A figure of enduring ingenuity, the nation has for centuries
played a part on the socio-political stage. Whether centre stage or
background scenery, it has featured in violent tragedies,
revolutionary drama and nostalgic fable. Today, the nation is cast
simultaneously in the roles of villain and hero. While it is
renounced by those advocating trans-national, post-national and
cosmopolitan forms of belonging, it has lately also been asserted
as the solution to various social failures in liberal democracies.
This appears to leave us with two alternatives: to jettison the
nation in order to move towards a less parochial world, a world in
which new forms of belonging underpin more inclusive politics. Or
to celebrate the nation as way of ensuring the social cement that
can unite a diverse society.
Using the ideas of Wittgenstein and Lacan, Amanda Machin
expertly explains that the overlapping and conflicting language
games of the nation produce it as an object of desire in an
uncertain world. The nation is not a pre-political "thing" but a
matter of persistent political contestation and coalition. She
reveals that the nation still has a vital part to play in
democratic politics, but that this role is one of improvisation.
While they endure as tools of emancipatory promise, nations
nonetheless remain potential categories of violent exclusion. They
cannot be pinned down as easily as anti-national and pro-national
alternatives suggest. It is precisely the indeterminacy of the
nation that gives it ongoing importance for democracy today.
Providing an urgent riposte to dominant accounts, this thought
provoking and highly original account demands a re-politicisation
of the nation. This book will appeal to those engaged in theory and
empirical research on nations and nationalism and the question of
their link to democracy in a changing world, as well as those
interested in psychoanalysis and Wittgenstein.
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