In the Fifties and Sixties, some shite White pedants were forced to teach people from ex-colonies utterly worthless subjects like 'Political Science' & 'Anthropology'. Since these Whites couldn't say- as their predecessors had- Nig Nogs got zero brains and thus can never rule themselves or have 'Nation States' and so forth- they were obliged to say 'Nationalism is imaginary. It is created by Literacy and 'Print Capitalism' and other stuff you Nig Nogs obviously lack. Please don't eat me. Have a nice PhD instead.'
Why did Black and Asian people put up with this shite? The answer is that they were credential seeking shitheads whose existence was entirely parasitic. Thus, it paid them to pretend to give credence to worthless White shitheads who, ludicrously, also claimed to be 'Liberal' or 'Left of Center'.
As a case in point, Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism was obviously false. It is not the case that those who consider themselves to belong to the same Nation necessarily want to belong to the same political unit. This is because idiographic considerations determine the optimal size and scope of political units. Only when such considerations change would a Nation- e.g the German or Italian nation- wish to have a strong Nation State of a unitary type. Nationalism is merely the wish to see one's own people flourish. This may be best done with autonomous cantons, perhaps with external alliances of opposite valency, or it may require a strong center accessing economies of scale and scope in the provision of public goods.
It is not the case that Nationalism is "primarily a political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent'. On the contrary, Nationalists may want the 'political unit' to include strategic or resource rich territories populated by 'lesser' peoples who may, in consequence, espouse a purely defensive Nationalism which, however, does not wish to link up with the territory of others of the same language.
Differences in Ideology or type of economic system or political tradition may militate for the splitting up of a Nation. The recent campaign for 'Calexit'- i.e. California's secession from Trump's America- is an example.
Gellner must have been aware that Taiwan and Hong Kong had plenty of Chinese Nationalists. But, they did not want Beijing to rule over both in an untrammeled fashion. We can easily imagine a Communist German or Korean whose Nationalism involved wishing their country to remain divided so 'capitalist forces' in the majority region did not strangle Socialism.
For the older view of Nationalism- that of Ernest Renan, for example,- which stressed shared political history, Gellner's dictum becomes a tautology. Nationalism is the political principle which holds that the political unit should be the political unit. Switzerland is the classic example- and a scandal for Gellner's theory.
The reductio ad absurdum of the Benedict Anderson, or Ernest Gellner, or most subsequent theories of Nationalism is the oft quoted dictum- “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist”. (Gellner 1964: 169) Gellner's example of a nation invented out of thin air is Estonia- a country greatly respected in Europe for its economic success and splendid Human Welfare indicators.
There are some very clear cases where modernism holds true. Take the Estonians.
Who speak an Uralic language unlike their Slavic or Baltic neighbors.
At the beginning of the 19th century they didn’t even have a name for themselves.
But they spoke a different language from their neighbors as well as their oppressors. Speaking the same language is enough to have a notion of ipseity. Only when speaking to an alterity does one need to identify oneself as belonging to a different nation.
They were simply referred to
by whom?
as people who lived on the land, as opposed to German or Swedish burghers and aristocrats, and Russian administrators.
So what? They knew themselves well enough. People on my street may refer to me as 'the bloke wot lives in the house at the end of the street'. Gellner may think this means I don't have a name for myself. I don't have 'self-consciousness'.
They were just a category, without any ethnic self-consciousness.
Suddenly, I decide to invent a name for myself. I start writing books and creating art-work which I sign with my own name. I have been brilliantly successful in creating a vibrant identity.
But since, they have been brilliantly successful in creating a vibrant culture which can be seen, very much alive, in the ethnographic museum in Tartu. The museum has one object for every Estonian-and there are one million Estonians. Obviously Estonian culture is under no threat, although Estonians make a fuss about the Russian minority which they have inherited from the Soviet system. Estonians have a vital and vibrant culture but it was created by the kind of modernist process
which occurred when the Uralic language speaking groups split up and went in different directions. This modernist process may only have begun 13,000 years ago.
which I apply to nationalism and nations in general.
Because tiny Estonia, which has suffered so much at the hands of rapacious, or ideologically demented, neighbors, really is typical of 'Nationalism and Nations in general.' The truth is the Estonians are exceptional in the manner they managed to cling on and are exemplary in the manner in which they have made the most of their opportunities since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If that kind of account holds true for some nations,
It doesn't.
then the exceptions which are credited to other nations are redundant.
No. A theory is false if there is even one counter-example.
