in
the problems attendant on weak states in Africa, the muscle-flexing of emerging powers
like India and China, and both the military and the political interventions of the USA. In
brief, globalization is real but not quite the uncontested and unambiguously positive
transformation some enthusiasts have suggested. And while new institutions outside or
beyond nation-states are important, nation-states themselves are called on to play central
roles in the context globalization. Indeed, much of the contemporary form of
globalization is produced and driven by nation-states—at least certain powerful nation-
states.
Globalization and the coming of postnational and transnational society are often
presented as matters of necessity. Globalization appears as an inexorable force—perhaps
of progress, perhaps simply of a capitalist juggernaut, but in any case irresistable.
European integration, for example, is often sold to voters as a necessary response to the
global integration of capital. In Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, a similar
economistic imaginary is deployed to suggest that globalization moves of itself, and
governments and citizens have only the option of adapting. Even where the globalist
imaginary is not overwhelmingly economistic, it commonly shares in the image of
progressive modernization and necessity. Many accounts of the impact and implications
of information technology exemplify this.
Alternatives to globalization, on the other hand, are generally presented in terms
of inherited identities and solidarities in need of defense. Usually this means nations and
cultural identities imagined on the model of nations; sometimes it means religions,
civilizations or other structures of identity presented by their advocates as received rather
than created. These are denigrated by proponents of transnational society who see the
national and many other local solidarities as backward or outmoded, impositions of the
past on the present.. A prime example is the way both nationalist economic protectionism
and Islamist movements are seen as simply the regressive opposite of globalization. In
each case, this obscures the often transnational organization of the resistance movements.
Likewise, the social imaginary of inherited cultural tradition and social identity is
prominent in ideologies of Hindutvah, essential Ethiopianness, the idea that an insult to
“Turkishness” should be a crime, and widespread notions of ‘cultural survival’.
This is doubly confusing. First, many of the supposed alternatives to globalization
are in fact responses to it and efforts to shape it. Second, there is a confusion between the
158
fact of growing global connections – the minimalist core of globalization – and the
specific institutional and market forms of globalization that have predominated so far.
Like modernization theory two generations ago, accounts of globalization today tend to
imply a single developmental direction for change. But it makes more sense, as a variety
of scholars have recognized, to conceive of multiple modernities or projects outside the
simplistic contrast of the traditional and the modern. So too it is important to recognize
that contemporary struggles are not simply for and against globalization but struggles
over its form, over who benefits and who suffers, and over what existing solidarities and
values must be sacrificed to secure an attractive global order.
In many settings, the economistic/technological imaginary of modernist
globalization is embraced at the same time and by the same political leaders as
nationalist, religious or other imaginaries emphasizing inherited cultural identity. The
contradiction is avoided by assigning these to separate spheres. The Chinese phrase “ti-
yong” has long signaled this, a condensation of “Western learning for material
advancement; Eastern learning for spiritual essence”. Similarly divided imaginaries
inform many Asian, Middle Eastern, and other societies. Even in Canada, a recent
Financial Times article reported, “the country wants to become a lean global competitor
while maintaining traditional local values”.1
Like many countries, Canada seeks at once to project itself internationally as a
tourist destination and domestically as an object of political cathexis. Like many other
countries as well, it does so with both enthusiastic representations of its rich internal
diversity and an effort to articulate the claims of the whole over its parts. Nationalism
provides a prominent rhetoric to both the holistic and the sectional, sometimes separatist,
projects. It offers categories for understanding the demarcation of cultures, the ways in
which individuals belong to larger groups, and the ways in which such groups participate
in history. It also offers what Raymond Williams called “structures of feeling” that link
categories of thought to emotional engagements.2
Feeling that one belongs to something larger and more permanent than oneself is
either a wonderful or a terrible thing. It is an inspiration for heroism and the composition
of sublime works of music and art. It is a motivation for morality and a solace amidst
suffering. Conversely it is sometimes the source of a claustrophobic sense of being
trapped or a crushing weight of responsibility. It makes some people silently quell doubts
and support dangerous policies of nationalist leaders, and makes others feel an obligation
to speak out. It is also the only way in which many people are able to feel that they
belong in the world.
This is not true of everyone. Some of us are happy eating at Parisian cafes,
basking on Bahian beaches and attending conferences in New Haven without thinking
much of national identity. Some hear Wagner without thinking of Germany or view
Diego Rivera as simply a great artist not a great Mexican. But if we imagine that
cosmopolitan inhabitation of the globe as a series of attractively heterogeneous sites is
sometimes simultaneously, with hope and panic. It has brought pursuit of human rights
and pursuit of terrorists. Democracy has made headway in some settings, but hardly
everywhere as some hoped after 1989. Humanitarian emergencies have exacted a brutal
toll, though on the positive side they have also brought forward a considerable response.
