Performing AmericaKeyword PresentationAllen Jeffrey Gurfel

NATION

I. Definitions:

Political Science: A Comparative Introduction, Hague and Harrop

“A nation is a more elusive concept than a state,” write Hague and Harrop in Political

Science: A Comparitive Introduction. “[N]ations are people with homelands. “ This

distinguishes nations from tribes or ethnic groups (whatever those are, presumably

they can get up and move and it’s all the same). “When a group claims to be a nation,

it professes a right to self-determination within its homeland. It seeks

sovereignty . . . using or inventing a shared culture to justify its claim.”

So nations are political according to this definition, seeking to control their own

destinies.

Are they modern or ancient? If nations have claims to political self-determination

they’re modern—those are modern ideas. National identity serves modern

purposes. The free-market losers can take comfort in at least one thing: the progress

of the nation. It rationalizes war and dying for strangers like you.

“What is a Nation”, Ernest Renan

“Clifford Geertz believes human beings inherently develop an emotional and

spiritual affinity to a larger grouping than their immediate neighbors.” Ernest Renan

knew this in the late 19th century, writing: “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.

Two things constitute spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One

is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present- day

consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage

that one has received . . . A heroic past, great men, glory . . . the social capital upon

which one bases a national idea. Common glories in the past and a common will in

the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more -

the essential conditions for being a people.”

We see a shift toward nationhood as residing in the minds of people. “The nation is a

soul, a spiritual principle.”

Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson

“Definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - imagined as both

inherently limited and sovereign.

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know

most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of

each lives the image of their communion.

The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing

perhaps a billion living human beings has finite boundaries, beyond which lie other

nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind.

Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality

and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep,

horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over

the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as

willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by

nationalism: what makes the imaginings of recent history generate such colossal

sacrifices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of

nationalism.”

II. Thoughts on Nation and National Identity

A nation is at the very least a group of people. What binds a group into a nation is

not in the world but imagined in terms of mental life. In words, in symbols, images,

stories, narratives, and sounds. These elements are not cold. There is meaning,

emotion, affect attached to them. They carve reality and shape perception.

This must have been pragmatic during the rise of nation-states. It made sense, in

terms of basic survival, to join into ever larger groups as they were better able to

deploy the use of force, to imperialize, and to control resources.

Nations create relation between persons unknown and unseen. The bond has to be

nebulous. And to do the job it has to be symbolically invested with very deep

meaning.

Now experiment from Terror Management Theory. Two groups. One group is death-

primed; the other is not. Every participant took a computer questionnaire before

performing a task. One group had the word DEATH flash across the monitor, too

quick for conscious awareness. The other group did not. They’re given a task of

nailing a nail into the wall and hanging a crucifix. The only available tools were a nail

and a crucifix. Christian subjects who were primed took significantly longer to

attempt and complete the task. They expressed puzzlement. They tried to push the

nail into the wall with their fingers and palms. Those who were not primed

immediately banged the nail in using the crucifix as a hammer. A similar task was

done with a jar filled with black ink and marbles. The task was to remove the liquid

while keeping the marbles in. The only other item was a small American flag. Similar

results are seen when the priming is done with images of foreign faces and symbols.

This test result suggests a deep and profound attachment to the symbols of one’s

own culture, an attachment to one’s own values and ways of living. The results of

this and other experiments suggest that there is a deep anxiety caused by the

knowledge of death that is allayed by attachment to a culture bigger than yourself,

to a symbolic structure affirmed by all, to a fundamentally meaning-filled order of

value and symbols, to something nebulous and immortal. When a person’s way of

life is challenged by even the knowledge of other way’s of being there is this

extreme experimental result.

Think of the US immediately post-9/11.

National identity elicits profound allegiance by giving nationals the terms in which

to think the world and by serving a death-anxiety-allaying role.

In order to serve such a purpose national identity must be very broad,

encompassing numerous more local and concrete identities.

It is necessarily vague and broad, because a singular, concrete identity cannot do the

symbolic work necessary for the allaying of death-anxiety. It is further necessarily

qualitatively different for it is invented, and not a fact the way sex, color, or

orientation are. There is nothing in the fact of my orientation per se that gives me a

realm of meaning to make my own. The nation offers that by definition. That is what

it does. That is the kind of bond it is.

