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Copyright © 2001 Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. All rights reserved.

Essay

BRIIFS vol. 3 no 2 (Autumn/Winter 2001)

Mohammed A. Bamyeh

Postnationalism    

This essay agues that the reduction in the cultural space occupied by the nation- state due to forces of globalization opens up hitherto less used spaces for expressions of solidarity and in ways that do not correspond to the old national mapping of the world. The new solidarities may be identified in terms of four central human values: i) interests (which give rise to material solidarities); ii) universality (which gives rise to humanist solidarities); iii) freedom (which gives rise to life-emancipatory solidarities); and iv) deep meaning (which gives rise to spiritual solidarities). The central argument is that, while nationalist ideology has claimed to provide for all such values and thus furnish a comprehensive existential outlook, globalization has fragmented this vision and led gradually to the creation of social networks clustering around one or another of these central values. The paper begins by giving a brief synopsis of the historical trajectory of postnationalism in Europe, moves on to outline different possible political reactions to globalization that may impede the progress of postnationalism and then charts out fundamental differences between nationalism and postnationalism (the latter accepting conceptual fragmentation of values, not insisting on being coterminous with state ideology and is oriented toward acquired, rather than given, identity).  

Studies of globalization are only now beginning to chart out how people forge solidarities in new ways in a more globalized world, one in which the nation and the state are no longer as effective or reliable reference points as they once were. In order to outline the likely pathways of postnational solidarities, we must retrace our steps and explore where and how national solidarities themselves started their silent retreat into the background. The story begins, therefore, in Europe, even though it is not simply about Europe. But since it is Europe that had introduced the world to nationalism, we can see more clearly how the nationalist logic first reached its dead end there and began to be replaced by postnational structures. The European Union is by far the most advanced institutional indicator of a postnational framework in the world today. And while we see many attempts nearly everywhere else in the world to form regional blocks loosely inspired by the EU model, it must be kept in mind that the most successful models in the global age will likely be those which do not simply define themselves as cooperatives of sovereign nations, but which rethink the very notion of the sovereignty of all member nations, great or small.

            Philosophically, there are two important differences between nationalism and postnationalism that must be specified at the outset. The first concerns value judgements, the second, multiplicity of forms. First, it is impossible today to approach nationalism without some form of moral judgement―it is good or it is evil―since its history is well within our field of vision and continues to frame our perspective. Second, nationalism was singular in character, having propagated itself throughout the world in the form of exact replicas of one model borrowed from Europe. That model had to actively compete against a myriad of other forms of solidarity, such as internationalism, global spiritual orders and subnational autonomies that had been left relatively undisturbed for many centuries before global modernity.

            Postnationalism, by contrast, escapes these two limits. It is not easy to apply a moral judgement to it or impose a single ethnocentric form upon it, in part because its story is just beginning to unfold, in another because, unlike nationalism, it offers multiple venues for solidarity. As is well known, the standardization of nationalist frames of solidarity required horrible wars, the extermination of spaces of hybridity, ethnic cleansing well before the holocaust and the increased impermeability of borders. Nationalism has thus been an extremely costly project, indeed, by far the most destructive ideology ever experienced by humanity. If there is only one reason to embrace globalization today, it is because it is removing the material support mechanisms that prop up nationalist ideologies. In doing so, it reintroduces into the world alternative modes of conglomeration and solidarity. Some of these are new, others have been in suspension for the seven decades between 1919 and 1989.

            A terminological clarification is warranted here, in light of the recent profusion of terms with seeming affinity to postnationalism, such as transnationalism or globalization. Postnationalism is concerned, in particular, with the way in which questions of collective identity are being reworked, partly as a consequence of the larger dynamics of global processes. It refers to frames of solidarity and association superseding or offering themselves as alternatives to nationalism and the modern state. As such, postnationalism is a more specific outcome of globalization. Globalization is a more general term commonly used to describe a variety of processes of conglomeration in the economic, political and cultural realms. Transnationalism has typically been used to refer to institutions and movements created in order to facilitate communication, coordination and decision-making across nation-states. But unlike the postnational perspective, which seeks to explore alternatives to modern nations and states, the transnational perspective upholds the principle of national sovereignty and, while highlighting the importance of global openness, regards group identity to be essentially definable by nationality and political form by the modern state. A postnational framework, by contrast, seeks to transcend these limits. While the sources which gave rise to postnationalism are global in nature, some specific and important lessons can be gleaned from contemporary European history where, in spite of resistance, the state and its nation have been gradually depleted of meaning and significance.

