The Nation/State Fantasy: A Psychoanalytical Genealogy Of Nationalism 3030229173, 9783030229177, 9783030229184

Table of contents :
Preface and Acknowledgments......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
Chapter 1: Introduction: Problematising the Present......Page 10
The Nation/State Problématique Revisited: Going Beyond Sovereignty, Statism and Territory......Page 16
The Contemporary Regime of Nation/State Congruency......Page 21
The Plan of the Book......Page 30
References......Page 37
Ernest Gellner, Congruency and Cultural Homogenisation......Page 49
Gellner’s Approach to History and the ‘Presentist Fallacy’......Page 52
Functionalism, Determinism and the Naturalisation of the ‘Nation-State’ System......Page 54
One Nation-One State......Page 56
The Limitations in the Gellnerian Theorisation of Nationalism: Towards a Psychoanalytical Reading of Nation/State Congruency and a Genealogy of Homogenisation Practices......Page 58
Fantasy and Enjoyment: A Lacanian Psychoanalytical Framework......Page 59
References......Page 69
Chapter 3: The State as One: The ‘Union of Men’, the ‘People’ and the ‘State’ in Early Modernity......Page 74
‘A People Is a Single Entity, with a Single Will’: Early-Modern Juridico-Political Discourse......Page 76
The Rule–People Nexus Practice......Page 78
The Homogenisation of Authority Practice......Page 81
The End/Teleology Practice......Page 86
The Representation Practice......Page 87
Rousseau and the Relationship Between the One and the Many......Page 88
The General Will, the Sovereign and the Unity of People......Page 89
From the State of Nature to Moral Liberty and Equality......Page 93
Small City-States and the Necessity of Homogeneity......Page 94
The State Is One, but More than Itself......Page 95
References......Page 99
Chapter 4: The Fragmentation of the State as Modality of Unity and the Rise of the Fantasy of Nation/State Congruency......Page 102
Abbé Sieyès and the Fragmentation of the State as Modality of Congruency......Page 104
Sieyès’ Third Estate as a New Subject for Analysis......Page 107
The Discursive Practices of Teleology, Representation and the Fantasy of Congruency......Page 110
‘Does the Earth Not Have Space for us All?’ Herder’s World of Peoples......Page 112
The Cradle of Nations: Language, Culture, Climate and the Congruency of Men and Country......Page 114
Herder’s Anti-State Polemic......Page 118
Humanität: Pluralism and the International......Page 121
The People (and the Vaterland) Above All: The Romanticism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte......Page 123
Man, Nature and the Organic Body of the People......Page 124
The State and the Vaterland......Page 125
The Rise of the Fantasy of Nation/State Congruency......Page 128
References......Page 131
Chapter 5: Fantasies of Nationalism: Between Nation/State Dialectic and Liberal Thought......Page 134
Hegel and the Dialectic of State and Nation......Page 136
World History and the Role of the Nation......Page 138
World Spirit and the Dialectic of the National Spirit......Page 139
Unity and Its Internal Contradiction: A Dialectical Progression of State and Nation......Page 141
The State, Freedom and the Heterogeneity of the Modern State......Page 143
Liberal-Democracy and Nation/State Congruency......Page 147
Representative Democracy......Page 149
Democracy in America......Page 155
The Congruency Leitmotif: History, National Identity and Liberalism......Page 161
References......Page 165
Chapter 6: The Nation/State Fantasy and the Production of the ‘International’ in IR Theory......Page 170
Modernity, the ‘End’ of Nationalism and the Coupling of Nation and State......Page 174
The ‘Nation-State’ as the Main Locus of Identification......Page 178
The State–Sovereignty Nexus......Page 181
The ‘Nation-State’—International Nexus and the ‘International’ as a Site of Intervention......Page 184
References......Page 189
Chapter 7: Back to the Present: The Contemporaneous Re-homogenisation of the ‘International’......Page 194
‘The Return to the State’......Page 195
Technologies of Homogenisation and Congruency-Making in the Contemporary International Power-Knowledge......Page 199
The Ratio or Balance Practice......Page 201
The Social Totality or Indivisibility Practice: ‘Strong’ States Versus ‘Weak’ States......Page 204
The Security/‘Securitisation’ Practice......Page 209
The Sovereignty-Borders Practice......Page 210
The Liberal-Democracy and Homogeneous-Heterogeneity Practice......Page 212
The ‘International’ and the Nation/State Congruency Fantasy......Page 216
References......Page 217
Chapter 8: Conclusions: Engaging with the Ethico-Political......Page 224
The Ethico-Political Dimension......Page 228
References......Page 235
Index......Page 240

Citation preview

The Nation/State Fantasy A Psychoanalytical Genealogy of Nationalism Moran M. Mandelbaum

The Nation/State Fantasy “Mandelbaum’s book provides a valuable intervention in the re-emerging questions of nationalism and fantasies of state congruency. By deploying a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach the book offers a critical inside into why congruency is a misguided and failed understanding of the society and the state and how it reinforces rather than decimates nationalist ethnic tensions. This work makes important contributions to the understanding of the state and nationalism and to the use of psychoanalytical approaches in the study of international politics.” —Dr. Andreja Zevnik, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Manchester

Moran M. Mandelbaum

The Nation/State Fantasy A Psychoanalytical Genealogy of Nationalism

Moran M. Mandelbaum School of Social, Political and Global Studies Keele University Keele, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-22917-7    ISBN 978-3-030-22918-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © EyeEm / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book arises out of a continuous curiosity and a sense of perplexity about nationalism and (global) politics, particularly how nationalism seems to endure and persist, and how its ideal mode of socio-political life, the nation/state, is a recurring motif in the project of modernity. This book is somewhat odd because it analyses the form and power of nationalism not in any specific case, say, of a country’s national identity or its historical process of nation-building. Rather, this book analyses nationalism’s form and power in political thought, offering a genealogy of the ideal congruent nation/state since early-modern European thought to contemporary political and IR theorisation. As such, this book has not always been easy to write, and it requires the reader to think about nationalism and the nation/state in more abstract terms. I hope, however, that by problematising our fixation with modalities of societal homogeneity and by offering a psychoanalytical reading of nationalism, especially at times of yet again rising nationalist fervour, we would be able to think and act differently. Writing this book has been a journey, and no doubt an unfinished one, that went through several important stops over the past decade. Researching for and writing this book, therefore, benefited from fantastic comments, critiques and many discussions along the way. During my MA and research years at the University of Haifa I have learned a great deal about IR theory, nationalism and questions of war and peace from Benny Miller, whose theoretical and empirical rigour were more than inspirational. I am also extremely grateful to Zack Levey, Ben Mor, As’ad Ghanem v

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and Sammy Smooha for inspirational teaching and for pushing me to continue my research. My PhD years at Bristol University were truly eye-opening, and I am indebted for the University of Bristol’s Centenary Scholarship which made it possible for me to pursue a PhD in the UK. Jutta Weldes and Columba Peoples, my supervisors, read meticulously my many drafts and were always there for me, truly beyond the call of duty. I have learned a great deal from both on discourse analytical and poststructuralist approaches to IR. Gregor McLennan’s masterclasses on the philosophy of the social sciences and our occasional chats were always stimulating. My deepest thanks to Terrell Carver who taught me about discourse analysis and to really think outside of the box, and for always encouraging me to go further with my ideas. I’m also grateful to both Terrell and Kimberly Hutchings, my Viva examiners, who seriously and constructively engaged with my not so easy PhD. The Viva was one of the best intellectual conversations I have ever had. Many more have contributed to my research at the University of Bristol and I’m grateful to Jon Fox, Eric Herring, Torsten Michel and Tariq Modood for excellent conversations. I must also thank friends and fellow PhD travellers for their friendship, support and engagement with my work in various workshops, reading groups and over beer or wine. Particular thanks to Cerelia Athanassiou, Anna Maria Friis Kristensen, Carina van de Wetering, Elisa Wynne-Hughes, Audrey Reeves, Jo Tidy, Nada Ghandour-Demiri, Jamie Melrose, Lara Montesinos Coleman and Jan Dobbernack. During the last five years I have also benefited from a growing number of friends and colleagues at Keele University who have supported my research and offered excellent comments on various parts of my project. I’m particularly grateful to Linda Åhäll, Barry Ryan, Helen Parr, Bülent Gökay, Brian Doherty, Liz Carter, Monica Mookherjee, Anthony Kauders, Ronnie Lippens, Yossi Nehushtan, Fabienne Emmerich, Becky Richards, Jon Parker and Naveed Sheikh. Beyond Keele, I should thank Daniele Conversi for advice, suggestions and continuous encouragement. My interest in psychoanalysis and the (global) political has also been stimulated by more recent discussions and exchanges. The EISA Exploratory Symposia in 2016 was particularly stimulating and I’m grateful to the EISA Board for giving us the time and beautiful space of Rapallo in Italy to reflect on psychoanalysis, IR and nationalism. During the symposia I had the privilege to present and discuss my research with Catarina Kinnvall, Juliet Brough Rogers and Andreja Zevnik. The roundtable and

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panel I co-organised with Andreja Zevnik at the 2018 ISA were also particularly useful and stimulating and my thanks to Charlotte Epstein, Jakub Eberle, Badredine Arfi, Catarina Kinnvall and Ilan Kapoor. I’m grateful to the editorial team at Palgrave, particularly Mary Fata and Sarah Roughley. Feedback and suggestions by the two reviewers were extremely valuable and helped improve and sharpen my argument. Parts of the book are revised and extended versions of earlier publications: parts of the Introduction is a revised version of a paper published in Critical Security Studies 4(2): 187–201; the section that analyses Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism in Chap. 2 is a revised version of a paper I published in Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(11): 2014–2033; the section that unpacks the Abbé Sieyès in Chap. 3 was published in Philosophy & Social Criticism 42(3): 246–266, and Chap. 7 is an expanded version of my paper published in the Journal of IR & Development 16(4): 514–538. I’m grateful to the publishers for their permission to republish my work here in a revised and extended form. My parents, Diva and Joseph Mandelbaum, have always supported and encouraged me and I’m grateful for their unconditional love. My thanks to my brothers, Arik and Dror, for their support (also financial). The many ongoing intellectual conversations about the human condition have been a constant source of stimuli. Finally, I’m indebted to my partner for life, Barbara, whose love, support and always brilliant advice enabled me to write this book. Barbara has made it possible for me to finish my PhD and pursue a career in higher education, whilst always being there for me no matter what obstacles and problems one might face. Keele, UK June 2019

Moran M. Mandelbaum

Contents

1 Introduction: Problematising the Present  1 2 The Nation/State Fantasy: From Gellner to Lacan 41 3 The State as One: The ‘Union of Men’, the ‘People’ and the ‘State’ in Early Modernity 67 4 The Fragmentation of the State as Modality of Unity and the Rise of the Fantasy of Nation/State Congruency 95 5 Fantasies of Nationalism: Between Nation/State Dialectic and Liberal Thought127 6 The Nation/State Fantasy and the Production of the ‘International’ in IR Theory163 7 Back to the Present: The Contemporaneous Re-homogenisation of the ‘International’187

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8 Conclusions: Engaging with the Ethico-Political217 Index233

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Problematising the Present

There can be no good international system until the boundaries of states coincide as nearly as possible with the boundaries of nations. (Bertrand Russell 1917: 146)

Ernest Gellner asserts that ‘nationalist sentiments are deeply offended by violations of the nationalist principle of congruence of state and nation’, for ‘nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (2006 [1983]: 128, 1). This notion of congruency—a congruency of ‘people’ with space and authority, or, briefly, the discursive idea(l) by which nation and state ought to be aligned—has become a leitmotif in our contemporary modes of thought. According to Bartelson (2009) it is precisely the permeation of the idea of nationalism, or the notion of a homogeneous national community, that has made it impossible to think about world community. Modernism and the ideal of national congruency have become indivisible thus rendering alternative modes of political life nearly impossible (Conversi 2012; Mandelbaum 2016a). In the social sciences, this has been dubbed ‘methodological nationalism’, namely ‘… the all-pervasive assumption that the nation-state is the natural and necessary form of society in modernity; the nation-state is taken as the organizing principle of modernity’ (Chernilo 2006: 5–6). In political and International Relations (IR) theory, more specifically, the congruent nation/state is both the final goal of political life and the © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_1

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precursor of, or at least concomitant to, liberal democracy, peace and modernisation (e.g., Cooper 2003: 14; Kymlicka 2001, 2004: 144–175; Linz and Stepan 1996: 16–37; Stepan 2008; Tamir 1993), whilst security in particular is discursively intertwined with nation/state congruency (e.g., Downes 2001; Kaufmann 1998; Mearsheimer and Pape 1993; Miller 2007, 2012; Van Evera 1994). The doxa of contemporary political and IR theory assumes, explicitly or tacitly, that only congruent societies are safe from internal upheaval and are able to modernise and develop economically. Congruent societies, however defined and practiced, are assumed to be the optimal units in the ‘modern international’ (see also the critique in Bartelson 2015).1 This ideal of nation/state congruency, which Gellner defines as the core principle of nationalism, is not to be conflated with state-centrism/statism, the indivisibility of sovereignty and/or territoriality, the subjects of important critical work in IR (e.g., Agnew 1994; Bartelson 1995, 2001; Booth 1991; Elden 2013; Walker 1993; Weber 1995). Rather, nation/state congruency refers to the discursively produced relationships between population, defined in terms in national peoplehood, authority and space and the various practices that allude to fix them, albeit always failing (Stavrakakis 2007: 189–210). As Doty (1996, 2003, 2007) has demonstrated in various studies of nationalism, the border and anti-immigration practices, the narratives of national identity and belonging are ambiguous and ambivalent at their core and require continuous maintenance. The distinctions between the inside and the outside, attempts to fix national borders, as well as to stabilise the meaning of the nation, sovereignty or the ‘will of the people’ (e.g., Canovan 2005; Conversi 1995; Doty 2007; Shapiro 1997, 2004; Walker 1993; Weber 1995) allude to the need to unpack the power of the nation/state and the ideal of unity it seeks to possess. This book critically interrogates the ideal of nation/state congruency and asks: ‘how did we get here?’ By deploying a genealogical approach (Andersen 2003: 17–23; Bartelson 1995; Foucault 1991; Nietzsche 1998 [1887]; Shiner 1982: 382–398, especially 387) this book aims to analyse the conditions under which we have come to define our socio-political existence, problems and solutions in terms of national unity and congruency, indeed the conditions under which the ideal of nation/state congruency, however defined, came to be rendered intelligible and legitimate. In other words, this book aims to critically unpack the values and meanings that have come to be equated with, and attributed to, the ideal of national homogeneity and in doing so have made it natural and rational. This means deploying the discursive practices approach and analysing the

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discursive spaces (Bartelson 1995; Doty 1993) through which nation/ state congruency came to be established. Equally important, this book aims to understand better the power of/ in nationalism, namely the affective hailing capacities that the ideal of nation/state congruency entails and how it came to be the doxa in modern political thought and practice. Put differently, this book engages with the discursive and affective apparatuses that have rendered the ideal of congruency a leitmotif in modern and contemporary political and IR theory.2 The book’s two main goals—to offer a genealogy of nation/state congruency and to understand better the ‘persistence of nationalism’ (Stephens 2013)—are intertwined since the power of nationalism, as I explain below, resides not only in the various discursive formations that animate it (e.g., achieving security, peace or modernity), but also in its structure, namely in nationalism’s fantasmatic ontology, its promise and failure and the temporal enjoyment it entails. Drawing on Kapoor’s (2008, 2014) psychoanalytical explanation of the endurance of development discourses, I argue that understanding nationalism requires both a discursive reading of its rationalisation and normalisation, but equally it requires a psychoanalytical explanation of its repetition, why and how nationalism discourses persist. To do so, this book deploys a discourse analytical and a Lacanian psychoanalytical approach in arguing that this ideal of nation/state congruency can be read as a fantasy, or a fantasmatic project, an endless endeavour of overcoming the lack and contingency of social life by offering a ‘fullness-­ to-­come’ (Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147; see also Arfi 2010; Eberle 2017; Kapoor 2014: 1133–1135; Mandelbaum 2014, 2016a; Žižek 1999, 2005, 2008). A psychoanalytical reading of nationalism and the nation/ state further draws on the Lacanian theorisation of the ‘split subject’, of the Freudian Spaltung, and thus lack (Lacan 2006 [1966]: 530; see also Burgess 2017; Epstein 2011: 335–337; Fink 1997; Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 260; Kinnvall 2017; Solomon 2015; Zevnik 2016). The Lacanian ‘lack’ or ‘void’ is key to the psychoanalytical reading of the nation/state as fantasy since it entails that no fixed and stable identity is possible. The Lacanian subjectivity is in an ontological state of void, a barred subject in Lacanian terminology ($), which is why political life is a continuous attempt, albeit bound to fail, at filling this lack (Stavrakakis 1999; Verhaeghe 1999). The ideal of nation/state congruency is thus a fantasy for it masks the disunity of, and the split in, society by offering an explanation for why ‘we’

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(the ‘nation’, ‘people’, ‘society’ and other tropes referring to an imagined collectivity) are not yet congruent (Lacan 1998 [1972–1973]; Žižek 1992: 165, 2008: 1–54) and by promising resolution and thus unity ‘… once a named or implied obstacle is overcome’ (Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147; Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006: 144–163). Since such a mode of wholeness, a fixed identity, is never possible (Laclau 1996: 57–58; Laclau and Mouffe 1985) congruency must be constantly re-imagined and reinvigorated, a certain utopia that is never ascertained and hence continuously re-invoked (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 261–262; Levitas 2007). This is an important reading of nationalism and the nation/state in modernity and in political and IR theory as well as the scholarship on nations and nationalism. This is so because, first, it goes beyond the modernist and constructionist school in nationalism studies (Anderson 2006 [1983]; Gellner 2006 [1983], compare with Smith 2000) that situates nationalism as a product and characteristic of modernity, as I attempt here to explain the fantasmatic function of nation/state congruency and nationalism’s affective power (Stavrakakis 2007). As such, my approach also goes beyond historical-sociological accounts of when and how nations are produced and/or institutionalised, mostly through state practices (e.g., Breuilly 1993; Brubaker 1996; Connor 1990; Hutchinson 2017), because my approach aims to understand the endurance of nationalism and our continuous investments in imagining and practising the congruent society. Second and as I briefly explain below, the book’s approach goes beyond scholarly accounts that inquire into the socially constructed and discursively produced nature of the nation/state. This is so because nationalism is often read through the ‘nation-state’ couplet as an institution, practice or discursive ideal that ought to be historically situated, explained and/or critiqued and deconstructed. This is especially so with social constructivists, poststructuralists and critical theorists, broadly defined, who draw on Anderson’s (2006) argument on the imaginary aspect of collective national identity and narratives. Such readings often stipulate the process of becoming, the possibility of rendering a certain population, present and past, distinct vis-à-vis its difference, socially/discursively producing ‘… the particularity or specificity of its world of significations’ (Castoriadis 1987 [1975]: 359). In this respect, the imaginary ideal of nation/state congruency is the manifestation of the social ­imaginary, a chain of significations and articulations that construct

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s­ociety  as distinct and different from Others, inside and outside (e.g., Walker 1993; Campbell 1998; Bartelson 1995, 2001; Wæver et al., 1993, Wæver 2002; Weldes et  al. 1999; Wendt 1999, although see Agamben 1998; Arendt 1958 [1951]: 267–302; Berenskoetter 2012; Butler and Spivak 2007). Others pointed to the socially constructed nature of sovereignty and the ‘nation-state’, as well as identifying the historical processes by which national/state identities were rendered  homogeneous, often through state-led and oppressive practices and/or by imposing state religion and thereby producing loyal subjects (e.g., Biersteker and Weber 1996; De Carvalho 2016; Rae 2002). Whilst these are important contributions to our reading of national/ state identities, and to the need to historicise the nation/state (sovereignty and territoriality), what I suggest in this book is that the ideal of nation/ state unity does not merely emerge out of discursive/social imaginaries that come to hegemonise a certain space at a certain time, namely to fix or homogenise population, but precisely how the ideal of national congruency constantly fails to achieve a whole and fixed national subject, and thus, consequently, how the ideal of the nation/state is evoked and rekindled continuously. In other words, the focus here is not only on the ‘form’ of nationalism and the ideal of nation/state congruency, that is, the discursive practices, formations and spaces that have produced the ideal of unity. Rather, by deploying a psychoanalytical framework I seek also to explain the ‘force’ of the ideal of nation/state congruency, that is, the why and how scholars of political thought from early modernity to contemporary IR theory have been grappling with the ideal of societal unity and endlessly attempting to capture what unity means and how to properly obtain it. This is why a Lacanian reading of nationalism and the nation/ state (Stavrakakis 2007) is crucial because it focuses on the continuous process of congruency making through which socio-political subjectivity is formed, albeit never completed. What I attempt in this book, therefore, is to account for the affective power of nationalism and the ideal of nation/state congruency in political and IR theory as well as offering a genealogy of nation/state congruency since early-modern European thought. This is not a genealogy of nationalism as a collective sentiment, or the ways by which the state appropriated/constructed national identity as part of its institutional practices (e.g., Anderson 2006; Breuilly 1993; De Carvalho 2016; Hobsbawm 1990; Rae 2002; Tilly 1990). Nor is this book an analysis  of  the discursive constructions of specific national identities (Sutherland 2005; Wodak 2009). Rather, in this book I interrogate the

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myriad forms through which the relationship between nation and state, broadly defined, is constructed and rendered intelligible within the fantasy of congruency and unity. Taking cue from Shiner’s reading of Foucault’s genealogy as ‘anti-method’, this genealogy is somewhat different since I do not investigate a given signifier like ‘state’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘citizen’ or ‘territory’ (e.g., Bartelson 1995, 2001; Elden 2013; Prokhovnik 2007). Rather, this genealogy sets out to theorise nationalism and the ideal of nation/state congruency and to interrogate the discursive and affective origins of this ideal in modern political thought and practice. Conducting a genealogy in this way is strategic and political since my objective is precisely not to endow a given sign with a hegemonic nature, which is why I deploy the nation/state rather than the ‘nation-state’. This genealogy’s objective, moreover, is to collapse existing distinctions within contemporary socio-political discourses and thus expose their ‘blind spots’ (Knodt 1995: xxxiv; Luhmann 1990 cited in Delanty and Strydom 2003: 439, 441). Collapsing distinctions is key to the operations of a genealogy since it entails demonstrating how two or more discursive distinctions that appear to constitute a given field are in fact more similar than currently perceived (say, by demonstrating how ‘right’ and ‘left’ in contemporary political discourse follow the same capitalist logic). By pointing to what actually unites the perceived discursive distinctions, rather than their difference, one therefore collapses distinctions and potentially frees-up other excluded alternatives beyond our discursive horizons. This also means that this analysis does genealogise continuities (Milliken 1999: 246–248), at least since the early days of (European) modernity, but it does so precisely in order to show how modern thought structures its modus operandi around certain distinctions and demarcations (e.g., between ‘nation-states’ and ‘state-nations’ or between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nationalism), which nonetheless share a commonality—the fantasy of the congruent nation/state. This introduction has three main sections. The first section revisits the nation/state problématique in modernity, as I explain the need to go beyond the ‘nation-state’ couplet, sovereignty and statism in our analysis of nationalism and the ideal of congruency. The second section engages with our contemporary regime of congruency by looking into present constructions of the ideal of congruency and the ways in which congruency and the lack thereof are problematised in a multitude of discursive formations. The third section details the plan of this book.

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The Nation/State Problématique Revisited: Going Beyond Sovereignty, Statism and Territory The genealogy undertaken here requires a different approach to the nation/state problématique, thus going beyond the analyses of the ‘nation-state’ couplet, sovereignty and statism, as well as territory. The orthodoxy of modern (international) political thought often reads the nation/state and nationalism through the ‘nation-state’ couplet, therefore arguing that modernity is characterised through the fusion of state sovereignty with popular sovereignty. As it is repeatedly argued, this is a fusion that took place in late eighteenth-century Europe, resulting from the French Revolution (e.g., Bartelson 2001: 40–41; Hont 1994: 166–231; Wokler 1998: 39–43, 2000: 161–183). The common theme is that with the French Revolution the state—that had already emerged in late mediaeval times (Skinner 1978, 1989: 90–131)—came to connote popular sovereignty and the idea of nationalism. As Wokler (2000: 178, square brackets added) puts it: Joined together with his conception of the unity of the representer—that is, the sovereign—as outlined in his [Hobbes’] Leviathan, the modern state since the French Revolution requires that the represented—that is, the people as a whole—be a moral person as well, national unity going hand in hand with the political unity of the state.

Indeed, to Wokler (2000) and critiques of modernity, the emergence of the homogeneous ‘nation-state’ model in revolutionary France is the main target of critique. Its development and spread during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries enabled a world of exclusion and eventually the genocide of peoples (Arendt 1958 [1951]; Bauman 1988; Wokler 2000: 161– 183; see also Mosse 1978: xvi, 1–3, 5, 10–11). This is because in a world of ‘nation-states’ only citizens have the right to have rights whereas the Other, the stateless, becomes the ‘scum of the earth’ (Arendt 1958 [1951]: 269, 282, 289). The issue here is that the ‘nation-state’ couplet becomes the etiquette of modernity, reading the fusion of state and nation as given, albeit critically. For political sociologists attempting to explain the rise and spread of the ‘nation-state’ and the international system, the fusion of the nation with the state came to be rendered possible by virtue of being distinguished from its external environment (e.g., Giddens 1987; Mann 1993;

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Tilly 1985, 1990). War, coercion and an international competitive environment created a clearer demarcation between states per se and a sharper accentuation of states’/peoples’ identity as ‘… the European states-­ making process minimised the cultural variation within states and maximised the variation among states’ (Tilly 1990: 79). To Giddens (1987), for instance, the ‘nation-state’ emerged out of the European absolutist regime and ‘… involves the emergence of administrative orders of high intensity (associated with borders)’ that possess the monopoly over the means of violence but that are ‘… for the most part internally pacified’ (Giddens 1987: 4). Nonetheless, what enabled the emergence of the ‘nation-state’ and indeed what constitutes its ontological status is the international structure, as he puts it: Nation-states only exist in systemic relations with other nation-states. The internal administrative coordination of nation-states from their beginnings depends upon reflexively monitored conditions of an international nature. ‘International relations’ is coeval with the origins of nation-states. (Giddens 1987: 4, 104–110)

The emergence of the ‘nation-state’, moreover, requires internal homogeneity and thus a sense of cultural unity for the state to be able to engage with other ‘like units’ in an international sphere that presupposes the modern state. Giddens, therefore, treats these ideas of cultural homogeneity and congruency of state and nation as a necessary result emerging from the external sphere. Internally, the role and function of nationalism is political and entwined with the practices of sovereignty and the administration of the state (Giddens 1987: 219–220). As such, for a state to obtain the tools to administer and govern its population and territory a ‘conceptual community’ is needed (Giddens 1987: 219). Such readings of modernity once again essentialise the nation/state and read it through the prescribed fused ‘nation-state’ couplet, almost as a fait accompli to be explained. I shall return to this point, often defined as ‘presentism’, when analysing Gellner’s theorisation of nationalism. Scholars of nationalism, the state and IR have often focused on the homogenisation of states as key parts of modernity and constitutive of the ‘nation-state’ (Conversi 2007, 2012; Breuilly 1993; Buzan 1991; Miller 2007; Hutchinson 2004; Rae 2002). Conversi’s important contribution to our understanding of nation/state homogeneity (2007: 371–394) is key here as he argues that the ‘nation-state’ couplet is achieved through

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cultural homogenisation, that is, the homogenisation of society and the fusion of state identity with ‘its’ nation. Moreover, he demonstrates how it is concomitant with the militarisation of society, the mass conscription army emerging in the late eighteenth century, war making and the idea of nationalism (see also Hutchinson 2004): … homogeneity was sought in a context of war and mass conscription. War was the key simply because the massive uprooting that inevitably occurred in its wake provided the ideal catalyst for the mobilisation of nationalist propaganda … wars simultaneously provided the most common vehicles for cultural homogenisation. The two trends reinforced each other in a deepening spiral cycle. (Conversi 2007: 388)

The ‘nation-state’ concept is thus so endemic to modern thought that modern history seems to be the history of the rise of ‘nation-states’ and indeed the homogenisation of states/nations. To Buzan, for instance, ‘nation-states’ are those in which ‘… the nation precedes the state and plays a major role in giving rise to it. The state’s purpose is to protect and express the nation and the bond between the two is deep and profound’ (1991: 72–73). State-nations, conversely, result from processes of homogenisation that are directed by the state and in doing so create a nation. As Buzan (1991: 73–74) explicates, this was mostly applicable to new states/societies in which the bulk of the population was transplanted, or what Miller (2007: 91–92) refers to as ‘immigrant societies in the New World’. To Rae (2002), the production of the modern state-system was made possible/constituted through, at least in some instances, the ‘pathological homogenisation’ of peoples including mass expulsions, killings and religious-cultural forced assimilations. In her social-constructivist informed study, she challenges modern readings of sovereign legitimacy by pointing to the ‘darker’ side of state formation and modernity (see also Mann 2005). The ideal of homogeneity and the relationship between state and nation are nonetheless taken as given, as an institution or practice to be historically explained, even if critically challenged. Equally important, the above readings of homogenisation and congruency making are mostly executed through the lens of sovereignty and state formation. Other historically orientated accounts of IR, in which I include social constructivist studies as well as discursive and critically orientated scholarship, have further contributed to our understanding of the nation/state in modernity over the last two decades. They have

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often pointed to the socially and discursively constructed nature of the state, sovereignty and territoriality thus situating our current international system in historical perspective, dislodging some of our preconceptions about the rise of the nation/state and/or engaging with alternative visions of (international) socio-political life (e.g., Bartelson 1995; Biersteker and Weber 1996; Deudney 1996; De Carvalho 2016; Elden 2010, 2013; Nexon 2009; Philpott 2001; Osiander 2001; Spruyt 1994; Reus-Smit 1999; Walker 1993; Weber 1995). Whilst I do draw on some of the discursive and critical accounts of IR in this book, it is clear that the relationship between the state and the nation and indeed the ideal of congruency is rarely interrogated, and when it is unpacked it is often rendered concomitant to the problématiques of sovereignty, statism and/or territoriality. Critical IR scholars focusing on sovereign representation, state formation and the discursive production of inside-outside are particularly key to this book’s approach (Bartelson 1995, 2001; De Carvalho 2016; Doty 1996, 2007; Walker 1993; Weber 1992, 1995). In Weber’s (1995) important analysis, for instance, the problématique of domestic communities giving rise and legitimacy to the state, which in turn speaks for its constitutive national community, is at the heart of her interrogation of sovereignty, the state and intervention. Weber (1995: 6) points to the unsettled questions about the ‘boundaries of a domestic community’, that is, the impossibility of defining the political and national community in question, who belongs to it and what type of authority it transfers to the state (see also Doty 1996; Shapiro 1997). The issue, however, is that nationalism and the ideal of congruency is once again investigated through the lens of sovereignty and the state, thus in a way deconstructing the myth of the congruent community and the indivisibility of sovereignty, but neither interrogating how this ideal of congruency came to be nor unpacking its emotive and discursive power (although see Weber 1999). Taking  a historical and juridical-political reading of political subjects, De Carvalho (2016: 58) does focus on the formation of political subjects, and by extension the formation of national and state identities, as he interrogates how ‘a (diverse) group of individuals or (direct) subjects of the ruler were gradually turned into a homogeneous group of political subjects owing their primary allegiance to the abstract notion of the state’. Analysing legal texts in Tudor England, De Carvalho (2016) argues that through gradual changes the relationship between subject and king and thence subject and state, understood as an abstract concept (Skinner

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1989), came to constitute state authority, sovereignty and state control and as such ‘territorialize space’ (De Carvalho 2016: 59). This process of subjectification (De Carvalho 2016: 59) came to give rise to later phenomena like nationalism. De Carvalho (2016) no doubt sheds light on an important and often ignored aspect of (early) state formation, namely the constitution of political subjectivity. The issue, however, is that national/ state identity is rendered  homogeneous, albeit the product of historical and juridical processes. The gap between nation and state, between space, population and authority, nonetheless requires further critical unpacking. Consider also Bartelson’s (2001) instructive study of the state, in which he shows how our modern statist approach is all encompassing, blinding us to any possible alternatives. Directly related to the issue of congruency and state-to-nation relations are his analyses of early-modern and modern political discourses of sovereignty, the state and the international (Bartelson 1995, 1998, 2001). Specifically, Bartelson (1995: 210–220) explains the ‘nation-state’ through the ‘dialectic of conflict’, as he illuminates the discursive practices by which nation and state become unified and how the state becomes sovereign unto itself. Drawing on the identity-difference distinction, Bartelson argues that the state is rendered possible and moral vis-à-vis its absence; in opposition to a world of no actual sovereign states, and in relations to both other states and the international. Bartelson (1995: 220) also demonstrates how the ‘nation-state’ idea becomes historicised, both moving towards a final model of resolution and unification, as well as being embedded in historical specificities (see also Bartelson 2001: 35). History, therefore, becomes in late eighteenth-century European thought the history of ‘nation-states’. Bartelson, however, seems to read the relationship between the state and the nation through the concept of sovereignty. He thus reaffirms the orthodoxy in which the state first appeared in late medieval times as an abstract idea, but that later came to be fused with the concept of the nation. As he puts it: ‘… the nation, first defined in empirical terms as a deep-seated cultural and linguistic identity, is cross-fertilized with the more abstract and transcendent concept of a territorial state’ (Bartelson 1995: 210). Elsewhere, when specifically discussing the Abbé Sieyès’ What Is the Third Estate? (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 92–162), Bartelson asserts that Sieyès’ tautological conceptualisation of the nation-state ‘… paved the way for the post-revolutionary symbolic identification of rulers and ruled within it, brought about by the fusion of state and nation’ (2001: 41).

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In this book, I offer a psychoanalytical reading of the nation/state problématique in modernity that unpacks how the logic of nationalism came to be a recurring motif in modern political thought and IR theory. First, I argue against deploying the ‘nation-state’ couplet as this assumes an existing institution, practice or model to be explained and/or critiqued, historically and/or discursively. To avoid essentialising the nation and/or the state or indeed the idea of fusion of state and nation, I use the terminology of nation/state, whilst directly pointing to its fantasmatic operation. More importantly, in this book I look to the discursively and affectively produced relationship between the state and the nation in an attempt to understand better how and why the ideal of congruency came to be dominant in modern political thought and practice and how the lack thereof has been problematised. I suggest, therefore, investigating the fantasy of nation/state congruency not only through the practices of sovereignty and the territorial state. This, I argue, leads to a problematic perspective in which the state and the nation appear to be fused in modern political discourse or whereby nationalism is read in IR scholarship through the contours of statehood. As I argue and demonstrate in this book, the early-modern sovereign state à la Hobbes is critiqued and fragmented with late eighteenth-century thought, rather than fused with the revolutionary idea of popular sovereignty, and is made possible again, and only partially so, through the fantasy of the congruent nation/state. The modality of nation/state congruency that emerges in late eighteenth-century European thought is not simply the ‘nation-state’ or indeed a fusion of the two; rather, what emerges is a complex and quite paradoxical logic that on the one hand seeks the finalist utopia of unity, as Bartelson (1995: 220) rightly argues, but that at the same time construes unity, the congruency of state and nation, as an impossibility and thus an endless battle (Foucault 2004 [1976]: especially 220–224).

The Contemporary Regime of Nation/State Congruency Across the social sciences ‘state’ and ‘nation’ are often deployed interchangeably and societies are discursively produced, as ‘… nationally bounded societies are taken to be the naturally given entities to study’ (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 304). This bias is often referred to as

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‘­methodological nationalism’ (see Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 301–334; Martins 1974; Smith 1979), namely equating societies with the ideal of the so-­called nation-state, thus rendering polities as national and homogeneous societies (Smith 1979: 191, see also Chernilo 2006, 2011). This results in the naturalisation, rather than problematisation, of national narratives. This blind spot has a long tradition in modern thought throughout the social sciences (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 302–308), as nation- and state-building operations are constructed as concomitant to progress and modernisation, and economic growth is premised on a minimum of national and social homogeneity (Gellner 2006 [1983]; see also Alesina and Spolaore 2005). In IR theory, the congruency fantasy is produced through the distinction between the ‘international’ sphere, constructed as anarchical, and the internal structure of polities, taken as ordered and hierarchical (Walker 1990, see also Bartelson 2001; Weber 1995). For critical geopolitics, the congruency fantasy is understood as part of the ‘territorial trap’, which entails taking the state as a ‘container of society’ (Agnew 1994: 68–71). The historiography of congruency or of states as ‘state-societies’ (Agnew 1994: 70) is thus interwoven with the power-­ knowledge constellation of political economy, that is, the sciences, knowledge and practices of state, territory and population (Foucault 2009 [1977–1978]), entailing the need to measure, manage and control societies, construed as juridical and territorially bounded entities. As Foucault (2008) has shown, this can be seen with the cameral sciences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Kameralwissenschaft: a practice-based knowledge devised to effectively run the affairs of the state, indeed, as an art of state affairs, Staatskunst, in German-speaking states and principalities (Small 1909; Wakefield 2009)—and with further developments and practices during the last 200  years such as statistics and public hygiene. According to Elden (2010, 2013), moreover, territory does not merely entail the process of boundary-making and/or demarcations, which are second-order problems, but could be read as a political technology designed at ‘measuring land and controlling terrain’ and is thus ‘economic, strategic, legal and technical’, therefore requiring a genealogical analysis rather than a fixed definition of territory (Elden 2010: 811–812). Consider also the contemporary geopolitical cartographic mapping of the world as ‘geographic imaginaries’ (Shapiro 2007: 291–313), namely the spatial carving of the world into perceived homogeneous polities, such that our questions and answers seem to reconstitute and reassert the ideal

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of nation/state congruency. As critical geopolitics scholars emphasise (e.g., Dalby 1991; O’Tuathail 1996; O’Tuathail and Agnew 1992), such spatial imaginaries and spatial (geopolitical) knowledge are intertwined with power structures because ‘[s]trategies of power always require the use of space and, thus, the use of discourses to create particular spatial images, primarily of territory and boundaries in statecraft…’ (Sharp 1993: 492, see also Müller 2008: 322–338). Geopolitical discourses—that are far from the mere structure of elite and ‘experts’ and are quite embedded in popular culture (Dalby 2008: 413–436; Debrix 2007)—therefore, imbue our world with spatial imaginaries that then enable the policies of interventionism, securitisation and development strategies (Duffield 2001, 2007) as well as territorial expansionism and violent acts (Neocleous 2003). In this respect, the cartographic imaginary of the unitary nation/state is not mirrored in IR—as positivists argue—but rather constantly produced through IR’s various discursive practices and through the continuous performativity by which the disunity of polities and territories worldwide is rendered homogeneous. As Carver (2011: 553) argues: ‘[p]erhaps the state, with its functional borders and cartographic specificity, is better understood as a performative, repetitiously enacted as a mode of violent aggrandizement, naming no reality other than the practices that bring it into “being.”’ Various contemporary national narratives, therefore, entail a fantasmatic relationship between population, space and authority such that the nation/state is rendered congruent and yet at risk, that is, a congruent terrain on the one hand and as a body to be secured from ‘threats’ to its perceived unity. This is probably how we should read demographic projections, migration and disease in contemporary global politics, namely as disruptors to the alleged congruency of nation/state societies (see Huysmans 2000, 2006; Schiller and Çağlar 2009). The spread of the Ebola virus into Canada, for instance, was produced as a menace to the imaginary fixity of Canadian culture and language, emphasising ‘the body’s integrity and anxiety about the nation-state’s decreased viability as a stable cultural and linguistic site’ (Fernandes 2004 cited in Shapiro 2007: 300). We could see the same fantasmatic logic of nation/state congruity in the anti-immigration rhetoric in Europe and the USA (leading to the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump), that is, not as mere reactionary expressions of existing and fixed national identities reacting to globalisation and the movement of people (the so-called little England,

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for instance, in the case of the UK). Rather, as failed attempts at producing the congruent mode of national society and how the Other/the immigrant is then the obstacle to such impossible mode of national wholeness but also its condition of possibility. The body national, as the epithet of congruency, and indeed the bodies of the national members must then be secured in response to such breaching of society’s perceived stability (Fernandes 2004: 189–210), thus reaffirming and rekindling the impossible-­possible narrative of national identity. Demography as the obstacle to the fantasy of nation/state congruency is also evident in Israel/Palestine, in which ethno-demographic projections have influenced centre and left-of-centre political discourse in recent decades. Projections of a growing Arab majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean in the near future (e.g., Sofer 2006; Taub 2001) have been deployed in order to legitimate an Israeli (unilateral) withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories so as to preserve a Jewish majority and thus ensure the Jewish-Israeli body national is viable, healthy and sustainable. The fantasy of Jewish–Zionist unity, understood in ethno-­ demographic terms, is thus directly linked to life and democracy, since the logic in this fantasmatic discourse is that an Arab majority in the area of Mandatory Palestine will de-facto form a binational state which, to them, would result in bloodshed (or even genocide) and would destroy Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state (Mandelbaum 2012; Pappe 2006: Chap. 12). We can further see this fantasy of unity in the ongoing complex relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Nimni (2003: 117–152) clearly shows, the fantasy of Zionism as Jewish (ethno-) nationalism entails anti-Semitism as both the cause of Zionism, namely why and how establishing a Jewish ‘nation-state’ is the answer to anti-­ Semitic sentiments, and its necessary obstacle. In other words, ‘… without anti-Semitism, political Zionism loses its raison d’etre’ (Nimni 2003: 122). The congruency ideal, however, is not just part of the modern state model, and/or the issues of sovereignty and representation that characterise our modes of thought and our limitations (Bartelson 2001; Martins 1974; Weber 1995). It is inscribed in, and practiced, both internationally/ globally and internally by state and sub-state bureaucracies. The discourses around ‘social cohesion’ and ‘integration’, in particular around issues of immigration, crime, radicalisation and terror in Europe, are good example. Dobbernack (2010: 154–159) argues, for instance, that cohesion has become embedded in a myriad of discourses and policies in Germany, France and the UK that seek ‘… to re-describe society, with new accounts

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of social problems and with gradually changing ideas of how society should be governed’ (Dobbernack 2010: 154). In Germany, the fantasy of a cohesive society is organised around the signifier of the Bürgergesellschaft (Klein 2001, cited in Dobbernack 2010: 155) often rendered synonymous with ‘Zivilgesellschaft—“civil society”’ (Dobbernack 2010: 155). Key issues that are then problematised in this ‘imaginary of cohesion’ entail youth crime, immigration, Islam, welfare and other issues, as they are rendered the obstacle to materialise the congruent nation/state fantasy. In the European conservative discourse, furthermore, cohesion is equated with the protection of liberal and national values, often invoked as fragile vis-à-vis the threat of immigration and societal fragmentation (Schiller and Çağlar 2009). This, furthermore, explains how David Cameron, the then British Prime Minister, and Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently expressed their disavowal of the multicultural project precisely because to them it only disintegrates society and renders it heterogeneous and disunited. The discursive logic beyond such expressions is the fantasy of congruent societies that are structured along national-territorial demarcations, and that congruency must be preserved for the sake of security, freedom and progress, amongst other things. The myriad practices, policies and discourses since the end of the Cold War relating to conflict, peace-building, development and security also seem to invoke the congruent nation/state fantasy. In these discursive formations, it is not just that states and nations are made homologous and that societies are taken as unitary national societies; rather, it seems that since the end of the Cold War great attention is given to the incongruent societies and ‘weak’ polities worldwide in an attempt to ‘fix’ the so-called weak/failed states and render them congruent so as to avoid war and obtain progress, economic viability and introduce liberal-democratic systems and values. Linz and Stepan (1996: 14–33), for instance, argue that democratisation processes are more easily achieved in homogeneous polities like France or Germany. In such cases the policies designed to create a ‘nation-­ state’ are aligned with those of democracy: ‘[t]his congruence between the polis and the demos facilitates the creation of a democratic nation-state; it also virtually eliminates all problems of “stateness” and should thus be considered a supportive condition for democratic consolidation’ (Linz and Stepan 1996: 17). Nonetheless and since ‘… very few states will begin a possible democratic transition with a high degree of national homogeneity’ (Linz and Stepan 1996: 17), that is, since most states are ­multi-­cultural/

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national, policies of inclusion are necessary before any prospective democratisation policies. Thus, to Linz and Stepan (1996: 14–33), the idea of congruency of state and nation so conducive to democracy can be achieved in either ‘nation-states’ or in state-nations, which are: … those multicultural or even multinational states that nonetheless still manage to engender strong identification and loyalty from their diverse citizens. The United States is such a multicultural and increasingly multilingual country; Switzerland is another. Neither is strictly speaking a “nation-state”, but we believe both could now be called “state-nations”. (Linz and Stepan 1996: 23)

Such ideas about the necessity of a minimum degree of (national) unity are quite common in the democracy/democratisation literature (e.g., Cooper 2003; Rustow 1970) and can even be found in nineteenth-century liberal-­ democratic writings. As Mill argued: ‘[f]ree institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 292) and ‘… [i]t is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’ (294). Interestingly, the power-knowledge discourse of congruency is also entwined with international practices that link the ideal of congruency with peace. Consider, for instance, the peace-making force to Cambodia, UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia), between 1991 and 1993. UNTAC had the mandate ‘… to ensure the implementation of the Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict, signed in Paris on 23 October 1991’ (UN Resolution 745, 1992).3 One of UNTAC’s tasks, as Ghosh explains, was ‘… to verify the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Cambodia’ (1994: 417) and the unit responsible for this was the Strategic Investigation Team. This followed allegations and demands by Khmer Rouge elite that some 2–3 million Vietnamese soldieries were still residing within Cambodia’s borders, a claim that was mostly baseless (Ghosh 1994: 418). What this team then embarked on, rather secretly, and with the help of ‘linguistic experts’, was to expose Cambodians of Vietnamese origins, who came as Vietnamese soldiers, and expel them back to Vietnam. Whilst this can be contextualised within the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal ideology, it nonetheless came to be adopted by the UN as necessary and as a legitimate task within the Cambodian peace-process (Ghosh 1994: 417–421).

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In this respect, the political discourse surrounding the Middle-East and its conflict-proneness, especially in places like Iraq both before and after the US invasion in 2003, are exemplary of the contemporary problematisations of the lack of nation/state congruency. As is often argued, it is the incongruity between the juridical and geopolitical borders of polities in the region and the ethno-religious affiliation of people(s) that is the cause of today’s violence in the region and its inability to develop and modernise (Chubin and Tripp 1988: 14–15; Kaplan 1998: 8; Miller 2007). The historical legacies of British and French rule and crucially the inability of Middle Eastern countries to supposedly mimic the European ‘nation-­ state’ model is thus problematised. As Dawisha (2002: 119) puts it: Iraq was created in 1921 as part of the reorganization of British interests in the Middle East. The infant state was put together from three provinces of the defunct Ottoman empire, Bagdad, Basra and Mosul. It was a forced and artificial creation, lacking the essential underpinnings of nationhood.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent violence made the issue of congruency a key part of the US nation-building mission in Iraq and elsewhere (Dobbins et al. 2003, 2007; Edelstein 2004: 59–64). As such, the subject/object of the nationally incongruent society moved centre stage and was further developed, as many came to suggest that incongruity is a catalyst or even the cause of violence, within and between ‘nationstates’. Byman and Pollack (2006) assert, for instance, that the absence of national cohesion is a good indicator of civil wars that spill over to neighbouring countries as they put forth the following questions as indicators of the degree of national homogeneity: Do society’s members consider themselves first and foremost to be members of the nation championed by the state? Are there rival cultural elites that do not accept the national identity (and are there national cultural elites that disparage other identities)? Do all members of society believe they have a shared history? (Byman and Pollack 2006: 131)

With the conflict, security and peace discourses of recent years, the vices of incongruity become further entwined with the ‘failed’/‘weak’/‘fragile’ state discourse. The world is now spatially differentiated into regions and states that follow the Weberian ideal-type of the modern and congruent state on one side of the spectrum, and those that deviate from it, ­positioned

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on this spectrum according to their strength (e.g., Goldstone et al. 2000; Societal-Systems Research Inc. and Colorado State University 2009; Rotberg 2003; Foreign Policy 2016). Such ‘anomalies’ are constituted as indicators of potential civil war, genocide, terrorism and famine (Byman 2003: 47–78; Rotberg 2002: 85–96, 2003). These heterogeneous states are then articulated as a threat, to themselves, their regions and the international system (Posen 1993; Van Evera 1994). The fantasy of nation/state congruency, nonetheless, is often more banal than the extreme cases of population transfers, war and territorial partitions (see also Billig 1995). The fantasy of congruency, therefore, does not merely entail ‘pathological homogenisation’ practices ‘… that state-builders have employed to signify the unity of their state and the legitimacy of their authority’ (Rae 2002: 5). The multicultural and communitarian models are illustrative, therefore, of how nation/state congruency is naturalised through what I define as homogeneous-heterogeneity, namely, producing nation/state unity through pluralisation and state investment and intervention in cultural diversity. Arising from a communitarian and a post-Rawlsian liberal discourse (e.g., Avineri and de-Shalit 1992; Taylor 1989, 1992; Tamir 1993; Walzer 1990: 6–23, although compare with Modood 2013) proponents of multiculturalism view societal unity as feasible and essential so as to avoid societal breakdown and strengthen the relationship between society and state. Achieving societal unity is crucial, according to multiculturalists such as Tariq Modood (2013), who advocates multiculturalism precisely at times of migratory and societal changes in mostly Western societies as well as against the rise of reactionary and populist-nationalist discourses across Europe (Modood 2013). Moreover, to advocates of the multicultural model, societal congruity is also a normative objective because a sense of community, collective identity and liberal values are commensurable (Kymlicka 2001: 234, 240–241), nationalism and liberalism are mutually reinforcing (Tamir 1993). It is beyond the scope of this short discursive exposé of multiculturalism to stipulate the various debates regarding the role of nationalism and national identity, and/or the issue of (national) self-determination (Hutchings 2000). The ideal of societal congruity within the nation/state framework is nonetheless a core tenet of the multicultural model (see also the critiques in Calhoun 2008; Canovan 2000, 2001; Stephens 2013, especially 74–76). Consider, for instance, the Canadian model of multiculturalism, which clearly shows the operations of homogeneous-heterogeneity, that is, the ways in which the Canadian state sought to maintain territorial integrity,

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strengthen state–society relations, whilst meeting ethnonational grievances and investing in cultural diversity as constitutive of the Canadian nation/state identity. As Kivisto and Faist (2007: 36) put it: As part of a national identity-building project, multiculturalism meant that the official stance of the Canadian government was to repudiate the earlier valorization of a homogeneous Anglophone culture in favor of a plurality of cultures…. However, from the point of view of elected officials and government bureaucrats, the purpose of multiculturalism was not to balkanize the nation, but rather to find a new modus vivendi for achieving national unity.

