The Term Nation is both historically determined and general. As a term, it refers both to the modern nation-state and to something more ancient and nebulous- the 'natio'- a local community, domicile, family, condition of belonging. The distinction is often obscured by nationalists who seek to place their own country in an"immemorial past' where its arbitaries cannot be questioned.
For we often hear that nationalism is dead. Despite explosive independence movements in different part of the world, many seem convinced of this. Some point to global developments that cast nationalism in the refratory light of heroic memory, where the invariable goals of creating the administrative economy, a repressive apparatus capable of waging war, and a sense of belonging that glosses over class conflicts, are being passed over in favour of local affiliations and loyalities on the one hand, and on the other, are being rendered obsolete by the international realities of multinational corporation and the telecommunications industry.
In fact, it is in the third world fiction after the second world war that the fictional uses of 'nation' and 'nationalism' are most pronounced. The nation is precisely what Foucault has called a 'discursive formation' - not simply an allegory or imaginative vision, but a gestative political structure which the third world artist is consciously building or suffering the lack of.
The phrase 'myths of the nation' is ambiguous in a calculated way. It does not refer only to the more or less unsurprising idea that nations are mythical, - there is no 'scientific' means of establishing what all nations have in common. The phrase is also not limited to the consequences of this artificiality in contemporary political life - namely, the way that various governments invent traditions to give permanence and solidity to a transient political form.
The rising number of studies on nationalism in the past three decades reflects its lingering, almost atmospheric, insistence in our thinking. In cultural studies, the nation has often lurked behind terms like 'tradition', 'folklore', ' or 'community', obscuring their origins.
The rise of the modern nation - state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is inseparable from the forms and subjects of imaginative literature. On the one hand, the political tasks of modern nationalism directed the course of literature, leading through the romantic concepts of 'folk character' and 'national language' to the divisions of literature into distinct 'national literature'. On the other hand, and just as fundamentally, literature participated in the formation of nations through the creation of 'national print media'-the newspaper and the novel.
In tracing these ties between literature and nation, Some have evoked the fictive quality of the political concept itself. Race, geography, tradition, language, size, or some combination of these seem finally insufficient for determining national essence, and yet people die for nations, fight wars for them, and write fictions on their behalf. Others have emphasized the creative side of nation - forming, suggesting the cultural importance of what has often been treated as a dry, rancorous political fact.
Nations are the imaginary constructs that depend for their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions in which imaginative literature plays a decisive role.
For we often hear that nationalism is dead. Despite explosive independence movements in different part of the world, many seem convinced of this. Some point to global developments that cast nationalism in the refratory light of heroic memory, where the invariable goals of creating the administrative economy, a repressive apparatus capable of waging war, and a sense of belonging that glosses over class conflicts, are being passed over in favour of local affiliations and loyalities on the one hand, and on the other, are being rendered obsolete by the international realities of multinational corporation and the telecommunications industry.
In fact, it is in the third world fiction after the second world war that the fictional uses of 'nation' and 'nationalism' are most pronounced. The nation is precisely what Foucault has called a 'discursive formation' - not simply an allegory or imaginative vision, but a gestative political structure which the third world artist is consciously building or suffering the lack of.
The phrase 'myths of the nation' is ambiguous in a calculated way. It does not refer only to the more or less unsurprising idea that nations are mythical, - there is no 'scientific' means of establishing what all nations have in common. The phrase is also not limited to the consequences of this artificiality in contemporary political life - namely, the way that various governments invent traditions to give permanence and solidity to a transient political form.
The rising number of studies on nationalism in the past three decades reflects its lingering, almost atmospheric, insistence in our thinking. In cultural studies, the nation has often lurked behind terms like 'tradition', 'folklore', ' or 'community', obscuring their origins.
The rise of the modern nation - state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is inseparable from the forms and subjects of imaginative literature. On the one hand, the political tasks of modern nationalism directed the course of literature, leading through the romantic concepts of 'folk character' and 'national language' to the divisions of literature into distinct 'national literature'. On the other hand, and just as fundamentally, literature participated in the formation of nations through the creation of 'national print media'-the newspaper and the novel.
In tracing these ties between literature and nation, Some have evoked the fictive quality of the political concept itself. Race, geography, tradition, language, size, or some combination of these seem finally insufficient for determining national essence, and yet people die for nations, fight wars for them, and write fictions on their behalf. Others have emphasized the creative side of nation - forming, suggesting the cultural importance of what has often been treated as a dry, rancorous political fact.
Nations are the imaginary constructs that depend for their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions in which imaginative literature plays a decisive role.
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