On NationalismAuthor(s): Danilo KisReviewed work(s):Source: Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 13-17Published by: Performing Arts Journal, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3245839 .Accessed: 17/05/2012 04:57

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ON NATIONALISM

Danilo Kis

^F _irst of all, nationalism is paranoia-collective and individual paranoia. As a collective paranoia, nationalism is born out of fear and envy. But above all, it appears as a result of an individual's lost consciousness. Therefore, collective

paranoia is nothing else but a summary of many individual paranoias brought together to a level of paroxysm. If an individual is not able to "express" himself within the framework of his given society, or if that given society does not stimulate him as an individual, or if disqualifies him-that is, if the society does not allow him to discover his own entity-then that individual is forced to look for his entity outside the society's identity and outside society's social structures. In so doing, the individual becomes a member of a clandestine group whose goal and task is, or seems to be, to solve problems of monumental importance: a survival and prestige of that group's nation. It seeks to preserve its national tradition, values, and relics, its national folklore, philosophy, ethics, literature, etc. Obsessed with that secret, semi- public or public mission, our Mr. X becomes a man of action, a national tribune, a pseudo-individual. And now, when he is brought down to earth, to his own size, when he is isolated from the faceless crowd and removed from the post where he has placed himself, or where others have placed him, we have before our eyes an individual without individuality, a nationalist, Cousin Jules. He is the same Jules Sartre wrote about, Jules who is no one in the family, a nil, and whose only virtue is to turn red whenever the word "Englishmen" is mentioned. That pale face, that fever, that "secret" of his to know how to become pale when Englishmen are mentioned, that is his only social entity. It makes him important and proves his existence.

For god's sake don't mention English tea before him. Immediately all of the people at the table will start to give you signals, to kick you under the table because Cousin Jules is very sensitive about the Englishmen. They all know Cousin Jules hates Englishmen. He loves his own, the Frenchmen. As a matter of fact, Jules becomes individual, someone, thanks to English tea.

This picture could be an accurate portrait of all nationalists and could be defined as follows: a nationalist, almost by rule, as a social being and individual, is a negative figure-a nothingness. That is, by definition, he is a cipher. Actually, he has

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neglected his home and family, his job (usually he is a bureaucrat), his literature (if he is a writer at all), his community service and public responsibilities, because all these things are insignificant in comparison to his messianism. Needless to say, he is an ascetic by choice, a potential warrior who awaits his moment. Nationalism is, as Sartre would put it arguing about anti-Semitism, "a total and free choice, a global stand that one has not only toward other nations, but toward people in general, and toward history and society as well. It is simultaneously both a passion and a world view." A nationalist is, by definition, an ignorant. Nationalism is therefore a stage of

spiritual laziness and conformity.

For a nationalist everything is easy because he knows, or he thinks that he knows, his

qualities, values, and abilities. That is, he knows the qualities of his nation, he knows his nation's ethical and political values. And of course he is not interested in and does not care about the others. The others are hell (other nations, other tribes). And he does not need any information about them. The nationalist sees and recognizes in the others only himself-the nationalist. As we said earlier, it is a very comfortable situation. Fear and Envy. According to the national matrix, the nationalist believes that not only the others are hell, but everything which is not his (Serbian, Croatian, French .. .) is alien to him.

Nationalism is an ideology of banality. Nationalism, therefore, is a totalitarian

ideology. Nationalism, in fact, is not only in its etymological sense, but by definition as well, the last remaining ideology and demagogy which addresses the nation'. Writers know that very well. That is why every writer who declares that he writes "from and for the people," who says that he subordinates his individual voice to that

higher call-the national interest-should be suspected as a nationalist. National- ism is kitsch. In the Serbo-Croatian version it is a struggle for dominance over the national origin of Ginger-Bread Heart2.

Usually a nationalist neither speaks any foreign language nor knows a variation of his own, nor knows anything about other cultures. He is not interested in them. But this is not that simple. If he speaks by some chance some foreign language, and

accordingly, as an intellectual, has some knowledge about the cultural heritage of some other nation, then he uses that knowledge only to draw analogies which will undermine that other nation. Kitsch and folklore, or rather folkloric kitsch, is

nothing else but disguised nationalism. It is fertile ground for nationalistic ideology. The expansion of folklore in the world today is not a product of increased interest in anthropology but of the rise of nationalism. Insisting on the outspoken phrase couleur locale (especially if it is out of some literary context and if it does not serve the artistic truth) is also nothing else but one version of hidden nationalism. Nationalism is therefore and, above all, a negative spiritual category, because nationalism is based on and lives by denial and on denial. We are not those people who they are. We are the positive pole; they are the negative one. Our national values, our nationalistic values, have some function only if we compare them with others: we are nationalists, but they are worse than we are. We slaughter (only when

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we have to), but they slaughter even more than we do. We are drunkards, but they are alcoholics. Our history is accurate only in relation to theirs. Our language is pure only if compared to theirs.

