tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132520298120231193.post4913975122515833650..comments2023-12-23T02:10:09.875-05:00Comments on howl at pluto: Collective forgettingLFChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13551197682770555147noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132520298120231193.post-68979172647356436342008-11-15T23:25:00.000-05:002008-11-15T23:25:00.000-05:00And see Nietzsche on the importance of individual ...And see Nietzsche on the importance of individual forgetting. Sorry I don't have the citation!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132520298120231193.post-66765482901030555852008-11-14T13:18:00.000-05:002008-11-14T13:18:00.000-05:00Naren,You raise an interesting question: How is it...Naren,<BR/>You raise an interesting question: How is it that Renan (sometimes) gets cited in IR as a critic of nationalism, when in fact he wasn't?<BR/><BR/>Here's my (intemperate) guess: it happens b/c some IR people have read their Foucault and Agamben (and even, i suppose, their Benedict Anderson), but they don't know enough about history (and historiography), so they don't know that Renan, like virtually every other major late-nineteenth c. French historian (i wd think), was a nationalist. <BR/><BR/>Thanks for raising this and also for the last point in your comment, which is of course entirely correct. <BR/>Btw you might want to look at (if you haven't already) David Laitin's 'Nations, States and Violence'(2007). He uses Renan's daily plebiscite quote as an epigraph for one chapter. I have it out of the library but am not going to read it right now so maybe i'd better return it. :)LFChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551197682770555147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132520298120231193.post-90242311880753012962008-11-14T12:01:00.000-05:002008-11-14T12:01:00.000-05:00Renan was writing in the aftermath of the German a...Renan was writing in the aftermath of the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. The population as I understand it were German-speaking but wanted to be a part of France. Renan's seminal piece, when put in this context, takes on added significance. For, while he was indeed arguing for the (recent and) constructed nature of the nation, his argument was nationalist - he seems to be saying,let us forget those troubling and troublesome aspects of our past. And his idea of the nation as a daily plebiscite seems to me a way a suggestion of how to move forward as a nation. <BR/>Benedict Anderson, however, gives a slightly different inflection to Renan's forgetting/remembering 'dialectic' in the closing pages of the revised version of Imagined Communities. There, he emphasizes Renan's comments as part of his critique of the constructed character of the nation, and its dangerous ability to demand/command death from its subjects, while being silent on the fact that Renan himself was deploying his arguments in the service of France. I am not sure if Anderson is largely responsible for this reading of Renan as a critique of nationalism, or if it reflects the growing skepticism towards nationalism in contemporary times. (I am not advocating nationalism/patriotism - far from it). I wonder how it is that in international relations (LFC, I am not taking a swipe at you - this is about how Renan gets quoted and cited in academic texts), Renan appears as both a critique of the objectivity of the nation, and of the ideology and practice of nationalism. I agree with the former, but not the latter. To adopt a social constructionist perspective on the nation, is not to automatically be critical of nationalism. <BR/>NarenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com