Nationalist Thinking Research Articles

The Importance of Being Cultural: Nationalist Thought and Jagan's Colonial World

The Importance of Being Cultural: Nationalist Thought and Jagan's Colonial World

The Importance of Being Cultural: Nationalist Thought and Jagan's Colonial World

Research Article| March 01 2004 The Importance of Being Cultural: Nationalist Thought and Jagan's Colonial World Nalini Persram Nalini Persram Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Small Axe (2004) 8 (1 (15)): 82–105. https://doi.org/10.1215/-8-1-82 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Nalini Persram; The Importance of Being Cultural: Nationalist Thought and Jagan's Colonial World. Small Axe 1 March 2004; 8 (1 (15)): 82–105. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/-8-1-82 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsSmall Axe Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Small Axe Incorporated2004 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Princely Impostor?: The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (review)

Partha Chatterjee. 2002. A Princely Imposter? The Strange and Universal history of the Kumar of Bhawal. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The "Bogus Woman": Feminism and Asylum Theatre

At the start of the twenty-first century the number of people at risk from persecution, fleeing their homes, and seeking asylum in another country continues to ri se. Under the United Nations Convention on Refugees that reinforces the international protection promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all people have the to asylum from war or persecution. While the Declaration promises the right to freedom of movement' European countries such as Britain, Germany, and France are also trying to initiate border control, especially as the threat of international terrorism increases. Hence there is a conflict of interest between those people who are displaced and in need of refuge, and those of whom they ask help who are looking for ways to tighten rather than to relax borders. All of this fuels an image of the asylum seeker as unwelcome suppliant and encourages racist and nationalist thinking so that seekers are viewed as bogus rather than genuine, despite evidence to the contrary.

The "Bogus Woman": Feminism and Asylum Theatre

At the start of the twenty-first century the number of people at risk from persecution, fleeing their homes, and seeking asylum in another country continues to ri se. Under the United Nations Convention on Refugees that reinforces the international protection promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all people have the right to asylum from war or persecution. While the Declaration promises the "right to freedom of movement'" European countries such as Britain, Germany, and France are also trying to initiate border control, especially as the threat of international terrorism increases. Hence there is a conflict of interest between those people who are displaced and in need of refuge, and those of whom they ask help who are looking for ways to tighten rather than to relax borders. All of this fuels an image of the asylum seeker as unwelcome suppliant and encourages racist and nationalist thinking so that seekers are viewed as "bogus" rather than genuine, despite evidence to the contrary.

Grundtvigs folkelighedsbegreb

Grundtvigs folkelighedsbegreb[Grundtvig's Concept of ’Folkelighed’]By Balder Mork AndersenWith Grundtvig’s own writings underpinning a dialogue with previous commentators, the article seeks to clarify elements in, and the significance of, Grundtvig’s concept offolkelighed. This then makes possible an assessment of the compass and the spectrum within which his thinking on nationhood developed. The principal method here has been to take as a point of departure the degree of influence exerted by the German philosophers Herder and Hegel who had earlier nurtured ideas concerning folk and fatherland.Analysis of the concept of folkelighed is made against the background of a survey of three separate, yet at the same time linked, chief components in Grundtvig’s conceptual world: folkeand, fadreland and modersmal [‘folk-spirit’, ‘fatherland’, ‘mother-tongue’]. Folkeand is perceived as the basic understanding of an idea of communality which must be constantly alive and alert in heart and in mind. Grundtvig requires that the folk opens itself up and embrace communality, though in such a way as not to curtail individuality.In the modersmal, the folkeand finds the optimum means of manifesting itself. For Grundtvig, the national and native language is the embodiment, tool and articulation of the folkeand, and without it no nation can flourish. At the same time, a feeling for the mother-tongue is for Grundtvig a crucial precondition for being Danish. On this point Grundtvig displays throughout his adult life a consistency of thinking in contrast to most other areas where his self-critical revaluations make it difficult to view him as a systematic thinker.The evolution of his thinking about the fadreland was somewhat characterised by changeability, in tandem with historical developments in the country. However, it is certainly the case that for Grundtvig love of the fadreland was a basis for the love of God and therefore that which legitimised cultivation of nationalism. He was fully aware that a selfsacrificing love of the fadreland could manifest itself in ethnocentric form; but this does not prevent one from justly pointing to instances where Grundtvig himself loses this focus and allows the culture of nationalism to take on a negative expression. It is, for example, problematic when he mixes politics and religion together and uses Christianity to legitimise acts of war.This notwithstanding, the overall picture affirms that Grundtvig basically found that there was no justification for exercising spiritualintellectual violence against people of a different nationality and that physical violence could be resorted to only when the country was threatened by aggressors. Thus his nationalistic thinking is of a polycentric character and closely tied to that of J. G. Herder.All in all, folkelighed is to be seen as a spiritual-intellectual and historical communality of values where all make their contributions and nurture feelings for the state of the nation, past, present and future. When the three strains - folkeand, fadreland and modersmal – sounded together in harmony, then, for Grundtvig, there could be talk of an authentic Danish folkelighed.