The European path

The seeds of postnationalism began to be planted in Europe after World War II, the war in which Europe was finally destroyed when the nationalist logic that it had created was followed to its logical conclusion through typical German conceptual consistency. The outcome of World War II differed profoundly from that of World War I, despite the fact that both had been nationalist wars and that the incendiary materials for the former had been provided at the end of the latter. Since it was clear to all parties that the discredited model of Versailles could not guarantee peace among nations after World War II, the war’s aftermath saw a modification of three principles relevant to peace. These three revised principles furnished the unintended material foundations for postnationalism today. All three principles were more European than American, which may help to explain the difference between the European and American attitudes toward postnationalism observable today. Indeed, as I will try to show below, the United States after the Cold War seems to be building the infrastructure of a new style of imperialism, rather than of postnationalism.

            The first trans-European principle of the post-World War II period held that peace is accomplished by guaranteeing interdependence. This displaced a World War I concept that saw triumph and the subsequent mastery of the victors over the defeated as providing the only assurance of peace. After World War II, the method for preventing future wars required foregoing reparations in favour of building structures and institutions that would ensure the thorough interdependence of the livelihoods of Western Europeans and the basic needs of their economies, to such an extent that European nations could no longer imagine war with one another. Mastery over the ‘other’ was no longer seen as a guarantee of peace. World War II vividly illustrated that truth to Europeans―although not to Americans, who explained the war in terms of their own failure to assert global hegemony after World War I and whose experience with hegemony was, in any case, still in its infancy compared to the waning European empires. For European polities, the abandonment of the principle of mastery in favour of interdependence was further implicated in decolonization, which proceeded at a remarkably rapid pace after the war and which was meant to replace colonialism by all kinds of commonwealth arrangements; however, the commitment to interdependence was most strongly manifested within Europe itself, rather than between Europe and the former colonies.

            The second principle to establish the preconditions for postnationalism was the dilution of sovereignty. Nineteenth-century conceptions of the state, which envisioned it as an irreducible organic symbiosis with society and economy, and which often presented it as a physical organism, much like the human body, tended by their nature to foster fanatic and unrealistic claims of sovereignty. This rigid emphasis upon sovereignty only guaranteed war, since the state faced constant infringements upon its sovereignty that were bound to multiply, especially in light of the principle of interdependence introduced earlier and with the advent of a globally interactive world. With this in mind, transnational sources of ideals were introduced to serve as legitimate venues from which to contest state sovereignty and prerogatives. These involved the United Nations, of course, but also charters, such as the International Declaration of Human Rights, and new military alliances, such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, both of which defined state security in terms of global strategies and obliged member states to accept the possibility of their own destruction at war in order to save the alliance as a whole.

            For a long time, states were too proud to admit that they planned according to this principle of reduced sovereignty and that they habitually relinquished sovereignty over such crucial areas as defence, human rights, trade and―ultimately―monetary and fiscal policy. In any case, after more than a century of nationalist education, most citizens were not eager to accept the surrender of sovereignty, which state functionaries frequently found themselves compelled to do. This secret has been disclosed only recently, under the pressures of globalization, which finally revealed that sovereignty has already been intruded upon for so long that there is little left for the state to do other than formalize its recognition of the dominance of both tangible and intangible global forces. Yet, in most places and for many decades, the state had to tread lightly around this delicate issue. We must keep in mind that the European Union took nearly forty years of patient work to ensure that, once it was formally announced, no one involved in it would be capable of defending sovereignty to such an extent that it would prevent the normal functioning of the Union.

            The dilution of sovereignty required a specific strategy and that strategy describes the third principle underpinning the slow birth of postnationalism since World War II. Since European nationalism had taught the world that nationalism must be embodied in the state and that each state should ideally stand for a distinct nation in the world, the state could not articulate too openly its abandonment of the vision of the ‘heroic state,’ which it had spent more than a century implanting in its own and other cultures. As a consequence, the national state in Europe had to withdraw from centre stage before national culture was willing to do the same or was even aware of what was happening. Once national culture found itself out in the cold, it was reasoned, it would have no choice but to adjust to the postnational world.

