Balibar, Etienne. "The Nation Form"”ŠReview XIII 3 (Summer
1990): 329-61.
purpose: to clarify...that of the causes and "deep" structures of contemporary
racism.
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I“ŗ Terminology: nation and state; social formation; world state-system;
Marxist historiography: functionalist (nation as instrument of bourgeois
hegemony) and historicist (nation overdetermining class struggle)
”ö”÷study national unity as an historical reality in
fact divided because of antagonistic class strategies, or even as the
long-term consequence of a continuous transformation of "class" identities
and the unstable equilibria established between opposing interests
Althusser's influence: ISA as combined functioning of several dominant
institutions (102)
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ŗKn
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History:
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Pre-history”Šon-linear, a series of conjunctural relations (e.g. institution
of national language, development of monarchical power, centralization
of legal and fiscal power, the complementariness of church and state )
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threshhold”Šnation and world economy”Šthe concurrence of nationalism and
cosmopolitanism
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(delayed) nationlization of society”Šstate bourgeoisie?
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producing the people--institution of individuals as nationals”Š
methods: education, force, analogy of religion, fictive ethnicity
(every identity is individual, but socially produced) (only imaginary
communities are real)
--unification of people by ideological form, e.g. patriotism, nationalism
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fictive ethnicity and ideal nation”Šnaturalization of belonging
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the production of ethnicity through language and race”Šracialization of
language, verbalization of race
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family and school”Šthe dissolution of extended family// penetrated by state-intervention
(e.g. health care, census, birth control, eugenics)
issues:
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language community (98) The linguistic community induces
a terribly constraining ethnic memory
, but it is one which none the less
possess a strange plasticity: it immediately naturalizes new acquisitions.
It does so too quickly in a sense....Ideally, it 'assimilates' anyone,
but holds no one.
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The future of nation (p. 91; 105) in globalism
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topics for future discussion: fictive ethnicity, national history and language,
different nation forms (U.S. vs. France, US vs. Canada, Canada vs. UK,
etc.),
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