The Problem of Europeanness in the Debates about Lithuanian National Identity

Vakarų Europos akademiniame ir politiniame diskursuose europinio identiteto analizė dažniausiai siejama su ES politinio teisėtumo, nusakančio dalyvavimo demokratijos stygių, problema. Tuo tarpu Lietuvoje europinio identiteto problema dažniau diskutuojama pasitelkiant tautinės identifikacijos problematikos prizmę. Abiem atvejais itin pabrėžiama tautinio identiteto politinės ir kultūrinės reikšmės apmąstymo būtinybė kaip neišvengiama europėjimo ir globalėjimo procesų pasekmė. Pagrindinis dėmesys kreipiamas į paskutiniojo dešimtmečio diskusijas, jas analizuojant tarpukario ir pokario laikotarpiais plėtotų idėjų kontekste. Pirmojoje straipsnio dalyje pateikiama Vakarų Europoje vykstančių diskusijų, politinių programų ir viešosios nuomonės apklausų rezultatų analizė siekia suformuoti konceptualinį ir istorinį pagrindą tolesnei Lietuvos situacijos studijai. Pirmiausia apibrėžiamos pagrindinės sąvokos ir nustatomi kertiniai, problemiški intelektinių diskusijų taškai. Nubrėžus šią konceptualinę koordinačių ašį, pereinama prie viešosios nuomonės apklausų rezultatų analizės. Apklausų rezultatai analizuojami ir lyginami su intelektualų ir politikų įvardintomis aprašomosiomis ir normatyvinėmis vizijomis. Šitaip pamėginsiu patikrinti, kiek diskusijose ginamos identifikacijos versijos sutampa ar skiriasi nuo viešojoje nuomonėje funkcionuojančių sampratų.

Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation–state building, migration and the social sciences

Methodological nationalism is understood as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world. We distinguish three modes of methodological nationalism that have characterized mainstream social science, and then show how these have influenced research on migration. We discover parallels between nationalist thinking and the conceptualization of migration in postwar social sciences. In a historical tour d’horizon, we show that this mainstream concept has developed in close interaction with nation–state building processes in the West and the role that immigration and integration policies have played within them. The shift towards a study of ‘transnational communities’— the last phase in this process — was more a consequence of an epistemic move away from methodological nationalism than of the appearance of new objects of observation. The article concludes by recommending new concepts for analysis that, on the one hand, are not coloured by methodological nationalism and, on the other hand, go beyond the fluidism of much contemporary social theory.

The Moment of Criticism in Indian Nationalist Thought: Ramchandra Shukla and the Poetics of a Hindi Responsibility

The Moment of Criticism in Indian Nationalist Thought: Ramchandra Shukla and the Poetics of a Hindi Responsibility

Nationalism, Sports and Gender in Finnish Sports Journalism in the Early Twentieth Century

The aim of this article is to examine through Olympic sports journalism the connections between sports, gender, nation and class in Finland during the period before the Second World War. The relationship between sports and the nationalist project has always been strong in Finland, and it is often considered that the Finns were the first nation to exploit sports for political purposes in such a consistent way. The attention here is focused on gender and class, since these were the two most significant dividing factors in Finnish sports at the turn of the twentieth century. The article concludes that the idea of a Finnish national character can be seen as a gender-specific narrative, as the image of the Finn has been built on masculine determinants and the male sphere of life. This is proved by the fact that women are not required, or sometimes even allowed, to follow national stereotypes and characteristics. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sports journalists were nevertheless obliged to conceptualise Finnish women as well through nationalist thinking. This was achieved by contrasting them with foreign women: the 'Other' women functioned as a sexualised background against which it was possible to depict the activities of Finland's own female athletes as pure, feminine, decent and respectable.