We can also see the fantasy of nation/state congruency in the British case during the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly through the Parekh Report (2000)—that is, The Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. The report begins with a normative vision of a multicultural British society, whilst clearly pointing to the various obstacles threating the multicultural project. The ideal of a British multicultural society is coached in the report as a way to strengthen British society and its relationship with the state, whilst celebrating British national identity as inclusive and multicultural. The Parekh Report (2000: x) begins by asserting that: We believe that it is both possible and vitally necessary to create a society in which all citizens and communities feel valued, enjoy equal opportunities to develop their respective talents, lead fulfilling lives, accept their fair share of collective responsibility and help create a collective life in which the spirit of civic goodwill, shared identity and common sense of belonging goes hand in hand with love of diversity. Having sketched our vision of a relaxed and self-­ confident multicultural Britain with which all people can identify, we analyse the obstacles standing in its way and propose policies most likely to overcome them.

This multicultural logic of ‘a community of citizens and a community of communities’ (Parekh 2000) is therefore exemplary of homogeneous-­ heterogeneity. The multitude of ethnicities, faiths and traditions, consequently, are not rendered a threat to the preservation of nation/state congruency, as in the case of nationalistic and conservative discourses. Indeed, the objective is to consolidate a sense of a ‘civic’ (as opposed to ‘ethnic’) all-encompassing mode of belonging (Mandelbaum 2014, 2016a, b). The multicultural project and the discursive practice of homogeneous-­heterogeneity nonetheless seek to obtain societal unity within the framework of nation/state congruency.4

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In short, the insecurity at the heart of the multicultural fantasy of societal unity arises from the possibility of a fragmented society in which national identity and state–society relations are fragile and/or antagonistic. The obstacles and objectives identified in the multicultural project of nation/state congruency differ completely from the reactionary right-­ wing politics of our days in which the primordial ideas of race, religion and ethnicity are evoked and assimilation, at best, is the only route to national/ societal belonging. Even so, the void within contemporary nation/state societies is still problematised and the solution is to re-invent nation/state congruency through means of ‘civic’ nation-building, or what I define as homogeneous-heterogeneity. * * * To reiterate, I have shown here that contemporary practices fetishise nation/state congruency. Congruency may come in myriad forms, like in the traditional ‘nation-state’ ideal or in the liberal multicultural framework. Congruency can also be ascertained through various technologies of homogenisation by which ‘geographic imaginaries’ carve the world into congruent societies and so-called failing polities are blamed for their lack of congruency and hence their lack of stability, democracy and progress (Call 2008; Löwenheim 2008; Mandelbaum 2013). This means that the axis of contemporary political thought and practice is not so much the oft-­ invoked statist bias; rather, it is the fantasy of society that is rendered singular and thus congruent through its relations to time, history, space and authority (Bell 2003: 63–81; Foucault 2004 [1975–1976]). The continuous debates concerning the ideal political community, diverse as they may be, can be said to be predicated on and pertain to the fantasy of homogeneity and unity, and that the proliferation of models of the nation, the state and society in modern times are thus made intelligible precisely because they all share the same point-of-reference, the same impossible ultima ratio—nation/state congruency.

The Plan of the Book I began this genealogy by explaining the need to critically unpack the ideal of nation/state congruency beyond the statist bias, sovereignty and/or territoriality and by briefly illustrating some of the myriad forms through which the ideal of congruency is discursively practised today. I argued that

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in order to denaturalise and analyse the ideal of congruency and its origins we ought to read nation/state congruency and homogenisation technologies as fantasy. That is, reading them as attempts to offer fixed and stable modalities of unity that endeavour to transcend the limitations of time and offer society a narration of identification, a legitimation of current practices and a blueprint for future ventures. Fantasy thus entails a certain sense of security, fixity and fullness by rationalising the past, justifying the present and prescribing for the future (Arfi 2010; Eberle 2017; Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147; Zevnik 2017; Žižek 2001: 17). Reading congruency as fantasy also means that such an ideal of fullness can never be attained—for this will simply re-expose the ‘split subject’, indeed the void of society—which thus account for the emotive power of fantasmatic projects of congruency, indeed their continuous repetitions. This book in its entirety is a genealogy beginning and ending with our contemporary regime of congruency. The book proceeds with six chapters (Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) followed by conclusions. The next chapter, Chap. 2, puts forth the theoretical and analytical underpinning of this book, namely theorising nationalism by focusing on the Gellnerian modality of nation/state congruency whilst offering to read nationalism and the nation/state as fantasmatic projects. This chapter is therefore key to this genealogy of nation/state congruency in modernity and to our understanding of the affective power of nationalism in political thought and IR theorisation. First, I analyse Ernest Gellner’s theory of nation-state congruency and homogenisation. I begin with Gelllner’s studies on nations and nationalism because he was the first to directly address the issue of congruency and homogeneity between nation and state as part of modernity. His approach, as I show, is problematic due to his objectivist and functionalist reading of nationalism, as he also naturalises the ‘nation-state’ and the international in modernity. The analytics of congruency and homogenisation can still be utilised, I argue, albeit by engaging critically with the discursive and affective production of congruency as well as its manifestations. I then proceed to stipulate the Lacanian psychoanalytical framework through which I read nationalism and the ideal of nation/state congruency. This part of Chap. 2 therefore explains the Lacanian terminology of the split subject and void, fantasy, jouissance and affect. In Chap. 3, I engage with ‘pre-history’—early (European) modernity. Following Skinner’s (1978, 1989: 90–131) theorisation of the state in early modernity, I analyse this period through the prism of the state, as I

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argue that the notion of congruency/unity is grafted onto the idea of the state. Despite the myriad and quite discrete state theories and models developed between the sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries, the notion of the unified state is quite super-ordinate. The fantasy of state unity is rendered possible here in myriad forms including, for instance, the idea of the covenant and the association of men. The state emerges in early modernity as the source of authority (Skinner 1989: 90; Trainor 2006: 776) and the rationale for, and legitimation of, various mechanisms and technologies of homogenisation. The state in early-modern European thought is the modality of congruency (De Carvalho 2016). I argue here that in various political treatises and philosophical writings, from Giovanni Botero in the mid-sixteenth century to Emmerich de Vattel and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century, the state is construed as unity. I maintain, nonetheless, that the state concept emerges within these discourses as an ‘empty signifier’; a signifier that exerts immense power but that is nevertheless neither fixed nor constant (Laclau 1996: 57–58). The state idea is in surplus—it is more than itself. This also means that the congruency fantasy of the state is never fully satisfied nor is it fixed—it is an ‘impossible possibility’ (Bartelson 1998: 295–326). The various texts chosen in this chapter are exemplary of state discourses that emerge in early-modern European thought, and particularly as I demonstrate how the fantasy of congruency and unity is articulated through the state signifier. Analysing the state in the writing of Botero, Hobbes, Pufendorf and Rousseau, for example, are key to the development of this genealogy, as they set the stage for the next chapter in which, I would argue, the Hobbesian state modality came to be challenged and even rejected in modernity. In Chap. 4, I analyse developments taking place in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century thought, demonstrating how the early-modern/ Hobbesian model of the state is critiqued and rejected in favour of a new modality of congruency that centres around the nation/people signifier. I argue here, therefore, against some of the known articulations of late eighteenth-­century European thought in which the state came to be fused with the nation and further articulated through the prism of popular sovereignty (Bartelson 2001: 40–41; Hont 1994: 166–231; Wokler 1998: 39–43, 2000: 161–183). Rather, and by analysing the writings of the Abbé Sieyès, as well as the works by Johann Gottfried Herder and German romanticism (Fichte 2009 [1808]; Herder 1969 [1772], 2002 [1793– 1797]; Sieyès 2003 [1789]), I demonstrate how the state of early-modern

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thought is fragmented and disjoined, unpacked and critiqued. I argue, therefore, that the ‘state-to-nation’ relationship is articulated during those early years of modernity in myriad forms and is rendered intelligible by various modes of legitimation. It is not a fixed mode of congruency that appears in late eighteenth century; rather, what does appear is the ideal of a congruent nation that must express itself in its own state apparatus. Analysing Sieyès, Herder and German romanticism is therefore key to this genealogy in two ways: first, to demonstrate the emergence of the fantasy of nation/state congruency that is not a fusion of the state with popular sovereignty, thus contributing to debates on nationalism, the state and modernity (Breuilly 1993; Conversi 2012; Greenfeld 1992; Smith 2000). Second, all three discourses are exemplary, rather than exhaustive, of various ways in which the fantasy of nation/state unity is articulated in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century European thought. To Sieyès, it is the nation that is already congruent and complete and that logically must therefore manifest in, and have control over, its own state (Hont 1994: 193). No other ‘nations’ are allowed in Sieyès’ model (Foucault 2004 [1975–1976]). To Herder, however, the state is mostly understood in negative terms and the world is and ought to follow an organic, almost divine cosmos of Volks, all living in peace and harmony (Berlin 1976: 153–158). To German romanticists (Fichte 2009 [1808]), however, it is not solely an organic reading of society, but a model in which the Volk guides the state. National spirit overrides the territorial sovereign state (Kohn 1950; Mosse 1966). In Chap. 5, I analyse two distinct knowledge systems developing in nineteenth-century thought, which are exemplary of developments in the genealogy of the nation/state and the ideal of unity in European modernity. One is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and his Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821], 1975). I argue here that in Hegel’s works the ideal of nation/state unity is part of the materialisation of the Spirit and the Idea: the actualisation of freedom. Nonetheless, the state and the nation are united only temporarily since each unity entails its own contradiction and thus every nation/state holds its own demise (Hegel 1975: 61, 58–62). What Hegel offers, I suggest, is thus a more complex picture than is often assumed. On the one hand, there is the Hegelian discourse of the state as the ‘ethical life’ that is rendered united via the reconciliation of the civil society–family distinction. The unity of the state, in the Hegelian discourse, is manifested via the actualisation of freedom and can be seen

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through the ability of states to mobilise people for the purpose of waging war. On the other hand, Hegel also construes the relationship between state and nation as dialectical, and this means that congruency of state and nation is only temporal. This is because the contradiction within this nation/state unity is bound to dissolve as complete unity can never be achieved. The second power-knowledge constellation I analyse in this chapter is the liberal and democracy discourses that develop during the nineteenth century by James Mill (1992 [1820/1823]), John Stuart Mill (1946 [1861]) and Alexis de Tocqueville (1988 [1835]). I argue here that the role of nationalism, collective sense of identification and unity are invoked in those discourses as the precursor of successful democracy. In myriad forms, the normative properties associated with democracy, such as freedom, are connected to the ideal of the congruent society. This could be the homogeneous society of the American township in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, or Mill’s production of the democratic and free polity as a nationally congruent society. Focusing on Mill and Tocqueville will therefore contribute to critiques of liberal-democratic thought (Passavant 2002; Jahn 2005). This chapter also serves to show how the discursive space of the congruent society is further developed and legitimated in modernity, albeit within two different knowledge systems. Analysing Hegel, Mill and Tocqueville is in no way exhaustive of nineteenth-­century discourses on nationalism, the state and/or democracy. They are chosen as exemplary of the ways in which the fantasy and ideal of nation/state congruency evolve throughout modernity, albeit by demonstrating both continuity and change in the genealogy of the nation/state. Chapter 6 analyses the discursive production of the ‘international’ and the primacy of the ‘nation-state’ couplet in traditional post–WWII IR theorisation. As I argue in this chapter, the international is constructed discursively as a separate realm of knowledge and expertise that is distinguished from all other disciplines by virtue of being anarchical in nature and composed of unitary ‘nation-states’ (Herz 1950; Morgenthau 1985 [1948]; Wight 2004 [1978]). The congruency fantasy is thus embedded and manifested via the ‘nation-state’ model, so society is congruent by being a national society governed by geo-juridical authority (Wolfers 1962; Wright 1955). I argue in this chapter, nonetheless, that the picture is more complex, for two main reasons. First, major works in IR in those years do not see the ‘nation-state’ as ontologically unitary and acknowledge the complexity

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and nuances of polities around the world (Aron 1966 [1962]; Wight 2004 [1978]: 28). The congruency fantasy is thus presupposed analytically and functionally so as to enable IR to speak of the international as international politics rather than (simply) politics. Herein, I illustrate how the international is produced as a state-system which then renders the international a site of intervention. Since the international is constructed as a system made of congruent ‘nation-state’ societies, the international as such becomes an arena for myriad power-knowledge interventions such as security and defence strategy, alliance or institution building, peace-­ making and/or regional integration. Second, I analyse how the anarchical nature of the international and its conflict-proneness riddled with the danger of nuclear war and the constant struggle for power and security functions as the fantasmatic obstacle to full nation/state congruity. The impossibility of actual unity does not arise from within the nation/state, but from the insecure international arena. In other words, the impossibility of nation/state congruity is projected outwards, as it were, in the form of nuclear war, arms race, alliances and international competition, more broadly. I analyse traditional IR theory since it pertains to key development in the genealogy of the nation/state in modernity, as the fantasy of unity has become intertwined with the international, although by demonstrating how the international is now the obstacle to national unity and societal security. Moreover, this chapter seeks to contribute to recent revisits of traditional IR theory, mostly classical realist thought (e.g., Bell 2002; Craig 2007; Lebow 2003; Molloy 2004; Williams 2005). The concluding chapter of this genealogy, Chap. 7, returns to the present as it analyses the contemporary practices by which the congruency fantasy is established and constituted. In this chapter, I continue my exploration of IR theory in the post–Cold War era as I argue that congruency is still entwined with the international, but how contemporary technologies of intervention aim to re-homogenise the international, that is, to re-­ construct the international as a system made of congruent societies. As I demonstrate in this chapter, several important discursive interventions take place in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s whereby the state concept moves centre stage and is problematised (i.e., the ‘return of the state’ discourse). These discursive interventions re-imagine the state as autonomous, whilst also interrogating the capacity of states to rule and govern their respective territories and populations. In these discursive interventions, the focus shifts towards internal factors of states and how

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these are connected to international affairs. In other words, the anarchical nature of the international by which traditional IR theory conceptualised its field is now reversed. During the last 30 years these discursive interventions came to greatly influence IR, so much so that by now the unitary state assumption has disappeared and the international is composed of many incongruent regions and societies. What contemporary IR power-­ knowledge constellations produce are various technologies by which the international is to be made homogeneous. That is to say that contemporary IR theory aims to take the analytical assumption of the unitary state, that was so endemic of traditional IR theory, and materialise it through various technologies such as nation- and state-building, development and security (Mandelbaum 2013). The international, consequently, becomes an arena for making societies congruent and thus strong in order to be able to speak of the international qua relations amongst ‘real’ homogeneous societies, be their ‘nation-states’ or other forms of socio-political organisation. Rather than just assuming analytically and functionally that societies are unified, congruency is now an ontological objective intertwined with, and connected to, other formulae and values such as democracy, security, peace and progress. Focusing on post–Cold War IR theory is key to this genealogy by returning to the present and critiquing the contemporary regime of nation/state congruency. This book ends with concluding remarks as I engage with the ethico-­ political implications of our contemporary practices of congruency. As argued elsewhere this is key to any critical work (Mandelbaum 2016b). I show, for instance, how present-day practices of territorial demarcation, sovereignty and security construe the stateless, the refugee and the ethnically incongruent population as a deviation from the ideal of unity and as a threat to peace and democracy, progress and modernity, or how the fantasy of national unity is reproducing new waves of reactionary politics and a return to populist authoritarianism. These brief conclusions are important to this book because they engage with the ramifications of today’s power-knowledge matrices of homogenisation and thus directly unearth the ethico-political implications of the nation/state fantasy.

Notes 1. I borrow this term from Walker (2006: 56–69). 2. This book deploys the Lacanian jouissance and the power of effect as part of fantasy, rather than focusing on bodily enjoyment and interpellation in the

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stories of specific national narratives. For the ways in which the Lacanian jouissance and affect are useful in explaining specific cases of national identity and belonging see, for instance, Eberle (2018), Edkins (2003), Kinnvall (2007), Solomon (2015), and Zevnik (2017), or my work on Israeli society and national identity in Mandelbaum (2012, 2018). 3. See https://peacemaker.un.org/cambodiaparisagreement91 [accessed 26 March 2019]. 4. My point here is not to render the multiculturalist logic identical with the national-state practices of either expulsions or assimilation. Indeed, the rationale behind the various forms of multiculturalism and consociationalism is precisely to avoid conflict and preserve democratic values. Nonetheless, the multicultural project is still caged in the liberal-democracy paradigm of unity. This, in turn, results in the neglect of alternative models of societal organisation that reject the need to obtain congruency. The model of the NCA, national–cultural autonomy, as developed by Nimni (1999, 2007) and drawing on the work of Otto Bauer is exemplary of such overlooked models.

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CHAPTER 2

The Nation/State Fantasy: From Gellner to Lacan

Nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state—a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation— should not separate the power-holders from the rest. (Ernest Gellner 2006 [1983]: 1) As a matter of fact, the modern idea of the nation is not even on the horizon of classical thought, and it is not merely the fortunes of a word that demonstrate this to us. (Jacques Lacan)

Ernest Gellner, Congruency and Cultural Homogenisation Gellner’s (2006 [1983]) pivotal book, Nations and Nationalism, argues that ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 1). According to Gellner, making states and nations congruent is quintessentially modern and functionally necessary for modern-industrial societies since they require ‘… a mobile, literate, culturally standardised, interchangeable population’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 44). Congruency-­ making, consequently, entails the homogenisation of state and culture, the ‘cultural homogenisation’ of the masses:

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[H]omogenisation is an elite-driven attempt to impose socio-cultural changes leading to, or aiming at, cultural uniformity. The concept is well rendered by the French term ‘massification’ and the verb ‘massifier’ (literally, to ‘massify’, to render homogeneous by stamping out cultural specificities). (Conversi 2007: 372, see also Conversi 2008)

Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism constitutes the bedrock of the scholarship on nations and nationalism. As O’Leary (1998: 40) puts it: ‘… all worthwhile subsequent writing and research on nationalism will benefit from Gellner’s work, whether they build on his presuppositions or dissent from them’. It is beyond this chapter’s purview to fully engage with the rich literature on Ernest Gellner’s scholarship (e.g., Bossche 2003; Conversi 2007; Hall 1998; Hall and Jarvie 1996; Hann 2001: 173–181), although one could identify three major strands of work that have interrogated critically Gellner’s theorisation of nations and nationalism. These are neither exhaustive nor are they mutually exclusive. The first strand of work takes issue with Gellner’s philosophico-theoretical approach. To some, the problem lies with Gellner’s functionalist approach, his somewhat deterministic reading of the process of nation- and state-building and, consequently, the absence of agency in Gellner’s ideal-type account of nationalism (Laitin 1998: 135–157; Mouzelis 1998: 160–164). According to Brubaker (1998: 272) and Minogue (1996: 125), Gellner’s philosophico-theoretical approach suffers from ‘Olympian distance’. The second strand of work criticises Gellner’s empirical and/or historical perspective. According to O’Leary (1998), for instance, congruency is not as widespread in modern-industrial societies as Gellner suggests. Others have questioned the link Gellner draws between industrialism and cultural homogenisation, namely whether the process of industrialisation actually requires, functionally speaking as Gellner argues, nationalism and the need to render states and nations congruent (Breuilly 2006: xxxv–xxxvi; Minogue 1996: 119–121; Nairn 1998: 107–134; Stargardt 1996: 175, see also Fuglestad 2018). Finally, the third strand of work objects to Gellner’s functionalism in the sense that it overlooks the political and the operations of power, as these critiques advocate the need to ‘bring politics back in’. As many have argued, the rise of nationalism in modernity and the processes of nation- and state-building cannot be divorced from power struggles, war making the political structure of modernity (Beissinger 1998: 169– 190; Mouzelis 1998: 160; O’Leary 1998: 63–71; see also Breuilly 1993, 2006; Conversi 2007; Mann 1993, 1996: 147–170; Tilly 1985, 1990).

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What is nonetheless missing in the literature, nonetheless, is a critical interrogation of congruency-making and cultural homogenisation, and how they were practised in modern history (with some exceptions such as Arendt 1958 [1951]: 267–302; Bauman 1988; Rae 2002). Moreover and despite the numerous scholarly debates on nations and nationalism and Gellner’s work in particular (Bossche 2003; Conversi 2007; Hall 1998; Hall and Jarvie 1996; Hann 2001: 173–181; Smith 1998: 371–388), the concepts of nation/state congruency and homogenisation are seldom analysed as a socially/discursively constructed project in modernity. With the exception of Danielle Conversi’s (2007) unpacking of congruency-­making and homogenisation, the existing strands of work often engage Gellner’s theory from a more empiricist and/or positivist stance, namely as a theoretical hypothesis to be tested, or as a framework in need of theoretical revisions, and/or the need to address the political in the story of nations and nationalism (Beissinger 1998: 169–190; Laitin 1998: 135–157; O’Leary 1998: 40–88). This book unpacks and draws on Gellner’s theory of nationalism, whilst specifically engaging with the concepts of congruency and cultural homogenisation. Rather than examining Gellner’s theory from a positivist-­ empiricist stance, however—for example, whether industrial societies require nation/state congruency or whether nationalism is a modern phenomenon (e.g., Conversi 2007; O’Leary 1998; Smith 1998: 371–388)—I take a critical approach (Cox 1981) and conduct a genealogical account of cultural homogenisation and congruency-making in modern thought and practice. As such, I read cultural homogenisation and the ideal of nation/ state congruency as ‘fantasy’ (Arfi 2010; Žižek 1989, 2001, 2006, 2008; Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147), which means taking nation/state congruency not as a fait-accompli to be explained, but, rather, as an impossible ideal, entailing a myriad of practices that are always in the process of becoming and are always failing. The various attempts in modern thought and practice to render the ideal of the homogeneous society meaningful are never-ending—‘it is like writing in water’ (Laclau 1985: 107  in Andersen 2003: 55–56; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). This therefore means addressing congruency and homogenisation mechanisms as fantasmatic endeavours, continuously trying to fill the gap of identity and meaning, which being an impossibility are an endless and failing procedure. In the following section I unpack some of Gellner’s main arguments about nations and nationalism as I illustrate how his philosophical and historical approach reduces modernity to industrialism and the need for

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homogeneity, and how this further essentialises and naturalises the ‘nation-­ state’ and the modern international system. Specifically, I address three (non-mutually) exclusive issues. First, I address Gellner’s historical approach and his ‘presentist fallacy’ (Bartelson 1995; Veyne 1988: Chaps. 2 and 3). Second, I contest Gellner’s deterministic and functionalist stance and in doing so show the ways in which Gellner’s theory naturalises the ‘nation-state’ system. Finally, I address the issue of congruency and Gellner’s criterion of ‘one nation, one state’. Gellner’s Approach to History and the ‘Presentist Fallacy’ Gellner reads history and approach historical research through a macro-­ historical lens thus deploying a bird’s-eye perspective in his analysis of societal formations (Brubaker 1998: 272; Minogue 1996: 115–116, 125). Gellner carves the history of human association into three major phases: the hunter-gatherer society, the agro-literate society and later modern society. Gellner argues that in the first two phases, the hunter-gatherer and the agro-literate societies, rendering states and nations congruent and homogenising people(s) could not have developed because the hunter-­ gatherer societal structure was too tribal and thus small and the agrarian society too large and complex (Smith 1996: 131, but see also the recent critique by Fuglestad 2018). Gellner (2006 [1983]: 8–18) specifically focuses on (European) agrarian society and explains how nationalism and homogenisation were both impossible and undesirable. Since the Middle-­ Ages’ social structure was relatively stable with a clear differentiation between the ruling elite and the peasants with enormous benefits to the upper class (i.e., nobility, royalty and the clergy), and, therefore, no incentive existed to produce cultural homogeneity. Agrarian society was thus mostly vertically structured, whereas horizontal lineages were separated by geographical hurdles and the stable and immobile nature of agrarian association (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 12). Modernity, according to Gellner, has completely changed societal structures. Modern-industrial society, therefore, is altogether novel as it entails an extremely mobile and literate body of individuals, who are able to overcome successfully class, socio-economic and geographical barriers. Moreover, industrialism is very different from any other human condition because of the need for constant growth and progress (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 22). This is key to Gellner’s modernist stance regarding nations and nationalism, namely that nationalism did not evolve from exiting eth-

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nic identities, what Smith (2000, 2009) defines as ethnie in his ethno-­ symbolism model. Nationalism is thus a novel form of social structure, unique to modernity (Breuilly 2006: xx–xxi). Nationalism, moreover, is not an ideology, nor an idea created and disseminated by the intelligentsia (Kedourie 1993). Rather, Gellner argues, nationalism was functional to, necessary for the evolution and development of, modernity and the industrial age. Industrial societies, therefore, entailed a completely new form of societal structure, continuously demanding more growth and further progress (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 22). To Gellner, therefore, nationalism was key to the project of modernity such that nationalism ‘invents nations where they do not exist’ (Gellner 1964: 169). Before moving on to the functional explanation of congruency and cultural homogeneity, suffice to see here how Gellner’s approach to history is totalising as he construes historical change in a teleological form (Stargardt 1996: 186, though see Gellner’s reply in Gellner 1996 [1983]: 627–628). We can clearly see this totalising and teleological approach in Gellner’s examination of modern-industrial societies, economic development and the function of nationalism, moving towards an end-­result: homogeneous and congruent nations/states. As Stargardt (1996) points out, nonetheless, the historical processes of nation- and state-­building have been far from linear or teleological, and much more contingent and complex: ‘[t]he exact relationship of state, civil society, economy and culture has had to be repeatedly renegotiated. It is not a once and for all business’ (Stargardt 1996: 184). Gellner’s methodology and his reading of the history of human society are problematic not only because of its ‘Olympian distance’, but more specifically because it deploys terms and concepts from the present in order to account for historical developments and change. Bartelson (1995: 57, who draws on Veyne 1988) defined this as the ‘presentist fallacy’/‘presentism’, namely to take … an institution or an idea from the present together with the contemporary role, function or purpose presently used to justify that institution or idea, and then describes its historical development as if this purpose or role had governed its emergence and transformation right from its origin onwards. (Bartelson 1995: 57 italics in original)

We can see this ‘presentism’ in Gellner’s reading of nationalism as he reads history as an almost linear shift moving towards cultural homogenisation

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and nation/state congruency as if homogenisation was indeed the rationale guiding the emergence of the modern state from the beginning. Gellner reads, therefore, the history of modernity and industrialism teleologically, a ‘tidal wave’ moving towards Gellner’s own present of congruent nations/states (a problem in itself to which I return later). The international system of allegedly congruent polities of Gellner’s present is thus the ultima ratio of modern history. Such a totalising and deterministic approach is quite evident when Gellner characterises the different types of nationalism and their development, mostly in Europe and Euro-Asia, in what he refers to as ‘time-­ zones’ (Gellner 1992: 285–293). Gellner carves Europe into four ‘time-zones’, thereby explaining the impact of ethnicity on politics and accordingly explaining the evolution, character and manifestation of nationalism. With this typology in hand, Gellner (1992: 290–291) distinguishes between Western Europe (e.g., Britain, France, Spain), ‘Mitteleuropa’ (i.e., primarily the Holy Roman Empire), Eastern Europe and Russia which later became the Soviet Union. In this account of nations and nationalism, Gellner is more attentive to other relevant factors in the story of nations such as the state, the economy and culture and, thus, his theoretical approach is less functionalist than his approach in Nations and Nationalism (Stargardt 1996: 177–180). My contention here, nonetheless, refers precisely to his totalising approach to the history of nationalism and modernity, as he demarcates so easily between spatio-temporalities and treats his account of nation/state congruency as a deterministic movement. This attempt may be understood as a Weberian ideal-typical abstraction of nations and nationalism (Mouzelis 1998: 163–164), and yet such a survey neglects the contingency of nation-building and its myriad manifestations, whilst prescribing a ‘presentist’ rationale (Bartelson 1995: 57; Veyne 1988: Chaps. 2 and 3) to the emergence and evolution of nations and nationalism as if their rise was determined by an economic-industrial logic from the beginning. Functionalism, Determinism and the Naturalisation of the ‘Nation-State’ System Modernity’s characteristics, according to Gellner, consist of processes of urbanisation, scientific and technological innovation as well as growth and progress. Modernity, to Gellner, necessitates a mobile social stratum in which persons ought to have the capacity to communicate with one

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another in a standardised and meaningful system, powering growth, which is endemic to modern society. Urban-industrial society thus ‘… requires effective and widespread context-free communication through a common medium, a “high culture”’ (O’Leary 1998: 47). To Gellner, the idea of ‘high culture’—that is, high literacy rates, pervasive educational systems and standardisation—is essential to understanding Gellner’s functionalist theorisation of nations and nationalism: Let us recapitulate the general and central features of industrial society. Universal literacy and a high level of numerical, technical and general sophistication are among its functional prerequisites. Its members are and must be mobile, and ready to shift from one activity to another, and must possess that generic training which enables them to follow the manuals and instructions of a new activity or occupation. (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 34)

Homogenising people and rendering nations and states congruent is an enormous endeavour that requires state investment and the state’s ability to affect society and culturally homogenising it. To Gellner, the role the state plays is crucial and is further evident to the quintessentially modern nature of nationalism and nation/state congruency-making. This is so because, as Gellner explains, only the modern state has the organisational strength to formulate and execute such an intricate and wide-ranging programme of cultural homogenisation through various apparatuses such as standardisation and a state-led education scheme (Conversi 2007: 372; Gellner 2006 [1983]: 38, 105). Gellner’s explanation of nations and nationalism is a functionalist one as he argues that nationalism and specifically cultural homogenisation is a function, a necessary part of modern society. Therefore, achieving congruency is not an ideology or a primordial sense of belonging which is being awakened to ‘fulfil its duties’, but an objective requirement of growth and progress (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 44). Society enters modernity, so to speak, through the process of homogenisation and congruency-making. ‘It is not the case as Elie Kedourie claims, that nationalism imposes homogeneity; it is rather that a homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 38). This further demonstrates Gellner’s determinism and his functionalist reading of nationalism since he takes homogenisation and congruency-­ making as inevitable and essential. Cultural homogeneity, according to

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Gellner, is a core tenet of modernity, and as such he naturalises homogenisation and potentially renders it legitimate: ‘[s]o the economy needs both the new type of central culture and the central state; the culture needs the state; and the state probably needs the homogeneous cultural branding of its flock’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 140). I do not argue here that Gellner is making a value-laden argument, indeed as he deploys a functionalist approach, Gellner reads congruency almost as natural law, whose rationale is embedded in modernity. Gellner’s terminology is telling in this respect: The imperative of exo-socialisation is the main clue to why state and culture must now be linked, whereas in the past their connection was thin, fortuitous, varied, loose and often minimal. Now it is unavoidable. That is what nationalism is about, and why we live in an age of nationalism. (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 37, italics in the original)

This determinism we see with Gellner’s account of nations and nationalism arises from a rigid structuralist-functionalist stance (Skorupski 1996: 468–469; Hann 2001: 173–181; though see also the discussion in Wettersten 1996: 500–503). Subsequently, Gellner interrogates modernity from a supposedly objective and external point of view, as if history reached its zenith and merely requires a material, almost mechanical explanation. Gellner’s philosophy of science is not exemplary of the logical positivism school (Hempel 1942), and, as Jarvie (1996: 523) argues, Gellner adopts a more sui generis version of positivism. Gellner, nonetheless, does mimic the positivist idea of general laws, as he searches for regularities of events in the history of human societies and particularly modern society. According to Minogue (1996: 116), however, it is a historical-­ materialist outlook, influenced by Karl Marx and Max Weber, that Gellner follows such that he theorises social conditions in a highly abstract way as if he has ‘… direct access to reality’ (Minogue 1996: 124). Regardless of the philosophy of science we assign to Gellner’s thought, his theorisation of homogenisation is deterministic. One Nation-One State The final part in Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism directly engages with the issue of congruency—‘one nation, one state’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 128)—as he discusses several types of incongruity of state and nation. As

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the following passages clearly show, Gellner’s approach and terminology are over-determined since he construes congruity as a natural and necessary property of modern society and, in doing so, he objectifies it: Nationalist sentiment is deeply offended by violations of the nationalist principle of congruence of state and nation; but it is not equally offended by the various kinds of violation of it. It is most actually offended by ethnic divergence between rulers and ruled … [W]hen it comes to the arithmetical non-­ correspondence between nation and state, it is more offended if, so to speak, the state is too few, than if it is too many. (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 128)

Incongruence, therefore, is most acute if a given national group is being ruled by a foreign regime, a nation with no state. In cases where one nation has many states The obstacles lying in the way of its correction are obvious and powerful. If a given nation is blessed with n states, it follows rigorously that the glorious unification of the nation will mean the diminution of the number of its prime ministers, chiefs of staff … Admittedly the one fortunate enough to have retained or acquired the post in question is now the laureate, director of the national theatre. (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 129)

The complexity of nation- and state-building and the processes of homogenisation are both essentialised and normalised as they are read through the prism of natural laws and historical teleological movement. The ‘imbalances’ between nations and states are therefore problematised as a hindrance to modernity that will, nonetheless, be amended by the forces of history. The Gellnerian approach thus lacks a substantive theory of nations and nationalism (Mouzelis 1998: 163–164), but it also trivialises and essentialises congruency processes and mechanisms. This results in problematic implications, for if the operations of homogenisation are necessary and functional to modernity, as Gellner argues, then questioning it and critically engaging with its political ramifications become impossible, indeed illegitimate. Conceptualising homogenisation as inevitable, ‘true’ and ‘right’ pertains to a scientific vocabulary that renders any political and ethical debate about homogenisation futile. Not only is ­ agency within the operations of nation-building made redundant; the ability to challenge and resist cultural homogenisation and its implications are structured as impossible and anti-modern.

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The Limitations in the Gellnerian Theorisation of Nationalism: Towards a Psychoanalytical Reading of Nation/State Congruency and a Genealogy of Homogenisation Practices To summarise, I would emphasise two major lacunae in Gellner’s thought on nation/state congruency and thus suggest reading congruency and the ideal of homogeneous  polities through a psychoanalytical lens, whilst advocating the need to inquire genealogically into the origins of nationalism. First, Gellner’s theorisation of nationalism takes a functionalist and essentialising stance, thus reading modern history as a one-dimensional era. This is an era, according to Gellner, that entails homogeneous polities as essential to growth, progress and modernism (Conversi 2012). The Gellnerian maxim of ‘one state-one nation’ is thus inevitable, a general law, which through the language of necessity and a teleological reasoning renders alternative societal association subjugated, indeed removed from our horizon of socio-political life, at least in modernity. Taking a psychoanalytical and a genealogical approach will offer a way to both understand how the ideal of nation/state congruency operate in modern thought and practice, but also how it came to be naturalised and legitimated. Second, the Gellnerian modality of modernity reads cultural homogeneity as inescapable, resulting in a ‘presentist’ methodological bias in his reading of modern history. Rendering states and nations homogeneous, according to Gellner, is an objective that guides modern human association. To avoid this ‘presentism’, a genealogy of nationalism begins, like Gellner’s, with the contemporary world. Contra Gellner, however, a genealogical investigation does not naturalise modernity. Put differently, this books offers a genealogical inquiry into the origins of nationalism and ideal of congruency so as to unearth the discursive ways by which congruency came to be rendered natural, legitimate and inevitable. This therefore means exposing the ways in which the ideal of congruent societies came to be construed as a constitutive element of modernity. This book, however, suggests taking the Gellnerian maxim of congruent societies seriously and deploys it through a critical and psychoanalytical stance, thus accounting for the persistence of the ideal of congruency in modern thought and practice. As I explicate below, this entails reading nationalism as a discursive ideal, a fantasy that both sets the ultima ratio of modernity and human socio-political association and renders it impossible due to some obstacle. Congruent nations/states, therefore, become an impossible-possibility. In the next section I explicate how a genealogi-

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cal approach that incorporates the Lacanian framework can help us understand better the ideal of nation/state congruency and its affective power.

Fantasy and Enjoyment: A Lacanian Psychoanalytical Framework This section puts forth a Lacanian psychoanalytical reading of nationalism, national belonging and the fantasy of nation/state congruency (Berlant 1991; Edkins 2003; Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006; Žižek 2008: 78–79). Below I delineate the Lacanian framework as I explain the following concepts:the‘splitsubject’andvoid,‘fantasy’,‘desire’and‘jouissance’/‘enjoyment’. Let us begin by unpacking the Lacanian split subject. Lacan draws on Freud’s (1938: 275–278) remarks on the splitting of the ego as a defence mechanism, Spaltung, as he maintains that the subject is split, a barred subject ($). To Lacan, this is a split ‘… between consciousness and unconsciousness, between an ineluctably false sense of self and the automatic functioning of language (the signifying chain) in the unconsciousness’ (Fink 1997: 45). Therefore, the Lacanian subject is ontologically in a state of lack, void of cohesive and fixed identity and thus in a continuous search of filling this void, of overcoming the impossibility of identity (Stavrakakis 1999: 13–47; see also Epstein 2011: 334–337; Kinnvall 2004, 2017; Zevnik 2017). The Lacanian subject, therefore, has no inherent substance and the split, the lack, is not a state of play between the conscious and the unconscious, or ‘between a real or authentic part and a false, external one’ (Verhaeghe 1999: 179). Rather, the split is that which constitutes the subject, as an anxious subject continuously trying and failing at overcoming the split. The Lacanian lack or split, however, ‘… is not simply a property of the subject. It makes up its very being, its relationship to itself, to others, and to the world. This lack, in other words, is the condition of the sovereignty of the Lacanian subject’ (Burgess 2017: 659). This suggests reading subjectivity as a paradoxical driving force in socio-political terms (Epstein 2011; Zevnik 2016) and especially in our reading of nationalism and national identity. This is because the subject’s ontological lack means that no fixed positive predication can be attributed to national identities and indeed to the idea of the nation/state. Rather, the process is one of continuous identification. But, it is precisely because of this impossibility of identity that the quest for recovering the lost sense of being in the world gives rise to subjectivities. In other words, the onto-

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logical lack both suggests no fixed identity and an endless struggle to cover the subject’s lack: It is that which ‘… defines the subject as such’ (Verhaeghe 1999: 179). Moreover, and as I explain below the Lacanian concept of fantasy, this void gives rise to our desire to cover this lack, to find the impossible identity, of both our subjectivity and the objective lack (Stavrakakis 1999: 40–54; Žižek 1989). From a Lacanian perspective, therefore, we cannot talk about subjects or identities as ‘… seat[s] that can hold any essential identity’ (Epstein 2011: 334). There is no self or identity in the essentialist sense when we discuss national identities, which in an age of fear and ontological insecurity account for the fantasmatic promise of stability nationalism and religion offer (Kinnvall 2004). Rather, what we do have is the endless attempt to eradicate the lack and impossibility of identity, of a clear seat or ego. As Stavrakakis (1999: 29) clearly explains: ‘What we have then … is not identities but identification, a series of failed identifications or rather a play between identification and its failure, a deeply political play’. Both notions here, that is of ‘failure’ and the ‘political’, are crucial to reading nationalism and the nation/state psychoanalytically and I will return to them shortly. Another way to understand the split subject is to consider the Lacanian Mirror Stage (Lacan 2006 [1966]). This is the moment in a child’s early development in which the child recognises him/herself in the mirror and in which human subjectivity is rendered both meaningful and incomplete. The Mirror Stage is thus an alienating phase (Lacan 1966 [2005]: 95; Nobus 1998: 176–119) because what the child sees in the mirror is both more ‘real’ and less ‘real’ than what the child (and the adult person) can identify and identify with. The image is more real because it captures the entirety of the subject’s body, an image which the subject can perhaps imagine but not fully capture, since one’s own bodily entirety is not accessible to one’s senses as it is to one’s environment. But the image is also less real because it is not really the subject’s being. It has no materiality, nor depth as it is a mirage. It is less real also because it offers an inverted image of one’s body, that is, a ‘mirror image’. As Nobus (1998: 117) puts it: Insofar as the imago appears in a mirror, it is moreover inaccessible because it has neither depth, nor contents, and one can neither manage nor wield it. In addition, the imago is complete: unlike the child, it has no insufficiencies and it also seems to enjoy the comfort of having nothing to demand or desire.

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The mirror image is thus a mirage, an image in virtual space that does not correspond to the way in which the subject is identified by oneself and others. The image thus offers an ‘Ideal-I, i.e. as an I that can never be realized’ (Nobus 1998: 117; Lacan 2006 [1966], 76, see also Edkins 2003: 88–89). The Lacanian focus here, however, is not merely with respect to the child’s development, but rather to our understanding of subjectivity as barred, from childhood into adulthood. Indeed, it is the impossibility of a fixed sense of identity that we first encounter as toddlers in the Mirror Stage that renders our endless identification processes possible throughout our lives as adults (Stavrakakis 1999: 30). The Lacanian reading of the split subject is also key to our reading of what Freud (1921/2001) defines as Group Psychology, and particularly nationalism in this book. This is because we are not talking here about the mere application of psychoanalysis to the collective/group level. Rather, it is the confluence and the void of both the subject and the object, their ontological lack, which therefore renders political battles for meaning an endless venture (Laclau 1990; Stavrakakis 1999: 40–54). The image of society and that of the national edifice, therefore, is always in flux and ambivalent at its core, in the same manner that a child both identifies with and is alienated by his/her mirror image. It is here that fantasy is key to understanding the impossible promise of nation/state unity and, equally important, the affective investment that the nation/ state fantasy entails. Fantasy arises out of a need to cover for lack, the hole or gap in one’s sense of identity and indeed in the imaginary wholeness of society. This is how and why the Mirror Stage helps us understand the logic of fantasy, a support of sorts for the incompleteness of social reality that is more real and less real to that of society, the nation, the state or any form of imagined collectivity, and that precisely because of this must aspire continuously to recapture its being/becoming in the world. Fantasy thus always attempts to frame the ideal society in which we wish to live; it sets the criteria by which the ‘good life’ can be attained, as it constantly strives to cover the lack, the incompleteness and indeed void of and within society. As such, fantasy, or fantasmatic projects, constantly aspire to account for the unpredictability, indeed, the contingent nature of social life by providing an ideal and reassuring blueprint for a fixed and structured world, a certain necessary utopia (Stavrakakis 1999: 99–121; see also Levitas 2007), that is, the future promise of fulfilment in which fantasy is realised and enjoyment is attained, although a realisation that can never be attained as I explain below. Fantasy, therefore, both renders

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a narrative of societal completeness and ensures such closure is never attained (Arfi 2010; Eberle 2017; Mandelbaum 2016). As such, fantasies and here the fantasy of national unity embedded in and expressed through statehood ‘… obfuscates the true horror of a situation: instead of a full rendering of the antagonisms which traverse our society, we indulge in the notion of society as an organic Whole, kept together by forces of solidarity and co-operation’ (Žižek 2008: 5; see also Žižek 2006: especially 47–60). This is how Zevnik (2017: 629) reads the so-called postracial society, namely that when Faced with the unbearable question of the purpose and the nature of one’s existence, caught between what is perceived on the one hand as a demand and on the other hand as a desire of the Other, the way out from this paralyzing conundrum “offered” to the subject comes in the form of a fantasy. In times when overcoming racial struggles presents itself as impossibility, a postracial society acts as a social fantasy.

The nation/state fantasy, moreover, should not be read as the antonym of reality. As Žižek (2006: 57) suggests, ‘[i]n the opposition between dream and reality, fantasy is on the side of reality…’. Ideas and conceptualisations of an imagined collectivity should not be dismissed as such, as imagined, or merely institutionalised through practices, institutions and/ or habits. Rather, the fantasy of national unity is that which constructs and renders reality possible—a reality that is contingent and in which society, the nation, ‘we’ is anything but a homogeneous symbolism (Mandelbaum 2016; Žižek 2008: 17). In the Lacanian architecture of the three registers—The Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary (Lacan 1974–1975; Thurston 1998: 139–163)—fantasy is the narrative that enables us to escape the horror and trauma of the Real, as that which cannot be symbolised, and offers instead a ‘smoother’ reality (Kapoor 2014: 1133–1136). This is because ‘fantasy is basically a scenario filling out the empty space of a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void’ (Žižek 1989: 126). To Zevnik (2017: 629), drawing on the Lacanian concept of Che vuoi?, ‘fantasy secures and reinsures the subject of the necessity of its mandate’ by reassuring us with what the Other wants from us, what is expected from us, or what the Other desires (an ambiguous process that entails its own failure and anxiety as I explain below). To Edelman (1998: 19–20), it is only through fantasy that reality is rendered meaningful since fantasy operates as

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an order, an organization, assuring the stability of our identities as subjects and the consistency of the cultural structures through which those identities are reflected back to us in recognizable form (19).

Indeed, elsewhere Edelman (2004: 33–34) argues that fantasy is the ‘central prop and underlying agency of futurism’ because fantasy not only attempts to stabilise the contingent, but ‘… compel us to identify ourselves with what’s to come by way of haven or defense against ego’s certain end’. This is the fantasmatic attempt at satisfying the ‘hunger for certainty’ (Edkins 2000: 154), or the constant endeavour in search of ontological security (Kinnvall 2004, 2017; Mitzen 2006). But, as Arfi (2010) and Eberle (2017) clearly explain, fantasy both renders the narrative of completeness possible and prevents it from obtaining full closure. It is here that I return to the importance of failure and the political in the analysis of the nation/state fantasy because as we learn from Lacan, fantasies always include their own failure, the explanation why the fantasmatic futurity has not yet been attained. As Glynos and Howarth (2007: 147) put it: Fantasy operates so as to conceal or close off the radical contingency of social relations. It does this through a fantasmatic narrative or logic that promises a fullness-to-come once a named or implied obstacle is overcome … or which foretells of disaster if the obstacle proves insurmountable.

Failure is therefore at the heart of the nation/state fantasy because it is the lack and void of national subjectivities that propels the fantasy of national unity, which in turn must explain and articulate its own impossibility: its inherent failure. This failure, or obstacle, nonetheless, is what constitutes subjectivity, the nation/state subjectivity, since it is loss and alienation that make the ‘basic condition of the formation of subjectivity and agency’ (Epstein 2011: 336). We could approach this duality in the functioning of fantasies by distinguishing between fantasy1 and fantasy2. Fantasy1 is the alleged unifying narrative of the national story, the narrative that captures all potential antagonisms and contradictions and clearly stipulates ‘our’ national roots, ‘our’ present importance in ‘working together’ and in setting ‘our’ collective destiny. Is short, it binds ‘us’ together and render ‘our’ national project legitimate. This is perhaps what Taylor (2004: 23) refers to in his account of ‘social imaginaries’ as: … the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations

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that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.

Fantasy2, however, is the obstacle, the Other whose existence and continuous meddling in ‘our’ affairs is the cause of ‘our’ inability to fulfil ‘our’ potential and to be finally a united nation, one people. The Brexit narrative in the UK is a good example of this duality in national fantasies. Consider, for instance, the call by those who advocate to leave the EU and to ‘stand on our own two feet’. On the one hand, the Brexit narrative advocates stipulating the British social imaginary of unity, of Britain’s past grandeur as an empire, and standing as one country fighting against Nazism and Stalinism, or as Ian Duncan Smith from the leave campaign puts it: Britain is a phenomenal country, the fifth largest economy in the world, it has stood alone and fought for freedom, it has traded, it has been a global trader, it can yet again be a global trader.1

Or as put by Major-General Tim Cross from the Veterans for Britain campaign, who argued for Brexit: As the 21st century unfurls we can and should stand among the front rank of world powers, bowing to no one and displaying confidence in ourselves as a country unique among the brotherhood of nations.2

On the other hand, the EU and its metonymic sign, Brussels, together with the image of the immigrant stand for fantasy2. Together they explain why Britain is not a congruent body as it allegedly used to be, and why it is not economically prosperous as it should be. In other words, the Brexit narrative encapsulates very clearly the duality and in-built failure in ­fantasies and particularly in national fantasies as it both promises the utopian future and explains why it cannot be reached. The failure to obtain a fixed sense of British national subjectivity, or the Lacanian lack, is thus the condition of possibility for the nation/state fantasy: Fantasy1 and fantasy2 are thus like the front and back of the same coin. Insofar as a community experiences its reality as regulated and structured by fantasy1, it has to disavow its inherent impossibility, the antagonism in its very heart, whereby fantasy2, for example the anti-Semitic figure of the ‘conceptual Jew’, gives body to this disavowal. In short, the effectiveness of fantasy2 is the condition for fantasy1 to maintain its hold. (Žižek 1999: 192)

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Fantasies, however, are not merely discursive and objective fillings by which national narratives are fixed and/or hegemonised. Focusing on national fantasies and narratives is not an analysis in the ‘… field of objective relations’ (Laclau 2006: 105). Rather, fantasies are embroiled with jouissance, a libidinal and affective investment entailing bodily enjoyment that produces and interpellates populations (Laclau 2006).3 As in the child’s Mirror Stage, the fantasmatic national narrative always entails a plot in which enjoyment was lost, stolen and destroyed. These are the stories of national and civilizational golden-ages, heroic pasts or major defeats and catastrophes narrating ‘our’ lost grandeur. The promised jouissance is thus ‘always-already lost’ (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 261) and is reinvigorated in the national utopia by the promise to recapture it, to reinstate it through the establishment of national sovereignty and by controlling (a specific) territory. The national fantasy is thus an impossible-­possibility that is nonetheless envisioned and as such is capable to hail populations precisely through its promise and the partial collective enjoyment it offers to its members. As Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras (2006: 153) put it: … the lost golden era of absolute enjoyment and the possibility of a return to this era is a chimera. However, the existence of this fantasy fosters the solidarity of the community, consolidates national identity, and animates national desire.

Returning briefly to lack as constitutive of subjectivity and identification discussed earlier, Solomon’s (2012: 917) analysis of discourse, affect and jouissance is exceptionally useful here as it displays the ambiguous nature of fantasies and the jouissance they entail: In pursuing a whole sense of ‘self’, the subject continually experiences both frustration and satisfaction—satisfaction in identifying itself with those valued signifiers of a culture that confer a sense of being and security (such as ‘patriotic’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’, ‘democracy’, etc.) and frustration in never being able to fully identify with the promise of wholeness and stability that such privileged signifiers seem to offer.

