Nationalism and the Imagination

• Main Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat de Barcelona; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2009-01-01
• Series: Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat
• Subjects: nationalism; the state; gender; international civil society; India; Bulgaria; regionalism
• Online Access: http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/lectora/article/view/7176

Nationalism is produced by tapping the most private attachment to ground for the purposes of the most public statecraft. It is predicated on reproductive heteronormativity: birthright. To "naturalize" is to legalize a simulacrum of displaced birth, which becomes an actual birthright for the next generation. Today's globalized world calls for a reinvention of the abstract state-structure for proper constitutional redress still to be available. It must be persistently cleansed of the emergence of nationalism through education. We are looking for a critical regionalism with trans-frontier jurisdiction. The international civil society has no social contract.