“Nationalism”, from emancipation to the cage of the individual: the topicality of Kedourie’s study
In the bookstore, fresh off the press, the first Italian translation of a small classic (albeit neglected) of world political science: "Nazionalismo" ( Liberilibri editions), by Elie Kedourie, edited by Alberto Mingardi, who is also responsible for a introductory essay so broad, brilliant and informed that it really makes it a book in the book. Nationalism is particularly topical in these days, in which one of the possible interpretations of the conflict in Ukraine is provided precisely by the "nationalist" sentiment, which can, in hindsight, be used to describe both the Russian act of aggression and the of the Ukrainian resistance. On the one hand, in fact, the will to power shown by Putin can be understood as "nationalist", who would like to rebuild the only Slavic nation, referring to the political entity known as Kievan Rus', which included the territories of European Russia , Ukraine and Belarus. On the other hand, however, the reaction of the invaded also sounds "nationalist": President Zelensky, addressing a message to Russian citizens, has in fact relied on the autonomy of the Ukrainian people, which can certainly be enriched by cultural confrontation with neighbors, without “this does not make them one whole”, dissolving one into the other.
The possibility of using the same concept to frame both opposing sides in a conflict suggests the opportunity for further reflection on the meaning and heuristic value of that concept. In short: what is nationalism? Does it really make sense to talk about nationalism in this case? To address the first question, the book in question, as already mentioned, is extremely precious. Its author, Kedourie, was born in 1926, of Jewish parents, in Baghdad: in previous years, the city had been one of the "capitals" of the Ottoman Empire and the Jewish community coexisted with the Muslim one (mostly Shiite, but with important Kurdish and Sunni presences) and the Christian one, in a position of political and economic prestige (the 1908 census shows that Jews numbered 53,000 of the total population of 150,000). But when Kedourie was born, things were changing, and not for the better. The British, who occupied the Ottoman provinces in 1917, promoted "nationalist" claims by Arab (minority) groups, in the hope that a rebellion against the Sublime Porte would shorten the time of the First World War. The tactical objective materialized and, as a "reward", the British sponsored the birth of the State of Iraq, entrusting its leadership to a Sunni dynasty. The latter promoted a pan-Arabist policy, which identified the Jewish community as one of the main targets: in the aftermath of the birth of Israel, the accusation of "Zionism" aimed at the Jews of Baghdad was an opportunity to justify violence, harassment and finally, to make their mass emigration inevitable. The rise of Arab nationalism and the Iraqi nation had led to the expulsion of the Jewish community from the country that had been "his" for more than two millennia.
Kedourie, who knew English, left Baghdad for London in 1947, enrolling in the London School of Economics, destined to become his academic home for nearly forty years. There, Kedourie bonded with political philosopher Michael Oakeshott and the liberal-conservative cultural cenacle that gathered around him and his friends / students (from Kenneth Minogue to Shirley and Bill Letwin). It was Oakeshott who directed Kedourie to the study of "nationalism". The result of his investigation is a systematic "demolition" of any positive aspect linked to the doctrine in question by that romantic rhetoric which – writes Kedourie himself – essentially "invented it in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century". Anyone who suspects Kedourie's blind prejudice towards the object of his study (moreover, Mingardi notes in his introductory essay, behind every theory there is a biography), would be forced to change his mind.
With the rigor of the scholar, in fact, Kedourie first of all identifies the intellectual roots of nationalism. The latter should be understood as a perversion of the Enlightenment concept of self-determination, which Kant had linked to the individual level and which his heirs (first of all Fichte) have instead moved to the level of the State: in other words, the individual disconnected from the “traditional” constraints (the order based on revealed religion and natural law) provided the mold on which the very concept of nation was modeled. Kedourie certainly does not want to deny the existence of ancient political communities endowed with a certain "individual" physiognomy, but rather to ascertain how, precisely at the dawn of the nineteenth century, this "descriptive" relief has instead become "prescriptive": not only do cohesive communities exist , but there cannot be plurals. Just as the Kantian individual recognizes in the "internal" moral law alone the parameter of judgment (better: self-judgment), so that the self-legislation of the ego is converted into self-determination of the subject in accordance with its most authentic nature, so the nation post-Kantian finds in homogeneity, also “internal” (cultural, value and linguistic), the way of collective self-determination: it responds only to that parameter, it can only be judged on the basis of that parameter.
A "conservative realist" like Kedourie easily detects the tragic irony of this "evolutionary" process: the Enlightenment concept of self-determination has passed, in the space of a few decades, from being an instrument of emancipation of the individual through his entrenchment in the ranks of a community , no longer a voluntary association of free men but pervaded by an absolutizing and even mysticizing feeling. All this has led, on the one hand, to think of the nation no longer as a "set of individuals" but as an entity that lives its own life, and, on the other hand, to believe that the individual can only be realized within of a specific nation. It is this "strictly one-dimensional vision of identity, where a language corresponds to a culture, a culture a territory and a territory a state" that constitutes "the most evident legacy of nationalist doctrines", and "it is paradoxical that precisely those men of thought that they wanted to be full architects of their own destiny, if they have drawn one in black and white ”, comments Mingardi.
It was said, at the beginning, of the topical note that Nationalism has in the light of the particular geopolitical moment. Curiously, it is partly prefigured precisely by the introduction that Kedourie affixed to the fourth edition of his text, published in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR (spring 1992). The author writes that “the disappearance of the Soviet superpower, which has nevertheless been so oppressive for its subjects, has created a dangerous imbalance of power between its former members and between them and their neighbors. There is a possibility of serious conflicts. Russia, which can only be called a great power in the classical sense, is surrounded by much weaker states that have separated from the Soviet structure. The United Nations does not have the strength to prevent Russia from reaching out to possessions that once belonged to the tsars and then became Soviet. The dangers deriving from Balkanization are not confined to the Balkans ”. This is certainly not the place – assuming that such a place really exists – to express a definitive judgment on the fate of the controversial nationalist doctrine or on how much it really serves to understand the dramatic logics behind Putin's war. What is certain, however, is that Kedourie's Nationalism is a very important reading, today more than ever. The study of the history of ideas does not retain a merely archaeological interest.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/nazionalismo-da-emancipazione-a-gabbia-dellindividuo-lattualita-dello-studio-di-kedourie/ on Sat, 05 Mar 2022 03:49:00 +0000.