Does It Matter Whether National Identities Have Deep Or Shallow Cultural Roots?

Essay Question: Does it matter whether national identities have deep or shallow cultural roots?

'Perhaps you think 'this silly German is getting excited'. But on my word of honour I'm Russian. I cannot even speak German . My father is Orthodox.' Chekhov's The Three Sisters

Max Weber's concept of culture involves 'a man, as an animal, suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun' . Culture therefore represents these webs. It is man's relationship with and understanding of what is around him that determines who he really is and the constructions or formulae that he uses to define what happens to him. The relationship between culture and nations has grown more and more distant since the end of the Second World War, particularly in the West. Baron Tusenbach's words from the first act of one of Chekhov's most famous plays are from a different time and suggest a closer relationship. Russia's national identity possesses these deep cultural roots, the language and religion that gives Tusenbach his sense of self and belonging. His status to the other characters is that of an outsider, simply because of his German roots. Thus national identity and cultural roots in this case seem to go hand in hand. Two men are of the same nation only if they share the same culture, which in turn, means a system of ideas, a mindset or a way of behaving and communicating. Yet, I argue the opposite is often true, particularly in agrarian society, post-war Europe and our own late-industrial one. Cultural identification in all these cases represented a greater statement of one's personality than the nation one resides in. National identity is only strong when the rare accident occurs that combines political boundaries within cultural limits. Yet during the periods of late antiquity and post-war Europe that frame the period of industrialisation, two giant cultural movements strode the world, undermining national identity. The movements were not necessarily already deeply embedded in society, but all had the effect of influencing a European's sense of identity to a greater extent than his or her nation did. Overall I argue factors that determined political boundaries were alien from those determining cultural borders. The fall of Rome and late antiquity constituted a crucial test for the cultural legacy of the Roman Empire, whose civilisation had dominated the world for so many years. Classical civilisation lived on in many ways due to these deep cultural roots preventing any strong national identities emerging easily from the victorious Germanic tribes. Americanization and the youth culture of the post-war period determined peoples' identities to a great extent. In the same way as Rome, they represented cultural giants that in a world of greater communication resulted in a Western sphere, devoid of overt nationalism. Thus, cultural roots have always acted as a barrier to the nation-state, particularly in agrarian societies and outside of the period of what Hobsbawm dubbed the golden age of nationalism, 1789-1945.

Gellner and Breuilly both refute this conventional attachment between national identity and culture. The former defines nationalism as a theory of political legitimacy, which requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones.' Both claim, as I do, that pre-industrial society discouraged this, but that, moreover, nationalism was somehow unnatural compared to culture. Elites, particular social groups and foreign governments use national appeals to provoke action against the state. Cultural identity comes naturally to the world's populations. Nationalism represents the means of creating a sense of identity where perhaps there isn't one. Rousseau and Rocker similarly collide in their depiction of the role of the state as a creator. The former writes about the citizen's submission under the common good embodied by the state. Rocker turns this argument on its head, claiming that culture creates the state. I agree that in the periods of the late Roman Empire and post-war Europe, it is wrong to overemphasise the role of the state in manipulating its people and their ideas. However, the flaw with the concept of culture creating a sense of national identity is that it fails to perceive the natural quality of culture in comparison with man-made political boundaries. Overall, I challenge, as do Gellner and Breuilly, the assumed, natural relationship between national identity and ethnic roots in the question. I take two periods, one of great cultural continuity, and the other of cultural revolution, as examples of the power and ability of Western ideas, art and values to transcend borders, race and language.

Roman civilisation and the process of Americanisation undermined national identity. The social organisation of agrarian society was not favourable to the nationalist principle of the convergence of the political and the cultural. Our idea of the homogenous and school-transmitted nature of culture within each political entity does not apply here, as the political boundaries were either, as Gellner argues, much smaller or much larger than cultural boundaries would indicate. Jerome wept when the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and proclaimed 'The City which has taken the whole world is itself taken.' Indeed, Rome influenced all areas of life in the countries it occupied and introduced a uniform visual style and infrastructure to previously barren territories. When the western half of the empire finally fell though, the victorious barbarians underwent in many cases, as Walter Goffart explains, a process of assimilation into the Roman lifestyle. Other Gothic tribes, such as the Vandals, simply disappeared, consumed by the great shadow of classical civilisation. The Goths did attempt to legitimise their own newfound prominence in the world by composing a history of the Germanic tribes. But the cultural roots of these tribes were too shallow to surpass the force of Roman civilisation. Therefore, the Goths employed Latin writers like Cassiodorus and Florentinus who naturally wrote in a style that dated back to Tacitus. Thus there is hardly any record of the language used by the Germanic tribes. Indeed, the idea of 'Germania', voiced by Tacitus, was a very vague one that they themselves never used. The visual representation of barbarian kings of the time confirms the view that this constituted an era of continuity rather than a break from the past. The Senigallia medallion of Theodoric shows the ruler in a cuirass and cloak in the style of an Eastern emperor and there is also a Latin inscri ption and title. Vandal coins remain one of the few sources of study of the lost Vandal civilisation that on the one hand was able to cripple the Roman Empire through its conquest of Carthage, but on the other was unable to impose anything lasting that represented Vandal identity. The coins feature a reference to a standing emperor in military dress and a horse's head, a symbol with different meanings for various peoples. In contrast, a typical Roman coin from Carthage would have the symbol of the city, a woman carrying grain, on one side and a reference to Rome on the other, the wolf with twins. Roman civilisation possessed this cultural heritage that made it very difficult for the territories taken over by barbarians to reinvent or create their own. Americanisation, on the other hand, represented a relatively new force on the world stage, but managed to seduce whole continents with its glamour and promise of family values and comfort (illusory or not). Procopius describes barrel-chested barbarians relaxing and losing their warrior-like attitudes when using Roman baths. In the same way, Europeans who had undergone so much suffering during the war liked nothing better than to indulge in the escapism of the latest Hollywood picture. American films promised glamour and something refreshing. Thus, America, like Rome, became a world power not just in terms of its economic growth, but also its ability to project an idea of its values and its products to the majority of the world, posing as the leader of the West. Today, in Iraq, a centre of hostility between American and Islamic culture, a heavy metal band, Acrassicauda (Latin for Black scorpion) plays underground in Baghdad despite the obvious dangers. Thus even areas that appear to have a totally separate, distinct national identity are infiltrated by Western culture. American protection of Western Europe during the Second World War and the Cold War as its sphere of influence led to the creation of the cult of the West. In Fellini's Amarcord, the inhabitants of a sleepy Italian provincial town rush to the waterfront to gaze in awe at a huge American steam boat. Gellner writes of the impossibility of a national identity, as we understand it today, in an agrarian society and the history of the Roman empire and its aftermath helps support this view. But equally post-war European society possessed (and still does) a world power in the US that helped give many countries, with very different histories and ethnicities, a common culture.

