Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 26: On Patriotism and Nationalism — with Jerry Zaslove & Nermin Gogalic
Speakers: Melissa Roach, Maria Cecilia Saba, Jamie-Leigh Gonzales, Paige Smith, Am Johal, Nermin Gogalic, Jerry Zaslove
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Melissa Roach 0:06
You’re listening to Below the Radar, a knowledge mobilization project recorded out of 312 Main. This podcast is produced by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.
Maria Cecilia Saba 0:17
Below the Radar brings forward ideas to encourage meaningful exchanges across communities.
Jamie-Leigh Gonzales 0:21
Each episode we interview guests on topics ranging from environmental and social justice, arts, culture, community building, and urban issues. This podcast is recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
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Paige Smith 0:40
Hello listeners, my name is Paige Smith with SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, and thank you for joining us on Below the Radar. In this episode, our host Am Johal sits down with esteemed Professor and writer of Literature and Humanities Jerry Zaslove, alongside liberal studies graduate student Nermin Gogalic to discuss the relationship between nationalism and patriotism. They examine these similarities and differences through the lens of personal identity and political transformation as seen in the former state of Yugoslavia. Jerry and Nermin delve into the building blocks of both ideologies, including examining what makes someone an “other,” the creation of national borders, and the use of political institutions to express these ideologies.
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Am Johal 1:30
Welcome to Below the Radar, really happy that you could join us. We are with Jerry Zaslove, one of the founding faculty members of Simon Fraser University, from way back in 1965, but has done so many amazing things, like set up the Institute for the Humanities, teaches in graduate liberal studies. But we fondly know him as the original Jay Z. And he is a living legend if there ever was one. And Nermin Gogalic, who is a graduate student in liberal studies.
Am Johal 2:07
Last year as part of the Vancouver Institute for Social Research series at the Or Gallery. Jerry and Nero (Nermin) were in a conversation about the former state of Yugoslavia. They had discussions around nationalism and fascism, and discussions around identity in the post-Yugoslavia environment. We are hoping to continue that conversation this afternoon. Welcome to both of you.
Nermin Gogalic 2:36
Thank you.
Jerry Zaslove 2:36
Thank you Am.
Am Johal 2:37
I thought we would start with picking up the conversation that both of you started at the Or Gallery which was a little over a year ago, and I am wondering if you can start off with where the premise of that conversation began and maybe we can start there.
Nermin Gogalic 2:55
Absolutely, the conversation was more about the question of identity and political transition in the post-Yugoslavia environment, and when one discusses this then inevitably you will lead on the subjects of Nationalism and Patriotism. And today we can maybe talk about Nationalism in a broader and more general sense, but maybe a good starting point -- at least as good as any other -- could be former Yugoslavia. Why this is a good starting point for the conversation is the fact that former Yugoslavia fell apart in an obviously very violent civil war in the beginning of the 90s, and the end of the Yogoslav political and social project came about due to a number of reasons, including the economical crisis, geo-political circumstances of the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe a lack of certain types of reforms that should have happened and didn’t happen in time, but the major aspect of it was actually the rise of Nationalism. And it was the rise of Nationalism that led to the civil war, and led to the end of former Yugoslavia. A violent end of this social and political project that lived for 45 years since the end of the second world war till the early 90s. The rise of Nationalism in the former Yugoslavia started in Serbia, and this is a historical fact that shouldn’t be ignored. This doesn’t mean the problem was only situated there and that the blame for the conflict should be directed solely to the Serbian part, but it did start there. It was orchestrated by the elites in Belgrade. It was orchestrated in the urban archipelago, but the recruits for the conflict came from secluded and rural areas. The rise of Nationalism in former Yugoslavia started in Serbia, but it was welcomed on every other part of the country. It was welcomed in Croatia, Slovenia, later on in Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Kosovo as well.
Nermin Gogalic 5:26
I think when we consider Nationalism and Patriotism, and when we talk about Nationalism and Patriotism in former Yugoslavia you will have two points of view. I think that spills over into Europe as well, and the world at large. The most common view separates Nationalism and Patriotism, and views it as two completely opposite phenomenons. And then on the margin, on the left of the political spectrum, you will have those people who will criticise Patriotism heavily and who will view Patriotism and Nationalism as basically two sides of the same coin. Recently, I was reading George Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism.” This is an essay that was written in 1945, in October if I am not mistaken. So very early after the second World War, and in this very interesting essay, right in the beginning in the first paragraph of the essay, George Orwell writes as follows. He says:
“Nationalism is not be confused with Patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.”