Chinese Populist Nationalism: Its Intellectual Politics and Moral Dilemma

In light of the growth of nationalism in China during the 1990s, it should comeas no surprise that intellectuals there have vigorously debated its political meaning and signiŽ cance. From their debates has emerged a multifariouspopulist nationalism which argues that anti-imperialist nationalism in China has provided a valuable public space for popular participation outside the country’s political institutions and that nationalist sentiments under the postcolonial condition represent a democratic form of civic activity. Advocates of this theory promote nationalism as an ideal of populist politics and as an embodiment of the democratic legitimacy that resides in the will of the people. Their justiŽ cation for populist nationalism is based on the argument that Chinese nationalismhas become the incarnation of the democratic process that allows the common people to join with others in forming ideals of equality and dignity in the national environment. This populist rhetoric radicalizes the emotional element in nationalist discourses and constructs nationalist politics as a fulŽ llment of the nation’s otherwise unavailable democratic public life. Populist nationalism is a comparatively late development in Chinese nationalism of the 1990s. It began to take recognizable shape after 1996, as a joint result of the evolving nationalist thinking of the early 1990s and the ongoing debates on modernity, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and their political implications—debates that have engaged many Chinese intellectuals since early 1995. From late 1989 to early 1992, nationalism was mainly an oYcial ideology by which the Chinese government buttressed the legitimacy of its tattered regime after the Tiananmen massacre. Throughout the second half of 1989, mainland media reiterated Deng Xiaoping’s explanation for the Tiananmen crisis: ‘‘This storm was bound to come sooner or later. This was determined by the major international climate and China’s own minor climate.’’ OYcial nationalism took a Ž rmly antagonistic stand

Fine-Tuning Nationalism: Critical Perspectives from Republican Literature in Turkey

This article reconsiders the role of nationalist literature in the making of Republican Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey witnessed the rise of identity politics and ideologies with Muslim and Ottomanist-oriented tones. It is often asserted that the major contradiction of identity politics in Turkey is between what can broadly be called the "Turkish-Islamic synthesis" and the radical, modernizing, official Kemalist nationalism. This article questions such a simplistic understanding of Turkish politics by articulating nationalist perspectives which oppose and criticize these two major ideologies. It discusses the work of three well-known nationalist writers, Kemal Tahir, Cemil Meriç and Attila I˙lhan in order to demonstrate the nuances of nationalist thinking and the possibilities that literature provides for extending the existing definitions of national identity in Turkey.

Nativist Cosmopolitans: Institutional Reflexivity and the Decline of “Double‐Consciousness” in American Nationalist Thought

Debate in the field of historical sociology on the subject of American citizenship and nationality tends to support one of two theories. The exceptionalist argument holds that American nationalist discourse has historically been based on the universal ideals of liberty enshrined in the Constitution, and has been inclusive in character. Critics contend that this was not the case – arguing that the narrative of American national identity has typically been grounded on exclusive ethno‐cultural criteria like race, religion or language. This essay attempts to demonstrate that the truth encompasses, yet transcends, both positions. This is not because there were conflicting parties in the nineteenth century nationality debate – indeed, there was a great deal of elite consensus as to the meaning of American nationhood prior to the twentieth century which simultaneously affirmed both the universalist and particularist dimension of Americanism. How to explain this apparent contradiction, which Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “double‐consciousness?” This paper suggests that the nineteenth century popularity of dualistic statements of American nationhood, and the eclipse of such conceptions in the twentieth, is a complex sociological phenomenon that can only fully be explained by taking into account the development of institutional reflexivity in the United States.