The promise of jouissance is ambiguous and fantasmatic in the sense that it only offers limited experiences of belonging rendered meaningful through partial enjoyment. This is vital to understanding the emotive hailing power of national narratives and the promise of nation/state congruency as they strive to eradicate the gap, the lack in the nation’s subjectivity,

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by offering partial modes of belonging, of limited identification with the Lacanian objet petit a as the object-cause of desire (Arfi 2010: 432–437; Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 262–263; Žižek 2008; but see Laclau 2005: 112, 114–115). This is how law and society’s demands operate. That is, by imposing limitations and prohibitions on the subject’s access to full jouissance such that ‘[o]ne no longer experiences pure desire; instead all cravings and ways of enjoyment are within the limits of society’ (Zevnik 2016: 29). At the same time, however, it is precisely the impossibility of full jouissance and a satisfaction of desire that produces the barred subject, thus again demonstrating the chimaera aspect of fantasy as conditions of possibility for partial enjoyment and the obstacle for why it is only partial (Arfi 2010; Evans 1998). It is here that we see the importance of desire in the Lacanian architecture, and its complex relationship with lack, fantasy and enjoyment. First, as I explained above, desire arises from the basic void at the level of subjectivity, but it arises equally at the level of the objective, such as the lack in the national edifice. In other words, desire is aimed not at satisfaction, say, of some particular need. Indeed, desires and needs are not identical and this explains the consumerist and over-consumption of the affluent West which does not need things but desires them nonetheless (Kapoor 2014: 1122). Desire, therefore, is aimed at recouping that which cannot be symbolised or named, the void/loss. This unnamed thing is the Freudian Das Ding and the Lacanian object petit a as the object-cause of desire (Žižek 2008). As such, desire has no object that ‘could satisfy it’ and we end-up with an endless movement ‘simply for the enjoyment (jouissance) of pursuing it’ (Evans 1998: 5). This is how Heath-Kelly (2018), for instance, analyses the notion of security, that is, how security as such is the object of desire, which being an impossibility entails an endless process of securitisation by which security actors fetishise particular threats and continuously moving from one to another. Second is the role fantasy plays as it ‘constitutes our desire, provides its coordinates’; that is, it literally ‘teaches us how to desire’ (Žižek 2008: 7). Kapoor (2005, 2014), for instance, demonstrates the relationship between fantasy and desire in his analyses of development discourse that construes the Third World as poor and ‘backward’, thus de-historicising imperial legacies and avoiding the more profound problem of inequality. In other words, the fantasy of development ‘… is the mise-en-scène for desire: it

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helps make reality smooth, coherent and harmonious, protecting us from trauma or lack …’, thus reassuring us in the global north that the reason for ‘underdeveloped’ states is because of ‘rogue civil servants, corrupt leaders, uneducated or irresponsible mothers, “ethnic” or “traditional” practices’ (Kapoor 2014: 1134). Returning to the ways in which fantasy ‘teaches us how to desire’ (Žižek 2008: 7) and the pursuit of enjoyment, the ways national narratives of unity are structured are psychoanalytically telling. They often offer various such moments of partial enjoyment and satisfaction as well as frustrations such as in the event of a crisis, war and/or national celebrations, parades and memorial days. The national edifice is able thus to produce and hail its national subjects through this partial experience of ‘we-ness’. But this is limited for any such moment of affective belonging ends with frustration, with a cry that this is not quite it, since enjoyment was experienced but very quickly lost again. Belonging was bodily performed but only to be shortly removed from the libidinal economy (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 262). As explained above, this is due to the subjectivity’s lack as the driving force of identification, but a lack that can never be rendered whole and as such includes the ambiguous or ‘amorphous’ quality of affect (Fink 2004: 51). As Solomon (2012: 915) puts it: For example, one can imagine a subject identifying him/herself as ‘patriotic’. S/he would identify with the signifier ‘patriotic’, but since there is no foundational or uncontested notion in society of what ‘patriotic’ ultimately ‘means’, the subject would feel a sense of both satisfaction and frustration. S/he would feel satisfaction in taking on the signifier ‘patriotic’ as identifying him/herself, since it is a signifier which is typically highly valued by society. Yet, the subject would also feel a sense of frustration in never fully being able to identify with all that ‘patriotism’ is often felt to entail.

The impossibility of the national fantasy and the jouissance that keeps the fantasy going, indeed animating it (Žižek 2008: xxiv), is directly linked to lack and the gap in the national existence, but this admission in ‘our’ lack, or the lack in the national signifying structure, is not recognised by the national edifice, for that would mean anxiety and paralysis. This is where we see again the affective and enjoyment-infused power of the nation/state fantasy, that is, by promising ‘us’ fantasy1 in which full unity is obtained and the ontological void is concealed. At the same time, fantasy2 offers ‘us’ an explanation for why ‘we’ are not yet congruent and secured and thus how ‘we’ slide between covering the lack and the impossibility of materialising fantasy1.

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What the national edifice thus offers is a certain libidinal bribe and trade-off. Through the constitution of the national body and bodies, the national edifice interpellates populations—that is to say the national population introjects the symbolic order through myriad practices and performativities (e.g., national symbols, the flag, national holidays and commemoration, military service etc.)—whereas the lack and inability to fulfil the fantasy and obtain authentic and lasting enjoyment is projected onto the Other (Mandelbaum 2018). This Other now stands for difference, for ‘our’ lack, and its existence is both a hindrance and a necessary explanation for why ‘we’ have not yet managed to secure and obtain ‘our’ national fantasy (Arfi 2010; Eberle 2017; Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147; Zevnik 2017). Why ‘we’ cannot live freely and are still insecure. This demonstrates how national fantasies both promise ‘us’ the satisfaction of desire, the obtainment of jouissance, security and fulfilment of ‘our’ national aspirations, and at the same time making sure this promise is kept at bay, unrealised. The reason is that identification can never be fully achieved, full belonging is impossible as explained above through the child’s Mirror Stage: ‘it is like writing in water’ (Laclau as cited in Andersen 2003: 55; Laclau 1996: 36–46). It cannot realise its national desire and instead it transposes it onto the future-to-come, whilst maintaining the Other as the obstacle, the explanation for why ‘we’ are not yet there: This way enjoyment is kept at a “healthy” distance, not too far but not too close either; close enough to support the appeal of an object of identification but far enough from letting us entertain the vision of full satisfaction as an imminent possibility, something that would kill desire, induce anxiety and put identification processes in danger. (Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006: 150)

The national subject thus emerges precisely in this gap, between the nation and the state, such that the fantasmatic promise of homogeneity is proclaimed, whilst at the same time entailing its own impossibility, the obstacle keeping ‘us’ at a ‘healthy distance’. Therefore. approaching the nation/state and nationalism through the Lacanian framework of fantasy, lack and jouissance enables us to understand better how the ideal of national unity, however practised, came to be a leitmotif in modern political thought and practice. The rest of the book traces the origins of this nation/state congruency ideal before returning to our current regime of congruency.

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Notes 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28021602.pdf [accessed 26 March 2019]. 2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/24/stiffen-your-sinewsand-vote-leave%2D%2D-brexit-will-make-britain-gr2/ [accessed 26 March 2019]. 3. See Laclau (2006: especially 109–110, 2004: 279–328), Mouffe (2000: 95). This book, however, deploys the Lacanian jouissance as part of fantasy, rather than focusing on bodily enjoyment and interpellation, two key concepts in the Lacanian framework I have used elsewhere (Mandelbaum 2012, 2018).

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Hall, John, ed. 1998. The State of the Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, John, and Ian Charles Jarvie, eds. 1996. The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Hann, Chris. 2001. Gellner’s Structural-Functional-Culturalism. Czech Sociological Review 9 (2): 173–181. Heath-Kelly, Charlotte. 2018. Forgetting ISIS: Enmity, Drive and Repetition in Security Discourse. Critical Studies on Security 6 (1): 85–99. Hempel, Carl G. 1942. The Function of General Laws in History. The Journal of Philosophy 39 (2): 35–48. Jarvie, Ian Charles. 1996. Gellner’s Positivism. In The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, ed. John Hall and Ian Charles Jarvie, 521–534. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kapoor, Ilan. 2005. Participatory Development, Complicity and Desire. Third World Quarterly 26 (8): 1203–1220. ———. 2014. Psychoanalysis and Development: Contributions, Examples, Limits. Third World Quarterly 35 (7): 1120–1143. Kedourie, Elie. 1993 [1961]. Nationalism. 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Kinnvall, Catarina. 2004. Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security. Political Psychology 25 (5): 741–767. ———. 2017. Feeling Ontologically (in) Secure: States, Traumas and the Governing of Gendered Space. Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 90–108. Lacan, Jacques. 1974–1975. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XXIII. R.S.I. ———. 2006 [1966]. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. New  York: W. W. & Company. Laclau, Ernesto. 1985. Hegemoni – en ny politisk logik. Interview in A. Andresen (ed.) Politisk Strategi i firserne. Copenhagen: Aurora. ———. 1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. ———. 1996. Emancipation(s). London and New York: Verso. ———. 2004. Glimpsing the Future. In Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critschley and Oliver Marchart, 279–328. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. ———. 2006. Ideology and Post-Marxism. Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (2): 103–114. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Laitin, David. 1998. Nationalism and Language: A Post-Soviet Perspective. In The State of the Nation, ed. John Hall, 135–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levitas, Ruth. 2007. Looking for the Blue: The Necessity of Utopia. Journal of Political Ideologies 12 (3): 289–306. Mandelbaum, Moran M. 2012. The “National Left” in Israeli Public Discourse: A Critique. Journal of Language and Politics 11 (3): 448–467.

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Solomon, Ty. 2012. ‘I Wasn’t Angry, Because I Couldn’t Believe It Was Happening’: Affect and Discourse in Responses to 9/11. Review of International Studies 38 (4): 907–928. Stargardt, Nicholas. 1996. Gellner’s Nationalism: The Spirit of Modernisation? In The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, ed. John Hall and Ian Charles Jarvie, 171–189. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Stavrakakis, Yannis. 1999. Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge. Stavrakakis, Yannis, and Nikos Chrysoloras. 2006. (I Can’t Get No) Enjoyment: Lacanian Theory and the Analysis of Nationalism. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 11 (2): 144–163. Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thurston, Luke. 1998. Ineluctable Nodalities: On the Borromean Knot. In Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. Danny Nobus, 101–138. New-York: Other Press. Tilly, Charles. 1985. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B.  Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, 169–191. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Verhaeghe, Paul. 1999. Causation and Destitution of a Pre-ontological Non-­ entity: On the Lacanian Subject. In Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. Danny Nobus, 164–189. New York: Other Press. Veyne, Paul. 1988. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wettersten, John. 1996. Ernest Gellner: A Wittgensteinian Rationalist. In The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, ed. John Hall and Ian Charles Jarvie, 497– 520. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Zevnik, Andreja. 2016. Lacan, Deleuze and World Politics: Rethinking the Ontology of the Political Subject. London: Routledge. ———. 2017. Postracial Society as Social Fantasy: Black Communities Trapped Between Racism and a Struggle for Political Recognition. Political Psychology 38 (4): 621–635. Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. ———. 1999. The Seven Veils of Fantasy. In Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. Danny Nobus, 190–218. New York: Other Press. ———. 2001. From Virtual Reality to the Virtualization of Reality. In Reading Digital Culture, ed. D. Trend, 17–22. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2006. How to Read Lacan. London: Granta Publications. ———. 2008. The Plague of Fantasies. 3rd ed. London: Verso.

CHAPTER 3

The State as One: The ‘Union of Men’, the ‘People’ and the ‘State’ in Early Modernity

… [A] state is defined as a composite moral person, whose will blended and combined from the agreement of many is taken as the will of all so that it may employ the forces and capacities of every individual for the common peace and security. (Pufendorf 1991 [1673]: 137)

As detailed in Chap. 1, a genealogical inquiry into the emergence of congruency and homogenisation technologies in modernity requires an analysis of modernity’s pre-history. I thus begin with early-modern juridico-political thought by showing that from the mid-sixteenth to the It is worth noting that the idea of congruency in European thought is about men. Men are the people who unite and covenant (Hobbes 2003 [1642]), men are the heads of families (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book II, Chap. V, Section XXIII, 552), and women, to Hobbes, are ‘… dependent, needing help’ (Carver 2004: 132, see also Lloyd 1984). In this sense, one could further point to the interaction of gender, heteronormativity and nationalism in the history of European state making and in contemporary discourses (see Peterson 2013; Yuval-Davis 1997) or indeed the changing nature of nationalism and sexuality in settler societies (Morgensen 2010; Puar 2017). Whilst this offers an important and interesting gender perspective and critique of the nation/state fantasy, due to my focus on the fantasmatic nature of congruency I leave this issue unexplored in this book. © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_3

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mid-eighteenth centuries it is in the idea of the state that the fantasy of congruency emerges. It is a congruency expressed and achieved through the unity of individuals that join to produce civil society and obtain the common-good through and within a multitude of state modalities. More so, as Skinner (1978) argues, the state emerges here as an abstract conception that transcends the sovereign/prince and the people (see also Skinner 1989: 90–131). The state, as I further explicate in the conclusion to this chapter, is the Lacanian ‘master signifier’ (Fink 1999), or Laclau’s (1996) ‘empty signifier’, in the sense that it projects a powerful authority, an object in the name of various practices are enabled and are made intelligible. Nonetheless, the state is also in a state of ‘void’, there is nothing essential about the ‘state’, and it is thus a signifier that can never be fixed or filled—the gap between the state as signifier and the state as a ‘thing in itself’ is never closed (Howarth 2000: 1–15; Laclau 1996: 57–58). The state is thus imbued with the notion of congruency and unity but at the same time the state never fully realises its potentiality for complete unity. The congruent nature of the state is both pre-supposed and envisioned; it is both assumed and set as the ultima ratio of its own existence. I analyse early modernity by utilising the notion of the state as a conceptual prism, a discursive space (Doty 1993), through which I investigate the ways in which various subjects and objects, models and symbols, are constructed and positioned vis-à-vis one another and in relation to the state concept. This allows me, first, to avoid projecting contemporary models—namely that of the ‘nation-state’, nationalism and popular sovereignty—onto past discourses that lacked these post-enlightenment conceptions. Second, utilising the state as a discursive space allows me to avoid fixing the state as a stable notion and thus enabling me to show the paradoxical nature of the state in early modernity that is both constructed as one, but that is nonetheless more than itself. This chapter has two main sections. In the first section, I analyse juridical and political works from Giovanni Botero in the mid-sixteenth century to Emmerich de Vattel in the mid-eighteenth century. I do not offer a diachronic picture of state models and theories; rather, I analyse exemplary works as I show the discursive practices by which the state is made intelligible and rendered congruent, but is, nonetheless, a signifier that is constantly re-articulated. This also serves to fragmentise early-modern thought that is at times presented as a chronological and even teleological development moving towards more ‘modern’ notions of representation and/or popular sovereignty and their convergence with the ideas of rule,

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sovereignty and the state (Hont 1994: 166–231). What emerges with these state theories is the idea of a union of many and a relationship between the sovereign/rule and the subjects as co-constitutive, interdependent and even indivisible. The second section engages with Rousseau by showing how the discursive space of the state is problematised around the potential conflict between the one and the many. Rousseau thus attempts to resolve the (Hobbesian) state problématique through the reaffirmation of unity—the fantasy of congruency. To Rousseau, this is manifested in the general will and governed by the people themselves through law, and thus law becomes the ultimate authority/power. Rousseau attempts to fix and fill the state concept through its homogenisation in juridical terms as he argues that the will is inalienable, sovereignty cannot be transferred. Rousseau also makes the case for culturally homogeneous societies in which direct democracy is more likely to succeed, indeed a society in the singular that stands for congruency of individuals and the unity of individuals (a ‘people’) with space. This chapter is important for this book’s objectives as it (1) offers a discourse analysis of early-modern thought and thus serves as the ‘pre-­ history’ of the rise of the nation/state congruency ideal; (2) it further shows how the congruency fantasy is articulated in early-modern thought by focusing on the state as the subject and object of congruency; and (3) it thus explains how in the late eighteenth century a multitude of discourses (which I analyse in the next chapter) do not fuse the state with the modern ideas of nationalism and ‘popular sovereignty’, but actually fragment the state as the modality of unity and reposition it in line with the modern subject of the congruent society. Each section of this chapter and each discursive practice I identify are exemplary of early-modern thought and practices because they illustrate the state as the embodiment of congruency, that is, the authoritative subject commanding congruency as well as the object and site of homogenisation.

‘A People Is a Single Entity, with a Single Will’: Early-Modern Juridico-Political Discourse Early modern juridical and political thought produce the notion of the state/l’état as an abstract idea ‘… divorced from rulers as well as ruled’ (Bartelson 2001: 34; see Bodin 1992 [1576]; Hobbes 2003 [1642];

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Hont 1994: 184–188; Skinner 1978: ix–x). The ‘state’ emerges as an idea designed to prevent the natural state of Bellum omnium contra omnes and to achieve the common-wealth (Hobbes 2003 [1642]). Whilst the idea of the nation as the source of legitimate state rule was yet to be invented, the idea of the people and that of a unity appears in this juridico-political discourse from Giovanni Botero’s Reason of State in 1589 to Emmerich de-­ Vattel in his 1758 Law of Nations. What, therefore, are the main issues and concerns being problematised in early-modern juridico-political thought from Giovanni Botero until the late eighteenth century? What type of relationship amongst individuals and between them and rule emerges within this juridico-political discourse? And, therefore, how is the congruency fantasy rendered intelligible through and within the state of early-modern European thought and practices? In this section, I analyse the role of the state and the relationship between the various signifiers that populate the discursive space of the state. Moreover, I show the various discursive practices by which the state as modality of congruency is constituted and established. I identify four main discursive practices: (1) the rule–people nexus practice that problematises the relationship between sovereign/prince and subjects and offers an anti-Machiavelli theory of the state; (2) the homogenisation of authority practice, that is, the practice that constructs the state and the ‘people’ as that which rules the land; (3) the end/teleological practice that constitutes the objectives of the idea of a unity of individuals and thus of the state (these are the notions of the common-wealth, civil society, security and law) and (4) the representation practice that constitutes the relationship between the various signifiers within the discursive space of the state as co-constitutive. The purpose of this analysis is to show that the state also becomes a juridical problem and not just a political one, especially with the works of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and interconnected to the imaginary of the ‘international’, the outside, especially in Vattel’s work (Beaulac 2004: especially 179; Boucher 1988: 145–167, 223–254, 262–265; Linklater 1982; Nakhimovsky 2007: 157–173). With Grotius, for instance, ‘the whole of international relations … become subject to the rule of law’ (Boucher 1998: 209), and to Vattel the international is a revised model of natural law (Boucher 1998: 255; Holland 2010). To reiterate, the conceptualisations of the state vis-à-vis itself and that of the state vis-à-vis its neighbours become intertwined and namely a problem of (international) law.

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Second, I show that whilst the idea of authority based on popular sovereignty and the role of historical identity is yet to be invented (Bartelson 2001: 35; Foucault 2004: especially 142; Hont 1994: 192–205), the notion of a union of many manifested in the idea of the common-wealth is deeply rooted in this juridico-political regime of truth. The state in these discursive formations is thus construed as a totality in the sense that it can only be a totality through the unification of individuals that in their assemblage create both the state and the ‘people’. The Rule–People Nexus Practice During the mid-to-late sixteenth century an important theme develops that problematises the relationship between individuals, but most importantly between individuals (as a ‘people’) and their rule(r). The set of questions that become intelligible with this problematisation are centred around the idea of the state, what it entails and how it can achieve its goals. What emerges here is a revision and even rejection of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe (The Prince) (2008 [1532]) and Jean Bodin’s idea of the indivisibility of sovereignty (Bodin 1992 [1576]). Several ideas concerning the state appear like Giovanni Botero’s Della Ragion di Stato (Reason of State) published in 1589 (although see Skinner 1978: 248– 249) and that of the ‘respublica’ in all its forms by the Späthumanisten (e.g., Hugo Grotius, Johannes Althusius, Herman Conring) mostly from the Netherlands and the German-speaking principalities. What appears as a discursive rule in these diverse political and philosophical writings is that the state entails a mutually dependent relationship between subjects and rule. This then constitutes the operations and techniques by which the state may and ought to preserve itself, indeed the idea of raison d’état (Foucault 2009: 237–248; Viroli 1992: 238–280). Botero (1956 [1589]), for instance, maintains that the ‘State is a stable rule over a people and Reason of State is the knowledge of the means by which such a dominion may be founded, preserved and extended’ (Section 1). The ways by which a state governs itself become a key problem in this era and revolves around the idea of justice between the ruler and the people and the mechanisms by which justice is delivered. Botero’s caveats with respect to state rule and the rule–people relationship, in contrast to Machiavelli’s prescription of more rule, are not those of internal rivalry to the prince; rather, Botero warns against corruption, slow or biased judicial verdicts, disproportionate taxation and the inappropriate increase in the

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sovereign’s revenues (Botero 1956 [1589]: Section 14; see Viroli 1992: 256–257). As Virolio (1992: 255) puts it: A prince who intend to preserve his state for long should not benefit the nobility at the expense of the people; if he does, he becomes the ruler of only part of the kingdom and the enemy of the multitude.

Installing just and effective governance mechanisms are all necessary since ‘[t]he preservation of a State depends upon the peace and tranquillity of its subjects’ (Botero 1956 [1589]: Section 8). The sovereign may have great powers over his subjects, but his rule must be within the realm of justice, morals and virtue otherwise the state as a mechanism of governance will descend into chaos and war. With Botero’s Reason of State the state emerges as congruent through a rule–people nexus. The state is therefore a discursive space that entails people and their rule and the various mechanisms by which state rule is just and effective, thus preserving the state’s existence. The rule–people nexus practice also arises with the Späthumanisten who write in the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries and construct their idea of the state as the res-publica mixta in which ‘Sovereignty is the highest power, which the magistrate has amongst the people by the consent of the people’ (Althusius in van Gelderen 2003: 88). What surfaces with this discursive practice continues the theme of Botero in the sense that the relationship between ruler and people is mutually constitutive and mutually dependent. The people are subject(s) to state authority and power but nonetheless constitute the state and contribute to its existence, preservation and growth. What is innovative here is that now the mechanisms of state rule vis-à-vis its subjects become part of a larger power-­ knowledge constellation, namely that of juridical knowledge, but also of a broader form of management and the perfection of the state and the people. Johannes Althusius, for instance, asserted that the state is constituted by an association of people who share and deploy power via representation and other consociational apparatuses (Althusius in van Gelderen 2003: 88). To Hugo Grotius, peoples have an existence that can be divorced from the idea of the state, for ‘… both states and individuals … are the bearers of rights’ (Boucher 1998: 210, although see Vincent 1990: 242). Thus, peoples are allowed to resist and even make war against their sovereigns ‘… if they offend against the Laws, and the State’ (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book I, Chap. IV, Section VIII, 372; see also Tuck 1999: 78–108).

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The focal point, therefore, for the Späthumanisten is the people (and the citizen) as the source of power where consociational and representational mechanisms are indispensable (van Gelderen 2003: 83–90). The discursive space of the state in Späthumanismus becomes a complex and mixed web of people, citizens and magistrates in which the unity of people and state is not absolute, hierarchical or eternal. This discursive formation constitutes the state as a mixture of governance systems in which the individual and the people as the union of many are part of the operations of rule and sovereignty (van Gelderen 2003: 83–90). What arises here with the Späthumanismus discourse, despite its myriad variants, is the ideal of a union of people who join together to achieve the common-good, and thus the necessity to homogenise rule, order and power through and within the law. The concepts that populate the discursive space of the state are those of people, rule and the myriad mechanisms of authority and power. The relationship between these various concepts is co-constitutive in the double sense that they all depend on one another to achieve the ideal of the state, but that the relationship between the sovereign/rule and the people is not absolute. The state, for instance, emerges from the ‘people’ but it constitutes the ‘people’ in its existence such that in the case of war or catastrophe the people and the state can no longer be considered the same. As Grotius explicates, the state and the ‘people’ form a nexus that is not absolute, for indeed unity per se only resides in ‘universal society’ (Grotius 2005 [1625]) and individual states are ‘… particular communities [that] had emerged for practical reasons’ (Bartelson 2009: 87). The state–people relationship, Grotius explains, is thus mutually constitutive: But if the Body of the People that constitute the State, be dissolved, it is more reasonable to say, that they are not to be esteemed the same People; nor the Things formerly belonging to that State to be restored to them by the Law of Nations; because a People, like a Ship, by a Dissolution of the Parts, is entirely destroyed, because its whole Nature consists in that perpetual Conjunction. (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book III, Chap. IX, Section IX.1., 1393–1394)

The rule–people nexus that is produced here is discursively practised through the idea of unity/association of men (as heads of households) and through the idea of the law as that which directs state apparatus. What the Späthumanisten assert is a mixed and complex system of governance, but

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one that is internally congruent and that relies on indispensable relations between rule(r) and ‘people’. Applying the psychoanalytical terminology of fantasy, we can see that the ideal of the state, that is, fantasy1, is a just rule by the sovereign over the people in a way that enriches the state, preserves the peace, domestically, and administers justice. The obstacles, fantasy2, are the corrupt ruler, injustice, domestic inequality and/or war and catastrophes—all of which are undoubtedly part of history—which stand in the way of achieving the ideal state and thus ‘reason of state’. Fantasy2, nonetheless, conditions the possibility of the fantasy of unity articulated here through the state concept. This further demonstrates why the state emerges as an ‘empty signifier’ here, that is, because of its impossibility it entails radical libidinal investment driving the various attempts at articulating the state, the right way to rule and how the relationship between state and people ought to be. The Homogenisation of Authority Practice In the mid-seventeenth century, a new theme develops that considers the state and the relationship between rule/sovereign and the ‘people’ quite differently. What Thomas Hobbes puts forward is an inversion of Botero’s notion of the state and the respublica mixta by the Späthumanisten. They presented the state as a governance system based on a mutually dependent relationship between the sovereign and the people/subjects. In other words, the sovereign/rule and the people are co-constitutive in Botero’s and in Späthumanismus. With Hobbes, the sovereign is the ‘people’ not in any sense other that he who rules the land represents the ‘people’ as a unified body with agential characteristics. With Hobbes, therefore, the state and the ‘people’ are one and the same and reside within the sovereign, literally; the ‘rest’ are citizens or the multitude (Hont 1994: 186; see also Skinner 1999: 1–29, especially 4–5, 18–26; Tuck 1993: Chap. 7, especially 314–335; Virno 2004: especially 22–23). Hobbes’s discourse on government in his De Cive (On the Citizen) from 1642 presents a dual-problématique, namely that of the state of nature and what it entails, to which I return later, and the problem of authority and the complexity of wills. The latter refers to the problems arising from a need to administer order and security and thus the prospective clashes between individuals’ wills. The questions that emerge with this problematisation are ‘who/what constitutes that which is meant to project authority and administer security?’ ‘If a state is a union of many designed

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to ensure the common-good and security, how can we reconcile the plurality and potentially clashing interests and wills?’ The problematisation in Hobbes’ discourse is how to salvage men from their mutual mistrust and at the same time establish a powerful and effective system of rule and governance. It is thus a dual-problématique, the insecurity of a stateless multitude/crowd and the likely incongruence of individuals’ (discrete) wills. What Hobbes offers is the idea of the state as a union of individuals designed to achieve the common-wealth, the good of all. It is a system of rule that provides security amongst individuals but that can understand and implement effectively what is in the best interest of all. The dual-­ problématique is thus answered through the homogenisation of many into a union that produces a single will. This singularity resides in and manifests itself via the sovereign, be it an assembly or a monarch (though Hobbes’ preference was for the latter, see Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. X, Section 3, 117). The ‘person of the state’ is therefore the source of authority and legitimacy from which the sovereign is rendered legitimate. As Trainor (2006: 776) puts it: ‘[t]he state is the “Author” who “authorizes” its government and the latter exercises its authority properly as the state’s representative or as the institutional expression and operational presence of the state’ (see also Skinner 1989: 90). The state is that in which many are united into one, which is hierarchically above the many and each individual alike. The representative of the state upon which the common will is grafted is the sovereign, who is himself one: Since therefore a combination of several wills in the same end is not adequate to the preservation of peace and stable defence, it is required that there be a single will [una voluntas] among all of them in matters essential to peace and defence. (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. V, Section 6, 72, italics and square brackets in the original)

The sovereign is thus the representative of the unity and his authority is derived from the act of covenanting, but the signifier that encapsulates this authority—the almost divine responsibility of the sovereign to protect the subjects (Skinner 1999: 19)—is the ‘state’: ‘[t]here is, in short, no natural unity outside the state; unity and community are attained only with the appointment of a representative’ (Skinner 1999: 19, see also Skinner 1989: 90; Hont 1994: 183–191). Hobbes animates the state through its personification, indeed the ‘person of the state’, which is produced through the discursive practice that

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homogenises that who rules the land and thus makes the idea of the homogeneous state intelligible. What is further emphasised in Hobbes’ discourse on government and that will reappear in his seminal work, Leviathan, is that this idea of an ordered and secure society is only achieved through the notion of the state that is anthropomorphised in the sense that it produces and is represented by a single person, literally. Indeed, the idea of a single will is not metaphysical but concrete in Hobbes’ works and represents a person-like entity in which the many are embodied. This constitutes the ‘people’ as that which holds power, that which is sovereign to which one could attribute agential properties, as Hobbes (2003 [1642]: 137—italics in the original) writes, ‘A people is a single entity, with a single will; you can attribute an act to it’ (see Skinner 1999: 1–29). To Hobbes, the union of individuals and the appointment of a representative produce the ‘people’, an entity that is not pre-political or pre-­ state, but rather an anthropomorphised political one that is the people and acts so as to obtain the common-wealth. Put differently, the ‘people’ in Hobbes’ discourse is that which possesses the sovereign power and as such can be the king in a monarchy or the council in either a democracy or an aristocracy. To Hobbes, the homogenisation of authority achieved through union and the appointment of a representative is crucial for the success of the civitas, for it is only through the state that the ‘people’ emerges as one and it is only via such a covenant that rule can save men from the state of nature and establish peace amongst them. The signifiers ‘state’ and ‘people’ are thus made homologous, that is, the state and the people are now merged and construed as one and the same. To further explicate this, we can notice how Hobbes differentiates between the ‘people’ and the ‘crowd’/‘multitude’. In other words, the process of rendering ‘state’ and ‘people’ homologous is also made possible by rendering the ‘people’ and the ‘crowd’/‘multitude’ heterologous and thus endowing the people concept not only with agential properties, which may already be intelligible, but endow it with authority, indeed the ultimate authority: A people is a single entity, with a single will; you can attribute an act to it. None of this can be said of a crowd. In every commonwealth the People Reigns … But the citizens, i.e. the subjects, are a crowd. (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. XII, Section 8, 137, italics and square brackets in the original)

The Hobbesian discourse establishes one will that is achieved through the union of many into a sovereign power. This is the ‘people’ that must pos-

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sess the ultimate authority and as such cannot be submitted to any political or legal scrutiny. The people/the holder of the sovereign power has immunity and absolute power given to it to conduct the business of the state. The sovereign makes the law and is above the law (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. XI). The Hobbesian discourse on government enables the idea of the state as a normative objective as it pertains to the common-­ wealth and the security of individuals. What emerges with this Hobbesian discourse is also an idea of an indivisible system of rule and governance in which congruency is embedded in the people. This is a congruency amongst individuals as they assemble and covenant to submit their will to the will of one person. The ‘state’ is the authority from which this act of covenanting is legitimated, but it is also the result of this technology of homogenisation. The state’s unity and congruency are rendered possible through its practices as it speaks and acts with one voice. The discursive space of the state in Hobbes’ discourse, therefore, consists of individuals understood not as a people in the modern oft-invoked notion of Volk or nation, but rather as crowd, multitude or citizens whereas the sovereign is the ‘people’ and possesses nearly absolute power. The discursive relationship between the multitude, the subjects and the sovereign is thus a hierarchical one situated and legitimated with the rationality of the state as the common-wealth, the sign of authority and at the same time the rationale for congruity. The idea of the state as the symbolism of unity and the modality of congruency also appears in Samuel Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law (1673). Pufendorf defines the state as a ‘moral person’, which ‘can move itself to action because it possesses an intellect and a will’ (Holland 2010: 440). Drawing on Hobbes, Pufendorf asserts that the notion of a union embedded in a state can only be achieved through the submission of individuals’ wills to one will. This again is inscribed in the notion of the one, the congruent sovereign, as the manifestation of the good of all and the vehicle to achieve the common-wealth. Its status, as in Hobbes’ De-Cive, is supreme such that it can compel the individual and the many to obtain what it perceives to be the common-­ good (Pufendorf 1991 [1673]: Book II, Section 6, 137). Interestingly, the idea of one authority, one congruent sovereign, is also articulated when Pufendorf (1991 [1673]: Book II, Sections 13–15, 144– 145) speaks of ‘systems of states’. He asserts there that ‘complete states’ can become part of a system with other states if they form an alliance or ‘hav[e] a king in common’ (Pufendorf 1991 [1673]: Book II, Sections

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13–15, 144). What we can learn from Pufendorf’s model of a ‘king in common’ is that the need to homogenise authority appears even on what might be referred to as an external level, the ‘society of states’ (Linklater 1982: 62–79). That is, Pufendorf asserts clearly that in a ‘system of states’ each state does retain its independence, but the final authority must be in one author, the ‘king in common’ (Pufendorf 1991 [1673]: Book II, Sections 13–15, 145; see also Hont 1994: 179 n.19). This homogenisation of authority also appears in the Law of Nations, published in 1758 by the Swiss jurist and philosopher Emmerich de Vattel. Vattel’s discourse of the state and the law amongst peoples constructs the state not in absolute form, as Hobbes does, but as a body politic in which the sovereign receives his power from the people and is thus their representative. The state has the authority, but its actual exercise resides in that who governs (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Book I, Chap. I, Sections 1–2; see also Beaulac 2004: 127–183). To Vattel, the need to homogenise the exercise of rule is mandatory for the preservation and success of the state and for the ability to consider it as a ‘moral person’, indeed a sovereign-agent even if this entails ‘… compelling those who should refuse to obey’ (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Preliminaries). The homogenisation of authority is endemic to Vattels’ conceptualisation of the ‘international’. Whilst only states hold the ultimate authority, it is only through the rendering of states sovereign upon themselves that enables an ‘international society’ of states. This is an ‘international society’ that bestows each polity with independence and security, whilst ensuring a certain higher moral code whereby states cooperate, rely and assist one another because … one state owes to another state whatever it owes to itself, so far as that other stands in real need of its assistance, and the former can grant it without neglecting the duties it owes to itself. Such is the eternal and immutable law of nature. (Vattel in Nakhimovsky 2007: 158, although see Holland 2010)

The homogenisation of authority is also achieved by the utilisation of the state concept, which is granted the source of authority and that which legitimates authority. Indeed, we can already note from Vattel’s definition of his own treatise that the law of nations is ‘the science which teaches the rights subsisting between nations or states, and the obligations ­correspondent to those rights’ (Vattel in Zurbuchen 2009: 409), which means ‘… that self-governing nations or sovereign states are exclusively

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the subject of the law of nations’ (Zurbuchen 2009: 409). The state concept is thus the ‘master signifier’ under its denomination various concepts gather. These are, in Vattel’s Law of Nations, the ‘body politic’, society and, as I show later, the ‘nation’. This means that the state is the ultimate authority, as it stands for the congruent ‘body politic’. The End/Teleology Practice The idea of the state as a union is legitimated and situated through the end/teleology practice as it serves to portray the state as the common-­ wealth, civitas and the guarantor of security. The space of the state in Hobbes’ discourse on government, for instance, is produced through the assemblage of many and in response to the fear and insecurity arising from the state of nature. Hobbes does not construe the state as a divine entity or as an authentic and natural growth of collective consciousness; rather, the state is artificial and it rests on an agreement amongst men that ensures the security of the collective and ends fear amongst people (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. V, Section 5, 72; see also Hont 1994: 186). What also legitimates this unity of individuals into a totality is what it delivers for the benefit of all thus achieving the common-wealth, that is, ‘… one person, whose will, by the agreement of several men, is to be taken as the will of them all; to make use of their strength and resources for the common peace and defence’ (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. V, Section 9, 73; see also Skinner 1999: 1–29). Samuel Pufendorf, who draws on Hobbes’ works, writes that the state is indeed the civitas in that it protects one from his/her neighbour. The state becomes a system of rule rendered intelligible through the unification of individuals into an ensemble ruled by and within the state and is thus the pacifier of society. Men, in Pufendorf’s treaty, cannot live in security and prosperity unless they abandon their natural liberty and submit their will to the single will since ‘Without courts of law, men would devour each other’ (Pufendorf 1991 [1673]: Book II, Section 5, 133). The discursive practice through which the state is established as the common-wealth is also clear in Hugo Grotius’ (2005 [1625]: Books I– III) On the Law of War and Peace. Grotius (and other juridico-political thinkers of the time like Johannes Althusius) opposed Jean Bodin’s ideal of the indivisibility of sovereignty as well as that of the absolute power of the sovereign. Indeed, Grotius conceptualised the state as the ‘respublica mixta’ where ‘[t]he populous … is the civil source of sovereignty’ (Van

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Gelderen 2003: 87). The power of the state is constituted by a ‘people’ through the unification of many, such that the state’s authority and power represents the common-good: ‘[t]he State is a compleat Body of free Persons, associated together to enjoy peaceably their Rights, and for their common Benefit’ (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book I, Chap. I, Section XIV, 162). To Grotius, this power and authority is not absolute and under certain conditions peoples are entitled to rebel against their sovereigns ‘… if they offend against the Laws, and the State’ (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book I, Chap. IV, Section VIII, 372). The state is nonetheless legitimated by Grotius as the perfect union, a congruent civitas symbolised as ‘a Body of Men’ (Grotius 2005 [1625]: Book II, Chap. V, Section XXIII, 552, italics in the original). The discursive practice by which state objectives are articulated and which renders the idea of the state possible and natural is also apparent in The Law of Nations. Vattel puts forth the idea of the state/nation (an important issue to which I shall return shortly) as a civil society designed to ensure the collective good by which it becomes a moral person: ‘NATIONS or states are bodies politic, societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safely and advantage by the joint efforts of their combined strength … It is a moral person’ (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Preliminaries, emphasis in the original). Indeed, this is further emphasised by Vattel as he analyses states’/nations’ properties and objectives, grounding them on the notion of civil society (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Book I, Chap. II, Section 14, italics and emphasis in the original). The Representation Practice The idea of representation is found in major juridical and political thought of early modernity. Hobbes’ famous phrase that ‘… it is the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person one’ (Hobbes 1991 [1651]: 114, emphasis in the original) springs to mind as we understand Hobbes’ model of the state as a complete unity in the agential sense. The sovereign thus must be an agent, preferably a monarch, to which an act can be attributed (Hont 1994: 183–188). Other mechanisms of representation can also be found in Althusius’ consociational model of the respublica. Althusius’ model of representation incorporates a supreme magistrate as the embodiment of the entire state as well as an assembly that represents the people (‘populus’). These representatives are called the ephors (van Gelderen 2003: 88). The relationship

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between the sovereign and the people also becomes centred on the practice of representation. In The Law of Nations, that who holds the authority over the people and is responsible for state affairs is the representative of the entire people, indeed that who embodies the ‘body of the nation’: Such is the origin of the representative character attributed to the sovereign. He represents the nation in all the affairs in which he may happen to be engaged as a sovereign. (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Book I, Chap. IV, Section 40)

To Vattel, nonetheless, the relationship between the representative and the ‘body of the nation’ is not to be conflated with a state-to-nation relationship. Rather, in Vattel’s discourse the ‘state’ and the ‘nation’ are rendered synonymous, the one represents and indeed suggests the other (see also Beaulac 2004: 127–183, especially 134–136). As Vattel puts it: ‘[b]y an evident consequence from what has been said, a nation ought carefully to avoid, as much as possible, whatever might cause its destruction, or that of the state, which is the same thing’ (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Book I, Chap. II, Section 19, italics added). The ‘state’ and the ‘nation’ thus invoke one another as they both refer to a social contract made amongst men that produces a sense of homogeneity of wills.

Rousseau and the Relationship Between the One and the Many In the previous section I have shown how the congruency fantasy is structured around the notion of the state as the unification of individuals and the subordination of individuals’ wills to one will. Rousseau continues this discourse, albeit arguing against the state theories of Hobbes and Pufendorf (Wokler 1994), whilst construing congruency in two main forms: one is the notion of the general will, enshrined in law, which represents congruency; the second is the understated notion of cultural homogeneity advocated by Rousseau as the basis for true and effective democratic life. Rousseau’s (1968 [1762]) The Social Contract addresses the problem of social order such that individuals in their coming together would be able to achieve further liberty and the moral life, and at the same time overcome the potential tension or even contradiction between the individual’s interest and that of society as a whole (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 12). The relationship between the one and the many is the crux to which Rousseau dedicates The Social Contract. I further highlight how Rousseau’s

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image of the ideal state, that is, the democratic republic or the civil state, differs significantly from later political theories of the state and the nation in that Rousseau rarely addresses the nation as a unit of analysis or as a key factor in his quest to attain free and moral life (although see Carr 1945, who argues that Rousseau fuses the notion ‘nation’ with that of the ‘people’). Moreover, and as Douglass (2013) argues, Rousseau’s theory of the state was not a prelude to modern liberal representative democracies since Rousseau rejected representation in principle, rather than out of pragmatic reasoning, because to Rousseau the will is inalienable (see also Urbinati 2006, especially 72–74, although see Cohen 2010). Finally, I demonstrate that Rousseau’s notion of a free democratic republic refers not to ‘nation-­ states’, which are too big, but rather to small city-states in which (cultural) homogeneity is tacitly advocated as the necessary lynchpin of a fully civil state, a true democracy (although see his later work, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, published in 1772, in which he does consider the possibility of a large ‘nation-state’ for Poland. On this see Putterman 2010: 122–145). This analysis is divided into three parts. First, I address Rousseau’s main theory of the social contract and the key discursive practices by which his state as modality of unity is explicated and made possible. What I try to show here is perhaps the final attempt in early-modern thought, before the restructuring of the idea of the state by the Abbé Sieyès and others, to resolve the state problématique by introducing the notion of the ‘general will’ as that which speaks as one and for all. Second, I sketch Rousseau’s main forms of discursively legitimating his philosophy, specifically in relation to Hobbes’ Leviathan (Hobbes 1991 [1651]), that is, equality, liberty and morals. Third, I briefly engage with Rousseau’s alternative model of small city-states, also reflecting upon the meaning of Rousseau’s union/ unity of people in city-states vis-à-vis contemporary notions of congruency and homogeneity. The General Will, the Sovereign and the Unity of People Herein, I analyse Rousseau’s theory of the social contract by highlighting Rousseau’s notion of the general will and thus the ways in which the state stands for the congruity of people and is indeed the modality of congruency. Rousseau’s theory of the social contract is first and foremost an ­association between individuals, a contract designed to accommodate the wills of the individual and the will of the many (a ‘people’) as a whole

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(Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 12). However, to Rousseau, this social contract is a union that is not an aggregate of individuals and hence it is not a formalistic way of balancing between private and public wills, between the particular and the universal as Hegel later formulates (Urbinati 2006: 75). Rather, this union invokes a general good, that is to say it manifests what is in the best interest of the people as a totality (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 12, 23). The general will is embodied in the Sovereign or the ‘body politic’ (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 14). The general will by definition, thus, can only comprise and manifest the collective interest. To Rousseau, this has several ramifications; first, the social contract as a union of individuals consists of a fundamental notion of equality of duty and interest. Second, Rousseau asserts that the social contract is made of individuals and its interests cannot go against those of the public. Third, the Sovereign need not give any guarantees to the public against harm for it cannot, by its definition as a united whole, hurt all its members (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 14). From this, it is clear that to Rousseau the general will and its manifestation in the Sovereign is a collective will that represents a union of all and thus cannot, by definition, be anything other than the interest of all. Hence, as the Rousseauian logic dictates, the body politic and the people who make it cannot be truly separated and thus an attack on one is an attack on all, and vice versa. This is where we also see Rousseau’s argument against the Hobbesian state and particularly the one articulated by Pufendorf (Wokler 1994). As Garsten (2009: 94) explains, Rousseau saw sovereignty as unity through law and thus the body that makes law, such that the legislative ‘… was analogous to the faculty of the will in an individual person’ and in contradistinction to the government or the executive which was about carrying out ‘… the decisions of the sovereign will’ (see also Urbinati 2006: 60–100). Rousseau’s notion of a social contract that becomes like a person in itself consists of a congruency of individuals. As Rousseau (1999 [1766]) writes in his essay, Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men, the ideal state is that in which the people and the Sovereign are the same. Moreover, what arises with Rousseau’s ideal state is also the fusion of congruency with democracy (Rousseau 1999 [1766]). The conception of the general will and the Sovereign in Rousseau’s The Social Contract manifests itself not in acts of war (1968 [1762]: 21), but rather in the exercise of the general will, which, to Rousseau, is clearly seen

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in law making. This is so because law making is always general and abstract and does not include a specific person as its objective and target. The law, moreover, is the manifestation of the general will as it exercises the common-­good. This ought to be separated from decrees by the executive, for those are particular. But the law is the manifestation of the general will and hence of the moral civil state—the republic (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 29–31). In the Rousseauian logic, the law stands for the congruent body politic—the law is the epithet of unity. Rousseau attempts to solve the Hobbesian problem of erecting a state in which security, liberty and the common-wealth are attained, whilst individual wills are converged. Contra Hobbes, Rousseau refuses the personified state where ultimate sovereignty is in the hands of one person, literally, for this easily leads to despotism. The (general) will ought to be read, as Urbinati (2006: 75) suggests, through the ‘… coordinates of Cartesian metaphysics’ such that ‘the will constituted the substantive attribute of the sovereign, which could not exist without it’. Indeed, the will being inalienable cannot be transferred to, nor represented by, a monarch or a committee of sorts as Hobbes maintained (Douglass 2013). Therefore, ‘[t]he essence of creating a state was to give birth to the rule of law, putting all the people of the republic without exception under a set of collectively and individually beneficial disciplines which they themselves agree to create’ (Hont 1994: 188). To Rousseau, tensions between an individual’s interest and the collective’s interest are nonetheless likely to arise. Nevertheless, he clearly explains that such cases do not undervalue the idea and practices of the Sovereign and the social contract and, more importantly, in such cases the whole coerces the one individual to follow the collective’s will. Rousseau further justifies this by stating that this is necessary if the social contract is to have any meaning. A civil state must be able to impose its collective will on the individual for this also secures the individual, and that the act of coercion is not truly an act of imposition, for by forcing the one individual to follow the general will the individual is freed (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 15). When discussing more specifically the possibility of disagreements and divisions within the body politic, Rousseau explains that for the general will to be fully expressed, society should be a unity in which individuals are allowed to have their own thoughts, but not groups of people within society. This is justified for if a given society is divided into factions then the general will is weakened by the particular wills of the different factions.

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This is further exacerbated when a faction’s will is strong enough so as to dominate the rest such that in the end the general will disappears and instead a particular faction’s interest/opinion prevails. However, Rousseau further explains that if a society is indeed divided, then it is preferable that there are many divisions and that they are equal (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 23–24). To Rousseau, the union of individuals is the foundation of every society and its sole source of legitimacy. Sovereignty embodies the only social basis upon which political association can emerge and succeed. The Sovereign, moreover, as a collective being can only will what the public wills and thus is not represented by anyone other than itself: … Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will. (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 20)

This Rousseauian logic construes ‘sovereignty’ as homologous with itself, that is, sovereignty being indeed sovereign and not an attribute (Urbinati 2006: 75). This means that sovereignty cannot be handed over for it is sovereign qua being the collectivity’s will. This is because sovereignty and the unity of the people is like an individual’s free will, ‘an inalienable gift of nature; hence any social institutions derived from man alienating his will would be illegitimate’ (Douglass 2013: 739). This idea of the general will and the inalienability of sovereignty is positioned vis-à-vis power, the executive, which ‘… may be transmitted’ (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 20), but not what is behind it, what authorises it—sovereignty (Garsten 2009: 94). Rousseau further asserts that Sovereignty is also indivisible in the sense that it is has to be general (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 20). As such, the Sovereign is not the state, or the executive (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 46), but rather the exercise of the general will. The general will need not be unanimous, but that every vote must be counted, for ‘… any exclusion is a breach of generality’ (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 21). Rousseau strives ultimately to answer the problem that Hobbes grappled with, namely how to accommodate the potentially conflicting wills within a union of many. Rousseau, thus, offers the final attempt to answer this by making the Sovereign and the ‘people’ one, but not as Hobbes did through the idea of authority and power; rather, with Rousseau the

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Sovereign and the people are one as they exercise the general will. The political mechanism that is designed to achieve the general will is the law. What is construed with Rousseau’s The Social Contract is consequently the ideal of unity, a congruent body politic that rules itself via the power of law as the manifestation of sovereignty. The singular body politic that Rousseau envisaged was a complete body that both requires unity and also creates it through law (as well as other practices such as education, religion and culture, see Barnard 1983: 236–241, especially 240–241). From the State of Nature to Moral Liberty and Equality Rousseau’s The Social Contract was written with textual reference, and in contrast, to Hobbes’ Leviathan and Pufendorf’s person of the state (Wokler 1994). Both the notion of the state of nature and the idea of a contract/covenant amongst individuals and between them and the state are key issues in his thought. Yet, Rousseau makes clear distinctions between Hobbes’ and Pufendorf’s theories of the state and his own, as he is also influenced by earlier theories of the state and the social contract (e.g., Montesquieu 2011 [1748]; Locke 1988 [1689]). Rousseau’s conception of the state of nature is not anarchy or a war of all against all— Rousseau ‘… agreed that natural man was inherently peaceful’ (Barnard 1983: 233). Rather, it is a state of natural liberty, and thus the transformation towards society or a social contract is by no means an attempt to escape misery. To Rousseau, the notion of an ordered society is an improvement and refinement of individuals’ liberty and morality. To Rousseau, hence, the ideal state, that is, the civil state, in which the social contract is fully in place does not stem from nature (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 3–4), for in the state of nature the individual is free, but does not live a moral life (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 15). The idea of a social contract, therefore, is an attempt to specify and legitimate a certain social order that, to Rousseau, promotes and stems from morality and liberty. In the transformation towards a social contract, individuals delegate some of their natural liberties, but their gains are far greater as they are now part of a whole—part of a unity—and in doing so attain the moral and free life (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 15–16). One can already note here that the notion of an organised state society is justified and legitimated by ascribing to it the notions of morality and liberty. Rousseau explicates the legitimacy of the social contract by asserting that in the assemblage of people not only is each person’s loss mini-

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mised in comparison to their gains, but in its ideal form the civil state consists of a full union in which the will of the public and that of the individual are one and the same (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 12–13). Small City-States and the Necessity of Homogeneity Rousseau’s conception of the general will and the Sovereign are an attempt to resolve and improve the moral life of individuals within a social contract. The state, to Rousseau, is clearly differentiated from the Sovereign and serves as a framework in which the general will is exercised. Rousseau’s modelling of the ideal state, consequently, is predicated on his conception of the general will, which constitutes the moral, equal and free life. Rousseau asserts that a large state cannot succeed in practising the general will and that it will succumb to force and coercion rather than liberty. Therefore, an ideal civil state is a small city-state—in Rousseau’s example it contains 10,000 people, although he notes that there is no specific numerical threshold (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 48–49)—where the relationship between the individual and the Sovereign is not as unequal as would be the case in a large state (although see Rousseau 2005 [1761]). Rousseau explains that for the general will to be fully exercised with a minimum use of force/coercion, the ratio between the individual and the sum number of the state inhabitants must be low. If indeed the state is too big and thus the ratio increases, then more force is necessary to preserve the state and maintain order. Moreover, in such a case the government must be stronger vis-à-vis the people, but then and in order to balance the government, or the executive, the people themselves should grow stronger too and so on (Rousseau 1968 [1762]: 48). Rousseau maintains that in a small state every individual is able to participate in politics (Cole 1955: xvi, although compare with Putterman 2010). The ideal civil state, therefore, ought to be homogeneous for the people to be able to both participate in politics, but most importantly to be able to share a common vision of their society and destiny. As Rousseau asserts in the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men, the idea of a democratic republic requires homogeneity as a prerequisite (Rousseau 1997 [1766]: 114–115). Indeed, if the general will can only be truly exercised when and where the sovereign and the people are the same, then one may assume that homogeneity is necessary. To summarise, Rousseau’s discourse produces the congruency fantasy in a double sense. Rousseau construes the union of individuals through

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the notion of the general will that is enshrined and manifested in the law. The law stands for the congruent body politic and at the same time renders it one through its singular and general voice. Rousseau, moreover, prescribes the small city-state as the ultimate unit for the success of the social contract and the effects of democracy, which thus implies that cultural homogeneity is a prerequisite. Rousseau’s notion of the general may thus result in a ‘totalitarian democracy’ (Talmon 1952, see also Berlin 1969), for his ideal polity is both predicated on homogeneity and wishes to produce a congruent body politic by rendering the law as that which speaks and acts on behalf of, and for, all.

