"We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians," declared
Massimo d'Azeglio during the first meeting of the Italian
Parliament. A little over 100 years old, the nation-state was
the most tangible product of the political practical experience
in the pragmatic context whose underlying structure is so well
reflected in literacy. Together with the nation-state, the
modern notion of nationality was defined and became a major
force of political life. As part of the political consciousness
in the age of industrial production, national consciousness
played a very precise role, ultimately expressed in all forms of
nationalism. It unified all those whose similarities in
biological characteristics, language, lore, and practical
experiences were constituted in a framework of shared resources
and political goals. Germany came into existence through a
unifying language (Hoch Deutsch) and was consolidated through its
literacy. Italy went through a similar process. In other
instances, nations were born as a result of voluntary political
acts: the United States, the nations declared independent after
the fall of the Soviet Union, Croatia, Macedonia, some of the
Arab countries, and a number of African nation-states, once
colonial powers could no longer afford to resist the force of
change. As with everything pertaining to politics, national
politics entails expectations corresponding to past phases (the
basic passions that once made up tribal solidarity), to
instances of human interaction well overhauled by the new
realities of the integrated world.
What, if any, explanation can one find in the dissolution of
Yugoslavia? Against the background of conflict in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, this question has divided many well
intentioned intellectuals (not only in France) inclined to solve
an absurd situation of genocide. Intellectuals questioned what
appeared to be irreducible religious contradictions between
Catholic and Orthodox Christians, or between Christians and
Moslems. The old conflict between the pro-fascist Croatian Ustash
and the Serbian Chetniks dedicated to the vain goal of a greater
Serbia was also on their minds. They also wondered what the
chances of the new nation-states of Estonia, Lithuania, and
Latvia, and many of the autonomous regions and republics of the
former Soviet Union were. How will the Commonwealth of
Independent States function once goals and purposes of
nation-states take over those assumed in a nebulously defined
commonwealth? And how can one explain the enormous discrepancy
between the attempt to constitute a broad European Community
(actually, the United Markets of Europe), while other parts of
Europe break into small nation-states? How much of the
underlying tribalism, or provincialism, or religious adherence,
or how much of the functions of literacy at work can be read in
the political fervor of nationalistic activism of our day? One
answer, no matter how encouraging, cannot address a full
paragraph of questions. These questions suggest that the
politics of nations is so multifaceted that understanding it
requires not so much rehashing the past but focusing on the broad
picture of its dynamics.
Between the old city-state, the early empire (Roman, Byzantine),
the medieval world of local attachments (pertaining to shared
space used mainly for agriculture, and under the firm grip of
the Papacy), and today's world of mass immigration and human
displacement (for political, economic, religious, or
psychological reasons), we find inserted the settled universe of
nation-states and their respective literacies. In this universe,
literacy and religion undergird the legal system. Politics
defines national identity, subsuming language, ethnicity, ways
of working, culture, superstitions, prejudice, art, and science.
Within the nation-state's borders, citizens are subjected to a
political practical experience of homogeneity, centralism, and
uniformity, required by the efficiency expectations of the
Industrial Revolution. The ideal of cosmopolis, the all-
embracing empire of reason declared by the Stoics, runs counter
to the ideal of the nation-state, which celebrates national
reason and willingness to compete with others.
When the pragmatic circumstances leading to today's global
economy started exercising their action, an all-embracing empire
of a different nature resulted. The new statement says that
Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, animists, even atheists,
although bearing a national identity, are part of the global
economy. Not surprisingly, political action and economic
integration each run its own course. Commerce, with all its
imbalances and unfairness, the almost uncontrollable financial
dynamics, and migration of industries take more and more
frequently what appears as the necessary path of globality.
Politics, even when it acknowledges globality, focuses on
national definitions. To an outside observer, a nation's
politics appears insignificant, powerless in comparison to
economic forces, although it claims to control these forces
through monetary policies, labor laws, and trade regulations.
The trans-national world has its own impetus. It continues to
evade political constraints, ascertaining its own life. It was
described from the perspective of its financial and economic
condition as The Borderless World (the title of Kenichi Ohmae's
book), within which nationality counts only marginally. This is
yet another reason for the low interest in public life on the
part of the wealthy in our days.
When the new southern republics freed by the breakdown of the
Soviet Union debate which form of writing they should
adopt-Arabic, Cyrillic, or Roman-and how to define their
respective nations, they still look for national identifiers.
Turkmanis and Uzbekistanis, Latvians and Estonians, Ukrainians
and Georgians, Hungarians and Romanians, and enterprising Poles
comb their territories in search of business opportunities. The
same takes place in many other countries, whose citizens are
obsessed more with prosperity than with sovereignty, with access
to financial means more than with self-determination, and with
cooperative effort, even involving traditional enemies, more
than with a constitutional foundation or universal protection of
human rights. Interestingly enough, while national identity is
more and more superseded by people's a-nationality, many new
countries, emerging as a result of the asserted right to
self-determination, face as their first task not the future but
the past: definition of their national identity. Nevertheless,
the civilization of illiteracy does not promise that Italians
can be made for all these new countries. Rather, these nations
will become, in not necessarily satisfying ways, a-nationals,
citizens of the world economy. Many of them will make up the new
immigrant populations settled in ethnic neighborhoods where
access to consumption will arouse a nostalgia for some remote
homeland.
No one can or should generalize. Many prejudices still heat the
furnaces of hatred and intolerance. Enough citadels from the
past pragmatic framework maintain hopes for expansion and
cultivate a politics appropriate to ages long passed. But
regardless of such unsettling developments, the nation-state
enters an age of denationalization, absorbed into a world of
economic globality, less and less dependent on the individual
and thus less and less subject to political dogma.