National identities are always of a certain type. They are moral, historic-positioning

identities. Morality is so strongly felt individually. It would figure in the national

space. Histories are parts of possible worlds to which groups seek to lay claim; the

group has to be symbolically on the right side of things.

When a nation grows, becoming highly diversified, encompassing numerous smaller

identities and groups the symbolic realm must grow to accommodate, become

totalitarian, or face serious strain. This is one reason for the astounding

hyperactivity of American culture production. Is it stardust concealing a very

profound emptiness beneath opened up by a historically huge ideological rift?

Having this vast symbolic existence, other identities are played out against or

within the frame of the nation.

III. Examples

I went to the Sarah Palin Glenn Beck rally in DC. “Either you’re an American or I am”

or I am is the feeling I left with. “I’m a New Yorker,” I said to one group. They just

turned around and walked away. Another man tells me “you’re a real American for

driving up here for this”. If he only knew. They see no symbolic bond between us. All

that binds us is that we live in the same cultural space. We deal with the same

symbols. The signifiers are the same. What is signified its meaning, its emotional,

moral and historical fault-lines are and can be contested, to a point.

Can the notion of nation and national identity help us critically analyze Lana Del

Rey? And can Lana Del Rey help us critically analyze national identity?

Lana Del Rey has wrapped herself in the signs of America. Del Rey is a 1980’s model

of Ford, the American car company. She’s described herself as a “gangsta’ Nancy

Sinatra”. Her songs include National Anthem, American, and Blue Jeans.

There is a pattern in her videos. There are scenes of golden hour glory, exuberant

happiness, but the scenes are in slow motion, removing viewer immediacy. They are

accompanied by mournful music. She describes her own sound as “Hollywood

sadcore”.

The National Anthem video contains American images galore, imploying all the

mythology of Kennedy’s Camelot, Marilyn’s singing Happy Birthday, and the

meanings of interracial relationship in America. These symbols have valence

specifically for Americans, though their meanings might be contested.

Lana deals in symbols of American mythology to create nostalgia for a meaning-

imbued world that once was. Or was it? At any rate, the nostalgia is certain, but what

is it more specifically? For young people the answer might be, I think, stronger

national identity. Interestingly this is positioned against materialism and the

worship of fame in Lana’s songs. Are the two incompatible? Matthew 6:24: “You

cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve God and money.” Is a national identity

so different from a religion?

In the Ride video in the end monologue Lana’s character says, “I believe in the

country America used to be.”

A short story excerpt. A gay boy of 20 standing outside a New York club late at night,

first-person narration.

“

I’m starting to get a little buzzed. I’m standing outside smoking a cigarette.

It’s 2013. No smoking indoors. No nothing anywhere. How can I miss a world I

never knew? You read Huckleberry what’s-his-face? He goes on a fucking adventure.

He hops on a fucking riverboat. No one calls child services. There was a time when

you could say ‘I’m going to follow my heart’ — and really mean it, not like that self-

help shit today. Yeah, there was fucking destiny and shit. There used to be the

frontier. The Wild West. The wilderness. America. Recreate yourself. Start anew. We

came to the sea on the other side. We covered the whole thing. The trembling realm

of possibility moved to the cities. If you wanted to reinvent yourself, if you struck

out in the little town of your birth my love, you needed only to move to America’s

great cities. Come to New York. No more wandering in the desert. No matter who

you are, you’ll find a place. Someone will embrace you whether on the Upper East

Side or in the East Village, Harlem or Chelsea.

I’m with Mother Regina the Supreme, a bizarre hybrid of Mary, Andy Warhol, The

Joker and Nicole Kidman as photographed by Annie Leibowitz. I glance up the street.

It’s Molly and Powder.

“

Here you can see how a gay identity is being played out within the national frame.

As in Lana Del Rey, there’s a nostalgia for a personally unlived history, for an idea of

America. There is a reaction against a strangling suffocating Law. There is desire for

the yet undiscovered and new that is doomed to be unfulfilled because all is

discovered. The symbolism speaks gay identity, speaks the desire to be genuine, to

be welcomed, to subvert, to create, to progress and to be American in numerous

ways.

IV. Discussion Questions

What if anything is the essential bond between members of a nation? What do you

think the word “nation” means?

How can we apply notions of nation and national identity to analyze performances

such as Nuestro Himno? How can we apply them to attempt an explanation of why

the song caused controversy? How do you feel about the song and why?

How does national identity interact with, fit within, or encompass other identities?

How do you experience your own national identity?