Nationalism is fed by relative notions. There are no general ethical or aesthetic values. For the nationalists there are only relative values. In that sense, nationalism is a rigid conservatism and a return to the past. You just have to be better than your brother or half-brother; the rest is not important at all. A nationalist does not care about anything else. What he wants is just to jump a little bit higher than his brother. Who cares about the others!! That is what I call fear. The rest of the world has a right to be better than we are, to get ahead of us; we don't care about that. The

goals of nationalism are always achievable goals. They are achievable because they are ordinary, and they are ordinary because they are sly. You do not jump or shoot to score a point, to reach the peak of your abilities, but only to defeat, to kill the others, those so similar and, at the same time, so different from you. They are the main reason for the whole game. A nationalist is not afraid of anything or anyone but his brother. He is scared of his brother pathologically and existentially: the

victory of his chosen enemy is to him his own, absolute defeat. It means annihilation of his entire being. Since he is a coward and zilch, a nationalist does not have higher goals. The victory over his chosen enemy, that other one, is his highest victory. That is why nationalism is an idea of misery, an ideology of a possible victory, a

guaranteed victory, and not quite definite, final defeat. The nationalist is not afraid of anyone, "anyone but God," and his god is made on his own terms and in his own

image-his pale Cousin Jules. And he is: his brother who lives next door, his

neighbor who is as incapable as he himself is, his cousin who is a "pride of the

family," who is a good citizen, an organized member of the family and/or a conscious part of the nation-that pale Cousin Jules.

We have said that to be a nationalist means to be individual without obligations. "The nationalist is a coward who does not like to admit that he is a coward; a killer who suppresses his affinity for killing, incapable of suppressing that feeling but also

incapable of committing such crime in public. He can do that, he can kill only if he is hidden, only from the unanimity of the crowd. He is an unsatisfied individual who is afraid to rebel because he is afraid of the consequences of his rebellion"- these are the real features of Sartre's anti-Semite mentioned earlier.

And we wonder now where does this cowardice, this rise of nationalism come from in our time? Suppressed as an individual by different ideologies and thrown on the

fringes of social movements this person is in fact smashed and lost between confronted ideologies. By the same token he is immature and incapable of individual rebellion because he does not possess real intellectual drive for that. In that way this individual has found himself in a crack, in a limbo, because he is a social being who does not participate in social life. As an individual, he needs to

participate in social life, but his individualism is suppressed in the name of

ideologies. What is left to him in that situation is nothing else but to look for his

KIS / On Nationalism * 15

social being somewhere else. The nationalist is a frustrated and confused individual, while nationalism is a collective expression of frustrated individualism. It is ideology and anti-ideology at the same time.

(Excerpted from Kis's book Cas Anatomije [The Anatomy Lesson], pp. 29-33, Nolit. Beograd, 1978)

NOTES

1. Kis uses the word "nation" ("narod" in Serbian or Croatian) in terms of ethnos (a group of people bound together by the same ethnic specifics), not nation in terms of demos (people of different ethnic backgrounds).

2. Ginger-Bread Heart is a homemade colorful cookie in the shape of a heart and sold at

country fairs by Serbian and Croatian peasants from Vojvodina and Slovenia. Like Valentine's Day gifts, it is exchanged as a sign of love.

DANILO KIS (1935-1989), best known abroad for his novel A Tombfor Boris Davidovic, was one of the most eminent novelists and most daring anti-Stalinist thinkers in the former Yugoslavia. Shortly after the book was

published, the Yugoslav Writers Union impugned Kis's reputation by accusing him of plagiarism, a claim politically motivated and initiated by Serbian nationalists. The author counterattacked by publishing his brilliant collection of polemical essays The Anatomy Lesson. He lived out the rest of his life in exile in Paris.

PERFORMING ARTS JOURNAL, NO. 53 (1996) PP. 13-16: ? 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Sarajevo 1993. Postcard by Dalida Durakovic and

Bojan Hadzihalilovic.

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