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if you look at nationalism as just another version of community solidarity, then i can see how some woudl treat it as inevitable and maybe eternal--but the fact that it shares some features with other modes of solidarity does not mean that it is the same, either logically or historically.
nationalism seems to me a kind of collective mental disorder specifically associated with 19th century style capitalism in general terms--with capitalist socio-economic systems that were in general organized within discrete boundaries that you see starting to come apart after world war 2, but which really starts to come under pressure from the 1970s onward.
this nationalism is of a piece with any number of other glorious achievements: wonders like colonialism, "scientific" racism, genocide, world wars on scales never seen before--with the development of standardized mass production, and all that it entails (for better and for worse). it is a central element in the construction of the ideological system for justifying and and all actions of capital, starting with the pretense that history only happens to other people, on through notions of manfiest destiny (a particularly lovely byproduct that you can map onto any number of other situations).
there is a way in which the notion of nationalism outlined above is already wholly obsolete--there are obviously other ways in which it continues to operate, usually for the worse (witness the sorry situation generated by the mayberry machiavellians around george w bush). the sad fact of the matter is that even as it might be obsolete, the category continues to structure how folk view their world, and probably will for another generation until new modes of thinking and acting within and with reference to the world begin to be worked out.
on the other hand, no-one wants to live in a transitional period.
but it seems to me that we do.
it also seems pretty clear that transitional periods are scary.
this is why, to my mind, lots of folk prefer to pretend that nationalism is something eternal--so maybe it makes more sense to look at it in psychological terms and wonder about why people seem right now to need it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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