Migration has been one force furthering global cosmopolitanism, but it is also met with
reinvigorated border controls and immigration restrictions. While it has sometimes been
portrayed as movement beyond the state, the growth of new nonstate global governance
institutions has been uneven and in some domains halting, and if many states are indeed
in crisis, states remain central political actors. The importance of the state is evident in
the problems attendant on weak states in Africa, the muscle-flexing of emerging powers
like India and China, and both the military and the political interventions of the USA. In
brief, globalization is real but not quite the uncontested and unambiguously positive
transformation some enthusiasts have suggested. And while new institutions outside or
beyond nation-states are important, nation-states themselves are called on to play central
roles in the context globalization. Indeed, much of the contemporary form of
globalization is produced and driven by nation-states—at least certain powerful nation-
states.
Globalization and the coming of postnational and transnational society are often
presented as matters of necessity. Globalization appears as an inexorable force—perhaps
of progress, perhaps simply of a capitalist juggernaut, but in any case irresistable.
European integration, for example, is often sold to voters as a necessary response to the
global integration of capital. In Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, a similar
economistic imaginary is deployed to suggest that globalization moves of itself, and
governments and citizens have only the option of adapting. Even where the globalist
imaginary is not overwhelmingly economistic, it commonly shares in the image of
progressive modernization and necessity. Many accounts of the impact and implications
of information technology exemplify this.
Alternatives to globalization, on the other hand, are generally presented in terms
of inherited identities and solidarities in need of defense. Usually this means nations and
cultural identities imagined on the model of nations; sometimes it means religions,
civilizations or other structures of identity presented by their advocates as received rather
than created. These are denigrated by proponents of transnational society who see the
national and many other local solidarities as backward or outmoded, impositions of the
past on the present.. A prime example is the way both nationalist economic protectionism
and Islamist movements are seen as simply the regressive opposite of globalization. In
each case, this obscures the often transnational organization of the resistance movements.
Likewise, the social imaginary of inherited cultural tradition and social identity is
prominent in ideologies of Hindutvah, essential Ethiopianness, the idea that an insult to
“Turkishness” should be a crime, and widespread notions of ‘cultural survival’.
This is doubly confusing. First, many of the supposed alternatives to globalization
are in fact responses to it and efforts to shape it. Second, there is a confusion between the
158
fact of growing global connections – the minimalist core of globalization – and the
specific institutional and market forms of globalization that have predominated so far.
Like modernization theory two generations ago, accounts of globalization today tend to
imply a single developmental direction for change. But it makes more sense, as a variety
of scholars have recognized, to conceive of multiple modernities or projects outside the
simplistic contrast of the traditional and the modern. So too it is important to recognize
that contemporary struggles are not simply for and against globalization but struggles
over its form, over who benefits and who suffers, and over what existing solidarities and
values must be sacrificed to secure an attractive global order.
In many settings, the economistic/technological imaginary of modernist
globalization is embraced at the same time and by the same political leaders as
nationalist, religious or other imaginaries emphasizing inherited cultural identity. The
contradiction is avoided by assigning these to separate spheres. The Chinese phrase “ti-
yong” has long signaled this, a condensation of “Western learning for material
advancement; Eastern learning for spiritual essence”. Similarly divided imaginaries
inform many Asian, Middle Eastern, and other societies. Even in Canada, a recent
Financial Times article reported, “the country wants to become a lean global competitor
while maintaining traditional local values”.1
Like many countries, Canada seeks at once to project itself internationally as a
tourist destination and domestically as an object of political cathexis. Like many other
countries as well, it does so with both enthusiastic representations of its rich internal
diversity and an effort to articulate the claims of the whole over its parts. Nationalism
provides a prominent rhetoric to both the holistic and the sectional, sometimes separatist,
projects. It offers categories for understanding the demarcation of cultures, the ways in
which individuals belong to larger groups, and the ways in which such groups participate
in history. It also offers what Raymond Williams called “structures of feeling” that link
categories of thought to emotional engagements.2
Feeling that one belongs to something larger and more permanent than oneself is
either a wonderful or a terrible thing. It is an inspiration for heroism and the composition
of sublime works of music and art. It is a motivation for morality and a solace amidst
suffering. Conversely it is sometimes the source of a claustrophobic sense of being
trapped or a crushing weight of responsibility. It makes some people silently quell doubts
and support dangerous policies of nationalist leaders, and makes others feel an obligation
to speak out. It is also the only way in which many people are able to feel that they
belong in the world.