            The state had to withdraw from the scene cautiously and in almost silent steps. Few in the 1950s would have believed that something like today’s EU would emerge out of such a technical and bureaucratic organization as the European Coal and Steel Community. Yet, that is now how the EU proudly charts its genealogy, frequently presenting it as if it had been a conscious plan all along, which it was, to a great extent―in terms of the grand principles, although not necessarily in the subsequent details. The idea was that the postnational world could only be created through a sequence of steps too small or too inane to be noticed, too technical or too sophisticated to warrant widespread interest. But those little steps established enough new facts over time―more entrenched networks of economic interdependence, more national vulnerability to transnational legal challenges, more commonalities across national politics and cultures, more common structures exposed to global trends, more possibilities for transnationally-minded enterprises to make profits and so on―so that even those opposed to integration had no choice but to live with it.

            While almost unvoiced, this process was not unconscious or unrecognized. Konrad Adenauer’s famous and victorious slogan, that there would be “no experiments” in postwar Germany, signalled the effective end of the heroic state model and its definitive displacement by ordinary technocratic administration as the primary ethic of governance. Alexandre Kojève foresaw the end of history in the minute details of postwar European cooperation agreements. So convinced was he of the outcome, he chose to give up his celebrated career as a philosopher in order to work as an EEC technocrat, contributing to the establishment of the GATT talks. Reportedly, he rejoiced greatly at the conclusion of minor trade agreements and was furious when his suggestions were not followed by those outranking him in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs, where he worked until his death in 1968.

            The patient stitching of the transnational union out of thousands of technical details, which appeared too mundane and uninspiring to provoke much discussion among contemporary intellectuals, exemplified for Kojève the working out of Hegelian dialectic at the end of history. The agent for the end of history was no longer to be a heroic figure, such as Napoleon. In our age, he could only be a technocrat working upon one small detail after another in a forgotten little office within a decidedly unheroic ministry. Yet, the groundwork for the end of history could only be accomplished in that unassuming manner and its significance could only be understood by someone as perceptive and simultaneously unappreciated as Kojève considered himself to be. (Stanley Rosen reports that Kojève used to tell his secretary that he was a god and felt hurt when she laughed at the idea.)

The American path

The European experience is significant in one essential respect, namely, it involved the dilution of state sovereignty and the transferral of important competencies to a transnational bureaucracy. The unique European nature of the three principles just outlined became more apparent after the end of the Cold War. Elsewhere in the world, societies are still grappling with state systems ill-equipped to deal with the new realities of globalization and interdependence. States that have not gone through the momentous cycles of destruction experienced in Europe frequently find themselves acting as ‘overdeveloped’ states; saturated with nationalist mythology, the state understands itself as the natural venue for the expression of ‘collective’ cultural values and contradictory economic interests. In one significant case, namely that of the United States, we can detect a crucial divergence from Europe after 1989 regarding the best approach to postnational possibilities. In the US, we see the emergence not of postnational orientations, but of an alternative trajectory. That trajectory does not replace nationalism with postnationalism, but with a fundamentally new kind of imperialism.

            The concept of imperialism is particularly poignant here and one must be careful to use it in a very precise way. The US has always harboured a strong undercurrent of unconscious nationalism or, as Bruce Robbins puts it, “nationalism that does not recognize itself as such.” Benedict Anderson, in fact, identifies the genesis of nationalism in the mindset of “creole pioneers”―colonists in the New World whose national consciousness was a response to their irredeemable exclusion from the imperial hierarchy of the mother country. Yet, until now, the prevalent model of nationalism worldwide has been the conscious European one, which is currently under strong contestation, rather than the unconscious American one, which presents itself not as nationalism, but as the expansive and all-inclusive cultural emblem of the spirit of our times. After World War II, the articulation of the United States’ global role as the champion of capitalism further downplayed the nationalist justification for its exercise of hegemony. Unlike European world hegemony, which was justified and propelled by nationalist rhetoric, American world hegemony was carried out in a conscious struggle against competing economic doctrines―notably, socialism―and on behalf of a global capitalist ideology.