The State Is One, but More than Itself What then can we understand from these various and mixed discourses of the state that emerge in late mediaeval practices and dominant early modern thought in Europe? How is the congruency fantasy inscribed in these myriad state theories? First, as Foucault (2009: 276–277) shows, the state becomes a ‘reflexive-prism’, that is, a subject/object that encompasses various technologies of governance, manifested and justified within juridical, economic and political rationales. Bartelson (1998: 321) generally articulates the state’s nature in the following manner: Regarded as nothing but a claim, it becomes possible to view the state as a contestable possibility whose fulfilment is impossible, and whose legitimacy always is derivative from its relative success, rather than conversely. As Hoffman (1995: 62–75) has argued, the final success and total legitimacy of any such claim would be tantamount to its cancellation, which entails that the state is profoundly contradictory—it is but a name for a certain structural impossibility made possible by a certain political practice.

This means that the state becomes its own self-reference and is thus both the objective and means of its practices. Put differently, the state is articulated in this era as an idea that covers already existing technologies and practices—it is thus already in existence—but that in this invocation of the state, the state also becomes its own objective—it requires further p ­ ractices through which the state is further perfected. In Hobbes’ and Pufendorf’s writings, for instance, the state is the source of authority legitimated through the articulation of the state as the civitas, that which pertains to the common-good (e.g., Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. V, Section 9, 73).

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The state is self-evident for it protects individuals from one another and installs order into their collective existence—the state is thus the answer to the brute life of the state of nature. The state, nonetheless, is also a set of practices; practices of rule, order and management, which further fashion the idea of the state and render it intelligible, without ever fully ‘materialising’ the state. These are the myriad practices of defence, protection of property and the workings of courts, to name just a few. This dual-logic of the state being both its own objective and its own means and is thus both pre-supposed and articulated as a desired end, is evident in Vattel’s Law of Nations in which the state is legitimated as the perfect form of socio-political life, but is endowed with the authority to perfect its status through myriad practices that pertain to the common-good. But this end-result, as I explained above, can never be fully obtained. Vattel thus asserts that ‘[t]he preservation of a nation is found in what renders it capable of obtaining the end of civil society; and a nation is in a perfect state, when nothing necessary is wanting to arrive at that end’ (Vattel 2011 [1758]: Book I, Chap. II, Section 14). The state, moreover, needs to know itself and measure its practices through a certain test, be it that of the common-wealth, security, the res-­ publica, the ‘law of nations’ or the ‘wealth of the state’. The state, consequently, is always in the process of becoming for it ‘… is at once that which exists, but which does not yet exist enough’ (Foucault 2008 [1978–1979]: 4). The state does not emerge as the expression of authority (Bartelson 2001: 3); rather the state is the source of authority (Trainor 2006: 767–779). Furthermore, what we witness here is also the idea of a union of individuals inscribed within the state, a union that is both that which constitutes the state and that which is the target of state apparatuses. The myriad technologies of homogenisation, therefore, are intertwined with the idea of the state and manifested through the notion of the unified state, the sovereign or the ‘body politic’. The idea of a union of many as the lynchpin of the civitas, nonetheless, is constructed throughout early-modern thought as a priory, indeed pre-determined. The idea of the covenant may be artificial and not in line with the state of nature (Hobbes 2003 [1642]; Rousseau 1968 [1762]), but the association of individuals so as to obtain the common-wealth is already assumed. The myriad state theories from Giovanni Botero to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emmerich de-Vattel may suggest revising and amending state apparatuses, indeed to constantly engage in critique—be it the idea of the separation of powers (Locke 1988 [1689]; Montesquieu 2011 [1748]), the introduction of a juridical system

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concerning the Law of Nations, or the idea of direct democracy articulated by Rousseau—but they do not pose the question of the union per se. The questions posed by the many scholars of the day are not whether a certain group of people are willing to unite and whether their being, their identity, is concomitant with the state, the boundaries of the sovereign(ty), however defined. Rousseau does not ask his fellow Genevois whether they wish to unite, but rather assumes their existence as a (culturally homogeneous) union despite his radical and quite subversive ideas regarding democratic rule. As I show later, this state model that already pre-supposes a given union is challenged and unpacked in late eighteenth century thought as the ideas of the state, the nation, the people and their relationship are re-positioned. What arises with early-modern thought and practices is the state as modality of congruency. It is congruent in the sense that it rests on a union of many and on various mechanisms that ensure that the state speaks with one voice in order to avoid conflict and obtain the common-good. As Hobbes maintains: A COMMONWEALTH, then, (to define it) is one person, whose will, by the agreement of several men, is to be taken as the will of them all; to make use of their strength and resources for the common peace and defence. (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: Chap. V, Section 9, 73, emphasis in the original)

Paradoxically, the state also emerges here as that which is always in the process of becoming and thus always more than itself. The state concept, therefore, is in surplus enjoyment (Žižek 2005), that is to say, it is never a specific subject/object one can identify and discern since you can never exactly identify its meaning and space: is it the territory, the sovereign or the people? Or is it perhaps the land and its resources and population? This means that the state and the ideal of unity in early-modern thought is both form and force (Stavrakakis 2007). It is form in its functioning through its difference, its absence or the imagined ‘state of nature’. It is a form in the sense that it is an ‘empty signifier’, which is always in a state of void and yet at times is partially constructed around specific meanings (Milliken 1999: 231–236; Howarth 2000: 1–15, 101–125). The empty signifier never has one meaning, never one signified. It ‘is to give a particular demand a function of universal representation—that is to give it the value of a horizon giving coherence to the chain of equivalence and, at the same time, keeping it indefinitely open’ (Laclau 1996: 57–58). The state, how-

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ever, is also force for it entails affective investment, an ideal that due to its impossibility and elusiveness radiates jouissance, a sense of enjoyment which is always already lost and due to disappear again. This is surplus enjoyment (Žižek 2008) in the sense that the state is a mysterious and unattainable thing, it is the ‘embodiment of IT’. The continuous attempts by political scholars to theorise and reconceptualise the state, therefore, is not only made possible via the emptiness form of the signifier ‘state’, but precisely because we could never have enough of it and what IT actually means. Achieving the full and fixed meaning of the state remains elusive, which is why the state and the ideal of congruency ought to be read as fantasmatic as they purport to signify the unity envisioned and at the same time incorporate their own failure, the explanation why the state is not yet complete or whole. Identifying the form and force and indeed the failure in the fantasy of unity is important for it demonstrates again not only the discursive forms by which the state as a concept gains dominance, as that which offers the authority and the legitimacy from which rule, however defined and practised, is derived (Trainor 2006: 767–779). Rather, it is the affective element, the surplus enjoyment, embedded in the idea of the state and the fantasy of congruency that renders them a recurring motif, continuously articulated and activated in various forms and ways. As I have shown above, the state represents an ideal socio-political existence, namely that of the common-good, which thus legitimates a multitude of practices aiming at further fashioning what the state ought to be. This further demonstrates the fantasmatic nature of the state in early-­ modern thought and the libidinal investment it entails. It is not only that the state as form can never be fully hegemonised that renders the continuous re-articulation of the state in those days. It is, moreover, the partial enjoyment that surrounds the ability to capture the ‘true’ essence of the state, it functions and morality as a Civitas, the good life (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008: 261). In other words, since the state can never ‘truly’ close the gap between the ‘state’ as signifier and ‘state’ as signified, the attributes and objectives of the state are always in demand and justifications to achieve these can always be re-invented and re-articulated. This, therefore, means that state and individuals, one and authority/the sovereign can never be truly made congruent and congruency thus emerges here as a fantasy, an ‘impossible possibility’ (see also Bartelson 1998: 295–326) that will indeed become the object and target of critique and de-construction by late eighteenth-­ century thought.

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References Barnard, Frederick M. 1983. National Culture and Political Legitimacy: Herder and Rousseau. Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (2): 231–253. Bartelson, Jens. 1998. Second Natures: Is the State Identical with Itself? European Journal of International Relations 4 (3): 295–326. ———. 2001. The Critique of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. Visions of World Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beaulac, Stéphane. 2004. The Power of Language in the Making of International Law: The Word Sovereignty in Bodin and Vattel and the Myth of Westphalia. Leiden: Hotei Publishing. Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Two Concepts of Liberty. In On Liberty, ed. Four Essays, 118–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bodin, Jean. 1992 [1576]. Bodin: On Sovereignty. Ed. Julian H.  Franklin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Botero, Giovanni. 1956 [1576]. The Reason of State. Trans. P.J. and D.P. Waley. Yale: Yale University Press. Boucher, David. 1998. Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carr, E.H. 1945. Nationalism and After. London: Macmillan. Carver, Terrell. 2004. Men in Political Theory. Manchester University Press. Cohen, Joshua. 2010. Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cole, George D.H. 1955. Introduction. In The Social Contract, ed. Jean Jacques Rousseau. London: J.M Dent. Doty, Roxanne L. 1993. Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of US Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines. International Studies Quarterly 37 (3): 297–320. Douglass, Robin. 2013. Rousseau’s Critique of Representative Sovereignty: Principled or Pragmatic? American Journal of Political Science 57 (3): 735–747. Fink, Bruce. 1999. The Master Signifier and the Four Discourses. In Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. Danny Nobus, 29–47. New York: Other Press. Foucault, Michel. 2004 [1975–1976]. Society Must Be Defended. London: Penguin. ———. 2008 [1978–1979]. The Birth of Biopolitics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2009 [1977–1978]. Security, Territory, Population. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Garsten, Bryan. 2009. Representative Government and Popular Sovereignty. In Political Representation, ed. Ian Shapiro et al., 90–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Gelderen, Martin. 2003. The State and Its Rivals in Early-Modern Europe. In States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Quentin Skinner and Stråth Bo, 79–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glynos, Jason, and Yannis Stavrakakis. 2008. Lacan and Political Subjectivity: Fantasy and Enjoyment in Psychoanalysis and Political Theory. Subjectivity 24 (1): 256–274.

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Grotius, Hugo. 2005 [1625]. The Rights of War and Peace. Edited and with an Introduction by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Hobbes, Thomas. 1991 [1651]. Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003 [1642]. Hobbes: On the Citizen. Ed. and Trans. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoffman, John. 1995. Beyond the State. An Introductory Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holland, Ben. 2010. Sovereignty as Dominium? Reconstructing the Constructivist Roman Law Thesis. International Studies Quarterly 54 (2): 449–480. Hont, Istvan. 1994. The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: “Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State” in Historical Perspective. Political Studies 42 (1): 166–231. Howarth, David. 2000. Discourse. UK: Open University Press. Laclau, Ernesto. 1996. Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Linklater, Andrew. 1982. Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Locke, John. 1988 [1689]. Two Treatises on Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machiavelli, Niccolò. 2008 [1532]. The Prince. Translated with introduction and notes by James B. Atkinson. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. Milliken, Jennifer. 1999. The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods. European Journal of International Relations 5 (2): 225–224. Montesquieu, Baron de. 2011 [1748]. The Spirit of Laws. New  York: Cosimo Classics. Morgensen, S.L. 2010. Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism Within Queer Modernities. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16 (1–2): 105–131. Nakhimovsky, Isaac. 2007. Vattel’s Theory of the International Order: Commerce and the Balance of Power in the Law of Nations. History of European Ideas 33 (2): 157–173. Peterson, V. Spike. 2013. The Intended and Unintended Queering of States/ Nations. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13 (1): 57–68. Puar, Jasbir K. 2017. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Duke University Press. Pufendorf, Samuel F. 1991 [1673]. On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law. Ed. James Tully and Trans. Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putterman, Ethan. 2010. Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1968 [1762]. The Social Contract. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. 1999 [1754/1755]. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Trans. Franklin Philip. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005 [1761]. The Plan for Perpetual Peace, on the Government of Poland, and Other Writings on History and Politics. Lebanon: Dartmouth College Press. Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1989. The State. In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L.  Hanson, 90–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State. Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1): 1–29. Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2007. The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics. Edinburgh University Press. Talmon, Jacob. 1952. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. London: Secker & Warburg. Trainor, Brian T. 2006. The State as the Mystical Foundation of Authority. Philosophy & Social Criticism 32 (6): 767–779. Tuck, Richard. 1993. Philosophy and Government 1572–1651. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Urbinati, Nadia. 2006. Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vattel, Emmerich de. 2011 [1758]. The Law of Nations: Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. Ed. Joseph Chitty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vincent, R.J. 1990. Grotius, Human Rights and Intervention. In Hugo Grotius and International Relations, ed. H.  Bull, B.  Kingsbury, and A.  Roberts. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Virno, Paolo. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude. Semiotext (e). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Viroli, Maurizio. 1992. From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wokler, Robert. 1994. Rousseau’s Pufendorf: Natural Law and the Foundations of Commercial Society. History of Political Thought 15 (3): 393–402. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and the Nation. London: Sage. Žižek, S. 2005. The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Women and Causality. London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso. Zurbuchen, Simone. 2009. Vattel’s Law of Nations and Just War Theory. History of European Ideas 35 (4): 408–417.

CHAPTER 4

The Fragmentation of the State as Modality of Unity and the Rise of the Fantasy of Nation/State Congruency

The nation exists prior to everything; it is the origin of everything. (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 134) For a nation is as natural a plant as a family, only with more branches. Nothing, therefore, is more manifestly contrary to the purpose of political government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing of various races and nationalities under one sceptre. (Herder 1969 [1772]: 324)

This chapter analyses changes in political discourse around the idea of the state and the nation in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I focus on Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, also known as the Abbé Sieyès, Johann Gottfried von Herder and the intellectual-political Romantic Movement in German speaking states. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the state idea of early modernity is critiqued and challenged in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Europe. By analysing the discourse of the Abbé Sieyès, Herder and German romanticism, moreover, I show the myriad forms by which the state to nation/people/Volk relationship was constructed and established and how modernity gave rise to the fantasy of nation/state congruency, a fantasy of societal unity we struggle with to this day. Specifically, this chapter has three main sections. In the first section I demonstrate that with the French Revolution and the work of the Abbé Sieyès, the state model of early-modern thought is fragmented and © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_4

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disjointed. What Sieyès produces is an innovative reconstruction of the state idea and what it represents such that the underlying assumption of early-­modern thought and practices is challenged, and the ideal of unity within and of the state is problematised. The Hobbesian idea of the state is thus critiqued and unpacked. What I suggest here, therefore, is that modern interpretations of Sieyès and the French Revolution as the invention of the nation, popular sovereignty and the fusion of the state with the nation is somewhat problematic (Bartelson 1995: 210–220, 2001: Chap. 2; Holland 2010; Hont 1994: 166–231; Wokler 2000: 166–183, especially 173–178). Below, I demonstrate that through various discursive practices what arises with Sieyès is indeed the novel ideas of the ‘nation’ and of popular sovereignty; nonetheless, what also arises is not a fusion of state and nation, but, rather, the break-up and fragmentation of the early-­ modern state model. What Sieyès produces, therefore, is not a new state theory as modality of unity, but of society that from now on will constantly self-refer and engage with its own being/becoming through the idea and fantasy of nation/state congruency, albeit in myriad forms and through various methods of rationalisation and legitimation. The second section analyses Herder’s organic theorisation of the Volk and his somewhat ‘national cosmopolitanism’ reading of the world. As I demonstrate in this section, Herder’s thought celebrates the Volk as an authentic community steeped in its own environment, language, culture and practices. The state, according to Herder, is an unnatural machinery that entails territorial expansionism and bring about misery, violence and war. This further demonstrates the discursive rupture taking place in the early days of modernity whereby the Hobbesian state as modality of congruency is critiqued and even rejected. The third and final section unpacks romanticism with a focus on Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s theorisation of the Volk and the role of the state. The romantic movement, and Fichte in particular, celebrate the idea of the people/Volk, similarly to Herder’s thought and offer an organic reading of nationalism and the nation. Unlike Herder, Fichte stipulates a more German-orientated discourse of national identity and construes the German Volk concept as superior to the state, and other Völker, and that which ought to guide the state apparatus. To conclude, this chapter does two things. First, I point to a discursive rupture in modern political thought, although one that runs against the accepted account in the literature. Second, I offer three different discursive formations that produce the congruency fantasy and that re-organise

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the knowledge of the state, thus re-positioning the state-to-nation relationship and giving rise to the fantasy of societal congruency.

Abbé Sieyès and the Fragmentation of the State as Modality of Congruency The Abbé Sieyès’ discourse is often mentioned as the birth of the ‘nation-­ state’, a political order based on popular sovereignty and ‘… the fusion of state and nation’ (Bartelson 2001: 41). This reading is somewhat problematic because in Sieyès’ formula the state of early modernity is not fused with the novel notion of the nation, the Third Estate; rather, the state model of early modernity is challenged and fragmented and then re-­ articulated and re-positioned. To Sieyès, the state is important but only if it represents the already in existence complete nation. Perhaps, this is the source of contemporary readings of Sieyès, because the ultima ratio of Sieyès’ discourse is indeed an alignment of state and nation, but only if the state is the expression of the complete nation, and not solely a fusion of the two. This means, as I explicate below, that with Sieyès the subject/ object that arises and thus becomes a site of interventions is not so much the state, the nation or the so-called nation-state, but rather the incomplete society, that is, a fantasy of congruency of population with space and authority that is already-lost and is thus always-desired. It is here, therefore, that we see the operations of the nation/state fantasy, namely fantasy1 as the legitimate congruent society in which the complete nation is manifested in its own state. And, fantasy2 as the reason why society is not yet congruent and united, that is, because of the nobility and the clergy as the Other/obstacle preventing the nation from fully expressing itself in its own state. In his Pamphlet, What is the Third Estate? The Abbé Sieyès critiques not only eighteenth-century France but the contemporary European system of governance (Sieyès 2003 [1789]). What is problematised in this work, and in other pamphlets Sieyès published at the same time (Sieyès 2003 [1789]), is the inequality amongst men with respect to rights and the power to govern. In other words, Sieyès problematises the aristocratic system of his time, what he defines as ‘palace aristocracy’, and maintains that the Third Estate constitutes the majority in France (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 102). It carries most of the burden of daily life and yet has no power and is actually ruled by a minority of nobility and clergy-men. The

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Third Estate is the ‘people’, a unity of individuals, which makes the nation. In other words, to Sieyès, the ‘people’ is the source of authority; it is united and complete and thus must be expressed through and by the state. This is why, as Urbinati (2006: 152) explains, representation was key to Sieyès’ model of the Third Estate as ‘… an active agency of power’. The two signifiers, ‘nation’ and ‘people’, are thus rendered synonymous: ‘all public powers … come from the people, that is to say, the nation’, and ‘[t]hese two terms ought to be synonymous’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 197). The nation was a ‘prepolitical reality and the origin of legitimacy’ (Urbinati 2006: 150). This means that with Sieyès it is no longer the ‘state’ commanding authority. The nation and the people, which are the same to Sieyès, are the source of legitimacy and authority/sovereignty, though the question that now emerges with this discourse is whether, firstly, the ‘people’ is indeed complete and, secondly, whether it is expressed in its own state. This is the revolutionary spirit in Sieyès work, perhaps due to his active participation in political life, in that his work is ‘… a description and an incitement’ (Wall 2013: 46), or what I define here as fantasy. Namely, the normative utopian vision of the fully congruent society, a complete nation expressed through a state and the various obstacles and tests to measure such congruency. Sieyès details at length the current political system in France and explicates what can and should be done to reform the political system and empower the Third Estate, the nation. Sieyès begins with a definition of the Third Estate. He asserts that the Third Estate is in effect the majority of people who provides most of the public goods and services and who engages in private employment as well as the ‘… liberal and scientific professions’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 95). The Third Estate, to Sieyès, is the nation, indeed ‘… a complete nation’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 94), which should be freed to govern itself, and that other privileged orders have no place in its midst. The Third Estate, the nation, is thus the main discursive field since it ‘… encompasses everything pertaining to the Nation, and everyone outside the Third Estate cannot be considered to be a member of the Nation. What is the Third Estate? EVERYTHING’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 98). This is the ‘constituent power’ of the nation that constitutes the power of government as constituted (Pasquino 1994; Spång 2014), and that creates the abstract and problematic notion of the people (Yack 2001, who draws on Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]). The idea of the Third Estate as the nation represents in Sieyès’ writings a totality, a congruity of individuals, who share together the burdens of

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society and the power to govern, indeed to operate state apparatuses, as Sieyès offers ‘… a theory of the complete nation as an embodiment of utilitarian or commercial sociability operating through the reciprocities of the division of labour’ (Hont 1994: 193). As Wall (2013: 47–48, who draws on Foucault 2004) explains, this utilitarian characteristic of the nation is that of ‘functions and apparatuses’ giving the nation its substance but not necessarily its form/function if it does not possess its own state, thus again demonstrating Sieyès’ revolutionary/fantasmatic Geist. Moreover, with Sieyès’ Third Estate we see Rousseau’s (1968 [1762]: 14) idea of the will reappears, although in a very different schemata following the logics of majority rule and division of labour (Keitner 2007: 63). To Sieyès, the people embody the common will, which cannot be appropriated other than in an equal approach to individual wills; each person has one will and hence one vote. Therefore, the power of governance cannot be in the hands of a few holding certain honours and privileges, but must be in the hands of the majority: ‘[r]easoned argument is pointless if for a single moment one abandons the self-evident principle that the common will is the opinion of the majority, not the minority’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 142). The conceptualisation by Sieyès of the nation as a totality entails the notion of ‘constituent power’, that is, the legitimacy of the Third Estate to freely govern its business and thus reject the legitimacy claims of both the aristocracy and the king (Spång 2014: 26–29; Wall 2013: 46–53). What Sieyès then suggests—in contrast to Rousseau’s (1968 [1762]) idea of the ‘general will’ or the Jacobin’s cleansing of ‘enemies of the people’ (Keitner 2007: 62–63)—is a representative system designed to ensure the efficiency of state affairs but, equally important, to ensure the representatives come from and represent the complete nation: It is patently obvious that in national representation, either ordinary or extraordinary, influence should be in proportion to the number of individual heads that have a right to be represented. To do what it has to do, a representative body always has to stand in for the Nation itself. Influence within it ought to have the same nature, the same proportions, and the same rules. (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 142)

The constituent power embedded in the idea of the nation à la Sieyès and his theory of representation is often taken as one of Sieyès’ innovations or contributions to modern political thought (Holland 2010; Urbinati

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2006). My point, however, is that Sieyès’ theory of the nation and national democratic representation is not only about juridical power/legitimacy (Wall 2013) but that it also entails a fantasmatic function since what he offers is not merely a narrative of constituent power and the legitimacy of the Third Estate, but why the Third Estate is not yet fully congruent and in control of its fate, namely because of the nobility which claims to be the nation but is ‘simply a word’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 147). This further illustrates the added value of the category of fantasy, for what Sieyès ushers in with his theory of the nation is an endless battle against obstacles to the legitimate and promised congruent society. Sieyès’ discourse is thus not only a theory of legitimacy/constituent power but a modality of congruency that entails its own failure, fantasy2, the explanation for why the nation is not yet fully congruent with the state. The ‘biopolitical fracture’ at the heart of the concept of the people, which ‘has no single and compact referent’, is thus both the drive and inevitable result of this fantasy of congruency (Agamben 2000; Foucault 2004). Sieyès’ Third Estate as a New Subject for Analysis What Sieyès defines as the nation is not a romantic mythological subject, as German romanticists would have it, nor is it a socio-political model designed to liberate people from a ‘war of all against all’.1 Rather, what emerges here is a new category—the congruent nation/state—which is imbued with the right to administer and rule ‘its’ juridical space. This is not only the idea of the nation as a common will, but most importantly that the ‘nation’ and the ‘state’ ought to be aligned, but only if the nation is authentic and complete onto itself. To Sieyès, this logic of congruency follows three necessary stages, all relying on the idea of the ‘common will’ and the necessity of a unified nation (Keitner 2007: 64–65). The first stage is an association of individual wills, that is, a substantial group of people who wish to unite and in doing so they already form a nation. In the second stage, the individuals seeking to unite discuss their future socio-­ political arrangement, that is to say ‘… they confer with one another and agree upon public needs and how to meet them. Here it can be seen that power belongs to the public’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 134). In the third stage, they produce a ‘government by proxy’, that is, a representative body that will be entrusted with the necessary power so as to execute the common will (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 134; Hont 1994: 192–193). The establishment of a government of representatives is unavoidable, for Sieyès, because

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a nation, being an association of numerous people, cannot fully and directly engage with the public services needed to satisfy the common will. Sieyès’ logic prescribes a new subject/object of analysis for knowledge production and juridico-political administration that is not predicated on a state organised according to privilege or a social contract between the people and the state. The latter point is key because Sieyès insists that the state and its various branches of governance are a manifestation of the people’s will, the common will, and thus the notion of a social contract is one that is premised on a common bond amongst individuals, and not between them and their sovereign/state: There is no other way to conceive of the social contract. It binds the associates to one another. To assume that there is a contract between a people and its government is a false and dangerous idea. A nation does not make a contract with those it mandates; it entrusts the exercise of its powers. (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: p. 120 ft. 19, italics in the original)

Nonetheless, the coupling of state and nation becomes in Sieyès’ discourse a paradoxical necessity (Keitner 2007; Xenos 1992: 77–82). It is an impossible result, indeed a fantasmatic project, since it promises what can never be fully attained, the jouissance of the whole and congruent body-national, and thus continuously imagined. First is the homogenisation of individuals themselves that through their will to unite form a nation. It is a unity of individuals in itself for the sake of a unity of wills. What then becomes necessary is the formal association of individuals into a juridico-political structure, that is, the state. Therefore, to Sieyès, congruency stems from a homogenisation of wills that in its maturation produces the ‘nation-state’ couplet because the state entails a representative body that springs out of the body-national as it holds the people’s interests (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 105–110). Its main language and operation are manifested through the law, and the law becomes the product of a unity of individuals and the congruency of the ‘people’ with its political system bounded by territorial demarcation. ‘The nation exists prior to everything; it is the origin of everything. Its will is always legal. It is the law itself’ (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 134). Here we can see how the relationship between identity, law and authority/sovereignty is construed quite differently from early-modern thought as Sieyès fragments the state as modality of congruency and renders it possible only if it is the manifestation of the complete nation (Foucault 2004: 219). In contrast to Hont’s (2005: 133) rendition of

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Sieyès’ nation as Hobbes’ state (see also Holland 2010), as he argues that Sieyès’s nation ‘… was a political artefact that was superimposed upon the existing territory and historically defined population of France’, I argue that it is the ‘nation’, in Sieyès Third Estate, that emerges as the discursive space, rather than the ‘state’ in early-modern thought. The nation’s relationship with ‘law’ is thus homologous, that is, the law is not solely a manifestation of the nation’s will, but it is the nation’s will (Skinner 1989: 90–13). The ‘nation’/‘people’ is rendered intelligible by virtue of, first, being true and identical with itself, an authentic and complete unity and thus embodying the law. However, second and as I also show below, the nation is made possible by being not, or at least not necessarily, aligned with the state. Consequently, Sieyès’ discourse does not read the nation and the state as one (Hont 2005) nor is it simply the birth of the ‘nation-­ state’ through the principle of representation (Holland 2010). In fact, Sieyès in his ‘revolutionary incitement’ (Wall 2013: 46) instructs us to critique and challenge existing states and inquire whether the true and complete nation is indeed in power and thus expressed in its own state as this is not pre-given. Indeed, to Sieyès the existing political structure in Europe as a whole was flawed precisely because the Third Estate was not in power, nor expressed in their own state, but ruled by a privileged few. The political discourse that emerges here, as Foucault explains, assumes a twin-relationship, albeit an ambiguous one, between the nation and the state, such that the nation cannot co-exist with other ‘nations’ in its midst, that is, other collectivities like the nobility (Foucault 2004: 220–224). The nation encompasses everything; it provides the services and goods needed in a society (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 98). Therefore, the nation ought to be embedded in a state that speaks through law and is bounded by foundational laws, a constitution (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 136). The state, however, is the organisation of the existing nation and thus the only right form of its expression. The discourse now is not only one of social contracts, sovereignty or ‘separation of powers’; instead, it invokes the right of the nation that is already homogeneous in its entirety and thus aspires legitimately, according to Sieyès, to coincide with the state. This further demonstrates the fantasmatic nature of Sieyès’ Third Estate, that is, the socio-political and biopolitical fracture at the heart of the nation, which can never be eliminated for that will simply annul the entire notion of the nation. This is because the nation, in Sieyès’ discourse, exists both before and independently of the state (Urbinati 2006, compare with Hont 2005) and at the same time requires, through its constituent

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power, to manifest itself in, and thus merge, with the state. The nation is not only a subject of juridical power (functionality/capability) (Foucault 2004: 217–225), but a fantasmatic subject that continuously strives for congruency and at the same time entails its own impossibility. This, to reiterate, further stipulates the discursive rupture taking place in late eighteenth-century thought and specifically with Sieyès, since the old (early-modern) practices of sovereign power are now transformed into a fantasy of a monistic society, a society in an endless project and thus a constant war (Foucault 2004). Sieyès and the French Revolutionaries, to be distinguished here from the Jacobines, have stipulated the supposed completeness and homogeneity of the nation as the highest source of authority, but at the same time they have also begun ‘… a long struggle to create it’ (Xenos 1992: 79; Urbinati 2006: 152–153). It is perhaps with Sieyès’ Third Estate that we witness the rise of ‘race war’ alluded to by Foucault (2004), or the ‘… emergence of “us versus them” discourses as a challenge to the traditional principle of sovereignty’ (Frazer and Hutchings 2011: 8). This is because now the promised completeness of society is constantly threatened by ‘enemy race’, who/which is the obstacle to the fantasy of the congruent nation/state, indeed the Other blamed for the unfulfilled congruity. The Discursive Practices of Teleology, Representation and the Fantasy of Congruency Sieyès’ logic is an inversion of Hobbes’ notions of the people and the state where sovereignty is the people and thus the idea of the people can only exist via the state, which constitutes the people through the unification of individuals and through their subordination to one will (Hobbes 2003 [1642]: 137). Sieyès, accordingly, fragments Hobbes’ state as the modality of congruency in early-modern thought and maintains that the idea of the people/nation exists prior to the state and is not established through the state—unlike Hont’s idea that both Sieyès and Hobbes offer a theory of ‘indirect popular sovereignty’ (Hont 1994; Holland 2010). Whilst Hobbes’ state legitimacy came from its past, that is, the transition from the so-called state of nature to the sovereign head, Sieyès’ Third Estate was prescribing for the future-to-come, but which can never become the present (although see Hont 2005: 133). This means that attempts to create congruency may have already taken place before Sieyès, but that it is with Sieyès that a fantasy of congruency is fully articulated, a fantasy that

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subscribes a plan for the future, rather than justifying the past–present link, and then introduces the obstacle to achieve such societal wholeness.2 Moreover, the state model of early modernity as a congruent entity is challenged, as Sieyès asserts that the state cannot be one, a unity per se, and must therefore be a manifestation, indeed a juridical, social and political embodiment, of the nation (and not a contract between the people and their ruler/sovereign) (Sieyès 2003 [1789]: 120 ft. 19). This is key, for it shows again that Sieyès’ discourse is not so much about the ‘nation-state’ or the fusion of state and nation. This is because whilst Sieyès’ formula does ascribe an important role for the state, it is nonetheless only constituted through a manifestation, an expression of an already existing and complete nation, the Third Estate. The subject/object that arises with Sieyès is, therefore, the fantasy of congruency, a totality that is conditioned by the expression of a complete nation in a state apparatus of ‘its’ own. The discursive practices through which the ideal of the congruent society is established and constituted are those of teleology and representation. First, the state is not construed as the existing manifestation of a union of many or a social contract; rather, the state is now the goal of the nation. To Sieyès, the ideal state is the ultimate and complete manifestation of the nation which exists prior to the state. As such, and second, the state can and should only represent the ‘real’ nation. The knowledge system that emerges here is not the knowledge of state affairs as with cameralism (Kameralwissenschaft) (Small 2011 [1909]), but rather a knowledge system of society—the ‘congruent society’. The questions that society should then ask itself are not whether the state is secured or wealthy or whether it pertains to the common-good; rather, society now asks itself: are we a ‘real’ and complete nation? Are we indeed a nation that manifests its ‘completeness’ in a state? This demonstrates that with Sieyès, the fantasmatic function of the Third Estate is two-fold. The nation and the state are indeed in an endless relationship, that is, ‘… between the nation’s statist potential and the actual totality of the state’ (Foucault 2004: 224). But society must now also interrogate its alleged completeness and totality. Is the nation indeed congruent onto itself and whether, once we have established national congruency, is it congruent with the state? What is constituted here is the subject/object of the incomplete society that now structures its internal/external relations and knows itself via the fantasy of congruency. Jens Bartelson is thus correct in arguing that Sieyès’ discourse is circular because ‘… the concept of a nation state comes to express nothing more than a vaguely tautological relationship between

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two entities which are merely numerically distinct from each other’ (Bartelson 2001: 41). By this, Bartelson means that with Sieyès the nation concept is both ‘… the ultimate source of all authority’ but also the desired objective of the revolution, which is to exclude other orders from within the nation (e.g., clergy, nobility) and manifest the nation within ‘its’ state. In other words, the ‘nation’ pre-supposes the state but nonetheless requires to be aligned with the state, which in turn constitutes the idea of the nation (Xenos 1992). But is not this state-to-nation tautology that which indeed produces the fantasy of congruency? It is a fantasmatic project, I suggest, by virtue of being an endless process; a constant apparatus of becoming that is never satisfied and indeed cannot. The tautological logic is thus what constitutes society’s subjectivity, knowing itself not only through the historicisation and temporalisation of its identity, as well as the construction of narratives and social imaginaries (Foucault 2005; Mandelbaum 1974: 51; Bell 2003: 63–81). Rather, society knows itself also through constant efforts at achieving the ideal of congruency, which can never be truly attained and thus must always be envisioned. The fantasy of nation/state congruency thus prescribes a utopian ultima ratio, the promise of jouissance, but at the same time introduces a prohibition on obtaining congruity, an explanation for why congruity is not yet achieved, either because ‘we’ are not a complete nation and/or because ‘we’ do not fully express ‘our’ will in a state of ‘our’ own.

‘Does the Earth Not Have Space for us All?’ Herder’s World of Peoples The nation and the state in Herder’s philosophy are two almost incommensurable entities (Barnard 1965; Berlin 1976).3 Herder celebrates the idea of the nation—or more precisely the Volk—and rejects the European political practices of expansionism and violence associated with the state. The nation is at the heart of Herder’s political thought, not simply as a unit of analysis, but as the authentic form of living and as that which constitutes one’s identity. As such, and similarly to Sieyès, it is not the state that is the focal point, but rather the nation, articulated as a complete existence and as the source of authority. Unlike Sieyès, however, Herder critiques the idea of the state and nearly dismisses it. To Herder, the world is divided into a variety of nations with different customs, languages and practices (Herder 1969 [1772]: 299–311, 2002 [1793–1797]: 384–385). The nation represents the authentic commu-

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nity, an extended family that is predicated on culture, language, religion and traditions (Herder 1969 [1772]: 324). Herder’s vision of the international political arena, nonetheless, is not one of national chauvinism, but rather one of peace, sympathy and respect. Unlike some of his contemporary German romanticists, Herder celebrated the nation and patriotism, but always emphasised universal equality amongst nations, as a form of pluralism and ‘national cosmopolitanism’ (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 384–386, 406–409; Berlin 1976: 143–216). As Iggers (1983: 38) puts it: ‘Herder’s concept of nationality assumes a basic equality of worth among all nations as contributors to the richness of the human spirit. In this sense, he is cosmopolitan in spirit no less than Goethe’. The state, in contrast to the nation, is an artificial machinery, lacking strength and internally weak. The state, moreover, only destroys the nation’s cultural heritage in its coercive practices of expansion, violence and war. Indeed, Herder condemns the European traditions of imperialism and state expansionism and argues that war and violence are only permitted as self-defence (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 404–406, see also 365, 381). The best political order is not a social contract or a complex system of powers and laws, but one that is based on the natural and authentic form of culture and the nation’s way of life in its indigenous environment. This demonstrates that Herder’s thought rejected natural law and social contract theories (Iggers 1983: 36). To Herder, nations cannot be separated from the individual’s sense of liberty since nations are the stable element in history. ‘They possess a morphology; they are alive; they grow’ (34–35), and thus there is no contract between the national people and rule, no political arrangement with respect to the apparatus of state affairs. Indeed, according to Hont (2005: 141) Herder’s theorisation of nations as cultural and organic entities was ‘antipolitical’ and at the very least ‘an alternative to modern sovereignty and international commercial rivalry’ (137). Herder’s conception of the nation as an extension of the family, a homogeneous culture based on language and traditions, implies that political structures, like the state, can be introduced, but only if they represent and embody the people (Herder 1969 [1772]: 324). States can only be legitimate and sustainable if they fully stem from the peoples they govern (Barnard 1969: 324, ft. 18). This is perhaps where we can partially see the similarity between Herder and Sieyès in that they both critique the existing states of day and the importance of establishing a state that springs

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out of the body-national. Unlike Sieyès, Herder was not too interested in modelling the state, its constitution and other forms of checks and balances because to Herder the nation is an organic and natural entity embedded in history. In the following I unpack Herder’s views on the idea of the nation and the state so as to further support my argument that in the late eighteenth century the state model of early modernity does not get fused with the nation. What Herder’s discourse, which celebrates the concept of Volk, produces is again the notion of a society, a fantasy of a singular collectivity that is united and complete both within itself and with its authority. I also show here the alternative conceptualisation of the congruency fantasy and the relationship between the state and the nation in Herder’s thought. This analysis of Herder’s thought has three sections: I first analyse Herder’s definition of the nation, addressing the ways in which nations are the product of their cultural, linguistic and topographical environment. The discursive practices one could identify here are those of (1) ‘authenticity’, which is the articulated naturalness of the nation, the Volk, and (2) the ‘organic’ practice, the ways in which the nation is predicated on ‘nature’s’ objects and subjects. Herein, the nation is articulated by Herder as the natural continuation of the family, moulded by their indigenous environment and climate. This is where Herder’s discourse on language plays a key role as language is constructed as endemic to a nation’s identity and individuals’ cultural affiliation. These discursive practices, therefore, produce the nation as the natural and best association in which the relationship between the individual and their neighbour, language, climate and culture are indivisible and inseparable. The second section addresses the vices of the state as a political structure. I present Herder’s polemic against war, expansionism and other state practices. This serves to show how the state model of early-modern thought is challenged and rejected, and how the state in Herder’s philosophy loses its primacy in favour of the idea of the Volk and indeed a universe of Völker. The third part briefly depicts Herder’s underlying ideas about humanity and pluralism. The Cradle of Nations: Language, Culture, Climate and the Congruency of Men and Country The most potent tenet of the nation, in Herder’s philosophy, is language, which is evident in his work The Origin of Language (Herder 1969

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[1772]). Herder draws strong linkages between one’s ‘mother tongue’ and one’s native culture—one’s native nation. As Herder emphasises, as infants we are all dependent on our family and society to survive and grow. This is achieved through language, which is not only a form of communication, but also the depository of a nation’s customs and traditions, its identity: Not surprisingly, we associate the strongest sentiments with our native language—calling it fittingly our mother tongue—for it was the medium by which our minds and tongues were first moulded and by which images were transplanted from the hearts of our parents into our own. (Herder 1969 [1772]: 163–164)

Indeed, language is the cradle of each nation in the sense that its words, expressions and cultural artefacts are transmitted through the process of growth, education and the absorption of traditions by the infant. Herder further explains that language constitutes, builds and preserves nations’ identities for in it are their history and their collective sentiments: ‘[t]he language is its [the people’s] collective treasure, the source of its social wisdom and communal self-respect’ (Herder 1969 [1772]: 165, square brackets added). We could further see here how Herder’s treatise on language suggests the importance of feeling, of a connection to one’s nation and its vernacular in ways that cannot be merely observed in a scientific way. Language is endemic to the culture and ways of life of the nation in question (Barnard 2003: 151–152). Herder also likens a nation’s language and culture to the family, construed as the basic nucleus of existence (Barnard 1983: 241–242). The nation, thus, receives its strength and legitimacy from the idea of the family and indeed the nation is an extended family. Language, therefore, is not simply a characteristic of a nation’s identity; it is an inseparable part of the Volk as the encompassing cultural and identitarian body. Furthermore, one can already notice that in Herder’s discussion of national characteristics the issue of congruency is naturalised. The nation, like the family, is a homogeneous totality with its own unitary customs, language and history. It is a natural entity and thus ought to be governed by its own people: It is nature which educates families; the most natural state is, therefore, one nation, an extended family with one national character. This it retains for ages and develops most naturally if the leaders come from the people and are wholly dedicated to it. (Herder 1969 [1772]: 324)

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The issue of congruency plays a key role here in a double sense. First, the nation, to Herder, is a unitary and homogeneous subject in itself. This is not a racist notion of the people, nor is it indicative of a nationalistic-­ chauvinistic stance as such (Barnard 2003; Berlin 1976). To Herder, the concept of people is exclusive in the sense that its collective sentiments are its own, related and connected to its past, traditions and environment: it is an organic subject. Second, whilst Herder is critical of the idea of the state, he does stipulate the necessity of political structures. The state, nonetheless, must spring from the nation, in the sense that its political leaders come from within the national corpus and hence represent it and are committed to its interests and sentiments (see Barnard 1969: 324, ft. 18; see also Barnard 1983: 231–253, especially 241–246). For Herder, the combinations of nations under a single political order would result in an empty machine: A human sceptre is far too weak and slender for such incongruous parts to be engrafted upon it. Such states are but patched-up contraptions, fragile machines, appropriately called state-machines, for they are wholly devoid of inner life, and their component parts are connected through mechanical contrivances instead of bonds and sentiment. (Herder 1969 [1772]: 324, italics in the original)

These discussions of the nation and the natural and legitimate form of political rule present a strong advocacy of congruency and homogeneity not as an ideal to achieve for the sake of stability and progress, nor as an operation carried out by the state (Gellner 2006 [1983]). Rather, Herder sees nations as natural and cultural social beings, predicated on language and traditions. Like the family, therefore, its political order must be derived from the nation’s own (re)sources and not subjected to other states’ imperialistic wills. The idea that nations are natural objects and that each deserves their cultural and political independence is a strong motif in Herder’s political thought. It also shows how cultural homogeneity is explained and justified not as a mechanism to achieve a higher goal, but rather as the natural state of things. This, therefore, shows how the discursive space of the state, so central in early-modern thought, had made room for the Volk as the focal point of one’s affiliation and of socio-cultural rule. It also demonstrates how the Volk is articulated and produced discursively through the practice of authenticity and the ideal of organic group association. The relationship

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between ‘nation’, ‘family’, ‘language’ and, as we shall see, one’s environment, amongst others, is that of indivisibility, all rooted in history and tradition. This exhibits Herder’s worldview in which congruency is construed as a natural and organic process that requires no social contract or complex theories of the state; rather, it evolves and achieves congruency of individuals and their rule through the works of nature, people’s natural habitat: Nature has divided peoples through language, ethics, customs, often through mountains, seas, rivers, and deserts; it, so to speak, did everything in order that they should for a long time remain separated from each other and become rooted in themselves. Precisely contrary to the world unifying plan of that Nimrod, the languages got confused (as the old legend says); the peoples divided from each other. The diversity of languages, ethics, inclinations, and ways of life was destined to become a bar against the presumptuous linking together of the peoples, a dam against foreign inundations. (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 384–385, italics in the original)

Nonetheless, Herder’s idea of culture is not a fixed and isolated form of collective existence; rather, his ideas regarding the constitutive factors of every nation—that is, language, culture, traditions—change by both influencing and being influenced by other cultures. Herder offers a normative understanding of cultural transmission as he suggests that those nations that remained secluded and learned nothing from other cultures became underdeveloped and backward. He stresses that whilst nature divided nations, they have throughout history affected one another and in cases where such effects were rejected, the result was not some racial self-­ preservation, but rather backwardness (Herder 1969 [1772]: 173). Barnard (2003: 8–9) goes further by arguing that in the Herderian worldview of culturally produced nations a strong sense of reciprocity in terms of culture and collaboration is crucial, what Herder defines as Zusammenwirken. To Herder, moreover, climate is a major variable affecting one’s relations to one’s homeland (Herder 1969 [1772]: 285) and one’s way of life. Climate is the combination of the topographical landscape, the weather and the livelihood of a people, be they farmers, nomads or fishers. More importantly and related directly to the issue of homogeneity, is one’s attachment to one’s ‘native country’. To Herder, the climatic effects are engrained in the individual spirit, as it were, and create pervasive sentimental bonds between the individual and their ‘native country’ (Herder 1969 [1772]: 285).

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This also demonstrates how the relationship of indivisibility between individuals and their climate is constitutive of a nation’s identity. Any act of infringement upon these attachments, such as being subjected to foreign rule or being forced to move, is described by Herder as unnatural. For Herder, then, congruency is not just between the nation and their political ruler(s), but the attachment and bond between the people and their birthplace. The role of tradition in constituting a nation is also important to Herder. When discussing national myths, Herder explicitly shows how national stories are inherited, as he acknowledges the power of the imagination (Herder 1969 [1772]: 299–300). This is so because myths are transmitted through storytelling via our hearing sense, which means that, unlike the visual sense, they cannot be corroborated or refuted. Hence, Herder explains, myths are narrations of a people’s history that form part of the upbringing of the individual and thus become a key part of one’s identity and bond to one’s people and country. Iggers (1983) further situates this in Herder’s reading of nations as culturally infused rather than politically bound and rationally conceived. Myth, like prejudice, is part of the national spirit, ‘it makes the nation happy and gives it cohesion’ (Herder in Iggers 1983: 35–36; See also Hont 1994: 213). Herder’s Anti-State Polemic Throughout Herder’s work we see how the idea of the state in general, and specifically the European states of the day, is rejected as unnatural, immoral and damaging to the core idea of the Volk and his cosmopolitan view of nationalism. First, Herder rejects the use of force and coercion as an attempt to transmit culture and development. He argues that such attempts by empires have only harmed both the invader’s people and of course its target country/people. Even in cases where one might suggest that the colonisation of foreign territories had resulted in favourable cultural and developmental conditions, Herder argues, the means employed to achieve that goal could not be justified. Herder offers a very strong polemic against empires in the classical world as well as against the practices of his contemporary European state-system: But why must peoples have effect on peoples in order to disturb each other’s peace? It is said that this is for the sake of progressively growing culture; but what a completely different thing the book of history says! (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 380–381)

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This is further emphasised when Herder writes about Christianity and its spread around the world often by the force of the sword, as in the crusades. As Herder explains, such acts of coercion and violence oppress the natural body of the people and rarely bring with it positive cultural traits: Even Christianity, as soon as it had effect on foreign peoples in the form of a state machine, oppressed them terribly; in the case of several it so mutilated their own distinctive character that not even one and a half millennia have been able to set it right. Would we not wish, for example, that the spirits of the northern peoples, of the Germans, of the Gaels, the Slavs, and so forth, might have developed without disturbance and purely out of themselves? (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 381, italics in the original)

Herder’s rejection of the state, however, is not merely an empirical observation of European imperialism and Christian crusaders. Rather, Herder opposes the idea of the sovereign state, one could say, ideologically. For Herder states and sovereignty, social contracts and centralised authority are unnatural and entail despotism. As Hont (1994: 214) puts it: He was an implacable enemy of the Hobbesian kind of central authority and attacked his teacher Kant for apparently accepting the false causation that because man was an animal living in the perpetual antagonism of ‘unsocial sociability’, he was in need of disciplined political rule. For Herder human beings needed no master, ideally everyone must govern themselves, and the state should become dispensable.