Nermin Gogalic 7:00
And to put that in historical and social context, and maybe to better understand why someone who is obviously on the left would write in this matter. I think it is very hard to criticize Patriotism in general. How can you criticize love for a homeland? It’s almost impossible. It’s a very, very slippery slope. A very hard position to take and defend. Especially in 1945, when English Patriotism won the second World War, and defeated the Nazism. Then these lines maybe make more sense.
Nermin Gogalic 7:37
Also, in preparing for the talk I was rereading a very important, in my opinion, essay on Nationalism written by Danilo Kis, who was one of the most talented and major writers who came out of the former Yugoslavia. Danilo Kis, his family and himself, he comes from the Yiddish civilization, the central European Jewish civilization, that unfortunately disappeared during the second World War. And for him, he views Nationalism and Patriotism in a completely different matter. I’d say both of them, if we had to say, if you had to brand them in a political sense, they would probably both be social democrats more than anything else. So they have a similar position on the political spectrum, but their views of Nationalism and Patriotism, as you will see when I read the Danilo Kis quote, are very different. Danilo Kis in his essay “On Nationalism,” writes as follows. For him, “Nationalism is kitsch. In its Serbo-Croatian version, it takes the form of squabbling over the national origin of those traditional Ginger-Bread Heart” tops with coloured sugar. He goes on to say, “Kitsch and folklore, or rather folkloric kitsch, is nothing else but disguised nationalism. It is fertile ground for nationalistic ideology.” And in his opinion, the expansion of folklore studies, both in Yugoslavia and the world at large, is due to Nationalism rather than Anthropology. So we see how Danilo Kis has a much more radical view of Patriotism. He doesn’t say Patriotism in these lines, but this is obviously what he is referring to. These are two very different opinions on the same subject; it is interesting that they come from the same part of the political left.
Nermin Gogalic 9:51
To understand this better, we have to think about Patriotism in terms of what kinds of conditions are required for Patriotism to grow. Zygmunt Bauman talks about this in his seminal work, “Liquid Modernity.” There is a chapter that is devoted exclusively to Patriotism and Nationalism, and there he talks about Patriotism as something that places, or rather lands, “where Patriotism is not a problem are those where societies are secure enough in their republican citizenship not to worry about Patriotism as a problem.” Good examples of this would be the United States, maybe Canada, maybe England. Places who have been very efficient in exporting their conflicts for the better part of the last 200, or 300 years, and especially recently in the 20th century. That is a place where Patriotism can grow and feel comfortable, and where it will rarely be criticized. On the other hand, there is not much room for Patriotism in a place like former Yugoslavia. In all of the newly established nation states of former Yugoslavia that came out this civil war and came out of a right-wing revolution, there is absolutely no room for Patriotism there, in my opinion, because even in places like Canada and the United States when Patriotism and Patriotic sentiments are tested by conflict or political crisis, they have a tendency to spill over into Nationalism. That isn’t something that is obvious to those who want to discuss it and view it.
Am Johal 11:59
I am going to jump in here to see if Jerry wanted to share some things on the distinction between Nationalism and Patriotism. Jerry, you have of course travelled a lot through former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe before it fell, but you’ve seen this spectrum of Nationalism in various points in your life and your own reading of history.
Jerry Zaslove 12:26
Thank you Am, and thanks for having me talk with my friend Nero and you. Let me start with one word, and Nero just used: “former.” Former tells you a lot about cultural memory and political memory, and if you just adding that one word to Nationalism and Patriotism. Nationalism didn’t exist until, we might say, the Enlightenment period. The concept of nation state was an undeveloped concept politically and in social theory. And this is what Marx tried to deal with, for example, and others, including John Stuart Mill. They were trying to find the laws in history that lead to the creation of the nation state. Now, is history driven by class conflict, which is where Marx took the historical trajectory, that is to say that the forces of production that lead to surplus and the elimination of certain classes, and the reduction of class conflict to warfare. At the same time, in the 18th century or after the 30 years war, the religious wars that helped form the European border, the question of revolution comes to the historical stage, and if you read Hegel, the question of how you read history. So do you read history in retrospect, in terms of the development of nations, or are there other historical laws that one has to look at?
