On Patriotism and False Nations

Abstract: A short reflection on the nature of what I deem “false” nationalistic discourses and their relationship to patriotism. I argue that “real” political patriotism rests on a cultural/conventional feedback loop in order to operate.

Imagine a society with limited knowledge whose inhabitants are taught that they are one state in a vast nation—and they infuse this knowledge as constitutive of at least some aspect of their cultural/individual constitutions. Now imagine the actual status of this nation to be a hoax, a ploy on behalf of elites to cultivate glory—would this public belief still constitute an “imagined community”? If it is a society dominated by an institutionalized pre-political sense of temporality, wherein a “meanwhile” is reproduced through the dissemination of print culture, then I am tempted to say that Benedict Anderson would respond with a “yes.” But would Schmitt? What real, concrete enemy could I face in this illusion? This end of the spectrum is no doubt extreme, and is rooted in what we might deem, at this level, to be mere “brainwashing.” The point, though, remains: all may be dust and mirrors, but as long as I believe, there be the nation. But now imagine an alien/non-citizen who, here illegally, still professes that they would die for America—do we say they are patriotic, or merely over-zealous and insane? What is at stake here is far more than identification predicated on a friend/enemy distinction and reducible to terms of intensity. One’s personal identification with the state seems predicated on a certain feedback loop of recognition. I’ve previously asked: Can one ever blaspheme against a dead god? Analogously, I want to now ask: can one ever be a patriot of a dead nation? Why not? Why do we point to one man and say: “patriot!” and to the other and say: “lunatic!”? If a brave French solider dies on American soil during the Revolution and is buried under the aegis “Here lies a true American”—why do we, who read it centuries later, know this was not just meant ironically?

Something is at play here analogous to John Austin’s version of illocutionary acts and sanctioned conventions, whereby not “just anyone” can break a bottle on a ship’s haul and declare it consummated—given the contextual criterion, only the authorized personnel may effectively complete such an activity such that it concludes in recognized social meaning.[1] The same seems true in terms of patriotism. Patriotism is a belief in the legitimate myth-making power of the state, predicated on the reciprocal validation viz. the state’s self-fabricated myth. Thus we say to the non-citizen who wishes to die for a purely American cause: “such is your choice—but, though you imagine yourself a part of us, we do not. We merely appreciate your commitment to the same promise, to exploring the same myth.” This of course stands behind the rhetoric of liberal “allies,” the contemporary “axis of evil” and dehumanization of the enemy that Schmitt is so attuned to, and so forth—all part of a modernized discourse of just and unjust wars, formulated initially by Grotius and Hobbes and reaching contemporary audiences through Walzer. This is why, fundamentally, our “allies” in one war may one day (not foreseeably, admittedly) be our enemies in a distant war—all with little in the way of theoretical contradiction or confusion. This is all to say: though the terms of sovereignty’s “imagined” basis must exist at the root of individual identification, this identification is mere delusion without its role sanctioned by an extant conventional constellation. To the extent that this conventional constellation has altered, so too do the effective terms of one’s patriotism—hence why it is that a solider who is lost behind enemy lines, failing to hear of the Armistice and continuing the attack, is not working for the American cause, although for all intents and purposes he absolutely believes he is. As the myth shifts its evaluation, the mobilization of material bodies also assumes different indexes of expectation, habit, behavior, and so forth.

A related topic emerges at the margin here. I would ask: what is the relation between forgetting and charisma? Is conversion a kind-of forgetting? In some sense, there is the irony that, according to Weber, while bureaucratization must in some way “forget” the charismatic founder in spirit, it must preserve his image/legacy/tradition in order to stabilize and ground processes of social integration.[2] In this manner, the “normal” processes of state balance a tight equilibrium between ensuring the revolutionary spirit is well known, but only known as a discreet, isolated and foundational phenomenon that, though disclosing a general “spirit” of a people/nation qua the characteristics of its mythic founders, nevertheless ostracizes this founding spirit to an extreme condition of exceptionality. To this end, the normal depletes the exception/charismatic of its power and banalizes this disruptive potentiality into the charged conduit that links a people to its past, invented or otherwise.[3] Renan’s genealogy possesses the persuasive reasoning that robs the claims to a “real” or “authentic” national lineage that familial dynasties even today attempt to claim and leverage—those ridiculous regimes of affiliation that relate current generations back to the “First Families of Virginia,” the “Daughters of the American Revolution”, and so forth. Thus, we are all to see a little of ourselves in George Washington, and vice-versa; but we, given our circumstances, are never to exhibit the same qualities so established as the core of our foundational heritage. Washington—among other founders—transforms into the Utopian model never actually to be fulfilled. Patriotism is a matter of striving—it is not to be possessed, “fulfilled,” satisfied, etc. Wolin’s narrative of fugitive democracy perfectly mirrors this Weberian structural transformation: the moment of the political recedes, giving to the stasis of habitude and the enervation of self-interest, to the “bureaucratization” of democracy and its inhibitive forms of isolation. This balance between what is remembered and what is forgotten unfurls into the general political problem of a “hollowed memory”—one that is active only symbolically, that cannot provide the content for a real model of action, behavior, etc. Locke’s notion of “identity” might relate to this in a tangential but illuminating way: what is the relation between personal identity and “active” vs. “hollowed/hallowed” memory? Is an identity forged upon the basis of a hollowed memory doomed to be—what?—a hollowed identity?

[1] See J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, pp. 23-24

[2] See Geertz on the vitality of the “center,” Hobsbawm on invented traditions; Burke on aesthetic and tradition; Habermas on the rationalization of society.

[3] See Schmitt and Kalyvas on the idea of the “exception” and sovereignty.

[1] See J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, pp. 23-24