The distinction between nation and state is a moralistic and ideological argument in Herder’s thought, such that the Volk is celebrated for its organic and authentic existence whereas the state is often the destroyer of the nation’s unique cultural traits: The stupidity of wars, both wars of religion and succession and wars of trade and ministers, will become obvious, and already is so now; innocent, industrious peoples will politely decline the duty and honor of strangling other innocent, peaceful, industrious peoples because the regent or his minister is tempted to receive a new title, a further piece of land in addition to those lands which he already cannot govern. (Herder 2002 [1792]: 365, see also 404–405 and Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 394)

Furthermore, Herder warns against the misappropriation of the idea of the nation so as to legitimate wrongdoings, what he refers to as ‘dark

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deeds’. Indeed, Herder sketches a harsh picture of European and Christian-­ based practices of colonisation, territorial expansion and the enslavement of black people, which ought not to be done in the name of the people or its culture. On the contrary, his conception of the nation specifically stresses the uniqueness of each nation, each culture, and its attachments to its climate, land and country and thus every occupation of other nations and their native country is a violent and immoral practice (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 394). The polemic against state practices such as war, colonisation and coercion positions Herder in contrast to romanticist philosophers, and later advocates of fascism, who celebrated war and expansion as a form of growth and development (Berlin 1976). To Herder, the linkages between the idea of the nation and that of war are mistaken and brutal, since such an approach hierarchically ranks nations according to their perceived superiority, strength and achievements. Thus, Herder rejects national myths that celebrate heroes who waged war, killed people and conquered land: All men of understanding should unite to blow away the false sparkle that dances around a Marius, Sulla, Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane until in the end songs to them and to Lips Tullian seem to every educated [gebildeten] soul to be equally heroic. (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 405, italics and square brackets in the original)

Herder justifies his anti-state views also by rendering the state redundant (Hont 1994: 214). First, he suggests that the individual is not created for the state, nor will they achieve happiness through the state. Second, he argues that the state is merely an instrument and hence cannot be considered the ultima ratio of a people. Indeed, Herder asserts that many peoples are quite happy without a state, and that inhabitants of strong and wealthy states are not necessarily content either. Unlike Sieyès or Hegel, the state is not a necessary expression or manifestation of a nation and its realisation is achieved organically. Rule and authority are organic parts of a nation and ought not to be an artificial structure of governance imposed on it. More importantly, various state practices result in misery, war and the subjection of many for the benefits of few (Herder 2002 [1793– 1797]: 404–405). Herder’s thought on the issue of congruency is therefore somewhat complex. On the one hand, as seen earlier, Herder legitimates political order only if it grows organically from within the Volk: there is no need for

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a Hobbesian mastery, nor a social contract that would achieve unity without infringing on one’s liberties as Rousseau envisioned. Nonetheless and throughout his writings, Herder stresses the vices and harms states inflict against other peoples and their own. Congruency, thus, can be understood as a natural-organic existence between a nation and their country (the land, landscape and in general the climate); between a Volk and their language, customs and traditions. Humanität: Pluralism and the International The philosophical core of Herder’s conception of the nation, the state and their relationship, is the idea of humanity and the qualities of humans— Humanität. Herder asserts that ‘Man is constituted for Humanity and Religion’ (Herder 1969 [1772]: 267) as the human instinct is predicated on ‘self-preservation’ and ‘sympathy’ (Herder 1969 [1772]: 268). Herder argues that the human spirit is orientated towards peace, love and sympathy. To Herder, this is accounted for by, for instance, the physicality of humans as he maintains that the human body possesses the ability to inflict violence only as a means for self-preservation and not for aggression (Herder 1969 [1772]: 268). Herder asserts that the human being is designed to live within a society, but that this is not a social contract or a political order as such; rather, it is based on the human inclination towards peace and a group’s social identity. To Herder, thus, ‘nationalism’ (a concept not really used by Herder himself as Hont 1994 correctly identifies) is as natural as, and derives from, the physical and natural proneness of mankind to love: Conceived in love and nourished by affection, he is reared by his fellows who bestow on him a thousand kindnesses that he does little to earn. In this sense man is actually formed in and for society, without which he could neither have come into existence, nor grown into maturity. (Herder 1969 [1772]: 304)

The idea of humanity and the innate capacity in every individual to love and live peacefully with one’s neighbour is clearly emphasised in Herder’s vision of an international world. Whilst Herder is not suggesting any international or political system as such, one could infer that the ‘international’ is indeed a world of independently ruled peoples that, whilst being independent, are also interdependent and hence ought to live in peace with one another as well as assist one another in times of crises:

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Is it necessary that one fatherland has to rise up against another, indeed against every other, fatherland—which of course links its members with the same bonds as well? Does the earth not have space for us all? Does not one land lie peacefully beside the other? (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 379, italics and square brackets in the original)

In contrast to twentieth-century notions and practices of nationalism and racism, Herder sketches a direct line between Humanität and the idea that all nations are equal and should co-exist in a benevolent international world. According to Berlin (1976), Herder’s organic view of nations does not contradict the pluralism and cosmopolitanism in enlightenment philosophy (although see Iggers 1983). As Herder asserts, whilst nations ought not to meddle in their neighbours’ affairs, they should all contribute to an international sentiment of justice and sympathy and, therefore, nations should assist one another, especially if they are being oppressed (Herder 2002 [1793–1797]: 406–409) since ‘[e]very nation must gradually come to feel it as unpleasant when another nation gets disparaged and abused; there must gradually awaken a common feeling so that every nation feels itself into the position of every other one’ (Herder 2002 [1793– 1797]: 406). This is again predicated on Herder’s notion of Humanität, since he sees all human beings and hence nations as equal and interconnected ­subjects. An international society of peoples is the natural and moral existence. Herder’s philosophical writings are not a systematic theory of the state or of any political order for that matter. Nonetheless, we can see how his conceptualisations of nation suggest that cultural homogeneity and hence congruency between people and their country are not simply an ideal, but are natural and stem from the very basic properties of man-kind, of Humanität. Herder’s thought offers a unique modality of congruency that is markedly different to Hobbes’ statist model and to his own contemporaries. His somewhat cosmopolitan reading of nations and nationalism, however, is fantasmatic because he considers his current state of affairs, the state machinery and its violent and unnatural practices, as the obstacle to the authentic and organic Volk-life. The fantasy of nation/state congruency, according to Herder, is moulded on its imagined and romanticised past that is now threatened by the territorial and coercive expansionism of state-making.

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The People (and the Vaterland) Above All: The Romanticism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte Romanticism developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as an anti-enlightenment philosophy, aesthetically orientated and with a strong emphasis on the ‘emotional’ rather than the ‘rational’ dimension of human thought (Kohn 1950: 443–472; Mosse 1966: 13–30). Within the poetry, music and arts of German romanticism the nation/people (Volk) and the state are conceptualised organically, by celebrating German language, culture and landscape.4 The German romantic philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in his Addresses to the German Nation (2009 [1808]) accentuates the differences between the Germans and the German language and other Teutonic peoples, as he glorifies the German language and culture as superior: And so we have solved our immediate task, to find the characteristic that distinguishes the Germans from the other peoples of Teutonic descent. The difference resulted immediately from the original separation of the common stock and consists in this, that the Germans still speak a living language and have done so ever since it first streamed forth from nature, whereas the other Teutonic tribes speak a language that stirs only on the surface yet is dead at the root. (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 57–58)

There are two main themes in German romanticism I address here: first, I show how the Herderian notion of nature and the relationship between the individual and nature are a motif in romantic thought. Congruency in romanticism is constructed first and foremost as the organic relationship between the individual and their natural habitat and thus how the ideal of the Volk is the lynchpin of political thought. The celebration of the German landscape, climate and nature are, therefore, not only a glorification of a place or its history—the territorial dimension Penrose (2002) identifies in Herder—but rather a testimony of the indivisible bond between the German nation and its land. Nonetheless, I show how the notion of man–nature congruency is addressed within a German national identity discourse rather than a general appreciation of peoples and peoplehood worldwide as in Herder’s thought, thus clearly distinguishing between Herder’s organic theorisation of nations and nationalism and German romanticism (Kohn 1950). Second, I address more specifically the conception of the state in relation to the nation. As I show, the idea of the state is not fully dismissed and rejected as in Herder’s anti-state

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polemic; rather, what arises with the romantic thought of Fichte is the idea of the state as that which must be governed and guided by the nation as its representative and spokesperson. Man, Nature and the Organic Body of the People Similarly to Herder’s philosophy, romanticism rejected the ‘rational’ form of human thinking and deduction and invoked instead the emotional, spiritual and religious forms of interpretation (Kohn 1950: 443–472; Mosse 1966: 13–30). Nature and the organic perception of society become a core tenet in romantic thought and the arts, as evident in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, Novalis’ poems like ‘Fragments’ and ‘Hymns to the Night’, Heinrich von-Kleist’s plays and the Brothers Grimm Fairy-tales collections (Kunstmärchen). Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, for instance, such as Morning in the Riesengebirge and the various pictures of the Riesengebirge area, paintings of the Dresden area, and The Cross on the Mountain, all represent an amalgamation of religious elements, mysticism and adoration of German nature (Koerner 2009). Friedrich constructed strong emotional bonds between Germanic mythology and Germany as a Vaterland (fatherland). This is clear in his various paintings that depict cemeteries and graveyards of supposed Germanic national heroes, the ultimate sacrifice Germany’s forefathers made by fighting and dying for the people. In the philosophical romantic thought of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, German landscape and nature was an intermediary between the individual and the community. Romanticism rejected the individualism and secularism of the enlightenment, and called for the uprising of emotional, religious and mystic elements in each individual. As Kohn (1950: 446) puts it: the romanticists succumbed to the lure of history and wished to enrich the present by reviving the past. They felt it so overflowing with poetry, so venerable with legend and prophecy, that they could not study it with rational detachment … [T]hus the individual found himself rooted in the past and determined by it. He appeared conditioned by the peculiar traditions of the national community.

Nature became the totality, that which encompasses the individual and the entire community, the German nation, as a whole. The German national

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spirit took residence in the German men and women and their environment alike. This source of identity is mostly inscribed in the notion of the Volk, and völkisch thought that forms a unity of man, nature and the people, a pantheistic totality (Mosse 1966: 14–18): A countryside becomes a landscape insofar as it is a coherent whole with its characteristics. But this can happen only when it becomes the experience of the human soul, if the soul recognizes the rhythm of the countryside as its own rhythm … for each people and each race a countryside thus becomes its own peculiar landscape. (Gmelin cited in Mosse 1966: 17)

Therefore, Herder’s world of nations is further developed in German romantic thought and art. This is not only because German romanticists amplified German identity as superior to others and at the same time pervasive throughout Europe (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 68, 104, 207–208; Müller 1810: 2nd lecture: 52f, cited in Kohn 1950: 471); rather, it is because congruency is understood as a natural and organic unity between the individual, their habitat (e.g., nature, way of life, livelihood and historical narratives) and the community. This totality is indivisible and authentic and is the ultimate source of legitimacy. Romantic philosophy was also predicated on the attachments and bonds between the German individual and their nature, town and daily life. This was constructed as a celebration of the German way of living in the small towns and cities of Middle-Ages Holy Roman Empire. An imaginative and nostalgia that, as Kohn (1950: 445–446) explains, drew on the life of knights and guilds, a pre-rationalist and pre-modern, as it were, era and thus authentic and pure, uncorrupted by modern enlightenment ideas. Nature consisted of the mountains, rivers and trees in which the Germanic soul is engraved as nature also entailed the constructed primitive way of life of Middle-Age Germanic towns. The State and the Vaterland The idea of the nation is organic and natural, as it adheres to an imaginary of the pre-enlightenment every-day life. The state, however, is not always explained in romantic political thought and is often perceived to be the same as the Volk (Kohn 1950: 446; see, for instance, Adam Heinrich Müller [1809] Die Elemente der Staatskunst [The Elements of Statecraft]). In Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation, nevertheless, the conception

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of the state is instrumental and complementary to that of the people and the Vaterland. To Fichte, the (German) nation and the Vaterland are eternal beings that outlive any state and as such must guide the state’s actions. Fichte further asserts that the state is a framework, an instrument designed to achieve internal peace, maintain order and secure property only so that the nation continues to develop and progress: people and fatherland far exceed the state, in the ordinary signification of the word—far exceed the social order as understood in its simple, clear concept, as it is established and maintained under the guidance of that same concept. This concept demands certain justice, internal peace, that each through his own industry earns his crust and prolongs his sensuous existence for as long as it is God’s will to grant it to him. All this is only a means, a condition, a framework for what love of fatherland really desires: that the eternal and the divine may flourish in the world and never cease to become ever more pure, perfect and excellent. This is the very reason why love of fatherland must govern the state itself, as altogether the supreme, final and independent authority, first of all by restricting the state in the choice of means available for its immediate end, internal peace. (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 105)

To Fichte, the state fulfils the national culture, expresses its characteristics and serves its will—the state is thus subordinate to the people. Fichte explains that this is the true manifestation of freedom since the sole function of the state is to maintain internal peace. The state ought to be supervised and checked or it would restrict individual liberties. The ‘higher culture’ of the nation, to Fichte, is what prevents the state from limiting individual freedoms; the people supervise the operations of governance and law making, even at the expanse of expediency and efficiency (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 139). The relationship constructed here between the nation and the state is one of hierarchy in which the idea of the Volk overrides that of the state and ought to guide state actions. To Fichte, the nation is the spirit, the living organism which propels the state, it is the generator of the state and ought to make sure that the instrumental operations of the state do not supersede the organic body of the people. Indeed, Fichte further explains that in cases of mass mobilisation, such as in war, the state in itself cannot inspire men to battle and cannot produce the willingness amongst men to fight and sacrifice their lives for the greater benefit of the people:

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Next, love of fatherland must govern the state by putting before it a higher purpose than the ordinary one of maintaining internal peace, property, personal freedom, life and the well-being of all. For this higher purpose alone, and with no other end in view, does the state assemble an armed force … What spirit is it that may in such cases take the helm, that with its own sureness and certainty, and without uneasy to -ing and fro-ing, is capable of making a decision, that has an undisputed right to command everyone who may be concerned, whether he wants to or not, and to compel the objector, to jeopardise everything, even his own life? Not the spirit of calm civic love for the constitution and laws, but the blazing flame of the higher love of fatherland that embraces the nation as the vesture of the eternal, for which the noble man joyfully sacrifices himself and the ignoble, who exists only for the sake of the former, should likewise sacrifice himself. (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 106–107)

We can further see how, in Fichte’s discourse, the unity between the (German) people and its natural habitat, and between the individual and community, are inscribed in religious motifs. God and a nation’s way of life, its environment and history are interconnected. Moreover, the intertwining of God and nation is the source of legitimacy for the people’s aspirations and for achieving its divine fate. The love of the Vaterland, thus, is the love of God and it endows the nation with its divinity and legitimacy as an unbreakable totality. As the German theorist and jurist, Justus Möser, proclaimed ‘he who does not love the fatherland which he can see, how can he love the heavenly Jerusalem which he does not see’ (quoted in Kaiser 1961: 43, cited in Mosse 2018). In the Thirteen Addresses to the German Nation (Fichte 2009 [1808]), Fichte directly defines congruency as a natural and necessary bond within a nation and between a nation and its state. He explains that the most natural boundary is the ‘inner frontier’ of a state, that is, the indivisible bond between individuals who share the same language, and between them and their natural habitat. A state that contains other languages in it is, to Fichte, likely to experience violence and unrest. This ‘inner frontier’ then affects the externality of states—the boundaries that carve a region into discrete polities. To Fichte, therefore, congruency is, first, the unity of language; people who speak the same language share a common culture and hence constitute a Volk. As a result, they can and should establish their own state, but only if that is congruent with their own language and culture: … [T]he first, original and truly natural frontiers of states are undoubtedly their inner frontiers. Those who speak the same language are already, before

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all human art, joined together by mere nature with a multitude of invisible ties; they understand one another and are able to communicate ever more clearly; they belong together and are naturally one, an indivisible whole. No other nation of a different descent and language can desire to absorb and assimilate such a people without, at least temporarily, becoming confused and profoundly disturbing the steady progress of its own culture. The external limits of territories only follow as a consequence of this inner frontier, drawn by man’s spiritual nature itself. (Fichte 2009 [1808]: 166)

The Rise of the Fantasy of Nation/State Congruency In this chapter I have shown how the early-modern state model of Hobbes, Pufendorf and Rousseau is challenged, critiqued and fragmented. It is not merely fused with the idea of popular sovereignty and/or the organic ideas of Volkgeist. The Abbé Sieyès critiques the existing states of his time as being ‘palace aristocracy’, political orders that do not represent the true and complete nation. To Herder, states are often the vehicles of ­destruction, war and coercion. Moreover, they cannot be imposed or produced artificially, as Hobbes suggested, and can only grow organically from the nation/Volk in congruence with people’s language and natural habitat. To various German romanticists and specifically to Fichte, the state is needed for the preservation of peace, but it can only succeed if it springs from the nation and is guided by the Volk’s spirit and identity. This means, as I argued earlier, that the orthodox view of the nation/ state in modernity, in which the state of early modernity came to be fused with the modern idea of the nation and/or the people (Bartelson 2001; Hont 1994, 2005), is problematic. This is because what arises with these and other discourses in modernity is not the so-called nation-state; rather, it is the fantasy of a homogeneous society coached through the impossible-­ possibility of nation/state congruency. The ideal of nation/state congruency is fantasmatic because it is presumed congruent, but not yet congruent enough. Whether this is the Herderian fantasy of congruency of men and their habitat, or the nation which, according to Sieyès, is the real collectivity that then ought to manifest itself in the form of statehood. Modern society, from now on, will have to constantly inquire introspectively as to whether it is congruent enough and indeed aligned spatially and juridically with authority. Modern society will, therefore, always be in the process of becoming (more) con-

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gruent. In other words, the ideal of nation/state congruency is fantasmatic because congruency is already pre-supposed, or always–already lost as the lost national jouissance, which then legitimates a multitude of practices such as war or revolution to manifest its unity and fuse with authority. It is, however, also an endless effort, a project that never reaches its destiny and indeed cannot. The fantasy of congruency is thus able to sustain itself and stabilise the contingency of social life by keeping the promise of jouissance, that is, the realisation of complete unity, ‘at a “healthy” distance’ (Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006: 152), by offering a future of social completeness, a future in which the presumed lost romanticised past and the jouissance it entails are recaptured, but nonetheless explaining (un/ successfully) why such a mode of congruency is not yet obtained: because the state is ruled by privileged aristocracy rather than the people or because the state is encompassing various other nationalities and creeds within its artificial borders. These new discursive coordinates of nation/state congruency demonstrate the operations of fantasy1 as the promised unity, the materialisation of the complete national subject within its state. At the same time, it is fantasy2 that keeps this impossibility at bay, introducing the obstacle/the Other (Žižek 1999: 192). This congruency fantasy also explains the ongoing ‘crisis of the nation-­ state’ in modernity as congruency is constantly envisioned but is never fully ascertained. Congruency is always in need (see also Dunn 1994; Hont 1994). It is, therefore, a powerful fantasy that renders numerous practices and policies intelligible (e.g., the control and monitoring of borders and demography, the introduction of the Passport), but it is a fantasy that has also propelled many to fight in the name of and for the sake of an imagined unity. At this stage, and especially with the writings of Herder and German romanticists, we can see the operations of affective mobility, the conceptualisation of the nation through ‘structures of feeling’ and natural way of life, language and culture that cannot be engineered (Stavrakakis 2007). This is further key to understanding the history of nations and nationalism and the fantasy of congruency since it alludes to the process of identification as a failure-based repetition imbued with enjoyment, which then enables a source of socio-political subjectivity in a contingent social world. This also means that from this moment on modern society, understood indeed as singular and thus congruent, is in a permanent battle, as it relentlessly ventures to re-examine its identity, its unity. It is not just that ‘society must be defended’ (Foucault 2004), but, rather, that society will

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have to assess, measure and know itself through the prism of a certain kind of (state-to-nation/people) congruency. It is, therefore, the fantasy of congruency, an impossible-possibility that renders things possible and made intelligible through various practices and strategies. It is indeed the tautological logic of the ‘nation (people)-state’ (Bartelson 2001: 41) that constitutes modern society and the various technologies of homogenisation it deploys. As I show in the next chapters, this theme of congruency becomes a leitmotif in various knowledge systems throughout modernity as the formula of state-to-nation relationship and the ideal of congruency is naturalised and legitimated in myriad ways. In the next chapter, I illustrate this through the analysis of two discrete discursive formations, Hegel’s World History and his theorisation of the state/nation and liberal democratic thought in which congruency is equated with (representative) democracy.

Notes 1. On German romanticism see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 [1808]); Hans Kohn, ‘Romanticism and the Rise of German Nationalism’, The Review of Politics, 12 (4) (1950), pp. 443–472. On the state as an escape from a ‘war of all against all’ see Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes: On the Citizen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1642]). 2. I do not claim in this paper that congruency projects only emerge in revolutionary France, but that with Sieyès congruency becomes fantasmatic, that is, an impossible-possibility to achieve congruency both as a nation and as a nation manifested in a state. On attempts to homogenise populations before the French Revolution see Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. trans. Graham Burchell (London: Macmillan, 2009); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp.  27–88; Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2002). 3. Herder utilises the concept of Volk, which is often translated to nation, especially in the ways ‘nation’ and ‘people’ came to be understood in anglophone scholarship (Yack 2001). 4. It is beyond the scope of this short analysis to fully acknowledge, and engage with, German romanticism and nationalist thought. For more see, for instance, Beiser, F. C. (2006). The Romantic Imperative. Harvard University Press; Beiser, F. C., Beiser, F. C., Geuss, R., & Skinner, Q. (Eds.). (1996).

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The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics. Cambridge University Press. On Language purism in Fichte’s work see Martyn, D. (1997) Borrowed Fatherland: Nationalism and Language Purism in Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 72(4), 303–315, and on Fichte’s cultural nationalism see Abizadeh, A. (2005) Was Fichte an Ethnic Nationalist? On Cultural Nationalism and its Double. History of Political Thought, 26(2): 334–359.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. What Is a People. In Means Without Ends: Notes on Politics, trans. Cesare Casarino and Vincenzo Binetti. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Barnard, Frederick M. 1965. Herder’s Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1969. J.G.  Herder on Social and Political Culture. Trans. and Ed. F.M. Barnard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1983. National Culture and Political Legitimacy: Herder and Rousseau. Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (2): 231–253. Barnard, Fredrick M. 2003. Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press. Bartelson, Jens. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001. The Critique of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, Duncan S.A. 2003. Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity. The British Journal of Sociology 54 (1): 63–81. Berlin, Isaiah. 1976. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. London: Hogarth Press. Dunn, John. 1994. Introduction: Crisis of the Nation State? Political Studies XLII: 3–15. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 2009 [1808]. Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation. Trans. and Ed. Gregory Moore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2004 [1975–1976]. Society Must Be Defended. London: Penguin. ———. 2005 [1966]. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge. Frazer, Elizabeth, and Kimberly Hutchings. 2011. Avowing Violence: Foucault and Derrida on Politics, Discourse and Meaning. Philosophy & Social Criticism 37 (1): 3–23. Gellner, Ernest. 2006 [1983]. Nations and Nationalism. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich. 1991 [1820/1821]. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. Hugh Barr Nisbet and Ed. Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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CHAPTER 5

Fantasies of Nationalism: Between Nation/ State Dialectic and Liberal Thought

In its initial stage, a nation [Volk] is not a state, and the transition of a family, tribe, kinship group … to the condition of a state constitutes the formal realization of the Idea in general within it. If the nation … does not have this form, it lacks the objectivity of possessing a universal and universally valid existence [Dasein] for itself. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 375, square brackets in the original) Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 292)

After the break-up and fragmentation of the state as modality of unity in late eighteenth-century thought, the fantasy of congruency becomes central to modern political thought. To exemplify this, this chapter analyses two discursive formations that emerge in nineteenth-century Europe that draw on and further develop the discursive space of the nation/state and the ideal of societal congruency. These discursive formations present two quite discrete ways of articulating congruency and, consequently, exhibit how the fantasy of nation/state congruency, albeit defined and practised in different ways, becomes endemic to modern thought and practices. The first is Hegel’s (political) philosophy in which state and nation are in a constant dialectical relationship as part of the telos of world history. Hegel’s discourse construes the nation/state as the key space in which important events take place as well as the main agent of transformations © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_5

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and transitions in world history. With Hegel, the nation/state, or the Volkstate, becomes the main unit of analysis. More importantly, I also show how it requires congruency—albeit not in any religious, ethnic or cultural sense—in order to realise freedom, and how it also entails its own demise because the state-to-nation relationship is dialectical and thus constantly changing. In other words, societal congruency is the historical apex of a given nation, but due to the dialectical forces of history this mode of congruency is also bound to collapse. Analysing Hegel’s thought here is pertinent to contemporary articulations of nationalism and the nation/state because Hegel is often presented as the ‘forefather’ of the modern state as the supreme socio-political order and the actualisation of freedom (e.g., Avineri 1974). Through the analysis of Hegel’s discourse of the state and of the rise and fall of nations in world history, I seek to destabilise this orthodoxy by showing that Hegel’s thought can also be read as a celebration of congruency, a convergence of individuals and authority and nation and state, but how this modus of congruency can never be truly maintained—congruency is only an historical episode. This means that the ideal of congruency, in Hegel’s thought, is again a fantasmatic project precisely because it can never be truly maintained and must thus always be re-articulated, re-practised and re-envisioned. The second discursive formation I analyse stems from liberal and democratic thought, which is inscribed in a larger discourse of liberal governance (Foucault 2008, 2009), and which establishes the ideal of nation/ state congruency. I focus on the writings of James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, illustrating how societal congruency is assumed to be vital to liberal democracies and the idea of representative democracy. The ideal of congruency is practised discursively here through the invocation of liberty, democracy and via the utilitarian logic of Jeremy Bentham. Analysing liberal democratic thought in nineteenth-century Europe also serves to problematise contemporary liberal (and democratic) knowledge and to reveal its contradictions. I demonstrate here how contemporary liberal discourses that invoke individualism, pluralism and ‘negative liberty’ (Berlin 1969), amongst other things, rest on the fantasy of the congruent society. Democracy, as it is practised in our contemporary liberal societies, may draw on the value of an open society, but also requires a congruent demos to render its democratic apparatuses feasible. Liberty can only be rendered possible through the convergence of individuals, as a

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populace, and their alignment with authority (Kymlicka 1995, 2001; Tamir 1993; Walzer 1990).

Hegel and the Dialectic of State and Nation In this section I focus on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. I start with the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History in order to examine the Hegelian conception of the nation and its status in world history. I do not delve into Hegel’s dismissiveness of Africa as barbaric and outside history, nor into the question of racism in Hegel’s thought (Bernasconi 2000; Walsh 1971). My focus is on how the notion of congruency is embedded in Hegel’s philosophy of world history in which the nation is the instrument through which the Spirit or the Idea realise themselves and in doing so actualise freedom. This is further explained in Hegel’s philosophy as a dialectical-historical move that, whilst considering a state of congruency between individuals and the nation as an historical necessity, also entails the idea that this unity always contains its own contradiction: true and complete unity is not attainable (Žižek 2012). I further illustrate how Hegel’s articulation of congruency is not premised on the homogenisation of culture (e.g., ethnicity, language) and that, accordingly, Hegel’s thought about the state and the nation is not totalitarian, as Popper (2011 [1945]: 219–290) argued, for ‘Hegel is the opposite of a “totalitarian” thinker’ (Nancy 2002: 8, see also Brooks 2007: 93, 96). Rather, I demonstrate how the state, to Hegel, ought to be the embodiment of freedom with a multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities and religions (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 19–20, see Avineri 1974; Kedourie 1993 [1960]: 28–29; Forbes 1975: vii–xxxv). I also illustrate how, for Hegel, congruency manifests itself in the state, and how the nation and the state aspire to attain unity, but, nonetheless, can only achieve such unity temporarily. The congruency of individuals and authority is the ultima ratio—the realisation of the Spirit and the manifestation of freedom—but it is a condition that can never be complete and thus constantly re-produced in world history. As Brooks (2007: 21) explains regarding Hegel’s state: ‘the Philosophy of Right itself is an exposition of “the Idea of the state”, a vision of the state that serves as an ideal, but one that has never existed’ and thus an ideal that can never be obtained, one may add. It is correct to state that the Hegelian text is contested with various scholarly debates, such as the known metaphysical versus non-metaphysical

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debate (see Taylor 1975 and Pippin 1989, respectively), and myriad readings of Hegel’s dialectic, the notion of freedom and the Hegelian state, to name just a few. In the following, I read Hegel not as a closed system. Rather, to draw on Hutchings and Pulkkinen (2010: 4), I employ an open and somewhat deconstructive mode of reading, as I read Hegel’s thought as a testimony of becoming, a foundation-less text with no beginning and no end, thus in no way trying to systemise Hegelian thought or read his dialectic or theory of the state as a totalising act (Nancy 2002: 8–14, see also Malabou 2005; Žižek 2012). Hegel’s dialectical reasoning is thus key here, as I do not read it as a formalistic structure, nor is the third dialectical move a ‘synthesis’, part of Fichte’s three moves of thesis–antithesis–synthesis (Mueller 1958). Rather, I read Hegel’s dialectic as sublation (Aufheben) in its multi-dimensional meaning, semantically and philosophically, and even in what may seem contradictory to the meaning of sublation, that is ‘abrogation’ (Malabou 2005: 156). As such, aufhebung can be read here as the ‘negation of negation’ (Žižek 2012: 285) or ‘sublation of sublation’ (Malabou 2005: 156). What is obvious is that Hegel’s sublation is not some form of synthesis or a reconciliation of opposites that eliminates the two opposites within it. As Brooks (2007: 19) puts it: Hegel rejects ‘synthesis’ on the grounds that the third movement does not bring two things together in an internal unity, because it treats the first two movements as externally related. Instead, for Hegel, the third movement sublates [Aufheben] the first two categories and, in so doing, preserves their relationship while pointing towards a new third category.

As I will demonstrate in my analysis of Hegel’s world history philosophy, sublation as ‘negation of negation’ and as letting-go/liberating will be crucial to the historical developments of the Spirit in the congruency making of nations/civilizations such that whilst unity is the ultimate aspiration, once achieved it must be renounced and disappear allowing for other civilizations to appear on the world stage. Key to my thesis here on Hegel’s nation/state unity, however, is the Žižekian idea that sublation actually points to the inherent void and that therefore ‘[t]he point of dialectical analysis is to demonstrate how every phenomenon, everything that happens, fails in its own way, implies a crack, antagonism, imbalance, in its very heart’ (Žižek 2012: 8). Unity always carries its own contradiction within itself and that is why becoming is an endless project, a future-to-come that always remains so (Malabou

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2000). Indeed, I take Hegel’s thought to be a fantasmatic project of actualisation, an endless process of becoming that is never attained and yet precisely because of this it is continuously re-envisioned and re-stipulated. Hegel’s sublation, the ‘negation of negation’, as applied to world history is not a frustrated or meaningless repetitiveness of events. As Žižek (2012: 471–472) argues, failure is what allows for great events to be memorialised and inscribed in world history. The importance of failure, I would argue, clearly applies to Hegel’s world history of nations/civilizations since they achieve their full unity and materialisation only provisionally, but their symbolic greatness lives long after their demise. In the following I engage with four themes in Hegel’s thought: first, I demonstrate how Hegel construes congruency as the unity of the nation in world history. This is a unity of the nation as it develops historically, and a unity between the individual and the nation. Second, I further illustrate how, to Hegel, the nation is the key engine of world history as the nation progresses in an endless attempt to realise its inner essence. I also demonstrate how congruency is construed as the convergence of individuals’ interests with that of the state. Third, I explicate the Hegelian dialectical logic by which the nation and the state do obtain unity—a sublation of the particular and the universal—but how this is a temporary mode, thus further showing how sublation is both reconciliation and a move of liberating and abrogation (Malabou 2005). Congruency is only tentative and is bound to disintegrate and die, as ‘Hegel’s gaze upon reality is that of a Roentgen apparatus which sees in everything that is alive the traces of its future death’ (Žižek 2012: 8). Fourth, I deal directly with Hegel’s theorisation of the state in which states stand for unity through the reconciliation of civil society and the family. States, nonetheless, are not a homogeneous existence in the cultural sense; rather, the state ought to manage and preserve a plurality of cultures. World History and the Role of the Nation Hegel begins his series of lectures by differentiating between three types of historical writings: original history, reflective history and philosophical history. Original history is written by those who experience the events and then report back. Reflective history ‘… is practiced by a wide variety of writers—indeed by all those whom we generally call historians’ (Hegel 1975: 16). Reflective history is the history of the ‘… past as a whole’ in which the author deploys their own ideas, concepts and notions leading to

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a narration of history. Philosophical history, however, attempts to achieve an understanding not of a specific aspect, but rather of a general historical perspective. In this, Hegel depicts his philosophical history as that which attempts to understand the ways in which world history as a whole operates—history’s ‘general design’ (Hegel 1975: 28). What underlines Hegel’s stance on the development of the nation and of world history is the ways in which the Spirit and the Idea are realised and actualised and in doing so actualise freedom: [I]t is the same with the spirit of a nation; its activity consists in making itself into an actual world which also has an existence in space. Its religion, ritual, ethics, customs, art, constitution … all this is its own creation, and it is this which makes the nation what it is. Every nation feels this to be so. And then the individual finds his nation already in being, as a complete and firmly established world to which he must become assimilated. He must take over its substantial being as his own, so that his outlook and abilities are in accord with it, in order that he may himself become something in turn … Once the nation has created itself, the dichotomy between its essence (or what it is in itself) and its real existence is overcome, and it has attained satisfaction. (Hegel 1975: 58)

This passage from Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History exhibits the Hegelian construction of the idea of the nation, its role in world history and how the nation’s telos is a dialectical move from idea to actualisation by which the individual and the nation become congruent. The actualised and free nation is, nonetheless, a temporary mode since actualisation finally leads to dissolution and death. As Hegel explicates, the dialectic of the nation does not end in the satisfaction of the nation but rather progresses into self-reflection, stagnation and finally fades away as ‘… the national spirit destroys itself by the negativity of its thought’ (Hegel 1975: 61, 58–62). Nonetheless, the nation’s spirit realises itself through the convergence of individuals and the nation. To Hegel, this process is the modus-operandi of history and, more importantly, through this self-perpetuating process freedom is realised. World Spirit and the Dialectic of the National Spirit Hegel conceptualises world history as the history of nations. The nation, to Hegel, is the unit of analysis which develops and transforms so as to

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realise its Spirit and Idea, its inner essence. Hegel does not refer to one specific nation that will always remain dominant. Quite the contrary; each epoch has its own great nation/civilization, from the Greeks to the West European nations, what he refers to as the Germanic epoch (Hegel 1975: 124–131). World history is always progressing into higher forms of realisation and consequently freedom. The Spirit materialises via the nation and reaches its highest manifestation when the idea of the nation and its individuals are converged: The aim of world history, therefore, is that the spirit should attain knowledge of its own true nature, that it should objectivise this knowledge and transform it into a real world, and give itself an objective existence … It accomplishes this end in the history of the world; it produces itself in a series of determinate forms, and these forms are the nations of world history. Each of them represents a particular stage of development, so that they correspond to epochs in the history of the world. Or on a more fundamental level, they are the principles in which the spirit has discovered itself, and which it is impelled to realise. (Hegel 1975: 64)

The nation is thus part of the telos of world history; it is a fundamental part of how the Idea and the Spirit are objectivised and realised (Bartelson 1995: 219–220). Thus, the convergence of individuals with the idea of the nation is ideal and necessary for the nation to follow the dialectic of realisation. As Hegel explains, this convergence takes place in progression, but when the whole, or the nation’s essence, and the individuals are one, just before the nation reflects upon its own thoughts and deeds, then the gap between the essence of the nation’s spirit and its real existence is closed. This is the moment in which the nation reaches its pinnacle—the nation’s historical yearning is satisfied (though, as I explain below, only temporarily). Hegel, moreover, conceptualises congruency with respect to the state and its relations with the citizenry. As Hegel explains, the state will be strong and powerful only if its interests and the interests of its people are one and the same. This mode of unity is the product of continuous struggles, changes and adjustments until the state and its citizenry are united: [A] state will be well constituted and internally powerful if the private interest of its citizens coincides with the general end of the state, so that the one can be satisfied and realised through the other; this proposition is an extremely important one. But for the state to achieve this unity, numerous institutions must be set up and appropriate mechanisms invented, and the

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understanding must go through prolonged struggles before it discovers what is in fact appropriate … The moment at which the state attains this unity marks the most flourishing period in its history, when its virtue, strength, and prosperity are at their height. (Hegel 1975: 73)

The unity achieved is thus a convergence and resolution of the particular and the universal. This unity is part of world history and the rise of nations as the temporal expression of the Spirit. Unity is also manifested in the individual, the citizen. The ideal of the congruent state is, accordingly, embodied in the particular individual, whose interests are aligned with the interests of the state as a collectivity, a universal. As Bartelson (1995: 216) puts it: [T]he state is unable to attain reality without the knowledge and interest of particular forces within it; men do not live within the state merely for the realization of their particular interest, but direct their will to a universal end.

Unity and Its Internal Contradiction: A Dialectical Progression of State and Nation In Hegel’s philosophy of world history freedom is rendered intelligible and possible through the state, which represents the unity of individuals and an alignment between them and authority: this is to Hegel the convergence of the subjective will with the universal will. Moreover, the notion of freedom, Hegel argues, is not understood in negative forms (i.e., freedom from coercion), nor is it a ‘social contract’ designed to achieve freedom within a structure that limits the powers of others on oneself. Hegel, therefore, asserts that at this moment of obtaining unity all dimensions of the Spirit (e.g., arts, justice) are fully actualised and are not in contradiction with individuals’ interests: to Hegel, this is freedom. In other words, the congruency of individuals with authority manifests itself in the state, which then renders freedom possible. The concept of the state is thus celebrated by Hegel precisely because it stands for the ultimate congruent society, a fusion of the particular and the universal: This essential being, the unity of the subjective will and the universal, is the ethical whole, and its concrete manifestation is the state. The state is the reality within which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but only in so far as he knows, believes in, and wills the universal. This, then, is the focal point of all the other concrete aspects of the spirit, such as justice, art, ethics,

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and the amenities of existence. Within the state, freedom becomes its own object and achieves its positive realisation. But this does not mean that the subjective will of the individual is implemented and satisfied through the universal will, and that the latter is merely a means to the end of the former. Nor is the universal will merely a community of human beings within which the freedom of all individuals has to be limited … only in the state does man have a rational existence. (Hegel 1975: 93–94, emphasis in the original)

The dialectic of world history—the rise and death of nations as a continuous historical movement by which the Spirit is realised—means that unity contains its own contradiction. This is essential in Hegel’s dialectical logic in which ‘[u]niversality and particularity are thus two aspects of one and the same Notion: its very “abstract” universality makes it particular’ (Žižek 2012: 365). Therefore, a fixed cohesive national spirit is never fully achieved, and every nation carries its own contradiction, which in turn allows for the Spirit to progress and die, but to nonetheless re-emerge (Hegel 1975: 58–62). As Hegel’s explains, when the national spirit degenerates ‘… a new and higher principle emerges. Division contains and carries with it the need for unification, because the spirit is itself one’ (Hegel 1975: 61–62). The discursive space that is produced with Hegel’s philosophy of world history can be read through the ‘nation-state’ couplet, but not as an irreversible fusion. For Hegel, therefore, congruency of nation and state is an ideal as it actualises the Spirit and the Idea, but incongruity of nation and state is nevertheless vital. This is because it is the incongruity of state and nation—the inability to fully fuse the two—that enables change and thus entails the prospects for the re-actualisation of the Spirit/Idea. In other words, congruency of state and nation is at once the true materialisation of the Spirit and thus of freedom, but congruency also entails its own contradiction, which in turn renders historical change and progress possible. The Spirit is one, an indivisible unity, but its expression on the historical stage in the form of a ‘nation-state’, the apex of civilizational greatness is temporal, only a tentative fusion of nation and state. In its initial stage, a nation [Volk] is not a state, and the transition of a family, tribe, kinship group, mass [of people], etc. to the condition of a state constitutes the formal realization of the Idea in general within it. If the nation … does not have this form, it lacks the objectivity of possessing a universal and universally valid existence [Dasein] for itself and others in [the shape of] laws as determinations of thought, and is therefore not recognized; since its

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independence has no objective legality or firmly established rationality for itself, it is merely formal and does not amount to sovereignty. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 375, italics and square brackets in the original)

What we see here is the impossible coupling of state and nation in the sense that the nation can only fully realise itself in the form of a sovereign state, but that this mode of sovereignty is unsustainable. The hyphen in the ‘nation-state’, therefore, stands for the disunity that yearns to progress into unification and thus freedom. But the ‘nation-state’ couplet reaffirms its own contradiction, the potential demise of its given national spirit and the re-emergence of a new national spirit, there or elsewhere. The State, Freedom and the Heterogeneity of the Modern State The third and last part in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right addresses what Hegel refers to as ‘the ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit). The ethical life is, as argued earlier, the full realisation of freedom as it is manifested in the state. The achievement of this moment is a progression and development of two elements that contradict one another, but are then resolved and converged into a unity—the state. These two elements are the family and civil society (see Pelczynski 1984: 1–13; although see also Benhabib 1996; Brooks 2007: especially 76; Hodge 2010: 43–45). The family is the ‘… immediate or natural ethical spirit’ (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 198) in that it is not based on individuals acting each for their own good, but rather on love. The family, to Hegel, is based on marriage, property and assets and the raising of children.1 The familial relationship, for Hegel, are of membership and are not based on self-interest. Each family acting as a unity/ person, is altruistic vis-à-vis its own members, but not with respect to other families (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 199–219). Civil society, however, is made of the ‘… person who … is his own end’ (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 220). Each person sees his own interests, but since she/he stands in relation to others, their satisfaction can only be fulfilled via others. Civil society, therefore, is a web of interdependence in which one’s desires are achieved through the completion of the desires of others and their wellbeing: The selfish end in its actualisation, conditioned in this way by universality, establishes a system of all-round interdependence, so that the subsistence [Subsistenz] and welfare of the individual [des Einzelnen] and his rightful

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existence [Dasein] are interwoven with, and grounded on, the subsistence, welfare, and rights of all, and have actuality and security only in this context. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 221, italics and square brackets in the original)

These two elements—the family and civil society—are only resolved in the state, the highest form of freedom and the manifestation of the ethical life (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 275). The relationship between the individual and the state is one of unity and fulfilment and thus freedom. This can be compared against other political theorisation of the state and its relationship with the people. First, Hegel’s idea of the state is not a Hobbesian one in the sense of a leviathan providing for the security of individuals and amongst individuals as well as for the preservation/protection of property (Avineri 1974: 40–41; Brooks 2007: 34–35). Hegel emphasises that the state is not a social contract designed only to account for the security of individuals (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 276). The state is the manifestation of unity and thus is not a specific choice of contract between people and their ruler, nor is it an aggregate of individuals. Hence and whilst security and property are active elements within the state, their relevance is different from the Hobbesian idea, but also different from the liberal stance in which property is a key feature. If the state is conceptualised as the guardian of property and as the provider of security, then it is wrongly equated with civil society, that is, with the interests of individuals (see Brooks 2007: 114–127, especially 125). This is not the idea of the state in its full realisation as the ethical life, for the state transcends the mere interests of individuals—it is the reflection and convergence of the state’s interests and the people’s interests. Thus, what constitutes a fully realised state is the ability of the state to wage war, that is, to mobilise men for the aim of collective defence. Indeed, to Hegel one characteristic of the ethical life is manifested in the willingness of individuals to fight on behalf of their state and this is achieved only when the state and its people are united: It is a grave miscalculation if the state, when it requires this sacrifice (war/ defence), is simply equated with civil society, and if its ultimate end is seen merely as the security of the life and property of individuals [Individuen]. For this security cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of what is supposed secured— on the contrary. The ethical moment of war is implicit in what was stated above. For war should not be regarded as an absolute evil [Übel] and as a purely external contingency whose cause [Grund] is therefore itself contin-

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gent. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 361, parenthesis added, italics and square brackets in the original)

Hegel’s ethical celebration of war is again crucial to understanding his fantasmatic and dialectical reading of nation/state unity. The ethical life embedded in the state is never finalised, an objective achieved by violence/war. War between supposed congruent nations/states, as perceived through the realist international relations perspective, is in a way the projection of the inner gap or void onto the external and contingent dimension. This is why, to Hegel, the mobilisation to war is at least potentially an ethical moment for it allows for the unity to re-emerge, albeit only temporarily, which is why nation/state unity is impossible and at the same time an endless projects. According to Žižek (2012: 453), there is no final Aufhebung here: the entire complex edifice of the particular forms of social life has to be put at risk again and again-a reminder that the social edifice is a fragile virtual entity which can disintegrate at any moment, not because of contingent external threats, but because of its innermost essence … external accidents which cause wars are genuinely accidental, the point is that, as such, they “echo” the innermost negativity that is the core of subjectivity.

Another element that represents the unity of the state and the people is the issue of duty and right. As Hegel explains, in contrast to liberal and ‘social contract’ theories of the state, in the true actualisation of the state duties and rights are as one, united and manifested in the state itself. To Hegel, this is predicated on the freedom of individuals, as Hegel refers again to the notion of the Idea and the convergence of the particular and the universal in the state. Therefore, the individual feels it is their duty, for instance, to partake in war and pay taxes, for they feel their duty contains also their right, for example, the protection of lives and property, attaining one’s welfare needs and so forth. The state, thus, is secured by the actions of its citizens not through coercion, or the result of a contract, but because the state in itself represents the individual and their interests: [T]here is a single principle for both duty and right, namely the personal freedom of human beings … But if we consider the concrete aspect, i.e. the Idea, we can see that the moment of particularity is also essential, and that its satisfaction is therefore entirely necessary; in the process of fulfilling his duties, the individual must somehow attain his own interest and satisfaction

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or settle his own account, and from his situation within the state, a right must accrue to him whereby the universal cause [Sache] becomes his own particular cause. Particular interests should certainly not be set aside, let alone suppressed; on the contrary, they should be harmonized with the universal, so that both they themselves and the universal are preserved. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 284–285, italics and square brackets in the original)

The unification of state and individuals, however, is not a political ideology to be prescribed, but rather a philosophical analysis on a historical grand scale. When Hegel refers to the progression of a specific nation, he argues that its transformation and development is contingent, as the nation’s leaders may invoke and set to achieve certain goals, and yet their actions may have a completely different result governed by the necessity of the progression of the Spirit and the Idea in world history. This is the ‘cunning of reason’ in Hegel’s theory of world history and the dialectic of the Spirit (Bartelson 1995: 219; Tucker 1956: 269–295; Žižek 2012: 508–513). Hence, the unification of state and people is not the homogenisation of language and customs or the standardisation of education (Gellner 2006 [1983]). The key attribute of this mode of unification is freedom and the intersection of state’s interests with individuals’ interests. Furthermore, and as Avineri (1974: 35, 44–45) shows, the modern state according to Hegel is made of a multiplicity of customs and languages and can only be held together by the mechanisms of political organisation. For Hegel, this is both a realistic observation and a political ideal as he maintains that the modern state will both have to contain cultural diversity within its borders, and at the same time preserve it. Further, the state ought to have no interest in the level of cohesion of its members in issues relating to culture, broadly defined, such as language and practices, which clearly distinguishes his thought from that of Herder and/or the romanticists: In our times, the links between members [of a state] may be equally loose, or even non-existent, as far as customs, education, and language are concerned; and identity in these respects, which was once a pillar of national union, now counts as one of those fortuitous circumstances whose nature does not prevent a mass [of people] from constituting a political authority … disparity of culture and customs has become a necessary product, as well as a necessary condition, of the continued existence of modern states. (Hegel 1991 [1820/1821]: 19–20, square brackets in the original)

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To summarise, Hegel does not construe congruency of nation and state according to the homogenisation of culture and language. Modern states, Hegel explains, ought to engineer a modus operandi by which different cultures co-exist within the state. The celebration of unity that is expressed in the state is an alignment of the individual’s will with that of the state, again pointing to the inherent gap in the nation/state subjectivity and the endless efforts at achieving unity and freedom. Collective defence and war are one of the hallmarks of unity and state. The Hegelian dialectic, moreover, progresses historically as in different epochs different nations attain their desires and are fused with the state. Nonetheless, this congruency is bound to fragment as the ‘nation-state’ couplet emerges here as the ultimate fantasmatic project in modernity—it is never truly possible and precisely because of this impossibility it is continuously envisioned and invigorated. The congruency of state with nation is thus the future that is never fully actualised, or at least actualised only temporarily, because the promise of complete and lasting unity is yet to come (l’a-venir) (Malabou 2000: 197). Hegel is indeed the philosopher of modernity (Avineri 1974), but not because of his celebration of the state per se, but because he taps into modernity’s fantasy—the impossible and yet/thus desired congruency of people and authority. Hegel is thus the true philosopher of the impossible-possibility of the nation/state in modernity.