            Due to its inclusive claims, expansionist tendencies, blind obedience to market logic and the historical association between its imperialism and the universalizing ethos of capitalism (rather than exclusive nationalism, as in the case of Europe), the United States initially seemed to harbour the superior building materials of postnational culture and to offer them cheaply for sale worldwide. Since 1989, however, something very dangerous has happened that dramatically altered the equation. The Cold War ended unexpectedly, leaving those warriors who regarded themselves as victorious with little idea of what to do with themselves once they had no war to fight, but their military toys and budgets intact.

            What we have in America after 1989 is not at all analogous to what we find in Europe after 1945. On the contrary, there is rhetoric about a ‘power void’ that needs to be filled by an assertive imperial hegemony, rather than the logic of interdependence between victor and vanquished. There is some dilution of sovereignty, but no awareness of the full range of its consequences in so far as political rationality is concerned. There is little in the way of reducing the state to a pure technocracy, so that postnational culture might reliably emerge. Instead, we confront a political field in which the predominant style is that of symbolic―rather than material―politics.

            On the American side of the Atlantic, therefore, we do not end up with a postnational culture, but with a strange and irrational new imperialism. The state exists at a much grander level than is warranted by its capacity for rational action or ordinary social mandates. It feels that it can justify its global magnitude only upon the basis of a new style of imperialism. This style differs from the old in that it has no strategic or wholistic plan or reason and is thus thoroughly irrational. When it was wedded to the interests and designs of a particular state, capitalism served to provide an extra-political logic and to give a strategic coherence to imperial ideology. This condition of coherence is now over.

            In the new imperialism, we may identify six major irrational features, all of which distinguish it from the old imperialism as experienced until the end of the Cold War. First, while coercive force is no longer necessary to integrate regions and peoples into a single global economic system, as association is sought voluntarily, the coercive capacity of the imperial state has not diminished. Second, while global capitalism no longer understands such concepts as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ and cultivates the wisdom of a lateral approach to the world, the imperial state has maintained and even redoubled its commitment to a hierarchical vision. Third, while capitalism no longer identifies itself with the welfare of any specific country, as it did by necessity during the Cold War, the imperial state continues to assert a common ‘national interest’ and unified national purpose even as the forces of globalization fragment the nation from within and set the interests of some members of each of its classes against those of other members of the same classes.

            Fourth, while capitalism has historically required that the invasions and wars of its political promoters possess calculable costs and benefits and that the vanquished be enlisted in its common global game (as under colonialism and after World War II), the new imperialism, as we have seen in recent wars in the Persian Gulf and Kosovo, actually insists upon doing the opposite: namely, fanatically isolating the vanquished and, thus, rendering large markets and investment opportunities inaccessible to global capitalism. The concept of hegemony so exercised seems a mere exercise in power, power purely for its own sake, rather than for systemic and rational purposes. Fifth, while global capitalism now requires a weak state with reduced sovereignty and prerogatives, the imperial state has responded by reducing its social responsibilities, to be sure, but maintaining its strength militarily. This in spite of an acknowledgement by military planners that the ‘national interests’ to be thereby protected are much harder to define under globalization than during the Cold War.

            Sixth, as those versed in multicultural debates already know, the categories defining conflict and coexistence have shifted from economic to cultural ones in the hands of such commentators as Benjamin Barber, Samuel Huntington and, most recently, Thomas Friedman. There is little talk of a struggle between capitalism and socialism, but much noise about conflicts between cultures, civilizations and traditions. People the world over are no longer portrayed, as they were in the recent past, as global modernizers capable of assimilating or acquiring any global ideology. Rather, they are presented as innately static collective cultural entities, hopeless prisoners to local traditions and patterns of thought. Yet, although this may appear to be the case from the new imperial perspective, it is not the assessment of global capitalism, which is now eager to do business with any culture, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any other vector of diversity. From the standpoint of global capitalism, theories of cultural essentialism and civilizational clash make little sense, even though they provide governments with an important venue for imagining new existential purposes in an age of globalization and in the aftermath of the Cold War.1

The three common features of postnational culture

States that are inadequate to meet the challenges of the global age, such as the imperial state and the overdeveloped state, stand in the way of postnational culture and curtail its ability to realize its full potential, a potential inherent in the material realities of contemporary global flows. The problem with the imperial or overdeveloped state is not simply that it has become―due to the choices it made or ineluctable circumstance― incapable of protecting its constituencies against the adverse effects of globalization. More fundamentally, such a state no longer has a wholistic purpose in a globalized world, since it neither presides over a unified field of interests, nor possesses a strategic vision of its purpose vis-à-vis society as a whole. The best that may be expected from any state in the present day is that it will gracefully assume the function of a technocratic institution devoid of all heroic claims, confining its task to the provision of essential services and infrastructure. But it errs fatally if it thinks that it may continue to embody ‘the nation’ or stand for ‘national’ interests in the larger world, for the nation no longer has any unified interests in the face of globalization.

