Banal Nationalism
Similar to the Third Republic of France, the new Republic of Turkey also started with the invention of traditions through three institutions or dispositive discussed by Hobsbawm (1983:271): primary education (secular, republican and revolutionary), public ceremonies (as a substitution of religious/local ceremonies and a new conception/management of time) and the mass production of public monuments (education for non-readers, place-making agents for ceremonies and pro/ducers/tectors of collective memory).
Apart from specialized days/places and after completing primary education, nationalism has to be reproduced in everyday life in order to persist. This banal nationalism is structured in enunciation through simple words and symbols, which "address 'us' as a national first person plural and situate 'us' in the homeland within a world of nations" (Billig, 1995:174). Similar to Kant's categories of time and space as the necessary condition of all the possible experience; the linguistic and spatial reminders of nationalism (which according to Billig permit us to forget that we are being reminded) preset the necessary conditions for possible nationalistic experience. Inspired by Essed's notion of 'everyday racism', Özkırımlı (2000:231) adapts it to nationalism as 'the integration of nationalism into everyday situations through practices that activate underlying power relations'. However, the success of this activation or the process of assujetissement is dependent on individuals.
So, it's possible to talk about a transformation of the nationalistic enunciation of the EMC after becoming an everyday public place. Planned, constructed and performed in accordance with an instrumentalist nationalism since the 1920s, it is possible to denounce it as a banal nationalistic urban background after 2008.
The question of how nationalism generates so powerful emotions, which conclude with the acceptance and promotion of martyrdom, can be explained by a need to protect one's own life or the lives of the beloved ones (Özkırımlı, 2000:224), which let us make a connection between Spinoza's notion of conatus and the nationalized term martyrdom.
According to Billig (1995:174-175) the flaggings (or enunciations) of nationhood are unlike the messages from the unconscious mind. Since we don't need a psychoanalytic training to read these signs, they are working in the domain of conscious. However, Billig claims that the constant repetition 'permit us to forget that we are being reminded' and 'only a conscious willingness to look towards the background' is enough for its criticism.
In Ricoeurian terms, this act of forgetting is similar to a 'passive forgetting' which works similar to Freud's 'screen memories' and only a critical approach of history can get us out of the repetitive memory of nationalism:
"[...] forgetting things, screen-memories, failed actions take on gigantic proportions on the scale of collective memory, which history alone, and more precisely the history of memory, is capable of bringing to light." (Ricoeur, 2004: 447-448)
However, Billig continuously highlights in his writings that although his topic is the unconscious aspects of nationalism, it is not the repressed, Freudian unconscious (Billig, 2009: 348) but being aware of the potential effects of these enunciations does not explain how this psychic mechanism might work. Banal nationalism is mostly criticized by excluding 'hot nationalism', ignoring the agency of people (agency-centered everyday nationalism vs. state-centered banal nationalism)* and overlooking the imaginary dimension of nationalism (Antonsich&Skey, 2017). Especially, the imaginary dimension, in relation to affects and emotions, empowers the necessary conditions of the nationalistic experience. When objects, discourses, and symbols coincide, powerful emotions might occur.
*Billig's response against this criticism is that "the 'ideological subject' [of banal nationalism] by no means passively receives a single ideological message" (Billig, 2009: 348).
Antonsich, M. & Skey, M. (2017) Introduction: The Persistence of Banal Nationalism, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism, Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, UK.
sara ahmed?--> connection to affections
Apart from specialized days/places and after completing primary education, nationalism has to be reproduced in everyday life in order to persist. This banal nationalism is structured in enunciation through simple words and symbols, which "address 'us' as a national first person plural and situate 'us' in the homeland within a world of nations" (Billig, 1995:174). Similar to Kant's categories of time and space as the necessary condition of all the possible experience; the linguistic and spatial reminders of nationalism (which according to Billig permit us to forget that we are being reminded) preset the necessary conditions for possible nationalistic experience. Inspired by Essed's notion of 'everyday racism', Özkırımlı (2000:231) adapts it to nationalism as 'the integration of nationalism into everyday situations through practices that activate underlying power relations'. However, the success of this activation or the process of assujetissement is dependent on individuals.
So, it's possible to talk about a transformation of the nationalistic enunciation of the EMC after becoming an everyday public place. Planned, constructed and performed in accordance with an instrumentalist nationalism since the 1920s, it is possible to denounce it as a banal nationalistic urban background after 2008.
The question of how nationalism generates so powerful emotions, which conclude with the acceptance and promotion of martyrdom, can be explained by a need to protect one's own life or the lives of the beloved ones (Özkırımlı, 2000:224), which let us make a connection between Spinoza's notion of conatus and the nationalized term martyrdom.
According to Billig (1995:174-175) the flaggings (or enunciations) of nationhood are unlike the messages from the unconscious mind. Since we don't need a psychoanalytic training to read these signs, they are working in the domain of conscious. However, Billig claims that the constant repetition 'permit us to forget that we are being reminded' and 'only a conscious willingness to look towards the background' is enough for its criticism.
In Ricoeurian terms, this act of forgetting is similar to a 'passive forgetting' which works similar to Freud's 'screen memories' and only a critical approach of history can get us out of the repetitive memory of nationalism:
"[...] forgetting things, screen-memories, failed actions take on gigantic proportions on the scale of collective memory, which history alone, and more precisely the history of memory, is capable of bringing to light." (Ricoeur, 2004: 447-448)
However, Billig continuously highlights in his writings that although his topic is the unconscious aspects of nationalism, it is not the repressed, Freudian unconscious (Billig, 2009: 348) but being aware of the potential effects of these enunciations does not explain how this psychic mechanism might work. Banal nationalism is mostly criticized by excluding 'hot nationalism', ignoring the agency of people (agency-centered everyday nationalism vs. state-centered banal nationalism)* and overlooking the imaginary dimension of nationalism (Antonsich&Skey, 2017). Especially, the imaginary dimension, in relation to affects and emotions, empowers the necessary conditions of the nationalistic experience. When objects, discourses, and symbols coincide, powerful emotions might occur.
*Billig's response against this criticism is that "the 'ideological subject' [of banal nationalism] by no means passively receives a single ideological message" (Billig, 2009: 348).
Antonsich, M. & Skey, M. (2017) Introduction: The Persistence of Banal Nationalism, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism, Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, UK.
sara ahmed?--> connection to affections
Comments
Post a Comment