Liberal-Democracy and Nation/State Congruency Liberal democratic discourses both before and during the nineteenth century are often invoked as the precursor of modern-day democratic systems with great emphasis on individualism, ‘civil society’, the ‘rule of law’ and systems of checks and balances designed to restrain government’s power. Indeed, one of the lynchpins of liberal thought throughout modernity is to ensure the freedom of the individual vis-à-vis state oppression. The individual, thus, came to be seen as the locus of political philosophy and practice in liberal democratic thought, as an intrinsic value in itself (e.g., Kant 1996 [1785]; Locke 2003 [1689]; Mill 1992 [1820], 1946 [1861]; Montesquieu 2011 [1748]; Rousseau 1968 [1766]; see Berlin 1969). The idea of homogeneity and nation/state congruency would, therefore, seem incommensurable with democratic and liberal thought and yet closer reading of the liberal democratic tradition reveals a historical and even a theoretical marriage between the ideals of nationalism and national identity and liberal thought (Passavant 2002). Indeed, the relationship

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between (national) congruency and liberal democracy was highlighted by communitarians (Taylor 1990; Walzer 1992, see also Avineri and de-Shalit 1992) and liberal-nationalist (Tamir 1993, 1996), who accused their fellow liberals for putting too much emphasis on individualism and neglecting the role of the community/nation and how it renders individual liberty possible (see Jacobitti 1991: 585–604). To Tamir (1993), for instance, liberalism and nationalism are quite compatible as she argues that the historical record of modern liberal democratic states is predicated on a national and collective sense of belonging (see also Kymlicka 1995, 2001). In this section I draw on the communitarian and liberal-nationalist discourse that likens liberal thought to the idea of national community, although I problematise their normative agenda (see also Abizadeh 2004; Hutchings 2000; Mayerfeld 1998). I expose here, therefore, the contradictory logic in liberal democratic thought as I show that various liberal tropes like civil society, liberty and the ideal of a free and inclusive society are actually predicated on the fantasy of a congruent society (whether it is structured around the idea of nationality and the ‘nation-state’ as is in J. S. Mill’s thought, or on the small township community in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America). The liberal-democratic modality, as I demonstrate here, is an exclusive and civilizational construction of society which entails various technologies of homogenisation and requires the elimination of difference in order to ascertain liberal and democratic life (Jahn 2005; Passavant 2002). In other words, liberty and democratic rule are enabled only in civilized communities/countries which are nationally congruent and thus deserve, as Mill argues, to be independent (Jahn 2005). In this section, I analyse three exemplary nineteenth-century liberal discourses, demonstrating how congruency is elaborated and advocated as the necessary precondition of viable liberal and democratic systems. Whilst the linking of congruency with liberal democracy is already seen in earlier liberal democratic discourses (Rousseau 1968 [1762]), the emphasis on either nationality (Mill 1946 [1861]: 291)—constructed as a cohesive/ homogeneous collective identity—or the merits of nation/state congruency is mostly evident in the nineteenth-century liberal-democratic regime of truth. I also show how congruency is practised discursively through the utilitarian logic of Jeremy Bentham and thus how congruency is articulated, legitimated and situated within the modalities of liberalism and democracy as a technology of governance (Foucault 2008: 40–41). I start with the writings of James Mill and John S. Mill, showing how congruency is constructed as the precursor of representative democracy.

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This is evident especially in John S. Mill’s discourse, which is often taken as the modern political model of free speech, individual rights and liberty together with a critique of despotism (Urbinati 2002). Drawing on Passavant’s (2002) and Jahn’s (2005) critique of Mill’s thought, I demonstrate the contradictory liberal democratic logic in which a free society stems historically from illiberal technologies of homogenisation. I then analyse Alexis de Tocqueville’s (travel journey) Democracy in America (1988 [1835]) to show how his depiction of the American system, specifically in New England, is an amalgamation of democracy and congruency, predicated on the notions of liberty and equality. Analysing Tocqueville further demonstrates how the celebration of civil society and the merits of democracy in contemporary liberal thought (e.g., Putnam 1993, 2000), which draws on Tocqueville’s thought, actually rests on the ideal of a homogeneous and organic community, in which the Other (the black and the indigenous American) is evacuated and subjugated (Shapiro 2012: 104–122). Representative Democracy James Mill’s point of departure is the utilitarian imperative of the maximisation of happiness and the reduction of pain and suffering for the maximum number of individuals. It is this utilitarian logic that makes government and its form of representative democracy since ‘[t]he object, it is plain, can best be attained when a great number of men combine, and delegate to a small number the power necessary for protecting them all. This is government’ (Mill 1992 [1820]: 5). The challenges facing Mill in his Essay on Government is how to design a governance system that, on the one hand, delivers the maximum happiness to as many as possible, whilst, on the other hand, ensuring power is not abused and liberties are maintained (Mill 1992 [1820]: 6). Amongst the checks and balances and other mechanisms designated to guarantee that, the issue of shared interests between the public and their representative is key. When Mill discusses the elective body, he enumerates several instances in which the elective acts upon its own will and thus subjects the will of the people or the community to the will of the rulers, be it one or few. He concludes that ‘… the benefits of the Representative system are lost, in all cases in which the interests of the choosing body are not the same with those of the community’ (Mill 1992 [1820]: 27). To Mill this is a crucial point and is a major factor in what constitutes ‘good Government’. Indeed, a convergence of the government’s interests with

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those the government represents is a guarantee against the misuse of power by the representatives: ‘[i]t [the government] must have an identity of interest with the community; otherwise it will make a mischievous use of its power’ (Mill 1992 [1820]: 22, square brackets added). To Mill, in order to achieve ‘good government’, indeed a democratic rule, the rule(ers) must be part of the people and thus come from within the people itself. Only in this way can their interests be aligned. Mill’s Essay on Government construes the fantasy of congruency around the unity of interests. This congruency does not refer to the cultural homogenisation of people and culture. The need for conformity of interests in Mill’s discourse is one of a set of means designed to ensure the maximum happiness to the maximum number of people. In this emerging discourse of representative democracy predicated on liberal notions, the relationship between community and its government are best secured when there is a unity of interests. To Mill, this is not the result of collective identity or the idea of nationalism, as his son J. S. Mill would later argue, but rather the result of the democratic system, which guarantees that the representative’s reign is limited. The representative comes from the community to be governed and is expected to return to it. Unlike Rousseau’s (1968 [1762]) notion of direct democracy taking place in small and hence culturally homogeneous city-states, to Mill, congruency is congruency of interests. In J. S. Mill’s Consideration on Representative Government the relations between governed and government is further specified. The importance of nationalism, constructed as a solidified national identity, and specifically congruity of state and nation are unequivocal. The discourse now does not hint at the congruency of individuals as a community or the congruency of a people and its rulers, as in Rousseau’s model of city-states’ direct democracy; nor is it a discourse of instruments designed to ensure conformity of interests between community and government. Instead, a solidified national identity is discursively framed as the social conditions under which representative government is applicable (Mill 1946 [1861]: 151). In short, a cohesive national identity and a congruity of state and nation are key to the success of liberal democratic governance. More specifically, Mill lists three prerequisites for the applicability of representative democracy: (1) that people should be willing to accept it, (2) that they both desire and are capable of doing what it takes to preserve such a system and (3) ‘… that they should be willing and able to fulfil the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them’ (Mill 1946

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[1861]: 152). These conditions require a union of individuals, indeed a people that share a certain sense of collectivity beyond that of the village or the town. To Mill, this is produced by history and political education under the guise of a central authority, which thus means that the state as the ‘central authority’ precedes and produces historically the ‘people’. This results in a unity of individuals and their alignment with government, the precondition of viable democracy: I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and learnt to feel themselves one people, except through previous subjection to a central authority, common to all. It is through the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into plans and subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into their mind the conception of large interests, common to a considerable geographical extent. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 156)

The discourse of representative democracy now requires a ‘civilised’ nation or ‘race’ that through historical specificities has come to understand, practice and accept large scale politics, indeed on a national level. In her critique of Mill’s international thought, Jahn (2005) has clearly identified Mill’s imperialism, whereby history has given rise to certain civilized nations to emerge in contradistinction to the barbaric who do not possess the qualities required for self-rule and liberty. This is key to understanding Mill’s political thought which ought not to be read only domestically or only internationally but taken together and as such critically interrogating the othering in the ‘Millian paradigm’ (Passavant 2002). As Jahn (2005: 618) puts it: Theoretically and politically, domestically and internationally, Millian discourses exclude liberalism’s ‘others’ from that highly praised deliberation because they are defined as ‘others’ in a philosophy of history which underlies and is prior to his political and international theory.

Mill is advocating a representative (deliberative) democratic system that, in stark contrast to Rousseau’s, is not a small city-state; rather, it is a full blown nation/state, or perhaps a ‘national-state’, in the geographical and demographical sense, such that the state’s democratic mechanisms reflect and come from a union, a congruent body of people. Mill further explicates congruency and connects it to representative government in the

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section entitled ‘Nationality, as connected with representative government’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 291). To Mill, nationality is a union premised on a myriad of attributes such as race, geography and religion, whereas language plays a crucial part in the cultural unity of the people, the governed (Brubaker 1999: 62–63; Tamir 1993: 128). Nonetheless, Mill mentions several examples, such as Switzerland and Sicily, showing how these factors do not necessarily produce or contribute to a national unity. The people of Switzerland speak different languages and yet share a common nationality, whereas Sicily sees itself as a different entity to its neighbour, Naples. To Mill, the key contributor to national union is ‘political antecedents’: This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes … But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 291)

To Mill, then, these political antecedents are directly related to the issue of democracy and liberalism in that a functioning ‘good government’ can only be achieved once there is a people, a nation in the modern term of the word, that is congruent both within itself and vis-à-vis its political borders. As Mill specifically states: ‘[i]t is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 294). And in cases of multi-national states in which separation is unfeasible, the resolution, according to Mill, is the absorption of the ‘less civilised nationalities’ into the more developed ones: Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in another … Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilised and cultivated people—to be a member of the French nationality. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 294–295)

What this discourse of liberal-democracy entails, perhaps in such an obvious way for the first time, is that, first, there must be a unity, a national identity of some sort (e.g., ‘race’, language) with a collective sentiment and shared experiences of political antecedents. There must be a sense of

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community en-masse that transcends the town but that, to Mill, remains within the polity of a state and not an empire (Mill 1946 [1861]: 154– 157). There must also be a congruency between the governed and the government according to existing national lines (see Mayall 1990: 27–29; Tamir 1993). Indeed, Mill offers the ideal society as the congruency of nation and state, individuals and authority, as it came to be practised in modernity and specifically during the establishment of so many ‘nationstates’ in the twentieth century. As Passavant (2002) and Jahn (2005) explain, the necessity of national identity becomes a ‘standard of civilization’ based in history, which is then deployed to measure and evaluate, both domestically and internationally, the extent to which nations are indeed congruent and thus civilized, meaning they can be free and enjoy self-rule, or whether they lack the pre-requisites, which renders them immature or even barbarian, and thus ought to be governed and ruled by the civilized nations. ‘While relations between civilised nations … are governed by the principle of equality, relations between civilised and barbarian peoples ought to take the form of a hierarchy’ (Jahn 2005: 606) and the same goes for the domestic such that incongruent and thus ‘semi-civilized’ or completely ‘barbarian’ peoples can be incorporated into bigger and civilized nations, but not the other way around (Ibid.). Indeed, for Mill incongruent and multi-national entities will not result in a free and democratic national union because [f]ree institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 292)

Nationally incongruent polities are thus to Mill a socio-political problem, since in an incongruent state different sections of the public will be subjected to different social influences. They will read and be exposed to different texts and will not be able, according to Mill, to cooperate against a despotic government since they will not be able to rely upon one another. National congruency is therefore necessary for the functioning of liberty and the rejection of despotism: One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. ‘The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways’ and each fears more injury to itself

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from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the State. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. (Mill 1946 [1861]: 292)

The predication of liberty and democratic rule—‘free institutions’ as Mill (1946 [1861]: 292) defines them—on the ideal of congruity, the existence of a ‘people’, is thus paradoxical. To Mill, the existence of a people is key to ensuring liberty through checking government and fighting against potential state despotism. But the idea of a people is, nevertheless, produced historically through the state, through ‘previous subjection to a central authority’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 156), which is not in line with Mill’s liberal democratic values. The contradiction in Mill’s logic is thus as follows: the state exists first. It imposes its authority on the individuals under its reign, as individuals learn to acknowledge the greater collective interest (Mill 1946 [1861]: 156). Through time, a ‘people’ is produced, a congruent nationality (Mill 1946 [1861]: 291), which is aligned with authority. This congruency, in turn, renders democratic rule possible and establishes liberty. But this process, by which a ‘people’ is produced, cannot be liberal or democratic since for that we must have a people first, a united nationality with shared historical and political antecedents. To Mill, therefore, obtaining ‘free institutions’ and preventing despotism requires illiberal techniques by which national identities are consolidated and made congruent with their governments. The paradoxical logic of liberal democratic thought is further revealed as democratic rule and the liberal trope of freedom stem from the eradication of difference and pluralism and the illiberal homogenisation of individuals with their government in a geojuridical space (Meadwell 1999: 277). The congruent society, in Mill’s account, is thus a fantasmatic project, an endless venture immersed in its own paradoxical logic of progress towards national congruency and civilization. This is because congruency is established as the prerequisite of free and democratic society, which thus means that the imagined congruency of a given nation/state is never fully satisfied. A given nation may consider itself congruent enough for the sake of liberal and democratic state rule, but the state must then continuously invest in the preservation and perfection of its imagined national unity. The contradictory and tautological relationship between authority/the state (i.e., ‘previous subjection to a central authority’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 156)) and the nation is hence a continuous project of becoming and failure, enabling various technologies of rule, imperialism and exclusionary

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practices both within state boundaries and in the international arena (Jahn 2005). Past experiences under one authority produce the nation as a cohesive entity, thus rendering a liberal and democratic state rule possible, which in turn must (the state) further produce the congruity of its nation for its own self-existence and preservation as free and democratic society. The promise of fullness, of a fixed societal subjectivity, is thus presupposed but already-lost, national and imperial enjoyment is presumed historically but absent from current affairs, which consequently legitimates additional technologies of homogenisation such as education, control of demography, and the ‘civilizing mission’ abroad. Democracy in America In Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America the ideal of congruency is structured around the township subject. The township, in Tocqueville’s analysis of New England, is a small and congruent socio-political community that springs organically and celestially, which consequently renders liberty and democracy possible (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 62, see also Boesche 1987; Zetterbaum 1967). To Tocqueville and contra J. S. Mill, the unit of congruency is not the geographically large ‘nation-state’, indeed Tocqueville warns in his writings from the possibility of a tyranny of the majority and the danger in absolute power (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 287–304; see also Maletz 2002) and further discusses the advantages in the federal system. To Tocqueville it is the small organic community, manifested in the homogeneous protestant communities in New England, that characterises the ideal of societal congruency. When describing the New England system of townships, Tocqueville refers back to the writings of Nathaniel Morton from the seventeenth century, who wrote a history of the Puritan settlements in today’s State of Massachusetts. Tocqueville’s inter-textual reference to Morton’s text demonstrates the values Tocqueville asserts to be vital for a free and democratic community. Consider, for instance, where Tocqueville quotes Morton’s depiction of the first act the settlers passed: We whose names are underwritten … having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our king and country a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, convenant [sic] and combine ourselves together into a civil body

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politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof, do enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. (Morton 1826 [1669], cited in Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 39)

Tocqueville cites Morton in order to show the religious and political roots of New England values and its political system. Indeed, immediately after the citation he explains how the settlements grew exponentially after the first Puritan statement of the early seventeenth century and how the townships of New England came to be a strong and flourishing democracy. However, one of the main elements that characterises the Puritan settlements is its cultural homogeneity, most evident in the origin of the population and people’s religious and political convictions. It is, in Tocqueville’s account, a clear manifestation of equality and liberty, that is, class equality and freedom from religious oppression. Put differently, democratic life in the New England system came to succeed, according to Tocqueville, because of the homogeneity of its population, a homogeneity that manifested itself in the Puritan religion of the New Englanders and their equality: In England the nucleus of the Puritan movement continued to be in the middle classes, and it was from those classes that most of the emigrants sprang. The population of New-England grew fast, and while in their homeland men were still despotically divided by class hierarchies, the colony came more and more to present the novel phenomenon of a society homogeneous in all its parts. Democracy more perfect than any of which antiquity had dared to dream sprang full-grown and fully armed from the midst of the old feudal society. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 39)

Throughout the depiction of the New England township system, the articulation of the community’s congruency is directly connected to the issues of equality and locality. Tocqueville explicitly explains that in contrast to European states, in which ‘political existence’ was introduced from the top, in New England it sprang from the local level. Democracy and political activity started in the small township, within the small community, where the individual was intensely attached to their community and to public political life. Each community recognised the authority of the monarchy, but, as Tocqueville explains, came to be a de-facto independent legal entity. In Tocqueville’s discourse, this local-township system of gov-

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ernance is extraordinary, unique and pseudo-religious as he invokes the organic and divine nature of the township’s political life: In the laws of Connecticut and of all the other states of New England we see the birth and growth of that local independence which is still the mainspring and lifeblood of American freedom … in New England, local communities took shape as early as 1650. Interests, passions, duties, and rights took shape around each individual locality and were firmly attached thereto. Inside the locality there was a real, active political life which was completely democratic and republican … as in Athens, matters of common concern were dealt with in the marketplace and in the general assembly of the citizens. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 44)

Tocqueville’s travel journey of the New England township system can be depicted as a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story, not in the individual and ‘objective’ sense; rather, what Tocqueville offers us is precisely a fantasmatic project of societal unity and thus liberty, homogeneity and thus progress and prosperity, ‘civil society’ and hence (as neo-Tocquevilleans argue) democracy (Putnam 1993, 2000, although see Danoff 2007). Tocqueville thus provides us with a fantasy in the sense of a ‘historical future’ (see also Bakhtin 1986: 23–24, cited in Shapiro 2012: 111) that promises a ‘fullness-to-come’ (Glynos and Howarth 2007: 147). As Shapiro (2012: 104–122, 2000) explicates, Tocqueville’s analysis of the homogeneous American community evicts from its spatio-temporal uniqueness the Other. The native-American and the black are ethnically and anthropologically depicted and positioned vis-à-vis the white European programme in such a way that the native-American is an untamed subject, who has not been changed by the European man. They are child-like and lack any characteristic of nationhood (Shapiro 2000: 33). The black, to Tocqueville, shows no resistance to his master nor does he possess free will and only desires to flatter his master. As Shapiro (2012: 110) summarises: ‘[t]hey can never be effectively part of politically qualified “American life”’. This is further in line with Tocqueville’s view on liberty, slavery and colonialism in which he rejects slavery at the individual level but accepts the occupation and control of other peoples by what he saw as advanced civilisation. It is thus no surprise Tocqueville justified French rule in Algeria (Todorov 1990). To Tocqueville, the township’s congruency renders democracy and the ideals of liberalism possible. Congruity here is structured around the

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township’s community and not so much with respect to the geographically larger state à la Mill. Nonetheless, Tocqueville’s celebration of the township as a congruent socio-political life further exposes how liberal democratic thought in the nineteenth century and to date is wedded to the advantages of congruency of individuals and their alignment with authority, even if authority here is a small township. To Tocqueville, the New England township system is the embodiment of what European states were not able to produce, namely a fully independent and homogeneous community that engages with the multitude of socio-political concerns. As such, the township governance system is also connected to efficiency and to the ability of society to take care of its problems, be it the provision for the poor, the establishment of schools and the ability to invest in infrastructure. In Tocqueville’s discourse, this is enabled by the advanced legal system of the American township system and is delivered, above all, through investment in education: The law anticipates and provides in great detail for a multitude of social needs of which in France we are still now but vaguely conscious. But it is the provisions for public education which, from the very first, throw into clearest relief the originality of American civilization. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 45)

The socio-political life of the township in Tocqueville’s discourse also constructs associations between liberty and democratic values and the national/patriotic nature of the township’s everyday existence. This is not simply Tocqueville’s account of what he articulates as a democratic system that springs from below (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 61–63, 68), or what is defined as a de-centralised governance system (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 95). Rather, it is also a clear manifestation of everyday practices that create strong emotional bonds between the individual and the community. This relates, for instance, to the administration of local life and political issues (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 66–68, 71–80), or to the rule that ‘[c]itizens over sixteen years of age were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia which appointed its officers and was bound to be ready to march at any time to the country’s defense’ (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 44). One issue in particular that emphasises the constructed associations between individual liberties and democratic values and a collective sense of belonging is the production of the ‘criminal’ subject. The ‘criminal’

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emerges here as the Other in Tocqueville’s discourse, as it stands for exactly what the township opposes—the disunity and fragmentation of society. This is why, and unlike European states, Tocqueville explains, the ‘criminal’ is understood as an enemy of all and, thus, the public are not simply spectators in the process of tracking down the offender, but become active participant in the manhunt: In America the means available to the authorities for the discovery of crimes and arrest of criminals are few … Nevertheless, I doubt whether in any other country crime so seldom escapes punishment. The reason is that everyone thinks he has an interest in furnishing proof of an offense and in arresting the guilty man. During my stay in the United States I have seen the inhabitants of a county where a serious crime had been committed spontaneously forming committees with the object of catching the criminal and handing him over to the courts … In America he [the criminal] is an enemy of the human race and every human being is against him. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 96, square brackets in the original)

Herein, lies Tocqueville’s liberal-democratic discourse that marries individual liberties with a focus on communal and collective sentiments. This is explicated by Tocqueville’s understanding that to resist central authority and its despotic inclinations the individual must be strong, free and accustomed to democratic everyday practices. This individual liberty, according to Tocqueville, arises from and is manifested in the township, the small community. These linkages illustrate how the liberal democratic thought of Tocqueville, but also of liberal democratic discourse in general, construes the individual as an atom firmly grounded in their community and the necessity that this community be homogeneous. Furthermore, Tocqueville’s discourse is premised on, and articulated around, the signifiers of freedom from tyranny, democracy and the importance of individual liberty. The underlying presupposition of the township system is ‘… that each man is the best judge of his own interest and the best able to satisfy his private needs’ (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 82). Tocqueville’s logic, nonetheless, is not what is often perceived to be the kernel of liberal democratic thought and practice, that is, that it is part of a religion- and ideology-free thought devoted to rationality, efficiency and freedom. Tocqueville indeed invokes those properties, but his admiration of the New  England township system refers to organic and religious (and one

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could say racial) elements in the American democratic system. Put differently, the discourse of Democracy in America is a combination of individual liberties and social organic development that springs, develops and takes root in a divine way. The lynchpin of Democracy in America, therefore, is the township, which stands for the ideal society since it is a ‘communal society’ that develops organically: It is not by chance that I consider the township first. The township is the only association so well rooted in nature that whenever men assemble it forms itself. Communal society therefore exists among all peoples … but townships seem to spring directly from the hand of God. (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 62)

Tocqueville further argues that the township’s liberty is not the result of human design and its emergence is rooted in ‘natural’, indeed organic processes (Tocqueville 1988 [1835]: 62–63). This also illustrates how Tocqueville constructs the townships as vital for a nation’s existence. Whilst his focus on small communities resembles Rousseau’s idea of the direct-democracy city-state system, Tocqueville does refer to ‘nationstates’ and, in the American system, to federal governance. As such, he considers the unique socio-political life of the township to be a clear and necessary property of the larger state/federal system. The liberty of the individual is rooted in the township’s independence, which then affects the higher instances of authority and state control. Tocqueville’s discourse, therefore, reveals the contradictory logic in liberal democratic tradition and contemporary liberal discourses (e.g., Putnam 1993, 2000; Tamir 1993; Taylor 1990—the so called ‘neo-Tocquevilleans’, see Whittington 2001: 21–31, but also see Danoff 2007). Tocqueville’s admiration of the township’s collective socio-political life, oft-invoked as the liberal trope of ‘civil society’, is put on a pedestal and congratulated as the ideal free society which restricts state’s power. What is naturalised and unchallenged is that such a civil society is premised on a congruent society and is thus inherently exclusive, as was clearly the case in the USA and seen through Tocqueville’s literary genre (Shapiro 2000). This illustrates, once more, how liberal democratic thought is contradictory as it celebrates liberty, democracy and a free society, but nonetheless requires the elimination of difference and the homogenisation of society.

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The Congruency Leitmotif: History, National Identity and Liberalism In nineteenth-century Europe the congruency logic becomes quite dominant as various technologies of homogenisation are advocated in order to attain the ideal society. The rise of biology and other sciences and the ways in which they were used to legitimate, promote and establish societal congruency is exemplary in this respect (see Mosse 1985). This entailed the various quasi-biological classifications of mankind into races and linguistic affiliations, as in the philological writings of the Grimm Brothers, or Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the invocation of his thought in application to myriad societal issues (Hawkins 1997). Other discourses of national/societal congruency rejected the organic and racial celebration of nations and invoked instead the ideal of the social contract, the republic and the ‘civic’ character of nations. Ernest Renan (2010 [1882]) is exemplary of this, as he asserted that ‘[i]n our day one commits a serious error: one confounds nation and race, and one attributes to ethnographical or rather linguistic groups a sovereignty analogous to that of real peoples’ (Renan 2010 [1882]: Section I). A nation and the ideal of congruency, therefore, rise from ‘a community of interest’, a voluntaristic will to unite (see Brubaker 1992; Kohn 1944). Other discourses positioned congruency within a juridical logic that focused on the role of the state, sovereignty, and its relationship with the population under its authority. The Rechtstaat concept and the rise of ‘public law’ are exemplary here as they developed in German-speaking states and then Germany itself throughout the century (Bhat 2007: 65–97; Stewart 2007; Stolleis 2001: 64–66). This chapter, therefore, has merely highlighted the deployment of the nation/state congruency fantasy around the ‘nation-state’ concept and the New England township. To Hegel (1991 [1820/1821]), state and nation aspire to unite as a continuous historical process that can only be temporarily fulfilled. Congruency of state and nation and an alignment of individuals and authority, in Hegel’s discourse, is thus a fantasmatic project, since it can never be truly achieved and maintained, but is continuously reinvigorated. It is part of world history, progressing in an endless dialectical move. To J. S. Mill (1946 [1861]: 291), nation and state ought to be congruent for the success of democracy as it guarantees liberty. With Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1988 [1835]) the main unit of congruency is the small township and its everyday practices of communal life. In both

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accounts, however, racial and national civilisation is rendered superior (Jahn 2005; Shapiro 1998, 2000, 2012). What emerges, therefore, with liberal democratic thought is a strong chain of connotations between national identity/nationality, the idea of congruency and democracy. Indeed, from Alexis de-Tocqueville to J. S. Mill the concomitant of culture and authority is a pre-requisite for a functioning democracy. To Mill, this is clear since ‘free institutions’ cannot operate without a minimum of cohesive national identity that does not have other nationalities in its midst. The invocation of the various signifiers and expressions so deeply associated with liberalism—for example, ‘rule of law’, individual liberties, ‘civil society’—have thus become a way of legitimising nation/state congruency and indeed the ideal of social cohesion. One major theme that is manifested in both Hegel and liberal democratic thought, moreover, is the historicisation and spatio-temporalisation of society’s identity (Bell 2003; Mandelbaum 1974: 51). As Foucault (2004) argues, the role of the nation and its wedding to the state becomes intertwined with the role and function of history and time. In Mill’s discourse, for instance, the criterion by which a given society can examine its identity as indeed congruent and thus able to democratise is through the re-construction of its past. Such a society would then have to historicise its emergence within spatio-temporal demarcations as a society with political antecedents: ‘the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 291). To Renan, for instance, what constitutes a nation as a congruent entity is the present will of its people to live together, but, equally important, is the nation’s ‘… heroic past, great men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory)’ (Renan 2010 [1882]: Section III). This is where society knows itself through the narration of its past and through the construction of its national identity and myth (Bell 2003). What this involves are the various forms by which societies throughout modernity have come to produce their symbolic order, commemorate their military victories and defeats, the dead and the survivors through national holidays and festivals, memorialisation practices, monuments and museums, and utilise architecture so as to further construct, maintain and nourish their spatio-temporal identiterian specificities (e.g., Anderson 2006: 167–190; Basham 2016; Boswell and Evans 1999; Heath-Kelly 2016; Hobsbawm 1990: 270–271; Sylvester 2015).

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The fantasmatic project of congruency, however, does not end here and some ‘nodal point’ that developed in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are worth mentioning. These become later on knowledge anchors in the discipline of IR and in our contemporaneous modalities of societal congruity, as I further show in the next chapters. One in particular is Max Weber’s theorisation of the state and as such his engagement with modernity. Without delving into the known debates regarding Weber’s nationalism (Palonen 2001: 196–214), what Weber’s writings entail is a naturalisation of modernity as a system of national societies (Hennis 1987, cited in Norkus 2004: 391), or political association framed within states, within the boundaries of territoriality and juridical-rational structures (Bartelson 2001: 30). What Weber takes-for-granted is thus the idea of human association that has become in modernity bound within the ‘nation-state’. Moreover, Weber’s influence on IR theorists is seen in the issue of power and violence both at the national and at the international level (Walker 1993: 137–160). To Weber, what characterises the state and distinguishes it from any other form of political association is the state as bearer of the legitimate monopoly over the means of violence: [T]he modern state is an institutional association of rule (Herrschaftsverband) which has successfully established the monopoly of physical violence as a means of rule within a territory, for which purpose it unites in the hands of its leaders the material means of operation. (Weber 1994 [1919]: 316)

A different development in the modern knowledge of congruency is the establishment of the principle of national self-government/determination and at the same time the juridical emphasis on minorities’ rights (Krasner 1999: 73–104; Jackson Preece 1997: 81–84, see also Arendt 1958 [1951]: 267–302). Whilst these two norms may appear conflictual, as a certain struggle or trade-off between self-determination as territorial sovereignty on the one hand and rights of internal minorities to be respected on the other hand (Barkin and Cronin 1994; Krasner 1999), both principles were actually intertwined and predicated on the Wilsonian ideal asserting that suppressed national yearnings hinder democracy and cause war. The model of peace-making for post–WWI Europe that Wilson envisaged, therefore, was not the old ‘balance of power’, but a congruency making model in which populations and authority ought to coincide on a juridical-sovereign territory. ‘[P]eople and provinces must not be bartered

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about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were chattels or pawns in a game’ (Wilson, cited in Baker 1922: 12). The causal linkage in Wilson’s reading of the European question is that national self-determination fulfilled in statehood in tandem with minority rights will lead to democratisation of states that amongst themselves will create a collective security framework (Krasner 1999: 93; see also Throntveit 2011: 445–481). Thus, newly founded states like Poland, Estonia and Czechoslovakia had to commit themselves to full citizenship to all of their residents and protect the minorities within their borders. In the treaty with Austria, for instance, signed in St. Germain-en-Laye, 10 September 1919, the protection of minorities was a requisite for independence (as was the case with other states) and required to become part of Austria’s body of fundamental laws (see Section V, Article 62). Such protection measures reappeared in later treaties such as the Treaty of Trianon, signed 4 June 1920, and the Treaty of Sèvres, signed 10 August 1920. Apart from covenants, various other mechanisms developed in order to address potential complaints of discrimination and oppression of minorities. These included the establishment of the League of Nations and within it the Council, specifically responsible for addressing and dealing with violations of minority rights, whereas The Court of International Justice was a juridical framework for solving disputes. As Rosting (1923: 647) explains, this also meant transferring potential issues arising within and between states into a juridical arena because ‘… differences which may arise are removed from a political to a juridical—a fact which should facilitate an impartial decision’. In the next final chapters of this book I show how these developments in the modern regime of congruency—that is, the Weberain state model and the interwoven principle of self-determination with sovereignty and minority rights—become further entrenched within the discipline of IR, as I demonstrate how the fantasy of congruency is further developed, rationalised and advocated within the knowledge and practice of the international and the state-system.

Note 1. The gender construction here is quite explicit as women are confined to the family and the household: ‘[w]oman [die Frau] […] has her substantial vocation in the family’ (Hegel 1991[1820/1821]: 206, see Lloyd 1984 and Stone 2010).

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CHAPTER 6

The Nation/State Fantasy and the Production of the ‘International’ in IR Theory

To date, no nonstate corporate actor has been able to rob a nation-state of the primary loyalty of more than a small fraction of its people. (Wolfers 1962: 20)

In Chap. 5 I showed how nineteenth-century knowledge productions, diverse as they may be, are centred around the ideal of congruency as part of historical progress and vital for the flourishing of democracy. The congruent society fantasy thus becomes intertwined with progress, liberty and equality: it is made constitutive of modernity. In this chapter I interrogate the fantasy of congruency in twentieth-century thought, focusing on post–WWII traditional IR (International Relations) theory,1 as I show how nation/state congruency is now intertwined with the knowledge of the ‘international’. Analysing IR theory does not exhaust the myriad discourses in which nation/state congruency is practiced and constituted in the twentieth century. As I surveyed in the introduction, various technologies and practices attest to the pervasiveness of the congruency ideal in modernity. Nonetheless, the knowledge production of the ‘international’ as a distinct and unique sphere of expertise is exemplary of modern deployments of the congruency fantasy, specifically around the ‘nation-state’ couplet. I would argue in this chapter, nonetheless, that traditional IR scholarship reads and theorise the nation/state in a rather ambivalent and fantasmatic way thus offering a much more nuanced picture as recent studies have ­demonstrated, © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_6

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especially with respect to classical realist thought (e.g., Bell 2002, 2008; Craig 2007; Lang 2002; Lebow 2003; Molloy 2003, 2004; Williams 2005). On the one hand, the nation/state as a congruent unit becomes constitutive of the disciplinary knowledge of IR, mostly through the ‘nation-­ state’ couplet, thus allowing IR scholarship to theorise at the level of the international. The nation/state, in turn, is rendered congruent through the international prism. We witness here a certain tautological logic in which society is assumed congruent, through an alignment of state and nation, thus enabling one to speak of international relations (see also Bartelson 2015). Society is also made congruent, nonetheless, precisely because we now see it from the outside (Bartelson 2001: 12; Walker 1993). As Rosenboim (2019) recently argues, there were ‘flexible and mutually constitutive dynamics’ between what she defines as the ‘political spaces’ of the ‘nation-state’ and that of the global, and both were shaped by historical, technological and ideological transformations. The production of the congruent society within the discipline of IR has another implication, namely that congruency is now also the unity of the ‘international system’ (Waltz 1979; Wolfers 1962) or ‘international society’ (Bull 1977), namely that nation/state congruency functions as an ordering principle for the discipline of IR. This is an international system/ society that consists of congruent ‘nation-states’, but that as a result becomes a unity in itself. IR theory, therefore, further normalises the Weberian (Weber 1994 [1919]) theory of the modern state and the norm of national self-determination, albeit by linking it with the knowledge and practices of the international as a site of intervention. On the other hand, traditional IR also questions, challenges and even rejects the idea and ideal of nationalism, the ‘nation-state’ and its presumed unity. The obstacle to complete and secure ‘nation-state’ societies, fantasy2 in the psychoanalytical terminology, lies at the level of the international, that is, at the level of the outside. As recent revisits of classical realist IR theory demonstrate, also defined as ‘reflexive realists’ (Steele 2007), nationalism and the nation/state are far from being essentialised in the scholarship of, for instance, Hans Morgenthau, E. H. Carr and John Herz (Lebow 2003, 2009; Molloy 2003, 2006; Solomon 2012; Tjalve 2008: 177–178; Williams 2005). According to Molloy (2004), for instance, Morgenthau did not take the ‘nation-state’ as given nor as permanent and with the advent of thermonuclear technology Morgenthau (1957) came to question its ability to protect its inhabitants, indeed its viability in world

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history (Molloy 2004: 16). Herz (1957) also questioned the function of the territorial sovereign ‘nation-state’ in times of nuclear technology, suggesting new forms of political/territorial order might arise (see the discussion in Craig 2007: 195–215). With respect to E. H. Carr, often described as one of the ‘fathers’ of modern realism and its reliance on the ‘nation-state’ model and nationalism, Molloy (2003), as well as Oren (2009), actually demonstrate Carr’s rejection of nationalism, reading it as an aggressive force in global politics lending itself to Herrenvolk mentality and policies. Molloy (2003: 290– 291, 302) further points to Carr’s post–WWII works such as Nationalism and After (Carr 1945) in which Carr clearly calls for a transformation in global politics and the need to reject nationalism as a project of modernity. From an ethical perspective, Morgenthau went on to critique what he defined as ‘new nationalism’, which refers to the nationalism developed after WWI, as destructive and self-defeating. Moreover, Morgenthau asserted that nationalism as such did not offer a solution to the problem of political order and that only through combining nationalism with rationality one could achieve an ‘ethical politics of responsibility’ manifested through the ‘national interest’ (Williams 2005: 184). As Lang (2002, 2007) further argued, Morgenthau’s conceptions of nationalism, the ‘nation-state’ and the national interest are more complex and ambivalent than often assumed. Lang argued that Morgenthau did recognise the power of nationalism and the importance of the ‘nation-state’ as a unit in global politics, on the one hand, but Morgenthau also saw the dangers in nationalism and the need to restrain nationalism (although compare with Pin-Fat 2005, who critiques this ambivalence and Morgenthau’s grammar as lending itself, tragically, to the totalitarianism Morgenthau wanted to avoid). In contributing to these relatively new readings of traditional (mostly classical realist) IR theory, I will show how the ideal nation/state congruency functions as a fantasy, namely as an attempt to cover the lack of national unity and state sovereignty and territoriality by projecting the ‘domestic’ incongruency and insecurity onto the external dimension. This is done precisely by rendering the international system/society anarchical, by accentuating the struggle for power and by emphasising the various threats and dangers that lie in the relations between states. In summary, this chapter makes three major arguments: first, I argue that traditional IR theory in the post–WWII era construe the fantasy of

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nation/state congruency around the ‘nation-state’ couplet and as constitutive of the ‘international’. Second, however, traditional IR discourse does not see the ‘nation-state’ or nationalism as fait-accompli, neither historically nor normatively, and indeed pre-suppose the unity of the ‘nation-­ state’ only analytically and functionally for the production of a distinct knowledge system. Traditional IR theory, therefore, does not take the ‘nation-state’ as ontologically given. Third, the fantasy of congruency is now transposed onto the ‘international’, clearly seen through the theorisation of the anarchical international, the danger of (nuclear) war and/or the need for collaboration and institution building in order to prevent conflict and/or achieve peace. The ‘international’, consequently, establishes its own congruent identity, which in turn renders the ‘international’ a site of intervention, manifested in the various IR theories and models developed in the post–WWII era. My point here is not to recover lost principles in traditional (realist or other) IR theory, nor to salvage it, particularly classical realism, from the clutches of Waltzian neorealism. Rather, I wish to demonstrate how traditional IR theorisation is fantasmatic in its reading of modern society, by reading the congruency of the nation/state in an ambivalent way, thus rendering the outside the obstacle, fantasy2, to the perceived wholeness of the national body. In the following I look into the production of the ‘international’ in the discipline of IR from E. H. Carr’s work in 1939, The Twenty Years Crisis, to the late 1970s including the works of non-realist theorists such as Karl Deutsch and Martin Wight. I address here three interconnected discursive practices by which the congruency of states and nations is constituted and established in IR and how nation/state incongruency is projected onto the international. The first refers to the invocation of nationalism, the ‘nation-state’ and the state-system as a clear characteristic of modernity, indeed the apex of modernity. Nationalism is depicted as group self-­ awareness seeking to secure its interests vis-à-vis other groups that moves towards ‘statehood’ in an almost teleological way. The ‘international’, therefore, is made intelligible through the consolidation of its constitutive parts, ‘nation-states’. The second practice refers to the idea of the ‘nation-­ state’ as the main locus of identification and as such the likening of individuals’ identities and interests with that of the ‘nation-state’. This discursive practice renders the ‘nation-state’ as unitary due to its power to extract material and emotional resources from its population. The third practice refers to the state-sovereignty nexus, that is, the invocation of the ‘nation-state’ as a homogeneous authority vis-à-vis the population under its reign.

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Modernity, the ‘End’ of Nationalism and the Coupling of Nation and State In IR, and in the social sciences in general, the ‘nation-state’ concept stands for a complete unity that is quintessentially modern. Popular sovereignty represented and manifested in a territorially bounded sovereign state is thus articulated as the apex of (Western) modernity, a phenomenon that cannot have taken place in Medieval Europe (e.g., Carr 2001 [1939], 1945; Deutsch 1953a; Eisenstadt 1966; Gellner 1964; Huntington 1968). Karl Deutsch’s work on nationalism and his theory of security communities is exemplary here (1953a, b, 1957), as he portrays modernity and nationalism as a process of unification and assimilation reaching its destiny in the state, the ‘nation-state’. To Deutsch, the rise of nationalism and the ‘nation-state’ since the late eighteenth century are intertwined with modern developments such as economic growth, migration to cities and the assimilation of people as part of communication grids and social mobility (Deutsch 1953a: 168–195). Deutsch thus reads the ‘nation-state’ as the apex of modernity, although he advocates finding the conditions for integration on a higher supra-national level in order to promote security and prevent war (Deutsch 1953a: 168–169, 194–195, 1969). The notion of nationalism as unification and assimilation of people can already be seen in Deutsch’s distinction between ‘people’, ‘nation’ and ‘nation-state’, suggesting a stratified form of differentiation: ‘… a people … is a group of persons with complementary communications habits. A nation is then a people which has gained control over some institutions of social coercion, leading eventually to a full-fledged nation-state’ (Deutsch 1953a: 169). The unification of individuals into a nation and a ‘nation-­ state’ is carried through the symbolisation and institutionalisation of ‘group awareness’, a process that is often not intentional but nonetheless quite powerful. Deutsch constructs nations as a socially produced group consciousness that once constructed has strong effect and political power: Group awareness, on the other hand, seems clearly a matter of social institutions. Some secondary symbols are attached to some aspects of group life and are repeated and disseminated over and over again by an organization or institution, often for a purpose that has nothing to do with nationality, or which might even be opposed to it. After a time, the institution may change or disappear, the organized repetition of the symbols may cease—but if there were enough of a primary reality capable of being symbolized, and if

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there had been going on that basic process of social mobilization which has been described earlier, then the results of the dissemination of those symbols may well prove irreversible. (Deutsch 1953a: 186, italics in the original)

Nations and nationalism, for Deutsch, may thus be the result of unintended processes, but they have an innate drive, that is, an inherent shift towards a realisation in a ‘nation-state’ that seeks to preserve the interests of its members vis-à-vis, and at the expense of, other ‘nation-states’. To Deutsch, this is an integral part of nations and nationalism in an age of modernity since … nationalism is the preference for the competitive interest of this nation and its members over those of all outsiders in a world of social mobility and economic competition, dominated by the values of wealth, power, and prestige, so that the goals of personal security and group identification appear bound up with the group’s attainment of these values. (Deutsch 1953a: 169, italics in the original)

Deutsch’s interest in nationalism, its emergence and development in modernity, is directly linked to the study of the international and Deutsch’s later theorisation of security communities (Stullerova 2014). Deutsch, therefore, did not essentialise the nation/state in modernity, albeit recognising its political and social power and its important effects on war and peace. As such, Deutsch was interested in interrogating the relationship between ‘national and international stability’ (Stullerova 2014: 315), thus in a way similarly to the warnings issued by Morgenthau and Carr with respect to nationalism (Molloy 2003, 2006; Williams 2005). Moreover, to Deutsch, analysing the processes of national self-determination as well as homogenisation (or assimilation as he often puts it) was key to moving away from conflict at the international level and finding alternatives to the model of the ‘nation-state’ and national societies (Deutsch 1969). The welding of modernity to the ‘nation-state’ and the process of unification by which individuals become a congruent society also appears in E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years Crisis. When Carr deals with what he defines as ‘The Nature of Politics’ (2001 [1939]: 91–96) he asserts that individuals have always lived in groups, thereby invoking Aristotle (Carr 2001 [1939]: 91), but that in modernity it is the ‘nation-state’ that expresses the contemporary form of political association. Like Deutsch and others, Carr maintains that the state is constituted by the unification of individuals, which then produces a sense of collective identity and interests.

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Nonetheless, Carr emphasises that the unity and congruency of the state as an actor in the ‘international’ is also achieved through coercion, violence and war: The state, like other societies, must be based on some sense of common interests and obligations among its members. But coercion is regularly exercised by a governing group to enforce loyalty and obedience; and this coercion inevitably means that the governors control the governed and ‘exploit’ them for their own purposes. (Carr 2001[1939]: 91)

Elsewhere, Carr specifies the emotive power the ‘modern nation’ possesses. As he argues, nations obtain a sense of ‘face-to-face’ relationship amongst the national members, like the family. This is done ‘… through a more or less uniform education, a popular national press, broadcasting and travel facilities, and a skilful use of symbols’ (2001 [1939]: 148). Carr’s historical and analytical engagement with nationalism is further unearthed in his 1945 Nationalism and After. Historically, Carr offers a periodisation of the emergence of nationalism in Europe and beyond, What Gellner (1992) called ‘stages in the evolution of nationalism’. To Carr (1945: 6): The nation in its new and popular connotation had come to stay. International relations were henceforth to be governed not by the personal interests, ambitions and emotions of the monarch, but by the collective interests, ambitions and emotions of the nation.

It is not the case that Carr was advocating nationalism or the ideal of the ‘nation-state’. Carr traced the emergence and evolution of nationalism from the old European monarchies to modern forms of nationhood, but Carr was mostly interested in the international (Gellner 1992) and ethically speaking sought to find ways to transcend the pitfalls of nationalism. According to Molloy (2003, 2006: 29), Carr did not see nationalism and the ‘nation-state’ as ordering principles of the international system. In fact, Carr argued that the anarchical nature of the international system was premised on power and its distribution, whilst further offering a ‘proto-­critical’ and emancipatory reading of structural change at the level of the international. Indeed, as Bell (2002) and Oren (2009) clearly emphasise, Carr’s non-positivist/naturalist epistemological stance was that ‘Political thought is itself a form of political action. Political science is the science not only of what is, but of what ought to be’ (Carr 2001

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[1939]: 6). This may be due to Carr’s focus on the international, as Gellner (1992) argued, and ought to be read in the changing historical contexts of Carr’s works. Suffice to say, however, that Carr, in both his 1939 critique of liberalism/utopianism and in his 1945 historical analysis of nationalism, offers an historical account of nationalism and the ‘nationstate’ in modernity, its importance to the production of the modern international, whilst also offering some pathways to transformation. The coupling of state and nation is also theorised in IR through the coercive and violent practices of state-making, through war, as they become constitutive of modernity. Raymond Aron’s War and Peace (1966 [1962]), for instance, links the building of ‘nation-states’ with violence and war, as he suggests that ‘… the stakes of war are the existence, the creation or the elimination of states’ (Aron 1966 [1962]: 7). Furthermore, Aron points to the ‘ambiguity of “international relations”’ (1966 [1962]: 7) in the sense that conflict and war are characteristic not only of relations amongst unitary ‘nation-states’, but also within them. Such conflicts, Aron argues, may start as civil wars, but they can become international as violence leads to the creation of new ‘nation-states’. To Aron, therefore, the congruency of nation and state is intertwined with the history and dynamics of war, which leads almost progressively towards new ‘nation-­ states’. As Hoffmann (1985) argues, Aron’s theorisation of the international—in Peace and War, but also in his other works such as his Études politiques (1972)—has paid more attention than his contemporary realists such as Morgenthau to the interaction of domestic and external factors and their effects on war and violence. This is important to my argument since it demonstrates that with Aron, as with other traditional IR theorists of the time, whether we define them as realists or not (Kolodziej 1985), nationalism and the ‘nation-state’ couplet are both construed as indivisible parts of modernity and the international, and at the same time how the ‘nation-state’ is read in more nuanced ways and far from the unitary model that is often associated with traditional IR theory. The ‘nation-state’ couplet is also produced in Aron’s discourse when he defines the nation concept and its features in modernity, as he asserts that a nation is the ‘… vehicle of a state and an autonomous subject on the historical stage’ (Aron 1966 [1962]: 295). He goes on to articulate the historical and sociological dynamics of nation-building in modern Europe, identifying population transfers in Central and Eastern Europe as key to the creation of national-states. Aron’s discourse fuses the nation and the state to political sovereignty, thus producing a unitary, indeed congruent

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entity, interacting with other similar units. As Aron specifies, the nation entails mass participation in politics, sovereignty vis-à-vis external political forces and congruity within its boundaries—a convergence of culture, people and state: The nation, as the ideal type of the political unit, has a triple characteristic: the participation of all those governed in the state under the double form of conscription and universal suffrage, the coincidence of this political will and of a community of culture, and the total independence of the national state with regard to the external world. (Aron 1966 [1962]: 295)

The ‘Nation-State’ as the Main Locus of Identification This discursive practice is characteristic of the various classical, and later structuralist, realist IR theories that construct the ‘nation-state’ as the main organisation of political life. The ‘nation-state’ is intertwined with the notions of territoriality, sovereignty and nationalism (Herz 1950, although see Herz 1957). Herein, the state is not constructed as a ‘black-­ box’; rather, what is assumed is that the modern state is a national-state and thus the representative of national societies, where the individual’s interests are the ‘nation-state’s interests. As The International Relations Dictionary defines in 1969, nationalism is a collective sentiment that ‘… makes the state the ultimate focus of the individual’s loyalty’ (Plano and Olton 1969, cited in Connor 1972: 334). In Arnold Wolfers’ (1962) Discord and Collaboration the primacy of the ‘nation-state’ is unquestioned. To Wolfers, the ‘nation-state’ may be a complex structure rather than a ‘black-box’, but it nonetheless acts as such in the international sphere. In Wolfers’ realist account, the congruency of modern society is structured around the ‘nation-state’ for in modernity it is the ‘nation-state’ that pertains to people’s emotions and desires. The ‘nationstate’ is socially constructed as the main locus of identification for individuals. Psychologically, nothing is more striking today than the way in which men in almost every part of the globe have come to value those possessions upon which independent national statehood depends, with the result that men, in their public capacity as citizens of a state, are willing to make the most sweeping sacrifices of their own well-being as private individuals in the interest of their nation. Therefore, state interests are indeed human interests in fact, the chief source of political motivation today. (Wolfers 1962: 6)

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Carr’s analysis of the ‘international’ on the eve of WWII also asserts the supreme role of the ‘nation-state’, whilst asking whether the ‘nation-state’ would be superseded by a different political unit in the future (Carr 2001 [1939]: 209–210). Carr explains that the invocation of the nation as a unifying symbol became so powerful in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that all socio-political demands—such as human rights, class rights and demands for equality—became embodied in the ‘nation-state’. Harmony of wills became possible neither in the idea of individual universal rights, nor in the class struggle Marx proclaimed; rather, Carr maintains, it was the ‘nation-state’ that came to be the vehicle of all demands and rights: The nation became, more than ever before, the supreme unit round which centre human demands for equality and human ambitions for predominance. Everywhere in Europe, national governments and one-party states made their appearance … the inequality which threatened a world upheaval was not inequality between individuals, nor inequality between classes, but inequality between nations. (Carr 2004 [1939]: 210)

In Politics among Nations (1985 [1948]), Hans Morgenthau emphasises the power of ‘modern nationalism’ and links it with both ‘human nature’ and foreign policy. Morgenthau asserts that to understand foreign policy, the behaviour of ‘nation-states’ in the international realm, we ought to appreciate the emotional power nationalism and the nation exert and thus how the ‘nation-state’ entails myriad technologies of homogenisation. To Morgenthau (1946: 192), the key factor is human nature as he endows the human subject with almost endless desire for power, animus dominandi. According to Solomon (2012), taking a more nuanced and rather psychoanalytically orientated reading of Morgenthau, the human condition entails not only the desire for power, but also love and thus the need to account for Morgenthau’s theory of the limited self. As Solomon (2012) explains, Morgenthau’s human condition entails an endless and impossible search for some form of ontological sense of subjectivity, what Morgenthau’s called the ‘shock of wonderment’. Consider also Pin-Fat’s (2005) grammatical analysis of Morgenthau’s national interest (Morgenthau 1985 [1948], 1951, 1952), in which she points to Morgenthau’s rendering of the ‘nation-state’ the source of ­ethical authority. Pin Fat critically unpacks Morgenthau’s key arguments against the notion of morality in the realm of international politics and the importance of the ‘national interest’ as both politically purposeful and

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ethically sound. That is to say that according to Morgenthau, the key ethical stance resides not in universal principles, but in the key objective of nations/states to survive, which also entails the preservation of the ‘nation’s territory, its culture and its political institutions’ (Pin-Fat 2005: 233). Pin-Fat further demonstrates how this stance of selfishness is also the result of Morgenthau’s theorisation of the subject (Morgenthau 1951, 1952), and how, according to Morgenthau, if we are able to establish such an order of ‘nation-states’ pursuing selfishly their national interests we would in effect have a more secured and restrained international environment. In other words, and as others have shown (Molloy 2004; Williams 2005), Morgenthau’s ‘national interest’ offers a form of restrain on the desire for power, induce prudence amongst state leaders and paradoxically might establish a moral order. According to Williams (2005) it is the ‘national interest’ that serves as an ethical position of responsibility precisely because it marries nationalism with rationalism. Nonetheless, and as Pin-Fat (2005) points out, by rejecting universal moral values and insisting on the ‘national interest’ as an ethical position, a restraining force, Morgenthau in effect ‘mysticise’ the ‘nation-state’ as the ‘ultimate source of authority’ (Pin-Fat 2005: 233). The logic is as follows: Morgenthau sees the ‘nation-state’ as the boundaries of moral behaviour which means that the ‘[t]he “concretisation” … of universal moral principles seems to be achieved through the existence of a moral consensus that exists within a nation-state, “society”’. As such and as I suggested earlier, Morgenthau’s reading of nationalism and the ‘nation-state’ are not simplistic or approving, taking them as given. We can say that throughout his writings in the 1950s and 1960s and his political activism especially vis-à-vis the Vietnam War, Morgenthau sought to liberate the USA from the tragedy of human nature’s lust for power as well as the devastating effects of nationalism (Kostagiannis 2014; Molloy 2004; Oren 2009; Williams 2005). In fact, what recent revisits of Morgenthau’s works demonstrate is precisely his reading of the nation/ state and nationalism as key forces in the history of modern global politics and the need, adopting the Weberian ideal-type (Turner and Mazur 2009), to formulate an approach to global politics that restrains unchecked power and avoids totalitarianism. Modern society, according to Morgenthau, has come to control, supersede, channel and institutionalise human drive such that the nation emerges as a unified and congruent whole. A source of authority, as Pin-Fat (2005) shows, and as the main locus of identification. The key demarcations that arise with modern society are between ‘national

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communities’, not within them as such. The ‘nation-state’ thus becomes the source of identification for the individual that can ‘materialise’ their drive for power through the ‘nation-state’ and in a paradoxical, albeit problematic way, restrain power on the global level. To Morgenthau, this explains how the masses identify with their ‘nation-state’s’ foreign policy, feel affected by its actions and take pride when the ‘nation-state’ is strong and powerful. The ‘nation-state’ becomes the main locus of identification for it can—through institutions, symbols and other technologies of homogenisation—transpose the human lust for power onto the international arena and this is exactly where we see the fantasy of congruency in operation: When we are conscious of being members of a very powerful nation … we flatter ourselves and feel a great pride. It is as though we all, not as individuals but collectively, as members of the same nation, owned and controlled so magnificent a power … Power pursued by the individual for his own sake is considered an evil … [p]ower disguised by ideologies and pursued in the name and for the sake of the nation becomes a good for which all citizens must strive. (Morgenthau 1985 [1948]: 119)

What arises with this discursive practice, the production of the ‘nation-­ state’ as the main locus of identification, is that the state can be identified with its individuals: society is congruent and structured around the ideal of a national-state. This naturalises and constructs an unbreakable relationship between the state and the nation, and between individuals and authority. The ‘nation-state’, therefore, emerges here as a discursive space that entails an indivisible relationship in which the identity and role of the people, the nation and the person are the same. This convergence of people and state enables the known vocabulary of mainstream IR, consisting of the iconic tropes like the ‘national interest’, ‘national security’, the sovereignty principle and ‘territorial integrity’ (e.g., Wolfers 1962: 8; Herz 1950, 1957; Morgenthau 1985 [1948]).

