"It might seem odd to begin a book on
nationalism with the Gulf War. The term 'nationalism' invites us to
look elsewhere for exemplars. In both popular and academic writing,
nationalism is associated with those who struggle to create new
states or with extreme right-wing politics. According to customary
usage, George Bush is not a nationalist; but separatists in Quebec or
Brittany are; so are the leaders of extreme right-wing parties such
as the Front National in France; and so, too, are the Serbian
guerrillas, killing in the cause of extending the homeland's borders.
A book about nationalism is expected to deal with such figures. It
should be discussing dangerous and powerful passions, outlining a
psychology of extraordinary emotions.
Yet, there is something
misleading about this accepted use of the word 'nationalism'. It
always seems to locate nationalism on the periphery. Separatists are
often to be found in the outer regions of states; the extremists lurk
on the margins of political life in established democracies, usually
shunned by the sensible politicians of the centre. The guerrilla
figures, seeking to establish their new homelands, operate in
conditions where existing structures of state have collapsed,
typically at a distance from the established centres of the West.
From the perspective of Paris, London or Washington, places such as
Moldova, Bosnia and Ukraine are peripherally placed on the edge of
Europe. All these factors combine to make nationalism not merely an
exotic force, but a peripheral one. In consequence, those in
established nations - at the centre of things - are led to see
nationalism as the property of others, not of 'us'. This is where the
accepted view becomes misleading: it overlooks the nationalism of the
West's nation-states. In a world of nation-states, nationalism cannot
be confined to the peripheries. That might be con-ceded, but still it
might be objected that nationalism only strikes the established
nation-states on special occasions. Crises, such as the
Falklands or Gulf Wars, infect a sore spot, causing bodily fevers:
the symptoms are an inflamed rhetoric and an outbreak of ensigns. But
the irruption soon dies down; the temperature passes; the flags are
rolled up; and, then, it is business as usual.
If that were the extent of nationalism
in established nations, then nationalism, when it moves in from the
periphery, only comes as a temporary mood. But, there is more. The
intermittent crises depend upon existing ideological foundations.
Bush, in his eve of battle speech, did not invent his dismal
rhetoric: he was drawing upon familiar images and cliches. The flags
displayed by the Western public during the Gulf War were familiar:
Americans did not have to remind themselves what this arrangement of
stars and stripes was. The national anthem, which topped the US music
chart, was recorded at a football final. Each year, whether in peace
or war, it is sung before the game.
In short, the crises do not create
nation-states as nation-states. In between times, the United States
of America, France, the United Kingdom and so on continue to exist.
Daily, they are reproduced as nations and their citizenry as
nationals. And these nations are reproduced within a wider world of
nations. For such daily reproduction to occur, one might hypothesize
that a whole complex of beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations
and practices must also be reproduced. Moreover, this complex must be
reproduced in a banally mundane way, for the world of nations is the
everyday world, the familiar terrain of contemporary times"
Michael Billig - Banal Nationalism