The central fact of the modern world is that the role of culture in human life was totally transformed by the cluster of economic and scientific changes since the 17th century.
Sheer nonsense! The central fact of the ancient world was that the role of culture in human life was totally transformed by the cluster of economic and scientific and religious changes which occurred since ancient times began. Indeed, the central fact about all facts is that they were totally transformed by stuff which was going on contemporaneously.
The prime role of culture in agrarian society was to underwrite a people’s status and identity-to entrench their position in a complex, usually hierarchical, relatively stable structure.
This was also the prime role of ignorance and scratching one's arse while chewing on a a piece of straw. What underwrites Gellner's status and identity? It isn't culture. It is earning a living by talking worthless shite. But that is a function, not of culture, but stupidity, ignorance and an atavistic belief in the wisdom of senile nutters.
In today’s world people have no stable position within a structure.
Fuck off! We have much more stable positions within political and economic structures which won't suddenly disappear. I fully expect to receive a pension and to die in a hospital. I don't expect to be kidnapped, sold in a slave market in Algiers, get gelded and end up as an Eunuch attendant upon the Sultana whom I so please with my tongue that I end up the Grand Vizier till the Bulgars invade and then, by another dazzling reversal of fortune, I rise from Venetian Galley Slave to the position of Avignon's Anti-Pope.
They are members of ephemeral professional bureaucracies which are not deeply internalised.
The Confucian bureaucracy certainly proved ephemeral in the early Twentieth Century as did the Japanese bakufu some fifty years previously. Tibet's theocratic bureaucracy disappeared. But the ICS turned into the IAS and is going strong. The Chinese Communist Party's bureaucracy doesn't seem ephemeral at all. But, it may turn out to be. What are not ephemeral are useful vocations and productive enterprises howsoever carried forward. Economics has explanatory power. Gellner's shite was meaningless garbage.
They belong to increasingly loose family associations. And what really matters is how they can incorporate and master high culture.
Fuck off! Having 'high culture' is what makes you shit at getting rich or defeating invaders.
By that I mean a literate codified culture which permits context-free communication, community membership and acceptability- that is what constitutes a nation.
Communication is never 'context free'. There is no 'i-language'. True, Turing found a way to specify a 'context free' Language. But, no CFL can be a natural language in the semantic sense. From the point of view of Syntax however, it may have a context free representation.
Essentially, Gellner is saying 'Nig Nogs may have gotten independence but they are too poor to have 'High Culture'. So they aren't really Nations at all.' This was one step up from saying 'only us Whites are human. Everybody else is a two legged donkey'. But, one step was all it was.
It is a consequence of the mobility and anonymity of modern society
as opposed to ancient times when vast folk-wanderings occurred and hordes and counter-hordes kept warring such that lots of people no longer remembered their own names but were simply known as 'Skull-Crusher' or 'Rapes-a-lot'.
and of the semantic, non-physical nature of our work that makes mastery of such culture and acceptance within it the most valuable possession a man has.
Fuck off! Gellner had to show up for work and mark a lot of exam scripts so as to draw his salary. This was physical- albeit inutile and demeaning- work.
It is a pre-condition of all other privileges and participation in society.
No it isn't. This fucker would still get his pension provided a Doctor could show he had a pulse.
This is what automatically makes a man into a nationalist, because if there is no congruence between the culture in which he is operating and the culture of the surrounding economic, political, and educational bureaucracies, then he is in trouble.
But Nationalism exists even if such a congruence obtains. Equally, no Nationalism necessarily arises where it does not.
It is true, under Imperialism or foreign rule, the natives may be humiliated. But the response may not be Nationalistic at all. A 'segmentary', caste-type, accommodation may be preferred. On the other hand, if a 'resource curse' obtains, a separatist Nationalism may arise even amongst an indigenous population of markedly superior status so that Sovereign Wealth be entirely expropriated by the 'sons-of-the-soil'. Actually, this might also be done by a heterogenous population. The Boston Tea Party was about various different types of European dressing up as Red Indians so as to create mayhem for, it must be admitted, a sound enough economic reason.
He and his offspring will be exposed to sustained humiliation. Moreover, the maintenance of the high culture, the medium in which society operates, is politically precarious and expensive. The state is the protector, usually the financier- or at very least the quality controller-of the educational process which shapes people into members of this high culture. This is a process of creation- my equivalent of that event of 6000 BC when humanity was suddenly brought into being.
So, Gellner is about as scientific as Bishop Usher. Why did anybody study under this cretin? Having got their worthless PhDs, why did nobody acknowledge that the fucker was fucked in the head?
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