(De)Civilising Nations and Nationalism

In 2024, it is no longer possible to deny that nationalism is gaining ground everywhere, in various forms. Because it is still associated, especially in Europe, with two world wars, fascism, Nazism and the violence of the ‘age of extremes’ (Hobsbawm, 1994), ‘nationalism’ is still seen as a repellent term, albeit less and less so. Few of the far-right political formations identify themselves as such, and liberal, conservative or progressive parties and their voters identify themselves even less as such. And yet, nationalist ideas have taken hold everywhere to the point of colonising the political arena, and ‘contaminating’ the so-called ‘traditional parties’, supposedly anxious to retain voters increasingly attracted by the populist vote. Among them all, however, the nation – the idea of nation, the national feeling – seems to be a consensus. 30 years ago, people were predicting the end of nations and the disappearance of borders, but today the ‘nation’ seems to be doing better than ever. In the United States as in France, in Flanders as in Italy, nationalists and their political opponents alike claim to cherish it and defend it against its adversaries in the opposite camp. ‘It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round. Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist’, wrote the great modernist historian Ernest Gellner in 1983. 40 years on, this paper proposes to re-examine the proposition in the light of current issues and the work of Michael Billig (1995) and Norbert Elias (1989, 1991). How does an obsolete survival unit – in a globalised world – continue to exist through the consciousness of its members? How does ‘banal nationalism’ provide a breeding ground for extreme nationalism? How does the national habitus ensure continuity between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’?