File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-08.224, message 67


From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: Re: M-I: cyberseminar
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 00:21:58 +0300


At 16:36 7/4/1997 -0400, you wrote:
>Zeynep:
>>
>>I still plan to write about Kurdish nationalism, posting on Friday or
>>Saturday. It is a complicated issue, and even if there's nobody sane out
>>there, it might help me express my ideas a bit better, since a foreign
>>audience is much more demanding to explain such local stuff, especially one
>>like nationalism that is sweeping many "local" areas around the world with
>>rather similar effects. Are they really similar? I was hoping to get that
>>from the cyber-seminar. Are they really the response of the communities to
>>advent of "globalism", as they find socialist and left ideas to be
>>discredited or weak?
>>
>
>Louis: Ah, yes. These are the key questions, aren't they? I have numerous
>questions myself. I plan to say a thing or two about the CPUSA's complex
>relation to black nationalism, Marcus Garvey in particular.

This "similarity" problem has been bugging me. My meager experience in the
left tells me big abstractions are just that - big abstraction. I mean it is
impossible to make any sweeping statements about why nationalism is such an
attractive ideology now in so many places around the world - from Quebec to
Kurdish mountains, to Bosnia to Chechnya to Northern Italy to Chiapas. I
suspect there is no single underlying cause that explains them all, perhaps
some common influences. We have to look at German intervention at Croatia,
Kurdish history and the structure of the Ottoman Empire, the importance of
French "cultural identity" and its economic base, if it does exist, how far
the "Soviet" ideology penetrated all the former Soviet republics which seem
to be hotbeds of nationalism, etc. If we have a cyber-seminar on some
abstract nationalism question (nobody will even be able to define nation and
nationalism, I bet) it won't really be of much use, methinks. 

Actually, I also wish Justin was still here. Some of the questions about
nationalism, connect, in my mind, to the question of how communities resist
the penetration of the market and individualisation. It is not exactly a
class question, but I think it is also unexplainable in terms of the
"individual" unit, but the examination must start from concepts as
"identity" and "social existence", which sound as if they can be explained
by starting with the individual as a unit, but which can't really, imo.
Nationalism must be a challenge to rational choice and the AM approach, both
for separate reasons.

I'd hate to bring this up, I'm sure all Americans are sick of this subject.
But, looking from afar this O.J. trial (yup, I've said the word) seems to be
the biggest show of black nationalism I've seen recently. Did anyone analyse
this in either marxist or somewhat marxist terms?

Zeynep



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