Jerry Zaslove 14:44
Where Nero comes from, and we talked about this before, the kinds of conflicts that developed as seen from the point of view of Orwell and British empire building as backwards nations. So what is the concept of “backwardness” about? What is that concept of “backwardness”? Backwardness produces the sense that there are people who are not circumscribed by national borders. They are somewhere else. They are strangers and they wander. They have to make a home, getting around to the point of a homeland. When you start talking about homeland and people wandering — Georg Simmel has this wonderful essay titled The Stranger: “The stranger is someone who came yesterday, stays today, and we don’t know if they are going to stay tomorrow.” He is ready to move, his bags are packed, maybe he doesn’t even have bags.
Nermin Gogalic 15:58
And therefore he is suspicious. We can’t trust him.
Jerry Zaslove 16:02
You can’t trust him, but he carries something with him. He carries the idea of what I would call the l’étranger, something different, something that has not assimilated. Not just politically, and this is the point I wanted to make for Am and for us today is that he carries something that began to called culture. Along with the Enlightenment, there was a missing link with the development of nation states, and that’s that the religion, place, class, institutions were in a formative stage based on industrialization. Industrialization was the great leveler that was going to introduce something that would unite through treaties, for example the Treaty of Trianon after World War One, had established the boarders of your homeland. Here is my point, something almost invisible emerges with the creation of the state, nation, or is the nation state, or is it the ethnic state? That becomes a cultural issue, but why cultural? Because new institutions have to be formed, out of language, schooling, law. So what do you with this nondescript concept called “culture.” Where does it go? But what you do with it, you ethnisize it. That’s what you do. The foreigner, the stranger, is bringing something -- and this is what is interesting about using the word former -- bringing something new to me. You are a carrier of culture, as well as identity. Does that make any sense?
Nermin Gogalic 18:00
It absolutely does. I think that is exactly what Kis was writing about when he says that Nationalism in a Serbo-Croatian varent, the Nationalistic Kitsch, takes the form of squabelling over the national orgins of the traditional ginger bread men. It sounds grotesque almost, it sounds laughable, but it is the reality. They are fighting for the cultural heritage and the cultural history that was there before the idea of the nation state. That was there and still is, on both sides of the border, but they want to acquire it for themselves so they would be able to build their national platform and cultural platform on those acquired elements of shared cultural history.
Jerry Zaslove 18:49
So what Capitalism does in its early stages, in its manufacturing stages, in its urban stages, it needs to also provide what I would call, and Ernest Gellner also talks about this, a libratory idea. Something that would enable a people to be formed and also participate in this new post-enlightenment, capitalist, whatever you want to call it, to some concept that unites the outsiders. If the imperial, colonial democracies with their concept of, what I would say, Kantian ethical tutelage, can teach those people who are “backward” something about our culture, who have to somewhere help institutionalize their language and their culture, but how do you do that? How do you assimilate that?
Am Johal 19:50
I want to pick up on this point that you brought up Jerry, about industrialization and the development of the nation state in a kind of post-westphalian context, because you do see as you have acceleration of this modernist project, particularly after the First World War, where people culturally impacted by the war, you have these right-wing, neo-conservative, neo-fascist thinkers. People like Ernst Junger when he writes about total mobilization in terms of use of the state towards particular ends, or Carl Schmitt talking about the friend-enemy distinction, and I am wondering how some of the, in terms of thinking about the nation in these very different ways, they don’t just come from the philosophical tradition cuts across the political sphere in some sense. Some of these ultra-conservative thinkers, neo-fasist thinkers, in a way bring something to bear onto this notion of the nation state itself.
Jerry Zaslove 20:57
Nationalism becomes symbolic at this point, throughout the transition from “backwardness.” Whether Capitalism can exist in a single country or across borders becomes part of the dialectic that you are talking about. Nationalism and early internationalism across borders has to promote first of all industry, it has to create a class of workers that can be established in its home country. This means dialectically, if you look at Hegel or Marx, the creation not only of a cultural concept, what is cultural? And this is where Orwell kind of falls down and tries to pick up because the national British project was to introduce British culture into the colonial countries. Not just through institutions such as school or religion. British Imperialism in the Middle East and elsewhere introduces the idea of British-ness, English-ness, to which the “backward” people —
Nermin Gogalic 22:07
— have to adjust.
Jerry Zaslove 22:09
Not only adjust, but imitate, mime. And it means the creation of, as Orwell himself was a bureaucrat (an intelligent one in India), it means the creation of an Indigenous bureaucratic class to create the transitional institutions that enable the colonial to provide labour, but also to thrive and distribute their products. Now, can this happen in one territory like the former Yugoslavia?
