Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat (Dec 2010)

Nationalism and the Imagination

  • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Journal volume & issue
no. 15

Abstract

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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.

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