Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities.

Orum, Anthony M.; Balibar, Étienne; Wallerstein, Immanuel

doi:10.2307/2074379

Cited by 39 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…What is being showcased in the Romanian rural novel is an aspect that was eluded by the local elites or was even impossible to accept for them before the Second World War, but which was confirmed by one of the most important studies on the nation and nationalism at the end of the twentieth century: nation-building has less to do with language, ethnicity, tradition, or shared histories, and much more to do with social emancipation (Hobsbawm, 1990;Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991). No matter how much institutional pressure or how much rhetorical energy was deployed by the promoters of the 'people-nation' myth, assimilating an 'imagined community' also involves a material dimension related to the social class, which is even more accentuated than suggested by Benedict Anderson's seminal study on nation-building (Anderson, 1991).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

2022

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Our article conducts a critical reassessment of one of the most influential cultural myths in Eastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the nationalist definition of peasantry as embodying the quintessence of the nation. In order to evaluate the imagological scope and ideological implications engendered by this so-called ‘people-nation myth’, we focus on the Romanian culture, whom we consider fully representative for the Eastern European context. More exactly, our study employs a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century, precisely the literary subgenre supposed to reflect the coalescence between the peasantry and the nation. By analysing the co-occurrences in these novels between words belonging to the vocabularies of nation and rurality, we aim at showing that – contrary to traditional historiographic consensus – nation building has less to do with language or ethnicity, and much more to do with social emancipation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

2022

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“…The Metaphysics of Hegel's Racism postulate a ranking between such groups should be conceptualized as forms of racism, too (e.g., Fanon 1994Fanon [1956; Memmi 1999Memmi [1982; Balibar and Wallerstein 1991;Blum 2020). Indeed, Hegel's claim that an 'absolute right of the Idea' (PhR: §350, 376) legitimates the colonial rule of 'civilized nations' over 'less advanced' ones (PhR: §351, 376) is logically independent of whether the difference between both is explained in terms of inherited features or not.…”

Section: Daniel James and Franz Knappikmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Metaphysics of Hegel's Racism: The Teleology of the ‘Concept’ and the Taxonomy of Races

James

Knappik²

2022

Hegel Bulletin

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This article interprets Hegel's hierarchical theory of race as an application of his general views about the metaphysics of classification and explanation. We begin by offering a reconstruction of Hegel's hierarchical theory of race based on the critical edition of relevant lecture transcripts: we argue that Hegel's position on race is appropriately classified as racist, that it postulates innate mental deficits of some races, and that it turns racism from an anthropological into a metaphysical doctrine by claiming that the division of humankind into races (at least in the Old World) is not a brute fact, but follows a ‘higher necessity’. We then summarize our interpretation of the relevant metaphysical background to this theory. On our reading, Hegel postulates an essentialist form of explanation that explains given kinds as stages in a teleological, non-temporal process through which the nature of a superordinate kind is realized. We argue that Hegel's views about a hierarchical and necessary division of humankind into races are an application of this model to the case of human diversity, motivated by explanatory considerations and subject to confirmation bias. By way of conclusion, we address two possible attempts to ‘save’ Hegelian philosophy from its racist baggage.

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“…First, ''the people'' is not a prefixed natural category, but a signifier that acquires meaning through a diversity of discourses. The idea that the signifier ''people'' is a discursive construct is illustrated by, for instance, theories on populism (see Canovan 2005;Laclau 2005aLaclau , 2005b and nationalism (see Balibar 1991;Hobsbawm 1990), discourses in which the people has a pivotal role (rendering it a nodal point Á see below). From this perspective, the essentializing and hegemonizing claims on the people can be seen as ways to generate coherent discursive structures that at the same time form strong interpellative forces to constitute political communities.…”

Section: Popular Culture and The Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting the populist claim on “the people” through popular culture: the 0110 concerts versus the Vlaams Belang

Cleen

Carpentier

2010

Social Semiotics

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Although they belong to different spheres, popular culture and populism can in some cases become intertwined and interlocked because they are both built around the antagonism between people and elite. Populist parties are often happy to associate themselves with popular culture as this allows them to strengthen their bond with the (signifier) people. This article looks at an inverse movement: the contestation of a populist party's claim on the people through popular culture. It analyzes the discursive struggle between the Flemish extreme-right populist party Vlaams Belang and 0110. On 1 October 2006, a series of concerts ''for tolerance, against racism, against extremism, and against gratuitous violence'' featuring many of Belgium's most popular artists from all kinds of genres, were held in four Belgian cities. The article shows how the organization behind the 0110 concerts managed to turn popular culture against the Vlaams Belang, thus questioning this party's claim on the signifier ''people''.

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Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities.

Cited by 39 publications

References 0 publications

The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

The peasant and the nation plot: a distant reading of the Romanian rural novel from the first half of the twentieth century

Exploring the Metaphysics of Hegel's Racism: The Teleology of the ‘Concept’ and the Taxonomy of Races

Contesting the populist claim on “the people” through popular culture: the 0110 concerts versus the Vlaams Belang

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