|
|
|
Book Review
| Chimène I. Keitner, The Paradoxes of Nationalism: The French Revolution and Its Meaning for Contemporary Nation Building, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. Pp. 233. $65.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0-7914-6957-6); $21.95 paper (ISBN 978-0-7914-6958-3).
|
| In this cogent and incisive book, Chimène Keitner analyzes and assesses nationalism by examining it, in its theory and its practice, at the time of the French Revolution. Whether one sees the Revolution as the mother or the child of nationalism matters little, since in Keitner's view "the deployment of the concept of nationhood by French Revolutionary thinkers and politicians provides a rich laboratory for exploring this concept and testing its ethical and logical limits" (13). |
1
|
|
Keitner identifies four paradoxes in nationalism, which she labels (with helpful alliteration) "conception," "constitution," "composition," and "confrontation." Each paradox is the subject of a chapter. According to the paradox of conception, a state is only legitimate when it reflects the will of "its" respective nation, but it is hard to conceive of a nation existing prior to or independent of a state that would delineate its territorial boundaries and furnish it with institutional structures. In the eighteenth century, Enlightenment writers and spokesmen for the oft-refractory judicial magistracy insisted on the prior existence of a nation whose will, laws and customs prevented the tyranny of royal absolutism, while supporters of the king felt compelled to justify his rule in terms of the nation's interests. Yet when trying to identify the nation in a contractual pre-history, Keitner shows, philosophes and magistrates failed to acknowledge the role of the centralizing French state in creating the conditions by which individuals inhabiting diverse regions of French territory (itself consolidated by the state) and divided by class, occupation, gender and other factors might think of themselves as part of the same national community. |
2
|
|
The second paradox is that of constitution. This concerns the question of how a nation can be constituted without relying on state institutions which, according to the prevalent idea of states drawing legitimacy from their nations, should not yet exist. For example, Keitner notes that the first spokesman for the French nation came from the parlements, the Old Regime judicial courts that challenged the king by claiming to be guardians of France's fundamental laws (and in the process rejected some of his legislative measures). Similarly, the author observes, when Abbé Sieyes famously urged the Third Estate in 1789 to defect from the caste-bound institution of the Estates General and form a unitary National Assembly, he nevertheless used the venerable deliberative body as his forum. |
3
|
|
The third paradox addressed in Keitner's book is that of composition. Who is included in the nation, and who is excluded? According to the voluntarist model (epitomized for many scholars by France), citizens belong to the nation by virtue of their will, in contrast to the non-voluntarist model in which race or ethnicity delineates national boundaries. Yet Keitner argues that will alone often fails to create the kind of unity that nationalism demands. She points to proposals by revolutionaries to impose the French language on speakers of other languages or "dialects," citing these plans (which admittedly never became law) as evidence that even the purportedly more liberal voluntarist conception of nationhood has coercive tendencies. |
4
|
|
Fourth and finally, Keitner analyzes the paradox of confrontation. The principle of national self-determination requires nations to treat each other as equals in the international arena, respecting each other's sovereignty and only waging wars of self-defense. Yet nationalism induces members of any given nation to see themselves as special, and often superior, an attitude which encourages arrogance and even aggression. Confrontation paradoxically comes about in part when members of one nation view another nation as insufficiently universal in its respect for human rights and thereby acquire a justification for "liberation" via invading armies. Keitner shows how the French revolutionaries and subsequently Napoleon used the universalist ideology of national self-determination to impose their laws on—and enrich themselves at the expense of—neighboring countries. |
5
|
|
Following a synthetic chapter elaborating on the four paradoxes is an "epilogue" that considers the striking parallels between the French invasions of neighboring countries in the era of the Revolution and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In both cases supporters of war combined the rhetoric of universal rights with the discourse of national liberation to justify attacks on other nations. Given the anti-French mood in the Bush administration, it is ironic to see the extent to which the President and his supporters have replicated ideologies deployed two centuries ago in revolutionary and Napoleonic France. |
6
|
|
Specialists in the history of the French Revolution will find much that is familiar in Keitner's book. Since François Furet's revisionist challenge to "Jacobin" orthodoxy in the 1970s, historians have repeatedly exposed the weaknesses of an interpretation that takes the triumphalist claims of French revolutionaries at face value. Still, historians will welcome Keitner's sustained analysis of the idea of the nation and be gratified to read a compelling case for the continued relevance of a much-debated historical subject. Moreover, the author's audience includes political theorists and scholars of international relations whose understanding of a key concept in their fields will benefit from Keitner's historically informed analysis. |
7
|
| Ronald Schechter
|
| The College of William and Mary |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|