Nermin Gogalic 22:42
Or Ex-Yugoslavia is another one.
Jerry Zaslove 22:44
Okay, so in response to Am, the political then meets ethnicity. It doesn’t know what to do with it. What do you do with ethnicity? What do you do with brown skinned people? What you do with it, is you think in terms of your own national traditions who is ethnics, outsiders, like those other people in your culture. Well, what do you do? You turn to Christianity, “the Jews are outsiders.” And Muslims, Islamic are outsiders. So there is a history of colonial empire building homeland of having to deal with not just the proletarian class, or the underclass, but have to deal with those people who never had real nations before. So, the point is, nationalism, at this point is really interesting in what you were quoting before.
Am Johal 23:46
In some sense the way you talk about nationalism from this period, you could map it onto the contemporary and the now, in the sense that the nationalisms we see today, be it Modi in India, or Erdoğan in Turkey, or Viktor Orbán, or the orange man down south. Is the creation of an enemy or creation of the “other” within one’s own borders, and also a creation of an enemy outside the border, and that the strong man is the one who has the answer. There is a template that we are talking about that comes from a previous place that we can place on to the now.
Nermin Gogalic 24:29
There is this one typical narrative on the right, which we can see unfolding right now south of the border. You have to, as a strong leader, as a nationalistic leader, or in terms of Donald Trump people might say Patriotistic, you have to convince those who are in the majority that they are the ones who are actually in danger. If we look down south of the border, that is exactly what is happening right now. The white people in the United States of America are still very much the majority in terms of population, but the way they describe their reality right now is that they feel endangered in their own country, and that is something was displaced Nazi Germany, in the 90s in former Yugoslavia as well. It is a very typical narrative that just comes up over and over again, and we are witnessing it right now in the States. Obviously, there is not much talk about American nationalism, but there is a lot of talk about American patriotism, and not everybody talks about it all the time. It feels like the country is based on it. It’s almost impossible to critique it. I don’t think any politician could survive that point of view. To critique American patriotism I think is equal to political death. I don’t think we’ll hear anything about that anytime soon. Not even from such characters as Sanders or anybody else, because you can not survive that.
Jerry Zaslove 26:18
This is why the mainstream media, which by the way only rarely interviews academics or people who have some history with these ideas, why the mainstream media talks about unification and division they blame Trump for dividing the country. The answer to that, is what I would call a sublime, super national concept of nationalism. It means somewhere Americans have figured it out, and that our nationalism is different from any peoples’ former nationalism. We’re above that.
Nermin Gogalic 27:04
We’re the good guys.
Jerry Zaslove 27:05
We’re the good guys. And our nationalism has a history. The way in which we have developed across the western hemisphere is that we are diffussionist, the sociologist maybe call us diffussionist, they spread out. They aren’t colonialist, they are diffussionist. So what does that mean? It means, what is the political institution that can contain American nationalism? What is the institution that can actually express it, contain it? We know what it is: defending Europe, defending territories in Latin America, it meant the Vietnam War. It means fighting against other nationalist forces. Communism becomes Russian nationalism. My point in what you were talking about is that nationalism is a fake universalism, particularly in American life. It’s a symbolic way of identifying your ethnic particularity, but if you try to translate it into universalism, medical care, race justice, courts, prisons, I mean look at the number of blacks and hispanics that are in the prisons in the United States, look at the police forces, just add up the police forces in the United States, military, state, community, that are the infrastructure of the symbolic nationalism. I’ll stop there.
Nermin Gogalic 28:47
I think the case with nationalism of Zygmunt Bauman, going back to that very important book of his, he says that nationalism, this is a figurative way to talk about it, but I think it's very much on point, he says, “nationalism locks the door, pulls out the door knockers, and disables the door bells declaring that only those in side have the right to be there and settle there for good.” When you think about that in the context of the former Yugoslavia civil war, the civil war from the early 90s, this rings through. The case was basically exactly like this. Those members of the same ethnicity who found themselves outside the border, outside of these locked doors, who tried to come in during the conflict were never welcomed on all of the sides. So the Croatians from Bosnia and Herzegovina who came to Croatia during the conflict, being ethnically Croatians, were not welcome. They were viewed as the “others.” The same thing happened in Serbia, when unfortunately through ethnic cleansing, people were made into refugees and seeked refuge within the borders of Serbia, where they logically should seek refuge because they are Serbs, but they are Serbs from Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. So when they came to Serbia, they were not welcome there. And the same thing happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a smaller scale with ethnic Muslims from Montenegro and Serbia from this historical region called the Sandžak. When they tried to, because they were exposed to Serbia nationalism and they were pushed out of their villages and towns and cities, and they seeked refuge in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They were not welcome there. So this statement of Bauman’s is very much on point, and tells us a lot about how nationalism functions and what are its dynamics.
