Chapter Abstract
Does the nation-state work? Modern political thinking has been absorbed in, if not wholly exhausted by, two closely interrelated historical trajectories. One was the process of state formation, the other that of nation-building. As a result, modern political discourse was usually understood on the basis of the geopolitical map of nation-states and the historical trajectory of its formation. Yet, the focus on the nation-state leaves many subjects in the shadows because their political experiences fail to register within these terms. This chapter uses these neglected experiences to construct a counter-history that accounts for both the emergence of the nation-state within the dominant political imaginary and those who are excluded from its terms.
Additional reading
Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein (1991) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, London: Verso.
This collection provides a critical approach to racism, which, influenced by the writings of the philosopher Louis Althusser and the historian Fernand Braudel, locates the phenomenon not merely in attitudes but in social relations and structures.
Bhabha, Homi (ed.) (1990) Nation and Narration, New York: Routledge.
This collection on nations and nationalism applies literary tropes in order to show how nations generate paradoxical allegiances through the narratives within which they locate themselves.
Campbell, David (1998) National Deconstruction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
This study of the violence in Bosnia refigures and extends Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction, turning literary tropes into political and ethical critique.
Corrigan, Philip and Derek Sayer (1985) The Great Arch, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
This investigation of English state formation locates the emergence of national allegiance within a long historical trajectory.
Edkins, Jenny, Véronique Pin-Fat and Michael J. Shapiro (eds) (2004) Sovereign Lives, New York: Routledge.
This collection treats the geo- and biopolitical aspects of sovereignty at the level of the lives impacted by sovereign prerogatives and practices.
Giddens, Anthony (1983) The Nation State and Violence, Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
This is a sociological treatment of the articulation between the development of the nation-state and the violence of its self-creation.
Lloyd, David and Paul Thomas (1998) Culture and the State, New York: Routledge.
This is a neglected but excellent treatment of the cultural governance perspectives and practices that have accompanied state formation.
Shapiro, Michael J. (1994) Methods and Nations: Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject, New York: Routledge.
This investigation of cultural governance and the neglect of the indigenous subject in the discourses of the social sciences on nation-building applies aesthetic theory, as it is articulated in film, music and landscape painting.
Tilly, Charles (1990) Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Tilly provides a historical narrative of the role of coercion in state formation.
Walker, R. B. J. and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds) (1990) Contending Sovereignties, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
This collection provides critical, interdisciplinary approaches to sovereignty.