The State–Sovereignty Nexus The state–sovereignty nexus refers to the ways in which the state as an actor is constructed in IR as the highest authority in the ‘international’, that is, as the final authority vis-à-vis its population, its nation, within a given territory. This ultimate power is produced discursively in traditional IR as the result of international anarchy, as there is no supra-national

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organisation or ‘world government’ to control and mediate relations amongst ‘nation-states’ (Aron 1966 [1962]: 738–743; Carr 2004 [1939]: 211–213; Morgenthau 1985 [1948]: 328–334, 341–346; Wight 2004 [1978]: 100–104). Indeed, this distinction clearly marked to traditional IR theorists their disciplinary identity (although see Guilhot 2008) and the distinction between the ‘nation-state’ and its environment. As Wight (2004 [1978]: 102) puts it: Anarchy is the characteristic that distinguishes international politics from ordinary politics. The study of international politics presupposes absence of a system of government, as the study of domestic politics presupposes the existence of one … while in domestic politics the struggle for power is governed and circumscribed by the framework of law and institutions, in international politics law and institutions are governed and circumscribed by the struggle for power.

This means that the congruency fantasy of states as ‘nation-states’—that is, as mechanisms of control of populations within bounded territorial spaces—is also intertwined with the sovereignty–anarchy relationship, or what Walker (1993) identifies as the ‘inside–outside’ binary. The state, however, is not only a ‘billiard-ball’ that ‘acts’ according to external stimuli (Wolfers 1962; Waltz 1979). The state is constructed as a complex political mechanism consisting of various economic, juridical and socio-political factors and subjects (Wright 1955: 55–559, 1957: 24–48). Nonetheless, the state is articulated as a discursive space in which all other entities, factors and subjects are positioned hierarchically and in which all possible interests and motivations are funnelled into the highest authority of the state. The state as the highest instance of authority is encapsulated here à-la Jean Bodin (1992 [1576]), who articulated sovereignty as inherently indivisible and thus the hallmark of the state as in itself indivisible. As Morgenthau (1985 [1948]: 341) puts it: If sovereignty means supreme authority, it stands to reason that two or more entities—persons, groups of persons, or agencies—cannot be sovereign within the same time and space. He who is supreme is by logical necessity superior to everybody else; he can have no superior above him or equals beside him.

This discursive practice by which the state is articulated as the highest authority vis-à-vis its people, however defined, is also clear in the various attempts at describing the international system, the key units in IR (Wolfers

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1962: 3–24; Wright 1955: 555–559, 1957: 35), and the ‘level-of-analysis’ problem (Singer 1961: 77–92; Waltz 2001 [1959], see also Allison 1969: 689–718; Jervis 1976: Chap. 1). Even theories of foreign policy that interrogated the internal workings of states’ apparatuses and articulated states as complex structures—for example, the state’s bureaucracy and the decision-making dynamics of governments and cabinets (e.g., Hilsman 1967; Janis and Mann 1977; Jervis 1976; Simon 1976)—produced the state as the final authority in the ‘international’ through which policy is produced and projected vis-à-vis the state’s externality. Consequently, it does not matter what level of analysis is deployed, be it Morgenthau’s human nature, Waltz’s ‘third image’ or Allison’s bureaucratic model; the notion of the unitary state is nonetheless construed as the final authority within the international realm. What this discourse of the sovereign and unified ‘nation-state’ means is that the ‘nation-state’ is not an ontological reality. The ‘nation-state’ is construed as a complex structure that ‘acts’ only through individuals’ decisions: There can be no “state behaviour” except as the term is used to describe the combined behavior of individual human beings organized into a state. Not only do men act differently when engaged in pursuing what they consider the goals of their “national selves,” but they are able to act as they do only because of the power and influence generated by their nations organized as corporate bodies. Therefore, only when attention is focused on states, rather than on individuals, can light be thrown on the goals pursued and means employed in the name of nations and on the relationships of conflict or co-­ operation, of power competition or alignment that characterize international politics. (Wolfers 1962: 8–9)

What emerges here is the idea of the state as structure/‘corporate body’ (Wolfers 1962: 9) that does not ‘act’ or ‘think’ as a person would, but that, nonetheless, structures the activities of people within it through various mechanisms that ultimately result in a unified action on the outside. This focus on the ‘international’, as the main level-of-analysis, or the ‘third image’ in Waltz’s work (Waltz 2001 [1959]: 159–186), shows how the state is articulated as a sovereign structure that channels all possible internal forces into a unified policy as it interacts with other states in an anarchical system. By the same token, Rudolph Rummel in his study of conflict and war construes the double-structure and function of the state. Internally, Rummel explains, states are ‘fields’ in the sense that they consist of spontaneous interactions amongst various forces:

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[I]n the state’s external relations, around the rim dividing the state-society from the foreign world, elites maintain coercive control. To move anything or anyone across this rim—to trade or travel, to emigrate or immigrate, to work or play, is of potential concern to the elite and usually requires their permission. Of this, the passport is an almost universal symbol. (Rummel 1979: Vol. 4, Chap. 3)

The discursive space of the state consists of various concepts such as the people, society, elite, political groups and many more, but that at least externally produce a congruent policy and so the state only appears to act. This complex structure of authority is not to be mistaken for a person, or a ‘billiard ball’; rather, the state is a complex authority that ‘structures behavior’ and via which one thinks, acts and behaves:2 The state is still not a living human being; it has no real personality; it does not behave; you cannot kick it. The modern state is a society controlled by a government (another legal fiction) based on an internal balance of powers among the people of a state, which defines who has authoritative status to act on behalf of the state. (Rummel 1979: Vol. 4, Chap. 3, italics in the original)

The state, to reiterate, does not act; elites, decision-makers, organisations and bureaucracies within the state do. The state becomes a naturalised form, a structure through which action and reaction take place. The state may seem redundant in these accounts of world politics, and yet the state cannot be ‘thrown out’ as it remains, even artificially, the highest authority in political affairs (Bartelson 2001: 77–113).

The ‘Nation-State’—International Nexus

and the ‘International’ as a Site of Intervention

The ‘nation-state’ and the state-system are the hallmarks of post–WWII IR. Traditional IR theory has long been critiqued for reading states as unitary and homogeneous entities that pursue their interests in an anarchical environment and seek to accumulate power/security. IR is thus the knowledge of the state-system—of the interactions between ‘nation-states’ constructed as unitary entities. As Aron (1966 [1962]: 5) argues: ‘relation among states, i.e. strictly inter-state relations, constitute international relations par excellence’. To more recent critical voices, this focus on the ‘nation-state’ as the main unit in IR and as a congruent entity was dubbed

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as the ‘fetishisation of the state’ (Wyn-Jones 1996: 199 cited in Peoples 2007: 274), ‘statism’ (Booth 1991) and ‘state-centrism’ (see also Agnew 1994). In this vein, many others have questioned, challenged and deconstructed the naturalised state-system that is so endemic to mainstream IR theory. These include a critique of political realism and the distinction it produces between the peaceful inside and the anarchical outside (Walker 1993); the idea of sovereignty and territoriality, which is far from a fixed juridical and/or territorial element of the ‘international’ (e.g., Agnew 1994; Ashley 1987: 403–434; Bartelson 1995; Deudney 1996: 190–239; Kratochwil 1986; Osiander 2001; Ruggie 1993: 139–174), the taken-for-­ granted interests of states and oft-used expressions such as the ‘national interest’ and ‘national security’, which are not pre-given but rather depend on various factors such as culture and historical specificities (Gupta 1995; Katzenstein 1996; Weldes 1996: 275–318); or that the ‘anarchical’ nature of the ‘international’ is not necessarily that which entails the unavoidable ‘security dilemma’ (Herz 1950), and that thus can be socially constructed so as to produce mutual trust amongst states and obtain peace (Adler and Barnett 1998; Wendt 1992, 1999). A major bias highlighted by Agnew (1994) is the naturalisation of states as ‘containers of societies’, or as Wimmer and Schiller (2002) put it ‘methodological nationalism’ (see also Chernilo 2006: 129–140). This bias entails the naturalisation of the ‘nation-state’ system not only in IR but in the social sciences in general, as ‘[t]he social sciences were captured by the apparent naturalness and givenness of a world divided into societies along the lines of nation-states’ (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 304, who draw on Berlin 1998). As Connor (1972: 332–336) has shown, IR theory seemed to have used the two concepts ‘nation’ and ‘state’ interchangeably. As such, the vocabulary of post–WWII IR theory did not only naturalise the ‘nation-state’, but also produced the two concepts as mutually constitutive. As Connor (1972: 334) explains, the tendency is not just to equate the nation with the state, but also to assume that national borders and state borders coincide, that the geopolitical and legal borders of states are aligned with the collective sentiments of groups (see also Miller 2007). This arises not from conceptual misunderstandings (Connor 1994), but because the two notions are rendered homologous. As some have already shown (e.g., Walker 1993; Bartelson 1995, 1998) this is created through the inside–outside distinction such that ‘… when viewed from the international outside, the state appears as a unified whole, marked by its sover-

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eignty and individuated through reciprocal recognition by other similar entities’ (Bartelson 2001: 12). Nonetheless, the construction of the congruent ‘nation-state’ is rendered intelligible not solely as a result of separating the external from the domestic, established by Vattel’s ‘Law of Nations’ (2011 [1758]; see also Beaulac 2004: 127–183) or the ‘balance of power’ in Europe; rather and following the genealogy undertaken here, it is through the ‘nation-state’ couplet that the congruent society is animated. I argue, therefore, that contemporary critiques of traditional IR miss two, contradictory and yet complementary, important elements relating to the nexus between the fantasy of the congruent nation/state and the ‘international’. First, state unity is not only the result of an external perspective. The role of nationalism and the power of the ‘nation-state’ to extract loyalty and even sacrifice on part of its people is a recurrent theme in traditional IR theory. As Morgenthau suggests, this entails a ‘Victory of Nationalism over Internationalism’ by which he means, like Wolfers (1962), that one’s loyalty is to the ‘nation-state’ rather than a certain universal value. Moreover, as Morgenthau explains, this is characteristic of modernity and the age of nationalism and the ‘nation-state’: [T]here is the enormously increased ability of the nation state to exert moral compulsion upon its members. This ability is the result partly of the almost divine prestige the nation enjoys in our times, partly of the control over the instruments molding public opinion. (1985 [1948]: 270)

Moreover, the ideal of the congruent society is wedded to the discourse of the ‘international’ as a specific knowledge system. The international is thus the compilation of similar units, societies structured around the ideas of nationalism and the ‘nation-state’. Societies are thus congruent by virtue of being national societies with clear boundaries and territorial sovereignty. The state emerges as the authority that rises from within society and relies on it. This is important for it shows how in traditional IR theory the nation (in Morgenthau’s vocabulary the ‘national society’) is wedded to the state, which in turn constitutes the international realm as a system of ‘nation-states’. To Morgenthau (1985 [1948]: 532), therefore, the state per se is not the sufficient element in pacifying the internal dimension of international politics; rather, what is key is national society, a collective that holds the ability to extract material and emotional resources from its members:

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The state is not the artificial creation of a constitutional convention, conceived in the image of some abstract principles of government and superimposed upon whatever society might exist. On the contrary, the state is part of the society from which it has sprung, and prospers and decays as society prospers and decays. The state, far from being a thing apart from society, is created by society. (Morgenthau 1985 [1948]: 532)

The power of nationalism as group awareness and its aspiration to align with juridical and territorial control, that is, state borders, is articulated as a hallmark of modernity. It is thus the assumption of the pervasiveness and identitarian power of the ‘nation-state’ that renders the ‘international’ as relations amongst states, in which each state speaks on behalf of and represents a national society (see also Wight 2004 [1978]: 108). Second and despite the construction of the ‘nation-state’ as a unitary unit in world affairs, the ‘nation-state’, nonetheless, is not an ontological determinacy. By this I mean that post–WWII IR scholarship does acknowledge the possibility and existence of incongruent societies and of political units that differ from the ideal-type of the unitary ‘nation-state’. Aron, for instance, uses the examples of rebellions and intrastate violence that obscure the ideal distinction between the pacified inside and the anarchical outside. Civil wars, Aron maintains, may develop into foreign policy and international war and thus ‘… the course of relations among political units is influenced in many ways by events within those units’ (Aron 1966 [1962]: 7, see also Morgenthau 1985 [1948]: 532–533). To Wight, moreover, the state only appears to act as one because of the external perspective and in the eyes of international law (2004 [1978]: 108). As he explains, most ‘nation-states’ are not truly a coupling of state and nation, they are not congruent societies and mismatches between national sentiments and state boundaries are quite common: France alone comes close near to being a homogeneous nationality … the United States is a unique attempt to create a new nation from immigrants of all European nationalities. The word ‘nationalism’ describes the collective self-assertion of a nation … this compels us to speak of conflicting nationalisms within a single state. (Wight 2004 [1978]: 28)

One the one hand, nationalism and the ‘nation-state’ are rendered as the main political unit in the ‘modern international’, being able to exert obedience and loyalty more than any other association or set of values. At the

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same time, the incongruity between nations and states and the blurring of the inside–outside distinction is also put forth thus, as Aron (1966 [1962]: 4–8) argues, making the boundaries of IR as a knowledge system rather ambiguous. I would suggest, therefore, that the unity of the ‘nation-state’ is not pre-supposed as an ontological necessity; rather, it is assumed analytically for functional reasons. This means that to render the ‘international’ as a knowledge system, unique and discrete from other areas of expertise, the congruity of the units that make the discipline must be pre-­ supposed analytically: the congruity of ‘nation-states’ is the precondition of IR’s disciplinary identity. The congruency of the foundational element of the ‘international’, that is, the ‘nation-state’, is functionally necessary, even if only analytically assumed, as it renders the ‘international’ a site of distinct knowledge and intervention. Without the assumption of congruent societies there can be no ‘international’ and international politics is ‘just’ politics. This, to conclude, suggests that despite the oft-invoked distinction between the pacified and governed inside of states and the anarchical outside (Walker 1993), the ‘modern international’ is congruent in itself by being the compilation of congruent societies, or ‘… the sum-total of those who possess international personality’ (Wight 2004 [1978]: 108). Third, we can also stipulate here the other side of fantasy, fantasy2, in traditional IR theory. To merely remind ourselves of the two sides of fantasy in the Lacanian architecture, the idea here is that fantasies entail both the utopian promise of wholeness, and the explanation for why the promised utopia cannot yet be materialised (Arfi 2010; Stavrakakis 1999; Žižek 1999, 2008). The obstacle to nation/state unity or the ‘nation-state’, as it is articulated in the vocabulary of traditional IR theory, is therefore projected onto the outside, the anarchical and dangerous realm of international politics. Studies of foreign policy and grand strategy, nuclear deterrence and/or the threat of nuclear proliferation, alliances and/or the prospects for inter-state collaboration or even supra-national institution building are all symptomatic of the fantasy of nation/state congruency in post–WWII IR theorisation (e.g., Deutsch 1969; Hoffmann 1962; Keohane and Nye 1977; Knorr 1985; Sagan 1985; Small and Singer 1969; Walt 1985; Waltz 1981). The promise and obstacle to achieve and obtain congruent societies reside at the level of the ‘international’, as both a site of intervention and the site that may bring about stability, peace or even transformation of (global) politics.

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Notes 1. I use the term ‘traditional IR theory’ broadly defined, referring to IR theory in the post-WWII era (with the exception of E. H. Carr’s 1939 The Twenty Years’ Crisis), but before the end of the Cold War. This includes classical realism, neorealism, but also the works of others such as Karl Deutsch, Martin Wight, and Rudolph Rummel. 2. On whether or not we can/should personify the state see the ‘Forum: Is the state a person? Why should we care?’ in the Review of International Studies 30(2).

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CHAPTER 7

Back to the Present: The Contemporaneous Re-homogenisation of the ‘International’

In Chap. 6 I showed how the congruent nation/state fantasy came to be entwined with the discursive production of the ‘international’. The emotive power nationalism and the notion of the nation exert become embedded in the modernity project in which the state and the nation are rendered almost indivisible. At the same time, I showed how IR theory construes the unitary ‘nation-state’ pre-supposition not as an ontological assumption; rather, the ‘nation-state’ is assumed analytically and functionally. The ‘nation-state’ as a socio-political unit is constructed as homogeneous, only analytically, for the functional ability to speak of international politics rather than (simply) politics. This then endows the ‘international’ with a new power–knowledge constellation in which various technologies of intervention are rendered possible. Speaking psychoanalytically, fantasy1 of the congruent nation/state is upheld by projecting the actual incongruity of society onto the international which now functions as fantasy2, that is, the obstacle blamed for the inability to have homogeneous nations/states. The ‘nation-state’ as the unit-level of IR and the ‘international’ are now circularly intertwined. In this chapter I continue my exploration into IR theory in the post– Cold War era as it exhibits the contemporary fantasy of the congruent society and how this is wedded to the image of the ‘international’. I use the term ‘IR theory’ here as an umbrella, referring to various security studies in IR that deal with, for instance, states’ war and peace propensity (e.g., Miller 2007; Van Evera 1994); civil war, ‘ethnic conflict’, conflict © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_7

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resolution and ‘Post-Conflict Peace-Building’ (PCPB) as well as ‘nationand state-building’, which also entail studies from comparative politics and political sociology (e.g., Brown 1993, 1996; Dobbins et  al. 2003, 2007; Gurr 2000; Paris 2004; Stepan 2008; Walter 2003). What we witness today is a different modality of congruency-making and thus different technologies of interventions vis-à-vis the nation/state. As I show in this chapter, changes taking place during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, particularly the ‘return to the state’ discourse, came to affect and influence IR theory during the last 30 years such that now the presupposition of the unitary ‘nation-state’ no longer holds: mainstream IR theory no longer takes its main unit of analysis as congruent. Instead, what is produced nowadays is a growing body of knowledge and technologies of intervention at a global level that aim to re-build the ‘international’ as a system composed of congruent societies that either follow the traditional model of the ‘nation-state’ or other forms of societal congruency. As I show below, our contemporary practices and knowledge of the ‘international’ seek to render societies congruent through various technologies of intervention such as development, post-conflict, peace-­ building and democratisation. To show these discursive developments in IR, I first offer an overview of the ‘return to the state’ and other discursive ruptures with respect to the nation/state model that took place already during the late 1970s and the 1980s. These discursive ruptures took place in the intersection of IR, political science, comparative politics and political sociology and have come to be incorporated into post–Cold War IR theory. Second, I analyse IR theory since the end of the Cold War and interrogate five discursive practices by which the fantasy of congruency is rendered possible. This chapter, therefore, returns to where I started—the present.

‘The Return to the State’ After the end of the Cold War attention in mainstream IR shifted from great power politics to civil wars and ‘ethno-national’ conflicts (e.g., Brown 1993; Posen 1993) as the concepts of ‘ethnicity’, ‘irredentism’ and ‘ancient hatreds’ gained popularity (e.g., Byman 2002; Chazan 1991; Kaplan 1993). New interests, connected to this shift, included nation- and statebuilding programmes and PCPB, as the literature on the involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates (e.g., Dobbins et al. 2003, 2007; Paris 2004; Talentino 2004). This is at least partly the result of the ‘return to the

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state’ (‘bringing the state back in’) discourse that had already emerged in the 1970s and gained popularity during the 1980s amongst political scientists, political sociologists and IR scholars (e.g., Evans et  al. 1985; Katzenstein 1977, 1978). The ‘return to the state’ discourse was also accompanied by an amalgamation of theoretical and empirical studies, mostly in IR theory, that during the 1970s and 1980s deviated from the mainstream and inquired into the ‘internal’ elements of ‘nation-states’ and how these affect international issues such as war and conflict (e.g., Horowitz 1971: 232–244; Weiner 1971: 665–683). Taken together, what the ‘return to the state’ discourse and the various analyses of state–society relations and their effects on the ‘international’ did was to open up the (supposed unitary) state and examine its domestic factors. Rather than assumed, the nation/state itself became the focal point, as the state’s structure, properties and relations with various other ‘internal’ subjects/objects (e.g., the people, society, territory) were problematised and re-­formulated. The congruity of the nation/state was no longer taken-for-granted. Let us begin with the ‘return to the state’ (Almond 1988: 853–874) discourse, which was a critique of the absence of the ‘state’ as a concept in the social sciences, in general, and in the ‘pluralist-functionalist’ approaches in particular. Whilst the target of critique was not IR theory as such, this discursive intervention nonetheless affected post–Cold War IR theory as it infiltrated its mainstream terminology and conceptual frameworks. In the following, therefore, I do not dwell into the many aspects of this discourse with respect to the ‘pluralist-functionalist’ approach, the counter-critics by pluralists as well as Marxist scholars, nor is this a genealogy of political science or the state concept (see Almond 1988: 853–874; Bartelson 2001: 114–148; Cammack 1989: 261–290). Rather, in the following I only overview this discursive intervention, rather than forensically analysing it, as the purpose of this section is simply to point to discursive changes that came to affect IR theory in the last 30 years. Specifically, I demonstrate how the state concept is unpacked and re-conceptualised, often following the Weberian state model, and how states came to be categorised according to their strength and autonomy vis-à-vis their societies and populations (Katzenstein 1977, 1978; Tilly 1985: 169–191, see also Cohen et al. 1981). This discursive intervention began in the late 1960s and early 1970 in some exceptional studies in IR theory and political science (Nettl 1968: 559–592; Riggs 1961: 144–181). These voices challenged their contemporary doxa and called attention to the internal structure of states and how these affect international practices. The first to address the nation/

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state concept in IR and political science in general and indeed the first to ‘bring the state back in’ was J. P. Nettl (1968). Nettl identified a lacuna in ‘American sociopolitical’ discourse with respect to the state concept whilst arguing that ‘the entry of the third world onto the stage of modern socioscientific consciousness has had one immediate result (or should have had), it is the snapping of the link between state and nation’ (Nettl 1968: 560). To Nettl, one of the problems with existing socio-political analysis was that state and nation, or state and society, were not adequately theorised. Drawing on Bendix and Lipset (1957) he argues that ‘[a]s a rule, political scientists and sociologists have treated the state simply as the general area of central government in contradistinction to society’ (Nettl 1968: 591). What Nettl suggested was to focus on the degree of statehood, or what he coined as ‘stateness’ in historical and comparative analysis. Somewhat later, Walker Connor critiqued the mis-usage of the nation and state concepts and the misguided conflation of the two in IR and political science (Connor 1978), urging us to consider the domestic making of nations/states and particularly ethnic-diversity and ethno-­ nationalism as key factors in world politics (Connor 1972; see also the discussion in Conversi 2018). To Connor, therefore, the problem was the taking-for-granted of the nation/state in IR theorisation and deploying nation and state interchangeably as if the two are the same. As Connor (1978: 378) puts it: The error of improperly equating nationalism with loyalty to the state is the consequence of a much broader terminological disease that plagues the study of global politics. It would be difficult to name four words more essential to global politics than are state, nation, nation-state, and nationalism. But despite their centrality, all four terms are shrouded in ambiguity due to their imprecise, inconsistent, and often totally erroneous usage.

Other developments in the 1970s and 1980s—working in the intersection of IR, political sociology and history—included Charles Tilly’s (1975: 3–83, 1985: 169–191) predatory theory of state making. Tilly focused on state building in European history and how the state came to exist through war-making and the capacity of states to extract resources from ‘their’ populations such as tax revenues and personnel for the military and ­warfare. Others focused on state–society relationship and connected it to economic foreign policy and revolutions (Katzenstein 1977, 1978; Skocpol 1979).

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In the 1980s, this focus on the state and in many respects on the ‘state-­ to-­nation’ and state–society relations gained more popularity amongst political scientists and political sociologists. Cohen et al. (1981: 901–910), for instance, addressed state making in ‘new states’ and focused on the ability of states to increase their tax revenues as an indicator of their power. Their approach was explicitly Weberian as they construed the role violence and coercion played to be the hallmark of the modern state, or what they referred to as the ‘national state’. As Rueschemeyer and Evans (1985: 46–47) put it: Our working definition of the state is essentially a Weberian one: We consider the state to be a set of organizations invested with the authority to make binding decisions for people and organizations juridically located in a particular territory and to implement these decisions using, if necessary, force.

The ‘return to the state’ discourse reached an apex in 1985 with the edited volume by Evans et  al. (1985), in which the re-focus on the state was dubbed as a move ‘… toward a More Adequate Understanding of the State’ (Evans et al. 1985: 347–366, capitals in the original). This shift further gave rise to various scholarship in political sociology and later IR, in which the ability of the state to rule the land and the people, run effective institutions and bureaucracy and ‘penetrate’ into society came to be key to its definition as state qua strong authority and governance (e.g., Mann 1984, 1993; Migdal 1988; Goldstone et al. 2000; Gurr 2000; Rotberg 2003; Foreign Policy: The Fragile States Index 2016). In short, the nation/state as a key concept could no longer be taken as unitary, not even analytically. We could also discuss here other discursive interventions that took place during the 1970s and 1980s, in which various studies interrogated the internal structure of states and especially inquired into the relationship between ethnicity, nationalism and conflict. Like the unpacking of the state concept in the ‘return to the state’ discourse, this discursive intervention also came to influence IR theory in the post–Cold War era. Horowitz (1971: 232–244) was amongst the first in the all-pervasive Cold-War discourse to talk about ‘ethnic politics’ and attempt at defining some of its main dimensions (see also Connor 1972). In this respect, the concept and phenomenon of irredentism also gained attention exploring the relationship between state, nation, ethnicity and war (e.g., Horowitz 1991: 9–22; Weiner 1971: 665–683). States and the ‘nation-state’ ideal-type were no

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longer assumed congruent and, more so, such incongruence may be the cause of war. What this discursive intervention entailed, therefore, was a re-evaluation of the nation’s/state’s assumed homogeneity and how that could affect international issues like security and war and peace. What is the significance of these discursive interventions to the issue of nation/state congruency and IR? As I have already argued, these discursive interventions suggest exploring the state and re-examining the relationship between state and nation. As such, the unity of the nation/state that had been so pervasive in traditional IR was challenged, albeit mostly by political scientists and political sociologists. Various political phenomena such as foreign policy, development, security and war and peace, amongst others, could no longer be explained without opening the ‘black-­ box’ of the state and evaluating a myriad of internal factors (e.g., the state’s capacity to extract resources, the state’s ability to control its territory, national and ethnic diversity and identity). What the proponents of ‘bringing the state back in’ argued, therefore, was that the pre-supposed unity of the nation/state could no longer be maintained; rather, the nation/state must be interrogated, problematised, re-categorised and re-­ imagined. As I show in the next section, this had come to influence post– Cold War mainstream IR theory, which began to interrogate the internality of the previously pre-supposed congruent nations/states, albeit whilst advocating the re-homogenisation of the ‘international’ according to the fantasy of homogeneous polities.

Technologies of Homogenisation and Congruency-­ Making in the Contemporary International Power-Knowledge In this section I show how the re-imagination of the nation/state concept in the social sciences came to influence post–Cold War IR. I analyse IR theory, mostly since the end of the Cold War, to highlight the discursive practices through which the fantasy of congruency is constituted, rationalised and legitimated. The contemporary fantasy of congruency often fits the more traditional ‘nation-state’ ideal-type as a fusion of collective group sentiments with juridical and territorial control. The fantasy of congruency is also rendered possible through other modalities of congruency-­making that pertain to ideas like ‘multiculturalism’, ‘power sharing’ and ‘consociational democracy’. The nation/state is no longer

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the only or the preferred form of authority in the ‘international’, but the fantasy of societal congruency nonetheless remains pervasive. The perceived ideal of an identitarian bond between individuals and authority is inscribed in major scholarly works in IR, including when progressive ideas of multi-national and multicultural governance systems are advocated. The congruent nation/state fantasy is a recurring motif since the discursive logic of an alignment of national/collective sentiments with geopolitical borders is still perceived as necessary to both domestic and international political order even in consociational democracy/power-­ sharing theories that reject race/ethnicity-based homogeneity and invoke instead multi-national and multicultural federal-like systems (e.g., Stepan 2008: 1–25; Simonsen 2005: 297–318). I address below five key discursive practices by which the fantasy of congruency is constituted and established. These practices cut across existing scholarly demarcations (i.e., between different strands of realism, liberalism and other ‘rational choice’ theories) and thus show how the congruency fantasy is pervasive across the oft-invoked distinctions between theories and schools of thought. The first is the ratio or balance practice that conceptualises congruency as a ratio/balance between national aspirations and the existing states in a given region. Herein, the discursive logic of teleology and representation also appear as the state is constructed as the end of nationalism and as representing the ‘real’ nation. The second practice articulates the social totality or indivisibility ideal that takes the state to be a totality of certain requisites, including congruency. The third is the security/‘securitisation’ practice that links congruency, albeit defined in varying forms, with security. Congruency here is the prerequisite of security, as the lack thereof is securitised. The fourth practice refers to the sovereignty-borders nexus in which the congruency fantasy is predicated on a socio-political demarcation bounded by territorial divisions that connotes state sovereignty. The fifth is the unity/liberal and democracy practice that weds congruency to peace and democracy. It thus constructs democracy as either the producer of congruency or that which requires a certain degree of congruency. This practice also discursively produces the logic of a ‘unity (congruency) in diversity’ (Stepan 2008: 4, parenthesis added). As this analysis shows, these discursive practices are not mutually exclusive and indeed exist in various combinations and compositions. I nonetheless distinguish analytically between them in order to emphasise the different ways by which congruency is advocated and legitimated in IR.

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The Ratio or Balance Practice The rising interest in ‘ethnic conflict’, indeed in the internal features of nations/states and how these affect the international system already emerged in the mid-1980s in various studies such as Donald L. Horowitz’s Ethnic Groups in Conflict (1985) and the edited volume Bringing the State Back In (Evans et al. 1985). With the collapse of the Soviet Union the relationship between nations and states became further emphasised as one of the root-causes of regional and global insecurity and thus to be resolved with an understanding of a desired balance or ratio between nations and states. The ideal of congruency, thus, is practised discursively here through the invocation of a balance or ratio between national fervour—a group of people understood to share certain collective features that wish to fulfil their national yearning in the form of statehood—and the existing states/ territorial demarcations to accommodate such aspirations. One of the first conceptualisations of a state-to-nation balance, or lack thereof, in post–Cold War IR is Gideon Gottlieb’s Nation Against State (1993). Gottlieb’s point of departure is the potential imbalance between existing states and national aspirations, as he maintains that national groups should be permitted to express their national sentiments, but ‘… without aggravating disorder in the society of states’ (Gottlieb 1993: 1). Gottlieb thus identifies as a key issue the imbalance between national aspirations and the number of states corresponding to those (unfulfilled) national desires. Gottlieb (1993: 3–5) proposes, through several mechanisms, the ‘states plus nations’ model, which aims to answer the question of nation-to-state imbalance without the atrocities of war, territorial partition and populations transfers. Gottlieb particularly puts forth a mechanism he defines as the ‘national-home regime’, which rests on the notion that one’s national home might not correspond to the existing state’s borders. In order to avoid violence the ‘… national-home regime would stipulate the national rights to be enjoyed in the national home without prejudice to the integrity of the states involved’ (Gottlieb 1993: 4). The idea of a balance between nations and states is further situated within the security discourse as Van Evera (1994: 5–39), for instance, hypothesises about the effects of nationalism on international and civil war and maintains that the first measure of the risks to the peace in a region is found in the proportion of its nationalist movements that remain unfulfilled in statehood, a fac-

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tor expressed in the nation-to-state ratio. Are the supply of and demand for states in equilibrium or disequilibrium? Peace in a region is more likely the more closely a supply/demand equilibrium is approached. (Van Evera 1994: 11)

Van Evera’s ‘nation-to-state’ disparity also suggests a teleological discursive strategy as the state, or statehood, is articulated here as the end of nationalism. Similarly to more traditional IR theory characteristic of the post–WWII era, Van Evera (1994: 6) articulates the role and power of nationalism and the nation as the ultimate socio-political community. This community exerts loyalty and mores more than any other group, values or ideology, and, most importantly, this type of community must be aligned with clear geo-juridical demarcations. As he puts it: I define nationalism as a political movement having two characteristics: (1) individual members give their primary loyalty to their own ethnic or national community; this loyalty supersedes their loyalty to other groups … these ethnic or national communities desire their own independent state. (Van Evera 1994: 6)

Moreover, the conceptualisations of ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are being articulated as natural and fixed, indeed they are essentialised. ‘Nationalism’, for instance, is predicated on an almost primordial reading of identity as if national identities are self-evident and pertain to perceived natural properties. Miller (2007: 1–128), who draws on Van-Evera’s hypotheses and Gottlieb’s analysis, develops an elaborated typological theory of states’ and regions’ war and peace propensity according to what he calls the ‘state to nation balance’. In Miller’s account, the relationship between ‘nation’ and ‘state’ understood in terms of balance/ratio or lack thereof bring about various war and peace outcomes. To measure this formula of balance Miller constructs the notion of ‘national congruence’: The extent of congruence is determined by the ratio between the existing geopolitical boundaries in the region and the national aspirations and identities of the peoples in the region, that is, the extent to which the current division of a given region into territorial states reflects the national affiliations of the main groups in the region and their aspirations to establish states and/or to revise existing boundaries. (Miller 2007: 55)

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Miller (2007: 88–100) further explains that incongruity is the result of, and manifested by, various phenomena such as settlers over the border, refugees, pan-national movements and, similarly to what Gellner defines (2006 [1983]: 128–130), the ‘too few states’ and ‘too many states’ variants of national incongruity. Miller’s ‘state-to-nation balance’, therefore, constitutes the congruent nation/state as a homogeneous unit in itself as he argues that ‘[c]ongruent nation-states are states in which there is a good match between the political boundaries of the state and the national loyalty of its population. The congruence and match can be derived from either ethnic or civic nationalism’ (Miller 2007: 89). What is also interesting is the use of the word ‘balance’ and its interpellating power. This is because ‘balance’ is an already familiar, and perhaps commonsensical, pertaining to existing realist and historical notions that connote stability and relative security in an anarchical world—that is, ‘balance of power’ (Morgenthau 1948; Waltz 1979). The fantasy of the congruent society produced here through the couplet ‘nation-state’ also has an external dimension because a ‘nation-state’ may be congruent ‘internally’, but not so externally (Miller 2007: 56, 89, 96–97). Thus, in Miller’s theory, ‘nation-states’ might be ‘externally incongruent’ in the sense that they breach the balance ideal by not controlling the entirety of their national population. ‘Nation-states’ that have some of their national members living outside their borders under ‘foreign’ rule thus pose a risk to regional stability and peace for such incongruence may provoke irredentist adventures. The congruency or ratio between nation and state thus takes on a regional and more systemic level, since peace and war are dictated by the level and degree of congruency in a given region, as Miller explains that war and peace are regional phenomena rather than global (Miller 2007). In Miller’s discourse, therefore, the ‘region’ emerges as a subject/object to be balanced and made homogeneous in order to attain peace. What this also means is that in Miller’s discourse, as is others (Gottlieb 1993; Van Evera 1994) the congruency ideal operates at several levels and requires several ‘balances’ or ‘ratios’ to be struck; first, the ‘nation’ concept itself should attain national cohesiveness thus obtaining the ability to extract emotional and material resources from its members. This, to Miller, is characteristic of modernity and the age of nationalism (Miller 2007: 5). Second, the existence of a nation per se is not sufficient for it ought to be fused with a state, with a clear geo-juridical political entity. Nonetheless, third, even a supposedly congruent ‘nation-state’ is not sufficient since a

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ratio or balance between nations and states must take place on a larger regional level. The next logical step is that the more congruent ‘nation-­ states’ and thus the more congruent regions there are, the more congruent the world is and thus the more peaceful. The ratio imaginary, therefore, must be satisfied throughout these levels until the entire world is made of homogeneous regions themselves made of congruent ‘nation-states’. Moreover, the relationship between nations and states in the ratio/balance discursive practice is representational, rather than merely teleological. Since states and nations ought to converge for regional peace, the sheer idea of the nation must be ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ that can be properly represented by its pair state. This is so because the idea of congruency comes from ‘successful’ nation- and state-building processes and thus the production of the ‘real’ nation and its ‘true’ representative. This means that with Miller’s theory of ‘state to nation balance’, Van Evera’s ‘nation-to-­ state ratio’ or Gottlieb’s ‘states plus nations’ model the state ought to represent only the ‘real’ nation. There are two dimensions to the regional state-to-nation balance. The first dimension refers to the prevalence of strong or weak states. This is the “hardware” of state-building. The second refers to the extent of congruence or compatibility between political boundaries and national identifications in a certain region. This is the “software” of nation-building. (Miller 2007: 54)

The Social Totality or Indivisibility Practice: ‘Strong’ States Versus ‘Weak’ States This practice produces the discursive space of the nation/state as the ultimate and totalised polity, the homogeneous and strong society. As I show below, this practice produces certain chains of signification and imagination about the idealised socio-political association. First, we notice how the congruent nation/state fantasy is rendered possible via the interweaving of juridical authority, territoriality and the identitarian sentiments of people within a given demarcated polity. Second, via the social totality or indivisibility practice the ideals of congruency and state strength are made causative or co-constitutive. The ideal type is that of a congruent society embedded within the ‘nation-state’, which constitutes this unified society as strong. Third, what is then produced here is the antonym, indeed the deviation from the idealised congruent nation/state, such as the ‘weak’, ‘failed’ and ‘collapsed’ state concepts. As I explain below, this

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subsequently renders the ‘international’ as a realm that ought to be made of congruent and thus strong polities. If certain polities are not congruent, they must be made so for the ‘international’ to be constituted as relations amongst congruent and strong polities. This discourse mostly refers to various IR as well political science and political sociology studies that in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s reconfigured the state and its components (e.g., Buzan 2009 [1991]; Evans et al. 1985; Holsti 1996; Mann 1993; Migdal 1988). Through this discursive practice, the state is dissected into various major ingredients that must be present in a certain quality and quantity so as to constitute the social totality. This produces a fantasy of the state that entails a certain congruency of people with state borders and institutions that as such constitute the ‘strong state’—vis-à-vis the ‘weak/failed state’. The power– knowledge technology that is now in charge of classifying polities around the world and thus measuring, for instance, their level of stability, economic productivity and degree of democratisation is the ‘state strength’ concept (Mann 1993: 58–61; Rotberg 2003: Chap. 1). Indeed, the recurrent deployment of this concept and the various methods of measurement become a certain technology of international intervention whereby knowledge wields power and the ‘international’ is a site for making states congruent and strong (Call 2008), as also seen in the mapping of ‘global danger’, ‘travel warnings’ and ‘no-go zones’ (Andersson 2016; Löwenheim 2007). In this discursive space of the strong state two key state properties are articulated to be constitutive of ‘state strength’: The first is the ‘idea of the state’ (Buzan 2009 [1991]: Chap. 2 and especially 70–83), which goes beyond the Weberian institutional model of the state as legitimate and effective bureaucratic apparatus (Migdal 1988). As such, the ‘idea of the state’ is the ideational dimension of states that endow them with the ability to govern effectively a certain territory and population. More specifically, the ‘idea of the state’ refers to the state’s national identity and/or its purpose and the (ethnic) identities of the state’s inhabitants, as well as the composition and dispersal of ethnic groups. To Buzan ( 2009 [1991]: 74), ‘[t]he idea of the state is the most abstract component, but also the most central’ and this should not be conflated with the state’s institutions and governing apparatuses or with the state’s physical base which ‘simply exists’. This ideational and abstract aspect of states/state strength is to be found in nationalism and national identity, what Miller (2007: 54) defines as national congruency or ‘the “software” of nation-building’. To Buzan (2009 [1991]: 74–75), this is directly linked to security and the idea of

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national security as the referent-object of security is the nation. To Buzan, the relationship between nation and state, between the ideational and the material, is key to security and to the actual constitution of states in modernity: ‘It is the idea of the state that both provides the major bindings holding the territorial-polity-society package together, and defines much of its character power as an actor in the international system’ (Buzan 2009 [1991]: 70). The second property that constitutes ‘state strength’ refers to the institutional capacity of the state in question; its monopoly over the means of organised violence, the efficiency of its institutions and its ability to extract resources as well as to mobilise the populace at times of war (Holsti 1996: 84–90; Miller 2007: 54; Thies 2004: 53–72). The Weberian model of statehood is key here, although the application of a state’s strength goes beyond Weber’s more rigorous definition. To Rotberg, for instance, linking state’s failure to terrorism and insecurity, the institutional capacity of a state is enshrined in the basic definition of the ‘nation-state’ in what he defines as the post-monarchical era: Nation-states exist to provide a decentralized method of delivering political (public) goods to persons living within designated parameters (borders). Having replaced the monarchs of old, modern states focus and answer the concerns and demands of citizenries. They organize and channel the interests of their people, often but not exclusively in furtherance of national goals and values. They buffer or manipulate external forces and influences, champion the local or particular concerns of their adherents, and mediate between the constraints and challenges of the international arena and the dynamism of their own internal economic, political, and social realities. (Rotberg 2003: 2)

Together, the ideational/national aspect of states and their ‘infrastructural power’ (Mann 1993: 58–61) render the nation/state unified and thus strong. To Buzan, the ‘idea of the state’ is key to the constitution of a state as strong, but a state’s institutional strength ought to be present too as both properties co-constitute one another (Buzan 2009 [1991]: Chap. 2). Holsti (1996: 84), however, argues that whilst institutional strength is important the two key factors that determine ‘state strength’ and that cannot be separated are a state’s identity and consequently its ‘right to rule’, its legitimacy. Thus, the mere institutional capacity of states cannot account for strength and ‘it is in the realm of ideas and sentiment that the fate of states is primarily determined’ (Holsti 1996: 84).

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Already, one can notice how the discursive space of the state that is produced here consists of a state-to-nation nexus, that is, a necessary minimum of national cohesion embedded within a state that ascertains an indivisible relationship between territory, state institutions and state identity, and the state’s inhabitants. The nation/state congruency fantasy is rendered palpable here through the construction of a social totality, that is, covering the lack of actual national and societal incongruencies by prescribing the ‘proper’ definition of states in the international system/society. This fantasy of nation/state congruency becomes the ideal-type that can be used to categorise and classify polities worldwide according to their strength and degree of congruency. This then also produces a discursive space in which ‘deviations’ from the congruency fantasy arise such as the ‘weak state’, the ‘failed state’ and the ‘collapsed state’ (Rotberg 2003). These subjects/objects suffer from the lack of legitimacy and are thus unable to control their territory, implement decisions and ‘penetrate’ into their societies (Mann 1993: 58–61). As Miller (2007: 54) puts it: Weak states lack effective institutions and resources to implement their policies and fulfill key state functions. Most notably, they lack effective control over the means of violence in their territory and an effective law-­enforcement system. Weak states thus face difficulties maintaining law and order and providing security in their territory. This hobbles the economic activity in these states, making it difficult for them to raise sufficient revenues, to collect taxes, and to maintain an effective bureaucracy and provide vital, or even rudimentary, services to the population (mail delivery, regular water supply, road network, electricity, education, health care, etc.).

Such classification and mapping of the world according to societal congruency and degree of state strength creates an inclusive–exclusion constellation in which polities and entire regions—such as sub-Sahara Africa, parts of the Middle-East and/or South-East Asia—are rendered both ‘danger/ no-go zones’ and the target for international interventions (Andersson 2016; Call 2008; Lisle 2013; Löwenheim 2007). The result is a global mapping of danger and risk that incorporates those so-called weak/failed polities and regions and at the same time excludes them from a Weberian and Western articulation of proper governance, of congruent nations/ states and thus strong polities in a developed system/society of states. Consider, for instance, Buzan and Wæver’s (2003) Regional Security Complexes (RSC) in which the classification of regions and states accord-

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ing to their strength is key to understanding security dynamics. As such, regions with weak and failed states may entail various insecurities arising from states’ social fragmentation and weak institutions, but as long as such states are weak, and insecurity is not projected across borders one cannot talk of an RSC since ‘low interaction capacity in a region makes it difficult for RSCs to form’ (Buzan and Wæver 2003: 64). The ‘international’ and thus at the very least a modern system of states, even if read through the regional framework, can only include strong nations/states that obtain a certain minimum degree of national congruency and intuitional capacity. The practice of constructing congruency as constitutive of the complete social totality, indeed the congruent society, also appears in the various power–knowledge constellations that address the economic development and the viability of states. These constellations are then often used in order to evaluate the fragility, weakness and violence-propensity of polities around the world. This mostly refers to the ‘weak/failed state’ knowledge system that is intertwined, as I showed earlier, with the construction of the ‘strong state’ (e.g., Goldstone et  al. 2000; Societal-­ Systems Research Inc. and Colorado State University 2009; Rotberg 2003; Foreign Policy: The Fragile States Index 2016). To Alesina and Spolaore (2005) and Alesina et al. (2006), for instance, incongruent states are ‘artificial states’ and defined ‘… as those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground’ (Alesina et al. 2006: 2). Focusing on econometrics, demography and the shapes of political borders, they operationalise the lack of congruency, or ‘artificial states’, as ‘… those that have straight borders and/or have a large fraction of their population [that] is represented by a group split with a neighboring country’ (Alesina et al. 2006: 4—square brackets added). Their analysis focuses mostly on the viability of states, which is defined as states’ ability to pursue a growing and sustainable economy. This discursive practice of the social totality and indivisibility enables, therefore, a certain mode of thinking about the ‘international’ as a realm that ought to be made of homogeneous units, manifested in and encapsulated through the nation/state. Variations and deviations should then be remedied so as to ensure the ‘international’ is indeed a system of interaction between like-units, that is, strong and nationally congruent polities.