This is not true of everyone. Some of us are happy eating at Parisian cafes,
basking on Bahian beaches and attending conferences in New Haven without thinking
much of national identity. Some hear Wagner without thinking of Germany or view
Diego Rivera as simply a great artist not a great Mexican. But if we imagine that
cosmopolitan inhabitation of the globe as a series of attractively heterogeneous sites is
1 Scott Morrison and Ken Warn, “Liberals strive to sharpen competitive edge,” Financial Times, June 11,
2001, “Canada Survey”, pp. 1-2.
2 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1965).
159
readily available to everyone, we deeply misunderstand the actual and very hierarchical
structures of globalization.
Globalization has not put an end to nationalism—not to nationalist conflicts nor to
the role of nationalist categories in organizing ordinary people’s sense of belonging in the
world. Indeed, globalization fuels resurgence in nationalism among people who feel
threatened or anxious as much as it drives efforts to transcend nationalism in new
structures of political-legal organization or thinking about transnational connections.
Nationalism still matters, still troubles many of us, but still organizes something
considerable in who we are. Whether and how nationalism can mediate peaceful and
constructive connections of individuals to the larger world is a crucial question.
Nationalism’s contributions to social solidarity may never outweigh its frequent violence.
Yet seeking to bypass nationalism in pursuit of a rational universalism may reflect
equally dangerous illusions.
2001, “Canada Survey”, pp. 1-2.
2 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1965).
159
readily available to everyone, we deeply misunderstand the actual and very hierarchical
structures of globalization.
Globalization has not put an end to nationalism—not to nationalist conflicts nor to
the role of nationalist categories in organizing ordinary people’s sense of belonging in the
world. Indeed, globalization fuels resurgence in nationalism among people who feel
threatened or anxious as much as it drives efforts to transcend nationalism in new
structures of political-legal organization or thinking about transnational connections.
Nationalism still matters, still troubles many of us, but still organizes something
considerable in who we are. Whether and how nationalism can mediate peaceful and
constructive connections of individuals to the larger world is a crucial question.
Nationalism’s contributions to social solidarity may never outweigh its frequent violence.
Yet seeking to bypass nationalism in pursuit of a rational universalism may reflect
equally dangerous illusions.
This is an interesting and yet short conclusion. It is all so true. All of it. There is terrible danger in globalization for huge numbers of people without power and yet how will we reach the consciousness of the whole without the struggle? These are amazing times. We are crossing beyond our selves wether we like it or not . Everyone seems very much afraid of the fact that the “reigns” of the “play” are hardly in anyone’s hands. There are no kings, governments or powers that can hold the horses any more. It’s beautiful! There is nothing to be afraid of! The human being will flourish again and again and again for many centuries to come no matter how much many of us suffer as we go along.
Each nation must hold its integrity just like each individual and at the same time stick to the whole of humanity. The great community is great enough to have no fear. We just need to do our work, carefully, patiently… lovingly, taking everything into consideration, letting everyone participate, trusting each other.
We don’t need to be afraid of letting go of the little we each have. No one has enough but together there is enough for everyone. Many of us can sacrifice our selves should it be necessary. We all need to sacrifice a lot and not to be afraid to sacrifice everything.
Each human being has nothing more than his and her own work. Everything else belongs here. It must remain here, including an individual’s work. We all work to leave it behind, joyously, gratefully. We take the self that the work has sculpted in us, nothing else and no one can take that away from us.
Each human being has nothing more than his and her own work. Everything else belongs here. It must remain here, including an individual’s work. We all work to leave it behind, joyously, gratefully. We take the self that the work has sculpted in us, nothing else and no one can take that away from us.
We are beautiful beings. We are each more beautiful than we are even close to imagining. Life will take each one of us to where we each wish to go. We can each reach whatever we wish to reach by simply trusting our selves. Trust is the greatest force that a human being will ever find. Trust in his own self and in others. It is from trust that compassion and forgiveness can come, when one knows in one’s heart that beyond all aggression is a human being. No one has enough to survive on his own but together we can survive. We have all made mistakes. Huge mistakes. Individually and collectively. Individually and nationally. It is no time for charging each other with guilt. It is time for building and rebuilding a world where we can develop our love. We each have so much to give. Individually and collectively. A man and a woman’s work is pure gold. Each man and each woman are creating the world each day, weaving life each minute, through their work. We must all be allowed to work not only for a living but for life.
Life weaves itself in and out of our selves as if its threads entered in an out of our lives and we were both needle and thread, tapestry and hands. Life is an air that is both in and out of our selves. We are deeper than the grand canyon! Each one of us is deeper than the galaxy, deeper and lighter. Each one of us holds the Universe in our selves. Don’t be afraid to be your self.
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