The decay of nationality: few accounts of outmoded term in everyday culture and literature

The decay of nationality: few accounts of outmoded term in everyday culture and literature Bogacheva Tatiana

As numerous academics have rightly pointed out1, nationalism is a modern creation that came only in the past few hundred years. It might as well be a temporary phenomenon, one of countless identities that have come and gone throughout human history. The XXI century does not only accelerates the time but also keeps us in the homogeneous space with cheap flights, international financial markets, the internet and cable TV channels2, common (or freely exchangeable) currencies, and on a different scale: universal standards of aesthetics, ethics, world literature, notions of contemporality, - all the privileges of modernity. In this little paper, a humble attempt to describe the decay of nationality will be made. The most frequently quoted is B.Andersons book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983).
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Simon Kuper. A question of identity. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/34783668-337011e2-aa83-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2ql6lLFRo

The decay of nationality: few accounts of outmoded term in everyday culture and literature

With the emergence of books as Why Read Marx Today? 3 and Why Marx was right4 in the west, it is justified to look at the orthodox marxist ideas from the only country marxs ideas were implemented in. According to Marx, state had always been an instrument of class oppression and thus it should eventually disappear for the lack of purpose. Revolutions in XX century did not withered away nationalities because it could not happen anywhere before the worldwide revolution is complete. But how does Marx describe capitalist society? The world became the focal point of both raw materials and commerce. Thus, while the bourgeois of each nation retained national interest, big industry created an international class in which nationality is dead5. He meant proletariat of course but it is not a live term now. The new international class which is created by big industries is class of consumers and nationality is as dead for it as it was for proletariat. Geographical division of labour made it more difficult to track the origin of goods and statements as made in Bangladesh dont promise us Bangladeshian product for it is made, perhaps, with Swedish design and English technologies. Exotic fruits we see in abundance in supermarkets dont necessarily evoke images of exotic countries we have never been and neither imported goods from neighbour countries. Those consumers who care where the goods they buy come from are odd ones. We have to recall another neo-marxism term cultural industry to make our next claim. It was first used by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the chapter The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment and refers to the commercial marketing culture (opposed to authentic culture) and not to be confused with mass culture. As any other industry, industry of entertainment is interested in capital increase and universal language of cinema, for example, provides an American media companies involved in the production and distribution of films and television programs to expand their sales market. Consumers are not force fed with Hollywood movies, indeed, they are given illusion of free choice. Robert McChesney argues that the media, far from providing a bedrock for freedom and democracy, have become a significant antidemocratic force in the United States and, to some extend, worldwide in his book Rich Media, Poor Democracy (1999). The rise of the novel goes hand-in-hand with the emergence of the modern nation-state. When it first appears in 18th-century Britain, the novel is among other things an exercise in nation-building 6 . Of a particular interest is one of the arguments of B.Anderson from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism: The idea of a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty time is a precise

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Jonathan Wolff. Why Read Marx Today? Terry Eagleton. Why Marx was right. 5 K. Marx, F. Engels. The German Ideology. p.73. 6 T. Eagleton's introduction to Nation and Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day.
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The decay of nationality: few accounts of outmoded term in everyday culture and literature

analogue of the idea of the nation7. If novel-as a genre-is inevitably associated with nation, there might be another genre which is better suited for nationless narratives. As Gerald Kennedy points out, The urgent need to make sense of contemporary culture and its violent preoccupations compels us to attend more closely as readers and critics to the fragmented images of twentieth-century life glimpsed in momentary clarity in the short story sequence 8. Postcolonial writers regard the genre as the most corresponding to the subjective reality they talk about9. Russian Disco, a bestseller in Europe by Russian emigrant Wladimir Kaminer, is a series of short autobiographical vignettes about life in the explosive multi-cultural atmosphere of 90s Berlin and Russia. It is worth to mention that the Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro whos regarded as a master of short story writing. However one wishes to account for the extraordinary profusion of story sequences in this (XX) century, their prominence as a fictional form seems indisputable10. Short story and short story cycle prove to be as contemporary for us as novel was in XVIII century and its rise with all the qualities attributed to it by writers who use this genre can signify the decay of nationalism. I view nationalism as an outsider11. Visiting my boyfriend in Germany, reading a French book translated into Polish and writing an article in English with background American music playing, Im doubting national culture. Knowing ones exact position in the universe is a privilege of the generations who didnt grow up in the cosmopolitan time. I dont want to say that cosmopolitanism is a bad thing or that I am not happy with my life and am lost in the world without my national identity (if so, I would be into something particularly Russian and provided how big Russia is I still would be exploring it in space) but rather I want to say that I dont feel justified to claim as Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Class of

B.Andersons. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, p. 26. 8 J. Gerald Kennedy. Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. p.14. 9 Z. Wicomb. South African Short Story Fiction and Orality. Reading in the Postcolonial Literatures in English, No 47 (2001). 10 J. Gerald Kennedy. Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. p.14. 11 This part of Simon Kupers who is writing about football as an anthropologist resonates in me and I dare to paraphrase this powerful and simple construction. I view nationalism as an outsider. Living in Paris with my American wife and my British passport, supporting Holland at football and South Africa at cricket, Im baffled that anyone would want to die for their country. Simon Kuper. A question of identity. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/34783668-3370-11e2-aa8300144feabdc0.html#ixzz2ql6lLFRo
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The decay of nationality: few accounts of outmoded term in everyday culture and literature

Elements-Clongowes-Wood College-Sallins County Kildare-Ireland-Europe-The World-The Universe.

Bibliography: 1. Benedict Andersons. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. 2. Bert N. Adams. Sociological Theory. Pine Forge Press, 2001. 3. Harry Cooper. Is European Nationalism Dead? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ 4. James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. http://www.gutenberg.org/ 5. Jonathan Wolff. Why Read Marx Today? Oxford Paperbacks, 2003. 6. J. Gerald Kennedy. Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. Cambridge University Press, 1995. 7. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers Co, 1970. 8. Patrick Parrinder. Nation and Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day. Oxford, 2006. 9. Robert W. McChesney. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 10. Simon Kuper. A question of identity. http://www.ft.com 11. Terry Eagleton. Why Marx was right. Yale University Press, 2012. 12. Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1997 13. Tomasz Wjcik. (Przed)ostatnia dekada. Lata 70-te w "Dzienniku" Jarosawa Iwaszkiewicza. (Nie)ciekawa epoka? Literatura i PRL. Warszawa: Elipsa, 2008. 14. Zo Wicomb. South African Short Story Fiction and Orality. Reading in the Postcolonial Literatures in English No 47 (2001).