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The Security/‘Securitisation’ Practice In the post–Cold War era regions such as the Balkans, parts of the former Soviet Union, the Middle-East and sub-Saharan Africa experienced great civil turmoil, including ethnic cleansing and genocide like Srebrenica in July 1995 and Rwanda in 1994. Drawing on the ‘state strength’ literature, what emerges in IR theory is a formula that connects incongruent and ‘weak’ societies with insecurity and war (e.g., Miller 2007; Paris 2004; Rotberg 2002: 85–96, 2003). This is because congruency of state and nation is articulated here as crucial to the normal and efficient functioning of states and thus to their, and their respective neighbours’, security. Consequently, nations/states that lack a certain degree of congruency become a problem, indeed a security risk or even threat not only to themselves but to their regions and the international/global arena as well. Byman (2003: 47–78), for instance, analysed the challenges facing the US intervention in Iraq and the US desire to democratise the Iraqi state. He argues that the weakness of the Iraqi state and the absence of a unified national identity—alongside other related factors—are causative of regional and international insecurity. ‘Challenges that may arise include a weak government that engenders security fears, a lack of a cohesive identity to unify Iraq’s different communities’ (Byman 2003: 49). Indeed, to Byman and Pollack (2006) the degree of congruency of state and nation—defined by the cohesiveness of a given national identity and the extent to which this is represented by a sovereign state—is a major indicator of what they define as an ‘All-Out Civil War’, which is a civil war that spills over into neighbouring states and can even affect global security: The strength of state identity. Do society’s members consider themselves first and foremost to be members of the nation championed by the state? Are there rival cultural élite that do not accept the national identity … Does the state fully control generators of identity? (Byman and Pollack 2006: 55–56)

The congruency fantasy is again rendered intelligible here through the ‘nation-state’ ideal. That is, with Byman and Pollack’s discourse, society can be congruent through the idea of a ‘national society’ that coincides and is governed by a state. This is then rationalised and legitimated through chains of signification between the fantasy of nation/state congruency and security at the regional and international levels.

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The discursive practice of constructing congruency, or the lack thereof, as a security concern is further emphasised in Miller (2007). As Miller (2007: 103, italics in the original) explains: … [I]ncoherent or failed states are the product of weak states in which the citizens also have a low level of identification with the state and with its territorial identity; they do not generally feel it reflects their national identity and aspirations. In other words, there are strong aspirations for either secession or irredentism. The weakness of incoherent states permits the violent actions of revisionist groups and encourages other groups trying to defend themselves. Such moves trigger a cycle of escalation which the weak state is unable to contain because it is unable to defeat or bribe the insurgents.

What appears with this discursive formation in which congruency and security are co-constitutive is also a process of ‘securitisation’ (Buzan et al. 1998: 23–27; Wæver 1995). Thus, various elements that are considered to be indicators of incongruence become a major concern for regional and global security. Populations, for instance, that seem to represent an incongruity with the state’s identity (in which they reside) in terms of ethnicity, religion or any other sectarian indicator are constructed discursively as a risk or a security problem. Other indicators of incongruity like refugees, or ethnic groups whose settlement patterns cut across geopolitical borders, become consequently part of a warning signal system for global insecurity including secessionism, irredentism, so-called ethnic-conflict and more (e.g., Gurr 2000: 75–76; Toft 2002/2003; Walter 2003, 2002 all cited in Miller 2007: 92–93; see also Chazan 1991; Horowitz 1985: 281–288; Wolff 2003: 501–509). We thus witness here the production of insecurity formulae and models designed to offer regional and global warning signs as polities worldwide are categorised and classified according to their level of incongruity and weakness/fragility. This practice has serious ethico-­ political implications, which I later address in the Conclusions part. The Sovereignty-Borders Practice (Neo-)Realist studies in IR theory that focus specifically on civil war and ‘ethnic conflict’ assume that the best way to overcome ethnic-strife and reconstruct war-torn societies lies in nation- and state-building and in the convergence of the two—state and nation. What emerges here is a discursive practice that conceptualises congruency according to the traditional

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realist elements of statism, territorial demarcation and sovereignty. As such, rising interest in the phenomenon of civil war becomes immediately not only a ‘real-world’ problem, but an abnormality with respect to the realist vision of world politics and indeed the state-system. Moreover, practicing discursively the ideals of borders and sovereignty results in a construction of nation/state congruency as a unity of people and state that is based on a primordial reading of collective identity. Realists argue that since congruency is key to avoid war and achieve stability and security in cases of bloodshed and continuous fighting, partition of territories coupled with processes of homogenisation like mutual population transfers, are best to prevent future wars (e.g., Downes 2001; Kaufmann 1998; Mearsheimer and Pape 1993; Tir 2005). Stefan Wolff’s survey of historical cases of forced population transfers, for instance, assesses that such techniques of congruency-making might prevent future conflicts as they achieve ‘… two essential objectives: to avoid internal ethnic strife and to prevent external minorities from being used as instruments of irredentist foreign policies’ (Wolff 2003: 508). Indeed, several recent studies into historical cases of population transfers and partitions have identified the benefit of the un-mixing of populations, although they mostly reject applying such policies as an instant remedy to ongoing conflicts and suggest instead other mechanisms for peace-making (Miller 2007: 337–368; Rynhold 2011; Wolff 2003). What underlies this approach is a discursive ideal in which states are and ought to be unitary, with a clear national identity and homogeneous population. The assumption of congruency as the basis of nations/states is further emphasised in the scholarship wherein conflicts are labelled ‘ethnic conflict’ as if ‘ethnicity’ is somehow self-evident and considered ‘… summative and totalizing’ (Fenton 2004: 180). States that lack a consolidated national identity and/or incorporate other unrepresented groups within their borders are then articulated as almost unnatural, pre-modern and thus conflict-prone. Consequently, not only is the notion of sovereignty and territoriality expressed mostly in the form of spatial demarcation, but the legitimate internal order is one that homogenises people and prevents the intermixing of supposedly conflicting populations (Kaufmann 1996). This, then, helps justify processes of partitioning and population transfers, for they contribute to security and progress (Downes 2001: 58–116). Kaufmann (1996: 136–137), for instance, maintains that ethnic/civil wars entail hyper-nationalist mobilisation that make cross-ethnic cooperation improbable. Moreover, he argues, ethnic wars only harden identities

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and thus the international community should invest in separation rather than preservation. Put differently, ethnically mixed cities and states that suffer from violence are likely to descend into ethnic cleansing or even genocide. To Downes (2001: 62), partition is necessary because it ‘… separates ethnic groups into independent states, endows each new state with defensible borders, and establishes a balance of power between them’. The policy implication is to encourage ‘movements’ of peoples so as to create defensible ethnic enclaves, or ‘real’ national homelands, since it reduces the incentives for war and decreases the likelihood of possible genocidal acts. This sovereignty-borders discursive practice thus appeals to the supposedly commonsensical realist jargon of ‘balance of power’, clear and secured borders and the re-invocation of the sovereignty principle. Furthermore, the sovereignty-borders practice produces a tautological logic by which the underlying problem, the heterogeneous aspect of various polities worldwide, which then leads to war and conflict, can only be resolved by creating homogeneous nations/states (see also Downes 2001: 58–116, 2004: 230–279, 2006: 50–51). The Liberal-Democracy and Homogeneous-Heterogeneity Practice Unlike the security/‘securitisation’ and sovereignty-borders discursive practices, the liberal-democracy practice advocates against partition and population transfers in war-torn societies, maintaining that such policies are neither ethical nor practical, and simply build the ground for future conflict (e.g., Fearon 2004; Kramer 2001: 9; Kumar 1997). As Kumar (1997: 26) puts it, ‘partition has more often been a backdrop to war than its culmination in peace; although it may originate in a situation of conflict, its effect has been to stimulate further and even new conflict’. The logic beyond this is that the act of partition in itself might create territorial grievances and lead to irredentism. The conflict then is not resolved, but further intensified as territory, memory and politics reinforce the antagonism (see Naimark 2002; Ther and Siljak 2001). The resolution produced within this discursive formation suggests maintaining the existing political borders, whilst creating some form of consociational democracy, that is, a power-sharing mechanism that delegates political power to the different belligerent (ethno-national) groups, whilst keeping the integrity of the political and territorial state (Esman 2004: 136–154; Lijphart 1977; McGarry 2005, although see Steiner 1990). To McGarry (2002), for instance, consociational democracy in ethnically divided societies, whilst

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having its limits, is far better than herrenvolk regimes (particularly in the case of Northern Ireland) since it guarantees both human rights for individuals and ensures and invests in collective rights in order to defuse the conflict and obtain stability and even peace (see also the discussions in Smooha 2002 and Van den Berghe 2002). What we witness here is not the more traditional ‘nation-state’ model being invoked; rather, it is a modality of unity and congruency that construes models of socio-political association that attempt to transcend nationalism. As I have demonstrated in the introduction, the ideals of liberalism combined with multiculturalism inform this logic of ‘unity in diversity’ (Stepan 2008). As so many divergent approaches in IR suggest, incongruent societies can regain their unity and thus security via other modes than the oft-invoked ‘nation-state’ model. Unity and congruency are still idealised, but their definition and the methods to achieve them vary. Therefore, what various approaches in IR engage with—which can be seen specifically in PCPB scholarship (e.g., Paris 1997, 2004)—re-assert the idea of congruency with respect to the identity of state institutions. The question that then arises in the scholarship on post-conflict societies as well as ‘nation- and state-building’ is whether the new state institutions ought to reflect the existing ethnic-divide (e.g., proportional political representation; incorporating symbols and traditions of all ethnic groups as part of state heritage and holidays) or remain neutral and even proclaim an overarching idea (Simonsen 2005). Simonsen (2005: 313), for instance, maintains that in post-conflict societies ‘… the salience of ethnicity is seen as something that can be reduced through the nourishing of alternative identities’. Others have focused on various mechanisms through which divided societies can nonetheless transcend the conflict and produce some form of overarching national identity. These include the cultural arena as well as military reforms and quotas (Simonsen 2007). Whilst these studies articulate a strict stance against partition or population movements, the idea of congruency still exists. Society ought to be congruent even if the model is different than the ‘nation-state’ one. In these studies, the idea of the ‘nation-state’ is liberated from the upheavals of ethnicity, whilst attempting to accommodate the plurality of cultures and nations. The goal, nevertheless, is still to produce a binding relationship amongst individuals and between them and authority (McGarry 2005; Stepan 2008; see also Sisk 1996). This discursive practice conceptualises congruency such that it resolves conflicts and pacifies societies via ‘liberal’ means, as McGarry (2002) argued with respect to post-1998

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Northern Ireland (see also McGarry and O’Leary 2004). It is through this liberal strategy that a polity based on a multicultural/plural society becomes intelligible and the preferred model for pacification. What further emerges with this discursive formation is the logic of homogeneous-heterogeneity, that is, a socio-political model that advocates plurality through various governance mechanisms (e.g., political decision-­ making, education and culture policies), but that structures this heterogeneity within a unitary polity. As I have shown in the introduction, the congruency fantasy articulated here is not predicated on race, ethnicity or religion; rather, it is maintained through the inclusion of pluralities. Various discursive technologies are rendered intelligible here as they attempt, in different ways, to make society congruent without the (traditional) ‘nation-state’ structure. Some technologies differentiate between types of collective national identity (Brubaker 1992; Kohn 1944). The sub-types of ethnic nationalism are rendered illegitimate and counter-­ productive to peace, whilst civic nationalism is established as more peace-­ prone and normatively preferable (Greenfeld 1992; Lepsius 1985: 49–50; Miller 2007: 34; Wæver 2002: 33–37; Smith 2000: 15–20). Other technologies focus on the role and function of authority, introducing power-­ sharing mechanisms so as to offer a more inclusive political public space. Nonetheless, all these power-knowledge matrices—including those advocating multiculturalism (Kymlicka 2001), proponents of consociational democracy and civic nationalism (Miller 2007)—adhere to the fantasy of societal congruency since they aim to resolve conflicts by manufacturing unity that is based not on ethno-national sentiments, but rather on the notions of civic communitarianism. An exemplar of this discursive practice is the federalist ‘state-nation’ model offered by Stepan (2008: 1–25), where ‘[s]tates that are quite culturally diverse, but whose diversity is nowhere organized by territorially based politically significant groups mobilizing nationalist claims for independence’ can still be conducive to ‘social peace and political democracy’ (Stepan 2008: 2). These are asymmetrical federal polities in which the state and its constitution recognise the cultural/national plurality and allow for these cultures to express their identity in various forms (e.g., more than one formal language). As Stepan argues, this is the production of a ‘unity in diversity’ (Stepan 2008: 4), or to put it differently, the accommodation of cultural heterogeneity within a politically congruent society.

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Moreover, the liberal-democracy discursive practice further establishes links between national or societal congruency and the success of democracy especially in divided and post-conflict societies. The idea here is that because ‘social conflicts that might become violent are resolved through voting, negotiation, compromise, and mediation’ (Rummel 1995: 4), democracy becomes a tool to accommodate rivalry and discontent through an acceptable and agreed upon political framework. Congruency here is achieved via democratic mechanisms of nation-building that invoke an overarching (national) identity thus promoting the plurality of cultures on the one hand, whilst still aligning the state with the nation (mostly states like the USA and Brazil, see Miller 2007: 91–92, who cites Smith 2000: 71–72). This discursive practice was further strengthened in IR by the ‘democratic peace theory’, which asserted that democracies are less likely to fight one another due to normative and structural factors (Maoz and Russett 1993: 624–638). What is produced here discursively, therefore, is a causal relationship between the democratisation of a given polity and the consolidation of societies according to civic-based notions of national/ collective sentiments. Democracy, which has come to connote positive ideas about governance and political rule, is evoked here as a cause of congruency, and at the same time because democracy is also articulated here as a process by which congruency is achieved (the consolidation of civic national identity) the entire notion of congruency is legitimated, rationalised and naturalised as endemic to democracy and thus desired normatively. This is the idea of a ‘people’. The utilisation of democracy has thus a dual-strategy; first, through the production of a scientifically based causation between democracy and national congruency, and, second, through the appeal to an established normative ideal, democracy, in tandem with the idea of a consolidated national identity. Focusing on the linkages between democracy, liberalism and national identity, however, some maintain that the role of democracy/democratisation vis-à-vis congruency is inverted. They argue that democracy requires congruency as a precondition (Linz and Stepan 1996: 16–37; Miller 2012: 455–469). As Rustow (1970: 351) puts it: ‘In order that rulers and policies may freely change, the boundaries must endure, the composition of the citizenry be continuous’. To Miller, the introduction of democratic norms and governance rules require an existing people, indeed a congruent society. Democratisation in incongruent societies may, conversely, bring about violence.

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… [W]hile democratization has stabilizing effects when it takes place within an s/n balance, in contrast, it has destabilizing effects within an s/n imbalance. The logic is straightforward: since in a democracy the people make the key decisions, it is essential first to identify who the “people” or “the nation” is and what are its boundaries … Thus, there is a need for a basic common national identity and an agreement about who is included in the national political community. (Miller 2012: 458)

The logic invoked here through the democracy practice is the one already suggested by J. S. Mill, who argued that ‘… [i]t is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’ (Mill 1946 [1861]: 294). To Miller (2012: 455–469), the logic of the congruency-democracy linkage relies on the ‘vox populi motif’ inherent in democratic systems, and thus in the absence of a consolidated nation the newly elected democratic rule will be considered illegitimate by some, which may result in violence and war (see also Cooper 2003: 14; Horowitz 1994; Snyder 2000; Mansfield and Snyder 2005).

The ‘International’ and the Nation/State Congruency Fantasy I have shown in this chapter how contemporary knowledge, especially in the discipline of IR, reproduces the fantasy of nation/state congruency. I have explicated that ruptures during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s changed the discursive landscape of various social sciences disciplines by re-focusing on the state as both actor and structure and on its many-fold ‘internal’ constituent parts. This shift, together with growing interest in, for instance, ‘ethnic conflict’ and nationalism, came to exert great influence on post–Cold War IR. Mainstream IR no longer takes the nation, the state and the so-called nation-state as given, but rather problematises and challenges the old unitary approach. It is not that IR theory is merely obsessed with the state concept, that is, IR’s ‘state fetishism’; rather, it is that in our contemporary power–knowledge constellations, IR is dedicated to re-making the ‘international’ as relations between congruent societies. Whilst in the past the notion of the unitary state and the congruent nation/state was mostly pre-supposed analytically for the functional ability to treat the ‘international’ as a separate realm of political knowledge, now it seems that IR is interested in re-constituting the world

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as ‘international’ and thus homogenising those polities deemed imbalanced, incongruent and thus weak, failed and war-prone. This also means that the ‘international’ is still produced as a site of intervention, although now it is not an intervention only at a systemic level, to re-invoke the old level-of-analysis issue. It is not an intervention at a supposedly separated realm of activities between assumed congruent polities. Rather, what is emerging today in the discourse and practice of the ‘international’ is an attempt to map, measure and thus normalise the ‘international’ so as to re-make it according to the previous analytically assumed world of homogeneous polities, be they ‘nation-states’ or other structures of authority and identity. The ‘nation-state’ is still often invoked as the best ‘standard of civilisation’, a yardstick, by which one can measure the degree and effectiveness of the congruency fantasy. The ‘nation-state’, however, is by no means the only modality of unity advocated today, as many have come to adopt a range of socio-political structures that attempt to transcend the old vocabulary of nations and nationalism and invoke instead the imaginaries of community, civic life, consociationalism and multiculturalism (e.g., Kivisto and Faist 2007; May et al. 2004; Modood 2005). Nonetheless, as I have argued, the bulk of our contemporary discursive practices still centre on the fantasy of the congruent society, a unity of people and identity and a convergence of these with space and authority. Reminding ourselves the contemporary technologies of homogenisations and the pervasiveness of the congruent society fantasy, the question that remains is that of the political. This requires us to address the ethico-­ political implications arising from these multi-faceted practices concerning the congruent nation/state fantasy, thus empowering the silenced voices and pointing to the possibility of change. Since such an interrogation closes the genealogical cycle, I address the ethico-political dimension in the conclusions part to this book.

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CHAPTER 8

Conclusions: Engaging with the Ethico-Political

In this book I revisited the orthodoxy of the nation/state problématique in modernity by pointing to and problematising our contemporary fantasies of societal congruency, and in that the myriad technologies of homogenisation. I have done so by deploying a genealogical technique which offers a ‘history of the present’ (Bartelson 1995), and thus a critique (Geuss 2002), and by reading nationalism through a Lacanian-­ psychoanalytical lens (Stavrakakis 1999, 2007; Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras 2006; Žižek 2008). What I have tried to offer is a critical thinking on the nation/state and the ‘international’ that avoids both the fixing of these concepts and the production of congruency as an ideal for which we must provide models and theories. This entails taking the nation/state and the ‘international’ as that which is always in the process of becoming and in continuous failure. It is its ambiguity and ambivalence (Doty 1996), its split subjectivity, that enable a continuous attempt at fixing and stabilising the meaning of the nation/state, of a complete and whole society. This mode of thinking thus reads the nation/state and the state-system as a set of discursive practices that produce certain logics and spaces, which then render certain modes of thinking intelligible. Nation/state congruency is thus key to understanding better our contemporary problematisations and solutions since it performs as an idealised yet impossible reference point according to models of socio-political life are constantly revised, modified and adjusted. The fantasy of congruency, however defined and practised, is thus constitutive of the ‘modern international’. © The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4_8

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I began this genealogy by (re-)reading the nation/state problématique in modernity not as a fusion of the two—nation and state—but as a fantasy of the congruent society in which ‘state-to-nation’ relationship serves as a ‘standard of civilisation’ in a multitude of socio-political discourses and practices. Drawing on the rich critical scholarship in IR, particularly the discursive interrogations of sovereignty, the inside/outside distinction, the idea of the state as well as national identity and borders (e.g., Bartelson 1995; Doty 1996, 2003, 2007; Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2009; Walker 1993; Weber 1995) I approached the concept of the nation/state and the ideal of congruency as ambiguous and ambivalent, an impossible endeavour that is continuously failing. Deploying a psychoanalytical framework enabled me, however, to go beyond the social and discursive production of the nation/state by theorising why and how the ideal of obtaining, and attempts at continuously articulating, nation/state congruency has persisted in modern thought and practice. This meant reading nationalism and the nation/state as fantasmatic projects, as narratives that both offer the future utopia of the good, stable and secure life, whilst also including their own failure (Arfi 2010; Eberle 2017; Edkins 2000; Zevnik 2017; Žižek 2008). Such a reading, as explicated in Chap. 2, is embedded in the Lacanian theorisation of subjectivity, the split subject and thus the void at the heart of the subject and the object (Stavrakakis 1999). The Lacanian fantasy, therefore, operates so as to ‘veil’ the subjective/objective void (Arfi 2010) and is particularly useful here because it helps explain why the ideal of societal congruency has become a leitmotiv in modern political and IR theory, precisely since it can never be satisfied and thus requires continuous investment. The nation/state fantasy, therefore, entails both its promise, fantasy1, in which the nation achieves full congruity and a sense of wholeness, and its prohibition, fantasy2, which entails the obstacle to the fulfilment of fantasy1 (e.g., the immigrant, the secrete cabal that really runs world affairs, or the ‘deep state’) (Kapoor 2014; Žižek 2008). The book began by problematising the present, namely showing how various contemporary discourses problematise the lack of societal cohesion and nation/state unity as is evident in debates around multiculturalism, so-called ethnic conflict, and violence in the Middle East, amongst others. In the introduction I also made the case for a genealogical inquiry into the ideal of nation/state congruency and a psychoanalytical reading of nationalism that goes beyond the problematisations of statism, sovereignty and territoriality. Chapter 2 engaged critically with Ernest Gellner’s

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theorisation of nationalism and nation/state congruency, whilst making the case to read congruency through the Lacanian vocabulary of the split subject, void and fantasy. In Chap. 2 I stipulated the Lacanian architecture, drawing on a multitude of scholarly sources, and explicated its utility to a myriad of works in political and IR theory as well as critical readings of security, race and development. The following chapters analysed the discursive practices that gave rise to the fantasy of nation/state congruency and societal unity from early modern political thought to contemporary IR theorisation. Chapter 3 offered a ‘pre-history’ by showing how the concept of the ‘state’ served as the modality of congruency between the mid-sixteenth to the mid-­ eighteenth centuries (‘early modernity’). Chapter 4 interrogated late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries discourses of nationalism and the Volk, clearly presenting a new subject/object that emerges in modernity, namely the ideal of nation/state congruency, rather than an actual fusion of state with popular sovereignty. Chapter 5 continued the genealogy by analysing nineteenth-century discursive formations in which national congruity came to be equated with democracy, liberty and modernity, amongst others. Chapter 6 unpacked twentieth-century traditional IR theorisation by showing the ways in which the nation/state and the fantasy of congruency were established and rendered an inevitable part of modernisation, whilst also showing how traditional IR scholarship did not take modern society to be ontologically homogeneous and read the nation/state only as analytically congruent. Chapter 7 returned to the present by focusing on post–Cold War IR theory and the ways the contemporary regime of congruency seeks to make the world a system composed of ‘real’ homogeneous polities, that is, to ontologically make societies and polities homogeneous. I concluded this genealogy, therefore, by returning to the present. Similarly to the introduction, I further illustrated the contemporary fantasy of the congruent society, although by focusing mostly on IR theory in the last 30  years as I showed how congruency is interwoven with security, democracy, peace and modernity. Despite the various modes of congruency advocated in contemporary IR—be it the traditional model of the geo-juridical sovereign ‘nation-state’ or the homogeneous-heterogeneity model articulated through various models of power-sharing and multinational political entities—the fantasy of congruency is still pervasive. What is interesting today is that congruency and unity are no longer assumed and taken-for-granted. Rather, various contemporary international

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t­echnologies are designed to achieve congruency and indeed re-build the idea of the ‘international’ qua relations amongst congruent societies. This book, therefore, seeks to contribute to two strands of critical and poststructuralist IR theory. First, critical studies of the state and the ‘international’ might benefit from a Lacanian reading of nationalism since it shows how it is not so much the idea of the state that is central to our present-day ‘regime of truth’ (Bartelson 2001). It is not solely statism or the state-centric approach that seem to characterise the discursive register of the ‘international’, nor the problematics of territoriality and sovereignty as such (Agnew 1994; Bartelson 1995; Walker 1993; Weber 1995). Rather, it is the fantasy of congruency and the unified society which are ubiquitous and constitutive of ‘modernism’ (Conversi 2012). This is important since what we witness today is a shift from the old taken-for-­ granted (analytical) assumption of congruent nations/states and a move towards reconstructing and indeed rehomogenising the ‘international’ by making societies congruent. Rather than taking societies as ‘national societies’, the known ‘methodological nationalism’ bias, the dominant discursive practices of our times attempt to re-engineer the ‘international’, to make it ‘truly’ international—a unity composed of congruent societies, be they ‘nation-states’ or other forms of socio-political order. As I explain below, this has serious ethico-political implications for our critical interrogation of global politics. Second, a psychoanalytical reading of nationalism through the analytic of fantasy would contribute to the biopolitics of security scholarship and to critical approaches to security, particularly those which draw on the Foucauldian bio-power lens in their analyses of war, governmentality and violence (Dillon and Neal 2008; Dillon and Reid 2016; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2009; Evans 2010; Parsons and Salter 2008). To Agamben (2000), this is clearly encapsulated in the ‘biopolitical fracture’ of the concept of the ‘people’, which ‘has no single and compact referent’. The biopolitical framework, however, tends to read security as the strategisation/technologisation of life for its own productive betterment (Evans 2010: 415), taking ‘population’ as security’s referent-object. In the biopolitical vocabulary, ‘population’ is not a synonym for people, nation or society, but a ‘cohort of biological individuals … a risk pool’ (Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2009: 267). Whilst the biopolitics lens is useful in accounting for the various risk and security assemblages we face today (e.g., finance, insurance, immigration control, terrorism and more), the betterment and securing of life in its biological sense, however, are not merely about risk, behavioural patterns and the ‘profiling of individuals’.

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Biopolitics does not take place in a flat world, as it were, in which security is merely evaluated as per individuals’ behavioural patterns. As Bigo and Guild (2017) show, for instance, the policing of European borders is practised variably as per individuals’ nationality, ethnicity and racial profile, amongst other things, and not merely based on a clinical risk analysis. Making life live in its biopolitical sense, therefore, is always relational: whose life? Against what other (types of) life? The operations of the nation/state fantasy as a failure-­ based narrative is thus useful to understand how othering takes place, that is, how the fantasy of nation/state unity functions biopolitically such that it keeps the idea of society at a continuous sense of security–insecurity, between the fulfilment of a whole biopolitical life and that who/which threatens it. This means, I suggest, that we can re-evaluate the relationship between state, nation, society and in/security precisely in order to understand better how the politics of life (and death) is operating. How some are rendered part of the ‘people’ to be secured and protected, whilst others are to be excluded or even eliminated.1 Following this, critical studies of how states (and regional structures like the EU) govern their borders, devise migration policies and treat asylum seekers and refugees, as well as processes of naturalisation and citizenship (e.g., Doty 2007; Huysmans 2006; Löwenheim and Gazit 2009; Squire 2016) might benefit from the reading offered in this book. This is because the ways in which states tend to justify their policies vis-à-vis issues of border control, migration and so forth are around the need to protect the ideal of societal cohesion and secure the imaginary nation from the ‘invasion’ of others, whilst keeping those others always at bay, close enough in order to preserve the necessary angst and render them the obstacle to the fantasmatic promise to be whole again.

The Ethico-Political Dimension Taking a genealogical approach matters theoretically and ethico-politically since it exposes our contemporary practices of congruency-making and enables us to engage with the implications that arise from them. It thus allows us to re-think the contemporaneous, particularly the contemporary structure of global politics, and potentially point to prospective change. The genealogy presented in this book is critical of our present-day discourses also by collapsing existing distinctions and de-ontologising (Derrida 1988: 4) the foundations of contemporary power–knowledge

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constellations, thus pointing to society’s ‘blind spots’ (Knodt 1995: xxxiv; Luhmann 2003 cited in Delanty and Strydom 2003: 439, 441). Throughout this genealogy I have shown how various debates and distinctions that exist in our current socio-political knowledge constellations— for example, between the ‘nation-state’ and the ‘state-nation’, or between the idea of a geo-juridical sovereign state and power-sharing/multi-­ national governance systems—actually collapse. What remains are some important reflections on the ethico-political implications arising from our contemporary politics of congruency and homogenisation that are exemplified in IR but also in the various power–knowledge constellations of everyday life. One could ask, therefore, what are the implications of the congruency fantasy for our power–knowledge matrices? What can we learn from the discourses of the congruent society about the relationship between our theorising of the world/‘international’ and the state-system? What other modes of thinking about socio-political life can we then look for? I take these questions to be inseparable from a critique and from a genealogical inquiry, as they engage with the ethico-political implications arising from a dominant mode of thought (see Campbell 1992; Campbell and Shapiro 1999: vii–xx). By this I mean that the critique offered here ought also to explore the ‘subjugated knowledges’, excluded from the ‘regime of congruency’ and rendered voiceless (Milliken 1999: 243). This is what I mean by ‘engaging with the ethico-political’, which is rejecting the imperatives of necessity, order and authority, and acting upon the world in order to enable change. ‘Engaging with the ethico-political’ can thus further mean that the exclusionary and potentially violent dimensions of ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ (Rancière 1992) are exposed and problematised. This means that by exposing ethico-political implications I also take the political as an ethical space, precisely because it is a ‘gap between past and future’ (Arendt 1961), a space in which the present can be changed. Below, therefore, are three key implications arising from our obsession with societal congruency, directly unpacking the contemporary ‘regime of congruency’ I have analysed in the introduction and in Chap. 7. First, the logic of ‘state strength’ and its deployment with respect to the global south—so much embedded in the politics of development, in our routine political and journalistic vocabularies, and in the IR theorisation of security, democratisation and peace—entails the scientification of the state apparatus according to various governance indicators (also known as Global Performance Indicators),2 including the ideal of congruency. This has resulted in a major corpus of experts and organisations that have been measuring, categorising and classifying states according

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to their levels of institutional strength and ‘fragility’, societal cohesion and further indicators of stateness (e.g., Goldstone et al. 2000; SocietalSystems Research Inc. and Colorado State University 2009; Rotberg 2003; Foreign Policy 2016). These Foucauldian practices of power– knowledge results in a quasi-scientific map of the world in which some parts are socially homogeneous and thus enjoy political and international legitimacy, whilst others are targeted for development and intervention. In other words, these practices normalise the ‘international’ as they determine the legitimacy of the state/region in question. As Löwenheim (2008: 271) argues, this process of classification … is not simply a way to coerce states to do what they are reluctant to do. Rather, it is a process through which a discursive field is generated and then becomes constitutive in the determination of states’ normalcy and international legitimacy.

The ethico-political implication of this is that the world is now divided into various regions in which states are coloured, literally, according to their degree of strength, varying between red, referring to complete weakness or even collapse, and dark green, referring to what is considered the most stable polity. Some regions are quite strong; in many others the composition is more complex. What arises here is a form of inclusive–exclusion, in which weak and incongruent states are on the one hand excluded from the normal referent-object of present-day discourses and knowledge constellations and, on the other hand, rendered a problem and even a threat to regional and world stability, viability, security and peace. This is also clearly seen in states’ ‘travel warnings’, the ways in which tourism in ‘danger zones’ are securitised and the overall global mapping of so-called no-go zones (Andersson 2016; Lisle 2013; Löwenheim 2007). This also means that ‘weak’ and ‘failed’ states and regions are constructed discursively as abnormal and should thus be assisted through, or coerced into, various development and interventionist mechanisms so that they can become part of the ‘normal’ state-system. The classification of regions and states according to their strength and their level of societal cohesion, sovereignty and thus economic viability and security leads to a myriad of interventionist practices such as aid and development (see also Kapoor 2008). A process of prioritisation of targets is also embedded in this process, by which the target state is required to follow certain socio-political and economic policies and governance

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reforms. This then entails the introduction of various security technologies and modalities that become entwined with development interventionism, such that development operations are subject to the West’s security concerns rather than guided by the true needs of the target states,  namely the ‘security-development nexus’ (Abrahamsen 2005; Duffield 2001, 2003; although see Chandler 2007; see also Ayoob 1995; Inayatullah 1996: 50–80; Richmond 2009). Call (2008: 1496), for instance, explains how the ‘failed state’ concept has introduced various policy-orientated studies which tend ‘… to lead to a single prescription for diverse maladies: more order’. This is the Weberian model of the strong and homogeneous state that is applied universally regardless of local conditions and specificities and is part of an interventionist technique designed to ensure and secure the West’s needs and desires rather than of the states and their population in question. This mode of measuring states and regions according to their strength and congruency as a ‘standard of civilisation’ also reaffirms hierarchy and authority where power and knowledge are interwoven. This process of normalisation, as a governmentality technology, is thus a manifestation of power relations where knowledge expertise—constructed and disseminated as objective, neutral and scientific—enables and legitimates forms of interventionism. What emerges is that the less-powerful states, which are almost always the target of such classifications, are construed as an ‘ethical agent’ and thus responsible for their own social, economic and political conditions, as ‘[t]he construction of the examined states as ethical subjects deemed capable of free and responsible choice. The responsibility for bad or unwanted conduct, then, lies with the examined state itself, and not with wielders of power or the examiners’ (Löwenheim 2008: 256). This of course obscures the historical legacies of colonialism, slavery and subjugation and ignores the power of global political economic structures, as it forces the targeted states to adopt policies in order to meet developmental targets (Call 2008; Kapoor 2008; Löwenheim 2008). Second, what emerges from the various discursive practices that render nation/state congruency rational and legitimate, particularly the security and the sovereignty-borders practice, is that the international system ought to be a system of homogeneous states, where states’ borders correspond to national demarcations (e.g., Downes 2001; Kaufmann 1998; Mearsheimer and Pape 1993; Miller 2007). Elements that seem to defy the general law of congruency are construed as a problem, indeed a s­ecurity threat. Refugees, scattered ethnic populations that reside in several states and other categories become a problem for our theorisation of the ‘interna-

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tional’ and for the security of the regions in which they reside (Van Evera 1994). These elements, especially in the post–9/11 War on Terror discourse, are constructed as major global threats, leading to ‘hot-spots’ of potential instability, insurgency and terrorism. As with the practices of development and the classification of regions and states according to their strength, it is mostly the non-West regions that are rendered backwards and which become responsible for their own fate, whilst the history and contemporary politics of (neo-)colonialism are silenced. Moreover, linking discursively nation/state congruency and security, progress and modernity results in the positioning of those polities that presumably are not nationally congruent as a deviation from what is constructed as the normal and optimal international system. The refugee or the stateless individual escaping climate change, authoritarian regimes and prosecution, for instance, is not articulated as a human subject in need of assistance and protection; rather, they now become a major concern for world security, a source of regional and political instability (e.g., being accused as leading to the rise of populist-nationalist and right-wing political rhetoric as is the current case in Europe and the USA) and thus can induce various interventions and security policies on the part of stronger states in order to ‘secure the borders’ and ‘maintain order and stability’. We should be extremely worried of recent developments around the borderlands, in which the logic of nation/state homogeneity, often construed along racial and civilisational lines, is clearly applied. Existing practices in the southern border of the USA, in the Mediterranean and the European periphery, or around the ‘perimeter fence’ in Gaza are exemplary of the logic of congruency and raise serious ethical issues. In those cases, and elsewhere, the migrant, the refugee and/or the subjugated are rendered the embodiment of national incongruency to the extent that they become zombie-like entities, rather than fellow-humans, whose sheer proximity to the imagined borders of the homogeneous civilisation (North-America, Europe or Israel) is to be prevented. The results are mass incarceration, targeting individuals and organisations that try to help refugees and migrants, or in some cases directly maiming or killing those who approach the ‘borderland’ (Puar 2017a).3 Third, what emerges with the liberal-democracy discursive practice with respect to various models of the plural and multicultural society is that the core tenets of liberal ideology as it is often construed—including individual liberties, democracy and the ‘rule of law’—are now predicated on the ideal of national congruency. Whilst such liberal discursive strategies advocate more plural models of society, the ideal of unity amongst people and

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between them and authority is nonetheless pervasive. Nationalism in its ethnicity and more exclusive versions is rejected by such liberal modalities, but the idea that ‘[n]ationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (Gellner 2006 [1983]: 1) is nonetheless smuggled through the back door even if the political is not necessarily understood as state borders (e.g., Kymlicka 2001: 234, 240–241; Tamir 1993; See also the critiques of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism in Calhoun 2008; Canovan 2016; Stephens 2013 but compare with Abizadeh 2002). Moreover, the multicultural project and its various application to conflict-­turn societies, particularly around power-sharing models, is still trapped in the cage of the national-state and thus in the liberal-democratic grammar of majority–minority and the need to protect minority (as well as native/indigenous) rights (see the critique in Nimni 2007). The underlying problem of a majority, a people that is represented by a given state, is neither challenged nor critically unpacked. There is, moreover, paternalism involved here as western democracies portray themselves as civic political communities and hence the morally preferable model of socio-political association. This entails a hierarchicalisation of the ‘international’ as western democracies are articulated as more inclusive and as plural societies, thus being able to provide counsel and assistance to incongruent post-conflict societies. What is obscured and indeed ignored is that western democracies may have emerged as liberal-­ democratic states, but their histories are riddled with violence, war and coercion (Tilly 1985: 169–191). States like the United States and Australia that are often celebrated as models of civic nationalism have a history of wars, enslavement and genocidal campaigns against their native populations. Furthermore, whilst western democracies may indeed be depicted as more inclusive societies, at times of crisis often ethnic and particularistic notions of collective sentiments arise where the Other—be it in the form of foreigners, migrants, or specific ethno-religious communities—is discriminated against and excluded (Kuzio 2002; see also Abizadeh 2004). We can clearly see this in the post–9/11 West, the War on Terror and the targeting and securitisation of Muslims (Ali and Whitham 2018; Croft 2012), or in the ways in which queer populations have become ‘subjects of life’ (Morgensen 2010: 105) to be protected by the state, whilst the native is queered and othered. As Puar (2017b) explains, this form of sovereign legitimation and nation-building, she defines as homonationalism, interpellates the ‘white’ and capitalist-consumerist homonormative subjectivity, indeed the politically docile citizen, whilst racially queering the Muslim/Arab other. The imagined story of liberal-democracy that enjoys a sense of civic-nationalism and/or multicultural policies in effect racialises

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internal and external others that function as fantasy2, that is, the obstacle to the fantasy of Western civilisational supremacy and exceptionality (on this and its various implications see, for instance, Agathangelou et  al. 2008; Haritaworn et al. 2013; Puar 2017b). * * * The critique offered in this book does not propose to replace the existing modus operandi of the international/congruent society system with yet another regime that will simply reintroduce other power dynamics, as there is no ‘power-free society’. Inquiring into the origins of the fantasy of nation/state congruency and the forms by which it is practised discursively presupposes that each regime of truth already emerges out of an ‘injustice’, a subjugation of knowledge and of subjectivities. Moreover, to imagine an alternative, a new interpretation, cannot really be conceived from within our current vocabularies and grammar ‘… because such an alternative cannot as yet be spoken of’ (Roth 1981: 45). Through a genealogical critique, and a psychoanalytical reading, this book’s objective was to open up the discursive space, stimulate debate and thus ‘extend the limits of the necessary’ (Kendall and Wickham 1999: 30). The ethical question of fantasy, however, is pertinent, namely whether the ethical-psychoanalytical move now should aim at ‘traversing the fantasy’. In the clinical setting that Lacan explains in Seminar XI (Lacan 1998 [1973], especially 203–216), traversing the fantasy is a move towards ‘subjective destitution’ whereby the analysand (the Lacanian term for ‘patient’) faces the void at the heart of their subjectivity, as they experience ‘the lack as created by the fantasy as such, as a lack without objectifying it’ (Arfi 2010: 439). As Verhaeghe (1999: 182) explains ‘… the subject comes to subjective destitution: it assumes the non-existence of the Other and the nonexistence of itself as a subject’ (see Žižek 1989: 122; 2008: 39–41). Transferring this logic to the question of nationalism, we might argue for a full realisation that the fantasy of societal unity covers a lack, a fissure at the heart of human association. The ethical stance is thus to bring-down the distinction between ‘our’ national subjectivity and its Others, between friend and enemy (Doty 2007), thus rendering our vocabularies of national societies redundant and the discursive positioning of others such as the stateless, the refugee or the native as enemy obsolete. Interrogating further the ways in which we could traverse the fantasy of societal congruency is needed, albeit beyond the scope of this book, as it might enable us to forgo modernity’s fixation with the ideal of national societies and homogeneous polities without attempting to reintroduce yet another model of societal cohesion.

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The problem I envisage, if I may conclude on a rather sceptical note, is that if my analysis of our contemporary regime of congruency is correct, namely that we have now moved from ‘methodological nationalism’ to actually investing in making societies and polities congruent, then we are too late. This is because the fantasy of nation/state congruency, as all fantasies, must maintain the national subjectivity in a form of anxiety, suspended between the promised utopia of congruity and security, and the Other, the obstacle hindering ‘our’ project of becoming whole. If we have indeed moved now to a stage in which we try to fulfil our fantasies as such, that is, creating congruent national societies, ontologically speaking, we may have already shifted from fantasy to nightmare in which the grammar of expulsions and genocide are the next logical step.

Notes 1. Consider also how the biopolitical lens ignores the history of racial violence, war, slavery and genocide, or indeed the continuous practices of settler colonial societies. As Howell and Richter-Montpetit (2018) argue, Foucauldian-­ based security analyses and biopolitics in particular read in/security through the Foucauldian and Eurocentric lens of the never secured human such that their ‘claim that life cannot be secured’, Howel and Richter-Montpetit (2018) argue, ‘fails to take account of how—conceptually and materially— the idea of human life is an effect of racism and colonialism’. 2. For recent discussions of GPIs see the Symposium in International Organization 73(3): 491–643. 3. Needless to say, as I explicate in other parts, that the logic of congruency also operates ‘internally’. The logic or what Puar (2017) defines as the ‘right to maim’ takes place not only in the borderland as such, but also within cities (in the West Bank, in the USA) around racial and civilizational borders, so to speak.

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Index1

A Affect, 22, 28n2, 47, 57, 59, 120, 146, 153, 188, 189, 192, 194, 202 Arendt, Hannah, 5, 7, 43, 156, 222 Arfi, Badredine, vii, 3, 22, 43, 54, 55, 58, 60, 181, 218, 227 C Cameralism, 104 Carr, E. H., 82, 164–170, 172, 175, 182n1 Civitas, 76, 79, 80, 88, 89, 91 Commonwealth, 76 Communitarianism, 207 Congruency and democracy, 2, 16, 17, 21, 27, 69, 83, 123, 128, 140–143, 147, 148, 150, 154–156, 193, 208, 219, 225 and the ‘international,’ 11, 13, 26, 44, 106, 114–115, 156, 163–166, 169–171, 174, 175,

181, 188, 192–210, 217, 219, 220, 222 and modernism, 1, 50, 220 and progress, 13, 16, 21, 27, 47, 50, 109, 131, 135, 147, 163, 225 and security, 2, 3, 16, 22, 27, 193, 196, 199, 202–204, 206, 219, 222, 224, 225, 228 Consociationalism, see Power-sharing Conversi, Daniele, vi, 1, 2, 8, 9, 24, 42, 43, 47, 50, 190, 220 Critique, v, 7, 25, 42, 44, 89, 91, 97, 102, 105, 106, 121, 142, 144, 165, 170, 178, 179, 189, 217, 222, 226, 227 D Democracy, 2, 15–17, 21, 25, 27, 57, 69, 76, 82, 83, 88, 90, 123, 128, 141–156, 163, 193, 205, 207–209, 219, 225, 226 and nationalism, 207, 208, 226

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 M. M. Mandelbaum, The Nation/State Fantasy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22918-4

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Demography, 15, 122, 148, 201 Derrida, Jacques, 221 Deutsch, Karl, 166–168, 181, 182n1 Discursive practices approach, 2 Discursive space, 3, 25, 68–70, 72, 73, 77, 102, 109, 127, 135, 174, 175, 177, 197, 198, 200, 227 E Eberle, Jakub, vii, 3, 22, 54, 55, 60, 218 Enjoyment, 3, 27n2, 51–60, 90, 91, 122, 148 Epstein, Charlotte, vii, 3, 51, 55 Ethico-political, 27, 203, 210, 217–228 F Fantasy, 3, 6, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19–27, 27n2, 41–60, 68–70, 74, 81, 87, 88, 91, 95–123, 127–157, 163–181, 187, 188, 192, 193, 196–198, 200, 202, 207, 209–210, 217–222, 227, 228 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 24, 96, 116–121, 130 Freud, Sigmund, 51, 53 G Gellner, Ernest, vii, 1, 2, 4, 8, 13, 22, 41–60, 109, 139, 167, 169, 170, 196, 218, 226 Genealogy, v, 3, 5–7, 21–27, 50–51, 179, 189, 218, 219, 221, 222 Glynos, Jason, 3, 4, 22, 43, 55, 57–60, 91, 150 Grotius, Hugo, 70–73, 79, 80

H Hegel, G. W. F., 24, 25, 83, 98, 113, 123, 127–140, 154, 155, 157n1 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 23, 24, 95, 96, 107–118, 121, 122, 123n3, 139 Herz, John, 25, 164, 165, 171, 174, 178 History of the present, see Genealogy Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 12, 23, 69, 74–82, 84–86, 88–90, 102, 103, 115, 121 Homogenisation, 8, 9, 21–23, 27, 41–51, 67, 69, 70, 74–79, 89, 101, 123, 129, 139–143, 147, 148, 153, 154, 168, 172, 192–209, 217, 222 Homogeneous, 11, 13, 14 Howarth, David, 3, 4, 22, 43, 55, 60, 68, 90, 150 I Identification, 11, 17, 22, 25, 51–53, 57–60, 122, 166, 168, 171–174, 203 Identity, v, 2–5, 8–11, 14, 15, 18–21, 28n2, 43, 45, 51–53, 55, 57, 71, 90, 96, 101, 105, 107, 108, 111, 114, 116, 118, 121, 122, 139–141, 143, 145–147, 154–157, 166, 168, 174, 175, 181, 192, 195, 198–200, 202–204, 206–210, 218 Imaginary (the), 4, 14, 53, 54, 70, 210, 221 International Relations/international relations IR, v, vi, 1–5, 8–10, 12–14, 22, 25–27, 156, 157, 163–181, 182n1, 187–195, 198, 202,

 INDEX 

203, 206, 208, 209, 218–220, 222 post-Cold War, 26, 27, 187–189, 191, 192, 194, 209, 219 poststructural, vi, 220 traditional, 26, 27, 163–166, 170, 177, 179, 181, 182n1, 192, 219 J Jouissance, see Enjoyment K Kinnvall, Catarina, vi, vii, 3, 51, 52, 55 L Lacan, Jacques, 3, 4, 41–60 Lack, see Void (of subject/object) Laclau, Ernesto, 4, 23, 43, 53, 57, 58, 60, 68, 90 Liberalism (IR Theory), 170 Liberal-nationalism, 141 M Mill, James, 25, 128, 140–143 Mill, John Stuart, 17, 25, 128, 141–148, 151, 154, 155, 209 Mirror Stage, 53, 57, 60 Modernism, 1, 50, 220 Modernity, v, 1, 3–9, 12, 22–27, 42–50, 67–91, 95–97, 104, 107, 121–123, 140, 146, 155, 156, 163, 165–177, 179, 180, 187, 196, 199, 217–219, 225, 227 Morgenthau, Hans J., 25, 164, 165, 168, 170, 172–176, 179, 180, 196 Multiculturalism, 19, 20, 28n4, 192, 206, 207, 210, 218, 226

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N Nationalism, civic, 6, 196, 207, 226 Nationalism, ethnic, 6, 196, 207 Nationalism (theories of), 43, 49 Nation/state, v, 1–22, 24–27, 41–60, 69, 95–123, 127–157, 163–181, 187–193, 196, 197, 199–202, 204, 209–210, 217–219, 221, 225, 227, 228 Nation-state, 1, 4–9, 11–18, 21, 22, 25–27, 44, 46–48, 68, 82, 97, 101, 102, 104, 121, 122, 135, 136, 140, 141, 146, 148, 153, 154, 156, 163–181, 187–189, 191, 192, 196, 197, 199, 202, 206, 207, 209, 210, 219, 220, 222 Nobus, Dany, 52, 53 O Other, 5, 7, 15, 54, 56, 60, 97, 103, 122, 142, 150, 152, 226–228 Othering, 144, 221 P Power-sharing, 192, 193, 205, 207, 219, 222, 226 Presentism, 8, 45, 50 Psychoanalysis, vi, 53 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 23, 70, 77–79, 81, 83, 86, 88, 121 R Real (the), 54, 121 Realism (IR Theory), 166 Romanticism, 23, 24, 95, 96, 116–121, 123n4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 23, 69, 81–90, 99, 114, 121, 140, 141, 143, 144

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S Security and insecurity, 21, 52, 75, 79, 165, 194, 199, 201–203, 221 of the nation/state, 26, 27, 55, 221 of society, 26 Sieyès, Abbé, vii, 11, 23, 24, 82, 95–100, 103–107, 113, 121, 123n2 Social imaginary, 4, 5, 55, 56, 105 Society, 1, 41, 68–70, 76, 79, 80, 87, 96, 128, 163, 187, 217 Sovereignty, 2, 5–12, 15, 21, 23, 24, 27, 51, 57, 68, 69, 71–73, 79, 83–86, 96–98, 101–103, 106, 112, 121, 136, 154, 156, 157, 165, 167, 170, 171, 174, 175, 178–179, 193, 203–205, 218–220, 223 Split subject, 3, 22, 51–53, 218, 219 State, v, 1, 7–21, 41–60, 67–91, 95–123, 127–157, 163–181, 187–192, 197–201, 209–210 Statism, 2, 7–12, 178, 204, 220 Stavrakakis, Yannis, 2–5, 51–53, 57–60, 90, 91, 122, 181, 217, 218 Subjectivity, 3, 5, 11, 51–53, 55–59, 105, 122, 138, 140, 148, 217, 218, 226–228 Symbolic (the), 54, 60 Symbolic order, 60, 155

T Teleology, 79–80, 103–105, 193 Territoriality, 2, 5, 10, 21, 156, 165, 171, 178, 204, 218, 220 Third Estate, 97–104 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 25, 128, 141, 142, 148–155 V Vattel, Emmerich de, 23, 68, 70, 78–81, 89, 179 Void (of subject/object), 3, 21, 22, 51–55, 58, 59, 68, 90, 130, 138, 218, 219, 227 Volk, 24, 77, 95, 96, 105, 107–109, 111–114, 116, 118–121, 123n3, 135, 219 W Will, 69–86 Z Zevnik, Andreja, vi, vii, 3, 22, 51, 54, 58, 60, 218 Žižek, Slavoj, 3, 4, 22, 43, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59, 90, 91, 122, 129– 131, 135, 138, 139, 181, 217, 218