Folkelighedsbegrebet i praksis - en vandrelærers arbejde i 1920'ernes Sydslesvig

The concept of “folkelighed” in practice. The work of an itinerant teacher in the southern Schlesvig of the 1920’sThis article attempts to pin down the way in which an element of “folkelighed” was central to the wide variety of work carried out by itinerant teachers in southern Schlesvig. After the referendum of 1920 and the fixing of the national boundary with Germany, the occupation of itinerant teacher was established south of the new border for the purpose of strengthening, in conjunction with private tuition in Danishminded homes, elements of Danishness. Taking the activities of the itinerant teacher, Jørgen Jørgensen, as an example, we see how popular nationalism at grassroots level was just as clearly visible in games and woodwork lessons as it was in history and Danish. The concept of “folkelighed” was on a par with Christianity, and nationalist thinking was an indispensable part of the mental baggage that belonged to the period and to the area and was therefore a natural component of everyday activity. Jørgen Jørgensen made a very committed contribution. He was a firebrand, who devoted his life to itinerant teaching and his significance for local society can be compared to the earlier platoon commanders. His work can be seen as an example of the way in which the concept of “folkelighed” was acted out in practice. The article concludes with some thoughts on the subject of the concept of “folkelighed” in our day, which, however much its reduced emphasis on nationalist and Christian elements has made it less distinct, nevertheless remains in great demand.

Partha Chatterjee

This interview with Partha Chatterjee, conducted in Calcutta, India, on 10 March 1998, was one of several interviews I conducted for a project that examines the possibilities and limits of postcolonial theor(ies) and practice(s) in the context of India. Although in the interview Chatterjee never once describes his work or that of the Subaltern Studies collective as ‘postcolonial’ or as an example of ‘postcolonial’ criticism, Gyan Prakash does view the intervention in South Asian historiography accomplished by Subaltern Studies as an instance of postcolonial criticism. Indeed, Chatterjee's recent Nation and it Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories exemplifies some of the critical procedures which Prakash defines as postcolonial — privileging the fragment, allotting considerable space to colonial knowledge(s), and what Prakash, following Spivak, defines as ‘the complex catachrestic reworking of [these] knowledge[s]’. That this is in evidence in work that has also been viewed as fundamental to any contemporary assessments of nationalism tells us of another area to which Chatterjee's work is indispensable. Among his many books, the two most routinely cited in the metropolitan academy are: Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse and The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.

‘A common law of nations’: Giuseppe Mazzini's democratic nationality

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyse the theoretical origins and character of Giuseppe Mazzini's idea of the nation and the wider tensions within nationalist thinking. In particular I will ground Mazzini's idea of national self‐determination on his distinction between rights and duties and finally his republican (and in this sense political, not ethnic) view of the nation‐people. It will emerge that, even if Mazzini shared a voluntaristic idea of the nation, he none the less had a clear perception that the argument of popular consensus needed to be limited (and legitimated) by normative principles, which for him were true democratic principles. Mazzini's originality and modernity lay in his capacity to avoid being a universalist in the old cosmopolitan sense without becoming a relativist. He faced the tension between universality and national identity by making the former concrete and inclusive: universality meant humanity which revealed itself through and within each nation, and was synonymous ...

Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African-American Political Thought

Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Background to Black Power Imbalances and Injustices Against African-Americans * Theories About Why Inequality Persists * The Context of Black Protest 2. Black Nationalist Thought in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries The Colonization Movement: A Profile * Reactions to and Criticisms of Colonization * The Ideology of the Colonization Movement * The Tactics of the Pan-Negro Nationalists * Pan-Negro Nationalism and Beyond 3. The Abolitionist Movement Early Abolitionism, 1645 to 1807 * Abolitionism from 1807 to 1870 * The Ideology of the Abolitionist Movement * Frederick Douglass: A Profile * The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass * The Tactics of the Abolitionists * Abolitionism and Beyond 4. The Politics of Accommodation Booker T. Washington: A Profile * Booker T. Washington's Philosophy of Education * The Social and Political Thought of Booker T. Washington * The Tactics of Booker T. Washington * Opposition to Booker T. Washington 5. Marcus Garvey and the Resurgence of Black Nationalism Racial Equality by Integration: A Survey * Garvey's Early Career * Garvey's Later Career and the Garvey Movement * The Political Thought of Garvey * Garvey's Organization and Tactics * Minor Expressions of Black Nationalism 6. Martin Luther King and Moralism The Moralist Approach: A Profile * King's Background and Intellectual Influences * King's Philosophy of Nonviolence * The Political Thought of King * King's Tactics * King and the Black Power Challenge 7. What Is Black Power? The Range of Usages of the Term Black Power * Reshaping the Categories of Black Power * Commonalities in the Usage of Black Power * Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black Power 8. The Counter-Communalists: A Comparison and Analysis Huey Newton's Background and Intellectual Influences * The Political Thought of Huey Newton * Huey Newton and the Tactics of Counter-Communalism * Other Counter-Communalists on Tactics 9. The Black Power Pluralists: A Comparison and Analysis Shirley Chisholm's Background and Intellectual Influences * The Political Thought of Shirley Chisholm * Other Pluralists on the American System * Shirley Chisholm on the Obstacles to True Pluralism in the United States * Other Pluralists on the Obstacles to Democracy * Shirley Chisholm and the Case for Black Power Pluralism * Other Pluralist Visions of the Good Society * The Tactics of Pluralism 10. The Black Power Separatists: A Comparison and Analysis Elijah Muhammad's Background and Career * The Political Theology of Elijah Muhammad * Elements of Elijah Muhammad's Political Theory * The Tactics of Separatism: The Black Muslims * Other Separatists on Tactics: Imamu Baraka and Imari Obadele I 11. A Critical Assessment of the Black Power Ideologies The Paradoxes in the Goals of the Black Power Ideologies * Malcolm X and the Dilemmas of Black Power * The Life of Malcolm X and Its Meaning for the Black Power Movement * Black Power and Individualism * Black Power and the Intellectual * Permanent Contributions of the Black Power Ideologies Notes Bibliography Index

Lionel Forman's trumpet: national communism in South Africa, 1953–59

Lionel Forman has long been acknowledged as a key influence on socialist and nationalist thinking in South African political circles since the Second World War. Yet, to date, his published writing is surprisingly ephemeral; apart from a book about the 1956-61 Treason Trial, it is mostly scattered in political journals and pamphlets. Much of his most interesting work remains unpublished. One reason for this surprising neglect of an imaginative, creative and industrious thinker by a movement which normally celebrates its intellectual achievements is clear from a new anthology of Forman's prose. For notwithstanding his loyal affiliation to what is often perceived to have been one of the most dogmatically doctrinaire communist parties outside eastern Europe, Lionel Forman was an intellectually adventurous man. He was outstanding among his comrades in his capacity to raise awkward questions, questions which continue to haunt South African liberation politics to this day. Lionel Forman was born in 1927, into a Lithuanian immigrant household in Johannesburg. His partner ran a shop in Rosettenville and the family lived on the premises. At the age of 5 he contracted rheumatic fever, which left him with leaking heart valves, a complaint which affected his health all his life and which eventually killed him. As a teenager he joined a left-wing Jewish youth club, Hashomir Hatzair, where he first encountered socialist and Marxist ideas. At the age of 15, bored with the Israeli orientation of the Hashomir's programme, Forman moved over to the Young Communist League, in which he soon made friends with Ruth First. He became a full party member when he was 18, one year after enrolling at the University of Cape Town. In 1949 he returned to Johannesburg to take a law degree at Wits university; here he renewed his friendship with Ruth First and together with her and Harold Wolpe became prominent in student politics. As Director of Research for the National Union of South African Students he was sent to Prague in 1952 as a South African delegate in the press office of the International Union of Students. In Prague he played a decisive role in arranging a unity meeting which prevented Western students from seceding from the IUS; he married his wife, Sadie, and he experienced a significant improvement in his health after treatment by Czech heart specialists. When their two-year term with the IUS ended, the Formans rented a seaside cottage in Britain. After four months a telegram summoned them back to South Africa so that Forman could temporarily replace Brian Bunting as the editor of Advance, in effect the party paper. On Bunting's return, Forman completed

Conceptions of slavonic origins of european civilisation. in search of the reasons for nationalistic thinking

Conceptions of slavonic origins of european civilisation. in search of the reasons for nationalistic thinking

Romanticist and realistic elements in nationalist thinking in the 19th century

Romanticist and realistic elements in nationalist thinking in the 19th century