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LECTURE NOTES
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Nov 14: Nationalism, Yeats, and Joyce
Nationalism is surprisingly difficult to define. According to Elie Kedourie "Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the ninteenth century. It pretends to supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a government exclusively its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in the state, and for the right organization of a society of states. Briefly, the doctrine holds that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type of government is national self-government" (Kedourie, Nationalism. Oxford, Blackwell, 1960: 1). More recently, Benedict Anderson has called nationalism a doctrine of "imagined community" in that it gives a sense of connection between subjects that does not really exist in any tangible way (see Kedourie's use of the word "pretends" above). As well, Tom Nairn has called nationalism "Janus-faced" after the Roman god of beginnings. Janus is usually depicted with two heads, one looking into the past, the other into the future. This very influential formulation invokes a number of ideas, most importantly the reliance of theories of the nation on history, but also that nations will themselves into being and project themselves into the future.
The idea of political self-determination is central to most definitions of nationalism, although nationalism usually also includes some reference to distinctions in culture (even when they may in fact be minimal between two groups). As well, and very importantly, most contemporary critics would use the term to signal deeply held beliefs that a political unit (like a country or a province) might appear to have in common. What this means is that we can talk about poltical nationalism (whether a certain distinct group has any independent political status) economic nationalism (debates about the Euro, for example, or a common currency for the US and Canada), cultural nationalism (themes in Canadian or Irish or German literature, painting, music), eco-nationalism (independent states and their reaction to the Kyoto accord) and a host of other significant differences that might separate one group of people from another. We should also remember that nation and state are sometimes entirely different things.
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