Am Johal 30:59
It's an interesting point because there are examples where the state in cases of conflict, it is very clear where these burgeoning nationalisms are making choices about who’s in and who's out. But even in what you might call a stable, democratic context you have the use of the state in the formation of the social order. The state is so involved in the ordering project. In the Canadian context, one of the critics of multiculturalism is very much that it is a state driven project, that’s built around a welcoming of all, but it smooths over the differences, it smooths over the hierarchies that are in place. It is very much a state driven sorta narrative project with policies, institutions that is meant to present a kind of window into the future.
Nermin Gogalic 31:54
Yes, but given the actual political climate it feels really hard to critique multiculturalism, doesn’t it? But then on the other hand, I think you are very much right, and Peyman Vahabzadeh professor at the University of Victoria sociologist professor wrote a very interesting book called “Exilic Meditations,” where he talks about this a lot, because his experience is that of exile. He came to Canada from Iran, and he critiques the hyphen identity and multiculturalism, because he says that, “yes, it does welcome you and give you a certain space, but it designates that space for you, and it gives you only that space.” This is your space, you are welcome, you can live with us, you can live among us, you are welcome here, but this is where you have to be. And we will remind you of your place with this hyphen. Because you are “Iranian-Canadian,” or you are “Chinese-Canadian,” but you never are “British-Canadian.” Because if you are British then you are Canadian, there is no hyphen there, but there is a hyphen when you come from other places in the world. I believe he has made some very interesting points there, and I do agree with his critique. I think that it is important to have that in mind.
Jerry Zaslove 33:17
Peyman Vahabzadeh has also just wrote a book on violence. Going back to this carrier of another culture: who carries that culture? The idea that somebody is not only different from you, but carriers a racial quality. Ethnic nationalism based on borders, and of course the passport begins in the late 18th century and the 19th century — the use of the passport, the building of dams that blocked movement of people. The idea that the state, the nation state, can control randomness, can control that which we historically haven’t been able to control except through Tsarism, Prussianism, former kingdoms that managed to — Austro-Hungarianism could control what people like Žižek and others called the psychological randomness of people who can not be identified. Are they going to be identified by what? By their language, by their looks, by their colour? Or are they going to be identified by some transcendent concept like class? You can join across borders by saying that the working class has some common denominator in the building of what? In the building of society, but no one knows what society actually is. We know what culture is, and as Weber pointed out we know what community is. You know, Gesellshaft and Gemeinschaft. Gemeinschaft means that which is together and joins together. Gesellshaft is a business. Gesellshaft means administrative structures that are institutionalized. So, where do you put people who are not just marginalized, but carry their interesting stories with them that have not been written down. This comes to Benjamin’s point and his thesis… who writes down the stories of, Islamic culture had a long history of literacy.
Am Johal 35:39
I am glad you brought up Benjamin, cause I was like, we are 30 minutes into the interview and Jerry Zaslove hasn’t mentions Walter Benjamin once. But I am still disappointed that there has been no mention of Kafka.
Nermin Gogalic 35:50
We’ll get there!
Jerry Zaslove 35:50
Kafka and Brecht used to, in different ways, would say that you changed your ethnicity or legitimacy simply by crossing the street in Central Europe, Mitteleuropa. Nobody knows where Central Europe is, but if you cross the street and you became a different person.
Am Johal 36:09
Central Europe, having studied in Hungary, they call themselves Central Europe, because they always want to post the Eastern Europe to the East of them, because they are not in the East.
Nermin Gogalic 36:19
Nobody embraces the Eastern Europe — everybody finds a way to wiggle out of it. Former Yugoslavia was not part of the Eastern Bloc, but in the West a lot of people forget that, or they don’t even care, so they push you into the Eastern Europe, and then we will try to explain —
Am Johal 36:42
When you tell people you are from Rijeka, they say, “oh I travelled to Prague once.”