            What are the basic building blocks of this postnational culture, whose emergence the state obstructs? At the outset, three features can be identified: postnational culture is perspectively fragmented rather than wholistic; postnational culture is not coterminous with state ideology; and postnational culture approaches all given identities as fetters and emphasizes expansive action in the world. The first feature, perspectivist fragmentation, may be understood if we compare it to the ideology that governed during the Cold War. At that time, every state in the world was expected to define itself in terms of its position in the global struggle between the grand ideologies of capitalism and socialism―including even those states that officially labelled themselves ‘non-aligned.’ Conceptually, the Cold War was very efficient. It filled the world with only two camps, each populated by peoples and states more committed to one or the other global ideology than to particular nationalisms. This made it possible for calculations of conflict and alliance to assume a more strategic coherence and also allowed thinking in terms of large totalities―that is, totalities in the sense that both capitalism and socialism were understood not simply as economic doctrines, but also as descriptors of a wide range of political and cultural practices and beliefs.

            My thesis is that this perspectivist totality has disappeared from our field of vision with the end of the Cold War. Ironically, it is more difficult to think in terms of totalities precisely because the world is becoming more economically integrated. Capitalism no longer needs the state or, to put it in grander conceptual terms, the economic no longer needs the political. Karl Marx himself noted that possibility in passing when, toward the end of volume one of Capital, he observed that, as the capitalist introduces centralization and planning into his own enterprise, while resisting political efforts to regulate that same enterprise, he brings order into economy and disorder into politics. In the context of globalization and the aftermath of the Cold War, the capitalist has even less of an incentive to submit to political regulation, especially since capitalism no longer has any credible enemies to compel it to make deals with the state in exchange for the latter’s employment of its protective or coercive mechanisms. The perspectivist possibilities that we now have are not those of a totality in which economy, politics and culture follow coordinated logics. Rather, what we have are fragmented visions and irresolute political and cultural actions.

            Politically, then, this state of affairs suggests that when we think of ‘order’ in a globalized world, we may need to consider models of partial control―or even models that can be described as variants upon ‘organized anarchy.’ Typified by economic unity and perspectivist fragmentation, the global age does not invite us to imagine how the world may be better controlled, but the opposite: how to unlearn the modernist fantasy of total, panoptical and instrumental mastery over society. This leads us to the second feature of postnational culture, which is premised upon the nascent realization arising in civil societies everywhere that what the world most requires is not more governability, as some suggest, but the introduction of spaces of ungovernability. Such spaces would be more in tune with the requisites for cultivating the full potential of postnational culture, which is less liable than national culture to be embodied in state ideology. In other words, the cultural task now at hand is how to encourage the global efflorescence of autonomous, non-state centred action upon the world.

            While the European trajectory toward postnationalism suggests the priority of state action, it must be kept in mind that state action in Europe simply sought to adjust itself to older realities. These old realities may be reduced to the basic tendency of economies and culture to burst out of their fetters, a tendency that may be found throughout historical world systems, whether European-, Arab-, or Asian-dominated. ‘Modernity’ is essentially the term we use to describe a faster than usual process of ‘bursting out,’ thus mandating the contemplation of bigger and better fetters. And ‘globalization’ is essentially the expression of the failure of such fetters. Today, we must confront this failure―yet, in an age of perspectivist fragmentation, there is no one to offer a credible blueprint of exactly how that might be accomplished. However, we can at least point out the basic problems confronting the exercise of rationality and suggest approaches through which spaces of non-state oriented, autonomous action may cultivate postnational culture―not through any state system, but through nodes of action in civil societies everywhere.

