Brokering Postnationalist Culture: An Introduction

Nationalisms Guest Editor: Teresa Vitaros Brokering Postnationalist Culture: An Introduction1 In his seminal 1939 speech "What is a Nation?" Ernest Renan stated that race, language, religion, commerce, geography, dynasty and military deeds, while playing a considerable role in the making of a nation, do not suffice to explain what a nation is or might be. Stepping outside of the material, Renan envisioned the nation as a principle, a soul or a spiritual unit and, as such, something uncontainable by politics or economics. For him the nation works as a spiritual unit, a complex whole that is "the result of the intricate workings of history" (153). Renan's speech attempted to answer die nation question within the civic humanist paradigm of nineteenth-century French nationalism. Rejecting the idea of empire promoted by the Fascist/Nazi Axis, Renan's concept of nation called for an everyday negotiation based on a democratic plebiscite. For Renan, the nation is a unit clearly uncontainable by the material. Although he understood the nation as that resulting from the intricate workings of history, Renan's very modern notion of civil nationalism refused to be defined by material history. Stepping aside all things material in what he consciously qualified as an old-fashioned move, he clearly affirmed: Community of interests is certainly a powerful bond between men, but do interests suffice to make a nation? I do not believe it. Community of interests brings about commercial treaties. Nationality, which is body and soul together, has its sentimental side: and a Union of Custom is not a country. (152) Notwithstanding Renan's slippage between country and nation (which in Renan's time is deeply engrained within the nation-state model) I would like to bring to the fore his remarks on sentimentality. The sentimental, in Renan's schema, is presented as a powerful energy that not only wraps the nation within it, but advances it forward into the historical as a spiritual organism. The sentimental side of the nation seems to be for Renan an almost spiritual force; a pure force that would always be beyond the concrete materiality surrounding the everyday negotiations in which a nation is involved from trade to war. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 7, 2003 112 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies It is therefore somewhat perplexing that Renan's strong move away from material historical discourses and toward a sentimental/spiritual version of civic nationalism can provide the intellectual basis from which to envision a European confederation . Nations, Renan believed, are not eternal; and, although he emphatically stated that "a Union of Customs" is not a nation, in a premonition of today's European Union he continued: "They [nations ] have had beginnings and will have ends; and will probably be replaced by a confederation of Europe" (154). Nations are indeed perishable units. So are empires and nation-states, for that matter. Almost fifty years after Renan's speech, and born out of the postmodern paradigm shift signaling a new global economy and the dominance of a new empire (that of the United States), the European Union became a reality. Founded mostly or solely on economic needs and principles and following up on Renan's arguments, we could concur with him in stating that because the social fabric of the economically united Europe does not seem as of yet to have generated a fully new and coherent "European" sentimental side, the European Union is not a nation . And yet, as an unsentimental organism , Renan's appeal to the sentimental seems to also apply to the European Union. It is emerging as a site of contention and desire. Its economic configuration steadily continues to attract a considerable number of continental and noncontinental nations (Turkey, for example) who want to become members. It is becoming a powerful contender of the United States, as Susan George has recently pointed out.2 It also functions as a symbolic recipient, as a wishing well for many of those historical nationalities of Europe without states of their own. A sentimental side of the nation is often conveyed in many nationalist discourses intent on achieving cultural and/or linguistic visibility. Small historical nations in Europe understand that claims for...