Nermin Gogalic 36:47
Exactly! And these things happen, and I’m not offended by it, I actually find it funny. But the problem with Central Europe, as you guys already said, where is it? It’s in more than one place for sure, depending on who you talk with. It’s not a geographical term, but more a political if not almost philosophical. And when you look at a map of Europe, you will find that Prague is more to the West than Vienna. And if you talk to people and tell them that Vienna is in Eastern Europe they will tell you you are crazy, and if you tell them Prague is in Western Europe you will have the same answer. But if you look at the map, it definitely shows the facts.
Am Johal 37:34
At your talk at the Or, one of the things that you talked about was Rijeka, the city that you come from. It’s the third biggest city in Croatia, and trying to read this question of identity through the history of the city and how you think about it today.
Nermin Gogalic 37:54
Well it is a very complex question, obviously the reality today is that Rijeka is a city in the North-West of Croatia, and it is obviously in that term considered a Croatian city. But its history, recent history even, that of the Second World War and pre Second World War was tied to the European post-World War turmoil. Rijeka, for a short period —
Am Johal 38:26
Where the torpedo was invented!
Nermin Gogalic 38:28
Where the torpedo was invented there. That’s a big thing obviously. Rijeka was part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the second most important harbour. When we think about the history of the city, one could definitely say that the golden age of the city was that, when Rijeka was part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. And after the end of the empire, it had a short spell as a temporary autonomous region, which was actually an independent state of Rijeka, a part of the League of Nations, which would be the equivalent of the U.N. today. That was a very short period of a year and a bit, and after that it became part of the Italian Facist state. It was obviously on the very East border of the Italian Facist state. Not the best years for the city in anyway. And after that it was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia where Rijeka had its second golden age. The city grew a lot, it changed in many ways. The ethnic structure of the population changed severely. Unfortunately the Italian minority was almost fully pushed out, and in its place came the people of the South Slavic Republics, from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rijeka was in many ways Yugoslavia in a nutshell, when one thinks about the ethnic structure of the population.
Nermin Gogalic 40:18
And now in modern Croatia, Rijeka has quite a uniform ethnic structure, more than ever before in its history. It still remembers its history, and it still, to a certain degree, brands itself, the city is branded as the city of multicultural coexistence, which is, in my opinion, a thing of the past than a thing of the present. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are pushing this narrative, the people that are running the city, they are branding the city as such. And I think it works very well because when you travel around former Yugoslavia you have to use a lot of energy to deconstruct the myth of Rijeka, the multicultural city. I think you have to do something similar when you travel to Europe and you are faced with this idea of Canada as the world’s peacemaker, this amazing country where only good things happen. I imagine you have to explain certain things, you were in London recently.
Am Johal 41:30
Everyone loves Justin Trudeau there, totally. You talk about the Tar Sands, but that’s a digression.
Jerry Zaslove 41:36
Let me respond to the Kafka, Brecht or Walter Benjamin point that Am brought up. What we are talking about, in Kafka’s The Trial, Joseph K., who wakes up one morning and is arrested, and at the end of the novel he comes to the doorkeeper, the custodian of his life, and he wants to know is it time to come in, to go through the door, through the gate. This is Benjamin’s point too. And the doorkeeper tells him, “your name is not on it. It’s not yours yet.” Joseph K. is like, “but I have an identity, I am a person. I know who I am.” The doorkeeper in essence is saying, “well, this is a different type of moral order that we have here. You don’t belong here yet.” That is where the novel ends. But the point being, going back to my earlier point, that the doorkeepers have multiplied in a nationalism society. There are many doorkeepers, many institutions, schooling, political. But what that means for labour, and Am will know more than I do about this, it means that nationalism has to delegate its powers and its former given powers, in Benjamin’s sense, mythical or sacred, control of violence and violence making institutions. And one of those institutions is revolution. This is the idea that social movements have an unknown history.
Jerry Zaslove 43:39
So what are social movements now under nationalism? In the American model, and the Yugoslavian yet-to-be-melted-down model, like the American melting pot, or the Canadian mosaic, the official multiculturalism act. Charles Taylor, who writes about that. My point is that nationalism as a concept is a historical concept, to historicize it fails because it can not produce a moral order. Early peoples, who are tribal peoples, we call them peoples, we call them a people. First Nations, right? The implication of a First Nation is there is an origin in a moral order, in which everyday life can be understood even if it collapses. In Northern Quebec, with schooling, or water, or disease, still there is some concept of homeland, of a people. One can sentimentalize it, we can talk about that forever, but there is still this legitimacy of culture. Even though it's a fractured term. Going back to this notion of a people, they know how to delegate power to others. In a classroom, I’m delegated as an authority, but what I am doing is transmitting what I know to other people who are also delegated in some utopian way to carry on with something.
