Nationalism, African Cinema, and Frames of Scrutiny

The impasse within the theoretical formulation of "nation" and "nationalism" can be found in various definitions, anthologies, and individual volumes (see Hutchinson and Smith; Bhabha; Balkrishnan; Beiner). Ernest Renan, for instance, defines the nation as "a soul, a spiritual principle [. . .] a large-scale solidarity [. . . ] a daily plebiscite" (19). Walker Connor thinks the "terminological chaos" abides because "the essence of a nation is intangible" (89, 92). These polemical approaches have also informed understandings of nationalism as "first and foremost a state of mind, an act of consciousness (Kohn 11), "a theory of political legitimacy" (Gellner 1), "often condemned as a bad form of patriotism--like jingoism or chauvinism--or as a sentiment contrasted with it" (Gilbert 5), "a scavenger" (Keane 192), "the Modern Janus" (Nairn), "a contradictory discourse" (Radhakrishnan 82), "a relatively open site of political and ideological contestation [. . .] always an articulatory formation--one in which popular aspirations are both partially constructed and given voice by elite representations" (Lazarus 188).

Overall, Benedict Anderson's formulation of the nation as an "imagined community," given its novel linkage of cultural production to nationalism, is especially pertinent here. According to him, the nation is "an imagined political community [. . .] both inherently limited and sovereign [. . .] always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (6, 7). In Anderson's view, the "style" of imagining is crucial, just as nationalism must be understood within "the large-cultural systems that preceded it, out of which--as well as against which--it came into being" (12). Further, he credits the cultural elite/intelligentsia, educational systems, language, "print-capitalism," and, later, the mass media with generating the discursive and identificatory networks through which a sense of shared experience, coherence, and community is imagined for people who may never meet beyond the face-to-face village level. Important here, as well, is his identification of the census, map, and museum as "three institutions of power" that "profoundly shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion" (163-64). However, Anderson's assertion that Europe provided the model that has been "pirated" in a quasi-diffusionist process in different contexts, circumstances, and with different outcomes has drawn critical fire from Partha Chatterjee who, in The Nation and Its Fragments, has argued that "[t]he most powerful as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa are posited not on an identity but rather on a difference with the 'modular' forms of the national society propagated by the modern West" (5). Chatterjee does not just underscore the import of cultural and historical specificity. He introduces "fragments" as a conceptual paradigm in studying nationalism. "Fragments," here, are not mere parts but units of overlapping political/social realities, subjectivities, positioning that bring up the issue of how marginal(ized) groups belong to the "nation." What is more important, it is within and through these "fragments" that the sense of "nation" is negotiated. Put together, Anderson's and Chatterjee's formulation underscore the importance of looking beyond normative nationalism.

Implicit in the preceding understandings is the question of approach to the study of African nationalism. Following Chatterjee, I argue that African nationalism is a synthesis of various intellectual histories, protest traditions, specific cultural institutions, and unique lived experiences. My position is bolstered by Smith's argument for an "ethno-symbolic" approach to nationalism that takes into account myths, symbols, traditions, institutions, religion, and memories of the nation (Myths); the fact that the institutions of nationalism, to a degree, "must work everywhere in a different way"as "part of the national 'identity'" (Balibar 19); that nationalism "is capable of being inflected to very different political positions, at different historical moments and [that] its character depends very much on the other traditions, discourses and forces with which it is articulated" (Hall 355); and that "the very notion 'nationalism' is inextricably intertwined in an intricate web with other complex concepts" (Periwal 229). A more extensive review of African...