            To recapitulate, the model of postnational politics as spearheaded by European integration premised universal peace upon the three principles of interdependence, diluted sovereignty and the transformation of the state into a technocracy devoid of all heroic or embodying claims. None of this was consciously designed to create postnational culture. But wherever some semblance of these principles was put into motion, even if no regional integration was contemplated, they served to readjust political systems to older logics and also to new horizons and routes for the migration, dissemination and expansion of both trade and culture. The American route to postnationalism, by contrast, is structurally inferior, even as American culture―whatever that may be―imagines itself or is imagined to be global culture. The point is that the end of the Cold War gave Europe a purpose, but took one away from the US. When various national systems commit themselves to similar neo-liberal blueprints, there is an additional justification for them to conglomerate and integrate, while there is less rationale for state claims to embody distinct societies and certainly much less rationale for imperial domination, which serves no coherent set of interests.

            While postnational culture, like national culture, cannot be guaranteed to be simply ‘culture’ with no connection to political power, it must be understood that the problem that globalization confronts us with concerns the disappearance of any rationalizing ethos for the exercise of political power. During the Cold War, for example, grand ideologies such as capitalism and socialism could provide states with strategic guidelines for planning, for seeking alliances and for coordinating a whole array of moral and cultural goals. But after capitalism became truly global and, thus, independent of the services provided by imperial conduct or state planning―in fact, it now requires the state to do as little as possible―this grand rationalizing ethos of state-centred politics disappeared.

            The most appropriate political task under such circumstances is to develop a model of politics that is suitable for the global era; namely, one that is capable of nurturing the further development of postnational culture. Reduced sovereignty mandates alliances and networks on a global scale, at the level of civil societies, rather than states. Globalization itself furnishes some of the preconditions for such networking, in the same way that Roman roads unwittingly furnished routes for the spread of Christianity. Instead of simply lamenting the advent of globalization, we must see clearly the new opportunities it offers for networking―especially networking along lines other than state and nation, against state power and even against governability.

            If civil societies become the most meaningful arenas for political action in the global era and if their initiatives evolve in such a way as to forego the need for translation into statist logic, then we may thank globalization for having reintroduced into the world the forgotten principle of systems based upon partial control and tolerated measures of anarchy. An historical view of processes of economic expansion and world systems shows that the idea of the ‘system’ as controllable by a hegemon or central institution is associated only with the modern world system; in older world systems, their constituent parts never thought they needed total control, and business and ethical standards evolved independently of political education and state interests. Only now, almost five centuries later, are we going back to the old idea of systems that consist of partial controls and thrive on thousands of little negotiations, not grand imperial initiatives―the model spearheaded by the Iberian manner of conquering the New World.

            Today, we are left with micropolitics on a world scale. Not micropolitics vis-à-vis macropolitics, it must be emphasized, but micropolitics as the only kinds of politics that can hope to be rational. At the level of civil societies active worldwide, interests are much clearer than they can be from the point of view of governments, which are left with little to do but maintain the same old arsenal and cultivate ideological vacuity. Of course, micropolitics has an obvious shortcoming: its outcome cannot be guaranteed and one does not always win the battle. But at least one exercises freedom and acts upon the world directly, rather than waits for an institution embodying the whole of society to do it in its own way. In micropolitics, alienation is not resolved with success, but with enjoyment of the very capacity for action.

The four types of postnational solidarity

So far, I have charted the perimeters surrounding the question of postnational culture, but said nothing about what postnational culture is or might be. I would like to conclude, therefore, by outlining its contours, with the caveat that what follows concerns only one of the vectors of culture; namely, how people create new types of solidarity beyond or above the nation. Other vectors, such as issues of lifestyle, consumption, or communication, are certainly important. But the question of new solidarities is central to the present discussion since it asks, in particular, how a rigid frame of solidarity, like nationalism, may be surpassed by solidarities that have the potential to be more humane and flexible or less easily institutionalized into state systems.

            The argument is not that old-fashioned nationalism is in the process of disappearing, but that it is now only one of many available strategies for solidarity, not its exclusive definer. Yet, even as such, nationalism suffers from the great disadvantage of possessing, as time progresses, fewer and fewer connections to actual value systems, material benefits, global causes and social networks, for these are increasingly being shaped by the forces of globalization. Even where nationalism is expressed most vociferously, as in the Balkans, its program is to link up the nation to something larger than itself, in the same way that Scotland, when and if it secedes from Britain, will not become independent, but will immediately apply to join the European Union. No one wants to be independent today and the rhetoric of independence only serves as a symbolic assertion of sovereignty in a world in which sovereignty is impossible.