Am Johal 45:36
But, culture is this field that is always contested. In the Quebec context of the Québécois nation when you have this further debates around secularism as a concept, what that means, how it plays out in the notwithstanding clause related to religious symbols. And Charles Taylor is involved in that too, although he’s back tracked and tried to push back a little bit around public servants wearing religious signs, so this concept of secularism within the “Québécois nation” gets politicized within this nationalistic frame to create that enemy or that othering in its usefulness in a poltical context.
Jerry Zaslove 46:26
He’s caught with this notion of the self. The idea that there is some internal, which Adorno called “power protected inwardness,” some inwardness that we carry with us that can communicate to others, and which the Quebec laws now, and this is very important in terms of nationalism, who makes the laws? And to what extent are the laws an extension of something that we call nationalism? Who makes those laws? Well, with the rise of nation states you change, this goes back to Carl Schmitt, and the remaking of law. You can not have nationalism without law. It doesn’t exist.
Am Johal 47:23
We sentence Charles Taylor to a rereading of Hegel.
Nermin Gogalic 47:26
Also nationalism also does not exist without the other. That is fundamental for nationalism. It only exists in reference to the other. Without the other there is no us. There's no point. There's no nationalism without the other and the differences that separate "us" from "them," are important and the way those are seeked out is also important. But when you have certain nations that share so much in terms of their history, in terms of their culture, in terms of their language as well, and this is the case of former Yugoslavia and nation states that came out of the conflict, then this search of the differences that set us apart from them a have a grotesque notion, because it's very hard to find them but obviously, they can be, they can be sniffed out if you really, really tried to do it in earnest, they will be found.
Jerry Zaslove 48:37
Yeah, I always think to myself, I told Nero, I think once when we were talking that when I hear the word “other” I immediately feel othered. That I think, "okay, now, where am I on that spectrum?" You know, is it mean property-less? Does it mean? Well --
Nermin Gogalic 48:56
The thing is, you will be placed. You can't tell where you are, you can only listen to them, and they will tell you where your otherness is, where your place is because your identity --
Am Johal 49:12
Jerry Zaslove. Is he in the 1%?
Nermin Gogalic 49:16
In some type of a 1% I'm sure he is, but not the one that you're talking about.
Jerry Zaslove 49:21
And then you start counting, you know, and you start taking statistics and yet it used to have a political battle over the census, you know, right? And then the pathological man in the White House wants to reject the census. Right? I don't want to say more about that in terms of psychiatry, but one has to talk about psychiatry. One has to talk about it --
Nermin Gogalic 49:51
-- when discussing
Jerry Zaslove 49:52
when discussing --
Nermin Gogalic 49:53
-- the man in the White House.
Jerry Zaslove 49:54
-- when discussing power figures, you know, when discussing what the notion that anti-otherness, whether it's anti semitism, anti black, anti Hindu, you know, anti whatever, when you start counting people, when you start counting them, that's the road to hell. Right? I mean, who's counting and for what purpose? Right? So, the point is that the formation of law-abiding people, needed population census. Indeed, you needed to determine who's in the border, do women go to school, can women own property? Can Jews own property, you know, who's good in school? As a matter of fact, in the 19th century, one of the Judeo phobic aspects of German anti-semitism, in a period of final Semitism in the 19th century, because Jews were needed, they were emancipated, they couldn't go to school. The Jews were output. And this is not my idea, that Jews were outperforming other peoples in the schools to the extent that they were advancing into the, what I would call, the transcendent, nationalist professions: law, teaching, professoriate…
Nermin Gogalic 51:25
Medicine.
Jerry Zaslove 51:25
Medicine, exactly. I left out industry, right industry, so the democratization of the culture, through the institutions, the other people begin to use the tools that enable them to advance right? Heidegger, for example, who's no friend of mine, but I know how to read him I think, was nervous about that, you know, was nervous about the idea that institutions of modernity, defuse themselves and lose their sense of borders, you know, they think in the Black Forest, then the Danube river flows East where those people were, right? And through Central Europe, right? Through Central Europe, his homeland, going back to Heidegger's homeland, was not Nietzsche so much, although partly, he was looking for that homeland, that that river would take him to as the Ur-homeland, from which all were from which real Europe descended. Real Europe descended from that. So my point is that I think one has to develop a new term for nationalism something ideological peopleness or something. The idea there is such a thing as a people, you know.
