The Clash is Back: Part II

So it is that the magazine which rarely fails to deliver the latest from the cast of the administration has released upon us all a piece by Jerry Z. Muller, a historian at Catholic University, arguing that 'ethnonationalism' emanates—yes—'from the human spirit' and is therefore ineradicable. In 'The Clash of Peoples' or 'Us and Them' (have your iteration: cover or 'in-book'), the conclusion that Muller conjures from this notion of the 'nature' of the human is that international policymakers should basically accommodate 'ethnonational' claims, because to deny them is to risk exciting a bloodbath between nationalists and the minorities or polities which they hope to do without. 'Partition,' Muller assures us, 'is often the least bad answer.' He later asserts that with it comes finality and a lower price tag in terms of international peacekeeping.

The allusion to Huntington's 1993 'Clash' is more than titular: The magazine is hoping to make a similarly spectacular provocation by employing a seemingly different thesis that, on consideration, seems (if we can steal Muller's unfortunate appropriation of terms with Hegelian baggage) to emanate from the precise spirit that animated 'Clash' fifteen years ago. While Huntington, by his own avowals, was setting forth a bold and provocative description of affairs as they were and would be, it became gradually apparent that he was more deeply implicated and invested in the conclusions than he may have wanted critics to believe.

So forgive me for experiencing a tad of déjà vu with 'Us and Them' and the case at hand:

'But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it has also proved to be a source of cohesion and stability. When French textbooks began with "Our ancestors the Gauls" or when Churchill spoke to wartime audiences of "this island race," they appealed to ethnonationalist sensibilities as a source of mutual trust and sacrifice. Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only compatible; they can be complementary.

One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World War II not because of the failure of ethnic nationalism but because of its success, which removed some of the greatest sources of conflict both within and between countries. The fact that ethnic and state boundaries now largely coincide has meant that there are fewer disputes over borders or expatriate communities, leading to the most stable territorial configuration in European history.'

The retroactive fallacy upon which nationalism is necessarily built—we must, for virtually the entirety of Western Europe, speak of the precession of the state—is at the same time concealed (he presents the European 'nation state' synchronically, as it were) and summoned forth by Muller: The ethnic project arouses, as the above passage makes clear, the author's sympathy, by virtue of its continuing powers of cohesion. And here we see that Muller's piece is also a lesson in understanding Theory's burden in the social sciences. The most basic insights into the dissemination of culture will receive acknowledgment only, by way of that precise acknowledgment, to then receive summary dismissal. 'Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to stress the contingent elements of group identity,' Muller offers near the end of the essay. 'It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim.' And yet: 'They regularly invoke Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities," as if demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will rob the concept of its power.'

Does this disclaimer near the conclusion of the essay acquit Muller of the work's persistent treatment of ethnonationalism as entirely superstructural? And what of the fact that, with few exceptions, the majority of any given populace remains ambivalent to indigenous nationalisms? Would not partitioning merely defer to those with the biggest guns and largest printing presses? Does Muller's determination that 'partition is the least bad answer' simply happen to coincide with his recognition of ethnonationalism's social benefits? And, if, as is more likely, nationalism 'emanates' not from the 'human spirit' but from configurations among economic strata, would partition solve a problem likely to reiterate itself despite new lines on a map? Nationalism's empire—an absurdity that manages to approach the object—knows no limits so long as the basic fissures of which it is an effect (and thus also an affect) are extant. Its work will complete itself neither of its own accord nor by a simple rearrangement of decidedly novel linguistic categories. Sort of like Theory's.