            If nationalism currently represents a less real referentiality to material benefits than it once claimed, one might expect alternative frames of solidarity to take up the battle cry. From today’s vantage point, we may identify four logical starting points for postnational solidarities, each emanating from a central human value: freedom, giving rise to life-emancipatory solidarities; universality, giving rise to humanist solidarities; interests, giving rise to material solidarities; and deep meaning, giving rise to spiritual solidarities. These four encompass the range of logical possibilities in terms of what solidarity is generally intended to accomplish.

Spiritual solidarities

The global growth of religious solidarities, in particular, and the efforts to recruit new converts recall a pattern of solidarity that predates the nation-state. This trend, which began to gather momentum in various parts of the world from the late 1970s onward, is characterized by a different level of religious fervour than that which typified traditional spiritualities, both in the centre and in the periphery. The new fervour is not merely characterized by seemingly deeper and more communalistic sentiments than was the case in previous generations, but is coupled, significantly enough, with a more vigorous sense of global mission.

            There are two immediately discernible versions of these spiritual solidarities. A ‘weak’ version―manifested, for example, in the interpretations of Eastern spirituality being adopted in the West―emphasizes personal growth and connecting the adherent, through personal, voluntaristic and meditative effort, to larger cosmic potentials that are nonetheless seen to inhere in the individual. The second, or ‘strong,’ version typifies what has come to be called ‘fundamentalism,’ both in the East and in the West. Unlike the weak version of spiritual solidarity, the strong version involves more emphatic commitment to communalistic ventures, whereby spiritual effort is coupled with the building of social institutions―schools, hospitals, charities, banks, mutual aid societies and the like―that solidify the ranks of such movements, while simultaneously fulfilling roles within the everyday life of the faithful. In this way, such solidarities activate those nodes of action within civil society that are most akin to the old role of the extended family.

            In many respects, both of these versions are in tune with the spirit of their times, rather than discordant, as commentators like Barber and Friedman mistake them to be. The main targets of these movements are not programs of ‘development,’ ‘progress,’ or ‘modernization’―terms which they themselves frequently use―but global conditions of vagueness associated with cultural globalization that they seek to replace with deep meaning. This deep meaning, in turn, does not emanate from purely logical requisites as much as from social standpoints: a desire to show the resourcefulness of the spirit in providing vigour and autonomy in a world otherwise governed by strangers or unaccountable forces, and to demonstrate this autonomy through direct challenges to imperialism and political authorities. Global spirituality does not reject globalization, only imperial and governmental interference. This spirituality is itself a creature of cultural globalization and, like all other such cultural creatures, it seeks to link an individual psyche to global spirituality, but through an aura of authenticity, rather than one of passivity and surrender.

Material solidarities

The gradual decline of organized class solidarities and the concomitant decline in the power of organized labour in many countries over the past few decades frequently obscures the growth and entrenchment of such solidarities at the global level. It is easy to overlook this fact because the most established networks of material solidarity also tend to be those least apparent to common ways of seeing. Thus far, transnational class connectivities appear to be more developed at the less visible, upper echelons of each society. Elmar Altvater and Robert Reich, among others, show that the global classes most aware of their connection to each other tend to be concentrated in society’s professional classes, especially in the financial sectors, in computer programming and in other types of ‘symbolic analysis.’ These classes tend, therefore, to be the ones most secluded from, and least attentive to, the downtrodden classes that may be living just a neighbourhood away. They tend to seek to insulate themselves as much as possible―even when giving charitable donations―from classes that are geographically close, but economically and educationally distant, while they cultivate their connections, marketabilities, common interests and income potentials among their peers―who are defined by class outlook―at the global level.

            This is the image of a national household that is contained only by geography, at a time when geography is less of a prison for interests than it has ever been. Of course, this observation is truer for some classes than for others, particularly those who have not been at the forefront of efforts to further the logic of globalization; namely, the indigenous industrial working classes. Only now do we find a nascent realization among labour organizers in various countries that the enhanced global capacities of capital require the enhancement of the coordinated global capacities of labour. Frequently, this trend expresses itself as an opposition to globalization. However, we must note that this ‘opposition’ is itself globally organized―the very conditions that make it possible are the networks established in order to foster an interconnected global life.  

