This America: The Case for the Nation (2019)
Jill Lepore (1966)
150 pages
In her essay This America: The Case for the Nation, historian and author Jill Lepore proposes rehabilitating the term nationalism from the extremely negative connotations it has come to have. Allowing the current pejorative image of nationalism to dominate has had the consequence, she argues, of sullying by association the concept of the nation, and so undermining the critical role of the nation-state in defending common, civic values.
Historians have been culpable in enabling this situation, according to Lepore. In the mid-1900’s, having witnessed a long series of destructive civil wars and international conflicts enflamed by national pride and prejudice gone mad, scholars hoped to help this dominant, destructive form of nationalism disappear by ignoring it. In its stead, they turned their attention to studying and writing about globalization and the growing interconnectedness of the world, as well as groups and identities within or across national boundaries. But, Lepore notes: “Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past. They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues, but get it they will.” (19-20) And so, as scholars left the writing of the stories of nations to those who invent and promulgate historical narratives tailored to their goals, the void was filled with narratives built around destructive images of nativist purity and hatred of others, and calls for violent action to defend a mythical heritage.
Having established her concern about the current nature of nationalism and its impact on our social and political situation, Lepore looks back, to the origins of nations. She notes that, originally, nations formed around people who shared a common descent and lived in a fairly contained region. Gradually, however, nations came to be defined more in a geographic sense, often encompassing people of varied, at best loosely related, backgrounds. To govern these nations of peoples, political communities then arose, leading to the idea of the nation-state.
Turning her focus on the United States in particular, Lepore points out that the US turned this typical origin story of the nation-state on its head: the government (the state) came first, with a national government established to rule the original, fairly independent, thirteen colonies, and the concept of a nation having to be developed in the wake of the creation of the state. Thus, she writes, the US originated, in a sense, as a state-nation.
As a consequence, in the early 1800’s, the original “nationalists” in the US were those who sought to develop and enhance federal power over state’s rights. By creating a story of the nation as centered around the founding of American democracy, they aimed to generate a feeling among the distinct populations of the states of belonging to a single, common polity. With the growing political and social conflict over slavery and finally the Civil War, however, this concept of nationalism split into two opposing strands: “liberal or civic nationalism, an attachment to a set of civic ideals, [and] illiberal or ethnic nationalism, nativism, racism, and recourse to aggression.” (58)
Lepore argues that both strands have remained present over the past century and a half. Describing their evolution, she notes that, on the one hand, a “race-based nationalism … endures, a scourge to the country and the world” (59), leading to the justification of violence and terror toward anyone not considered part of the “true” America, as the country has witnessed coming to a head again now, in early 2021.
On the other hand, a liberal nationalism, as embodied by, for example, Abraham Lincoln, has also remained present. It has defended civil rights, and supported an on-going expansion of these rights to a broader set of groups within the country. Admittedly, she notes, these advances have come in fits and starts, with whole segments of American society – Native Americans, women, blacks – having to agitate and fight to have their past honestly told as a part of the story of the nation, as well as to be acknowledged as active participants in forming its future.
In This American, Lepore argues that it is high time for scholars to re-engage in the defense and support of liberal nationalism, to write the true history of the American nation, telling a comprehensive story of the good and the bad that has occurred in American history. In so doing, historians can make the case for the importance of the nation to engage as a defender of the values of civic liberalism for its citizens, as opposed to continuing down the destructive path of illiberal nationalism.
For while it may be, she notes, that at some point in the future nations no longer exist – that civilization arranges around some other structure – for the moment and the foreseeable future nations are here to stay. And so the nation, and the political states that govern them, remain the best hope for realizing and protecting the civic goals of “equality, citizenship and equal rights” (137) for a nation’s people.
Other notes and information:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
No comments:
Post a Comment