The protest and youth movement of the 60s and 50's consumerism constituted culture at its most powerful and anti-national. These global phenomena did not derive from particularly deep cultural roots, but this did not make them any less powerful. The suffering of Europe during the war and the need for financial support from the US to rebuild its cities meant there existed a similarity of aspirations across the continent. Consumerism satisfied this wish for a return to normality and the reconstruction of community, economy and family. Herbert Marcuse wrote a damning indictment of consumerism that analysed the nature of its hold over people of such diverse cultures. This democratic 'unfreedom' resulted partly from the creation of a false consciousness. People began to recognise themselves in their commodities. Priorities became more and more materialist. Schoolman commented that 'All mental behaviour appears to be material.' The democratisation of glamour, particularly Hollywood glamour, led to the deposition of many of the longest lasting traditions of society. Italy had always been a deeply Catholic country, yet the introduction of scandal sheets and magazines like L'Oggi, Lo Spechhio, L'Espresso and L'Ore challenged the restraints that religion had always imposed upon its inhabitants, such as marriage. Thus this sacred ceremony came to be called 'an industry'. Denial of the flesh was part of traditional European, religious spirituality yet consumerism effected a shift in the concept of the body. The cultural revolution of the 1960's that swept across the globe was in reaction to the materialist society that stretched from North American to Rome. Hobsbawm called it 'the triumph of the individual over society' . I argue that the real revolution was in making the younger generation an autonomous social stratum through the creation of a youth culture as well as a rebellion of the mind. Kant wrote that a person's identity and dignity is rooted in his universal humanity, or more broadly his rationality and not his cultural or ethnic specificity. Yet 1968 seemed to achieve a cultural autonomy through a rebellion of the mind. The new libertarianism did not possess or need any ideological justification, it was rather in the name of the unlimited autonomy of individual desire. The slogans of May 1968 reveal this individualism. 'I take my desires for reality, for I believe in the reality of my desires.' Others included 'The personal is political', 'God is me'. 'It is forbidden to forbid'.The protests did not have a specific target. Subjectivity was at the core of their arguments. It was far from a conventional revolution. The enemy was authority of any kind. Sexual liberation, drugs and music represented a rebellion against the prejudices and culture of their parents. The acceptance of music, clothes and language of 'lower classes' also represented a shift in popular culture of the time. This revolution in manners and customs and the commercial arts therefore resulted in a common youth culture across much of the world. To be young meant 'to do your own thing', with the least possible restraint, although the freedom of this movement became more of an imposition as the new youth culture soon became more of a uniform fashion across the world.

The agrarian world of late antiquity and post-1945 Europe both possessed certain surprisingly similar traits in their repression of nationalism in favour of a more international culture. In the age of empire and increasing industrialisation, culture became entwined with the creation of the nation state. The culmination of this nationalism came in the first half of the twentieth century with the First World War and the rise of fascism. After 1945 the world suddenly became a smaller place in certain ways through the rapid technological advances of the period and the dominance of two world powers. Culture once more became a more international affair. Albert Camus shortly after the war cried out for the death of nationalism. 'The new world order we are looking for cannot be national or even continental and especially neither eastern nor western. It must be universal.' Nationalism was indeed suppressed, but this was achieved not with a political programme as Camus would have liked, but rather with a series of two cultural revolution.

Bibliography

Grosby S, Nationalsim: A Very Short Introduction, OUP

Hobsbawm E., The Age of Extremes, London: Abacus, 1994

http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/camus.html

Hutchinson J & Smith A.D., Nationalism (1994)

Breuilly J, Nationalism and the State (1983)

Gellner E, Nations and Nationalism (1983) Hobsbawm E, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1990)