Humanist solidarities

The idea of ‘interests’ as a basis for solidarity may be generalized to include those that are indeed identified as ‘material’ in nature, yet shared beyond various kinds of lines, including class lines. Adherents of these types of solidarity assert that there are global causes―precisely because large sectors of humanity have shared interests―that can be articulated in broader terms than economic interest to the self and beyond national borders. Movements that exhibit such an outlook include variants of environmentalism, pacifism, human rights, feminism and so on. Despite this wide variety of causes, such movements generally follow a different line of emphasis than those adopted by spiritual movements, which concentrate upon combating conditions of vagueness in cultures, or by movements based upon class affinities, which define interests according to class locations. Movements oriented toward human causes in any genre tend to articulate them on the basis of passions for objectives that are seen to be irreducibly universal in nature.

            To date, this type of solidarity is most organized and visible in what tends to be called ‘global civil society.’ It is also the type of transnational solidarity most likely to be acknowledged by state-oriented organizations, such as the UN, which currently recognizes over 2,000 non- governmental organizations, over 70 of which enjoy consultative status. The humanist line of emphasis in global life amasses enormous resources through private sector grants. It has successfully forced itself upon―and continues to articulate―the agendas of many global gatherings dedicated to its causes, for example, the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, where the agenda was determined in great part through the input of environmental organizations, or the women’s conference in Beijing, which attracted 35,000 participants and enhanced the enduring global connectivity of women activists around the world.  

Life-emancipatory solidarities

Global life further unleashes the potentials of those movements associated with propensities toward liberation or modes of expression that are restricted within each society. More precisely, these are the movements oriented toward individual freedom to pursue particular lifestyles or choices that contradict or are at odds with mainstream cultural patterns. Life politics begin with the self. Assertions such as, “it’s my life,” do not mean that the speaker feels self-sufficient, but the exact opposite. When the self seeks disengagement from a given surrounding that it regards to be restrictive, it does so first by searching for those who share similar perspectives and who entertain the possibilities of emancipated individualism. Any simple internet search will reveal thousands of possible permutations on this theme across the globe.

            In many ways, life-emancipatory movements derive energy from their status as statements against normal patterns of behaviour. Their very possibility within each society requires some of the sociological features that globalization only accentuates; namely, environments characterized by anonymity or autonomy that thrive in the context of cosmopolitan urbanity which, in turn, is experienced as an antidote to the relative immutability of lifestyles fostered by the parochialism of town life. Globalization only deepens and furthers the possibilities hinted at in cosmopolitan urbanity, offering a wider net of world association and cross-learning to help individuals decide how to conduct their lives, in so far as that conduct requires a supply of globally-derived energies.

            Some of the most active arenas of life-emancipatory orientations cluster around youth movements and musical styles usually tend to be the chosen venues through which a new definition of the emancipated self is propagated. If we observe the globalization of rap music, for example, we will note that it may be readily detected in almost all of the countries of the world, even though rap, as a lyric-intensive genre, might be expected to be the musical genre least likely to be disseminated globally. But this example reveals the determination of the freedom-oriented vectors of global life to extract purposely new possibilities for expression from non-local sources, precisely because they express local problems and concerns―as rap usually does. Models of emancipated life circulating as global trends allow ancient concerns to be expressed in new light. In such a world, one is invited, for instance, to learn how to become ‘gay’ in accordance with experiences of emancipation elsewhere, rather than simply practice an ancient form of sexuality as it has always been practiced.  

This essay resulted in part from my lack of satisfaction with a response given by Benedict Anderson, the famous author of Imagined Communities, to a question that I asked him at a public event at Cornell University in the summer of 1998 about the future of nationalism in an age of globalization. Anderson refused to recognize any possible alternatives to nationalism since, for him, nationalism represents the most successful modernist ideology of solidarity. However, it seemed to me that a central story unfolding in our age―perhaps not so differently than in earlier epochs―concerns social dynamics operating just below the level of expressed institutionalism. It concerns less audible social formations which, in due time, assert themselves because they better correspond to the realities of their age than do established institutions and discourses. The latter may not yet realize that they themselves have been born for the sake of already concluded or passing realities. Therefore, the declining meanings and purposes of nationalism and the state do not mean that either will suddenly disappear from view; they persist, but like ghosts that do not understand the world of the living.

Notes  

This essay is based upon my recent book, The Ends of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).  

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