Nermin Gogalic 53:09
Yeah, nationalism. I understand the point.
Am Johal 53:14
I have one last question for both of you, which does have nationalistic overtones, which has to do with the term, "We the North." Can you give us just a little bit of your thoughts on the Toronto Raptors run in the NBA Playoffs?
Nermin Gogalic 53:30
I'll say something really short, and then I'll leave it Jerry because he understands both of those aspects of question better than me, I would say, but I joined the bandwagon somewhere halfway through the semi final conference series, and I had the pleasure of watching most of those games with you Am. And a number of your friends and our mutual friends at your place. It was amazing. I remember that forever because I don't think it will happen soon again. It was fun. It was interesting. I did see a little bit of patriotic sentiments rise on the streets of Vancouver and in that room as well. Which is not strange at all. We started with George Orwell and I'll just finish with him maybe, but on a better note. Orwell had was obviously he's a novelist, but he's, I would say maybe even more adept in writing essays and here his journalistic work was special, I would say. His collected essays, "Why I Write," and other essays that were published in the 50s, I believe, one of the essays, talks about sports and patriotism and nationalism, and he talks about the visit of CSKA Moscow that came to England in 1946 to play Arsenal in London, and CSKA Moscow, I believe won, but then there was a lot of controversy there because people in the stands were saying, "God, this isn't CSKA Moscow, this is the Russian national team. What are they doing? They're tricking us." And he was talking about how, obviously sports and nationalism, sports and patriotism go hand in hand. And his last paragraph of that essay says something that I hope there won't be a game played in Moscow, but if it happens, I hope we'll send an amateur team.
Jerry Zaslove 55:39
Patriotism of the basketball, right? That's what you're talking about. And the Croatian and the Serbian basketball players are. Don't take a backseat to anybody. Here's the point. That something does transcend political nationalism and it's not just cultural nationalism of sports, but which also has to do with women's lives, lives that you live as children. And you imagine another life for yourself better than the one that you've lived. Basketball actually comes out of urban ghettos. That baseball comes out of the agriculture, the farmlands of the United States and soccer comes from the streets.
Nermin Gogalic 56:34
It's a working class one class sport that's been hijacked.
Jerry Zaslove 56:37
Yes. Well worth a lot of hijack money. Yes, excellent. If you read the essay in the New Yorker about corruption, you know about that, but the point is the idea, well, they tried to take Canadian basketball away by stacking the cards against the Raptors and not wanting the Golden State to lose, right? They try pretty hard. I'm just being facetious. But the point being, that some transcended experience pervades anti-nationalism. I mean, when Trump attacked LeBron James, and tactical and Golden State, something and he attacks the football players right for kneeling, or he knows something. He knows something about nationalism. But he, even in terms of the range of sublime terror, which he's an artist, artistic about some imparting sublime terror, to his linguistic sickness, how he talks, how he repeats himself, how empty phrases come out. Okay, so here's my point, that basketball and that, or sports, whether it's ice hockey in Canada, are places where generations can form their own history. This is People's History. Folk history, right? And it's, you talk to people who remember cultural history of how they played sports, who was Wayne Gretzky? You know, people become authorities about their culture of sport. Does that make any sense? Right, but only a few people do that about politics. You know, only a few, an elite group remember the formation of these institutions of politics? And that's one of the problems of mass culture. Right? Of trying to form oppositional movements within mass culture, which is you know the work of the Frankfurt School try to identify --
Am Johal 59:03
Thank you so much to both you Nero Gogalic who's a graduate student in Liberal Studies at SFU. And Jerry Zaslave, the living legend, the original Jay Z. Thank you very much, both of you for joining.
Nermin Gogalic 59:17
Thank you for having us.
Jerry Zaslove 59:18
Thank you for having us.
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Paige Smith 59:23
Thank you again to Jerry Zaslove, the original Jay Z and Nermin Gogalic for joining us on this episode of Below the Radar. If you would like to hear another discussion between Jerry and Nermin, you can listen to the Vancouver Institute of Social researches public talk entitled: "Transition and identity and post Yugoslav environment." You can find a link to this recording in the episode description. As always, many thanks to our team that puts this podcast together, including myself, Paige Smith, Rachel Wong, and Fiorella Pinillos. David Steele is the composer of our theme music and thank you for listening. We'll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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