nationalism hangover

A few years ago, while discussing his recently-published book (that he was gracious enough to assign the class), a professor of mine made an aside about how after writing the book, he realized that he'd been preoccupied with the same issue for his entire academic career, but not having named it as such, he didn't recognize his own theme until 20 years into it. His theme was the causes and results of freedom of speech. Mine, I've realized of late, is nationalism.

I have always been uncomfortable with nationalistic ritual, even before my distaste for religion had blossomed. By always, I mean ever since I was old enough to pledge allegiance to the flag, in my case, a flag that I knew, and was continuously made aware, was not my own. It was a ritual that I had to perform, like everyone else, but because I was aware that my flag had green and an eagle on it while this one did not, I learned a lesson really early on about ritual--that it is meant to engender certain feelings, rather than to confirm feelings that are there naturally. I didn't belong, but I watched my peers learn to. And watching the process of indoctrination is unsettling, even to a six year old who doesn't quite know what to call it.

The way I grew up, I was neither Mexican nor American. I was born in Mexico City, yes, but my parents moved to the states in 1987. Both of them, come to think of it, had checkered pasts with the idea of the nation. My dad came from a long line of men who had attended Virginia Military Academy, and much to his father's chagrin, he refused to go. His ethnic background includes ancestors from Kansas, Ireland, Germany, Peru, and even San Martin, "liberator" of South America from Spain. Instead of going to VMI, he went to UNAM (in Mexico City), and when the Vietnam War came around, he made it a point to renounce his US citizenship. My mom's case is more straight-forward. She was born in Mexico to a fair-skinned mother and a VERY Indian (that is to say, native, indigenous, pick whichever is more tasteful) looking father. So her issue was never directly a conflict with patriotism, but was rather a class-conflict, which in Mexico can become an issue of patriotism.

I digress. We moved in the late 80s, just before I turned three years old. My parent's cosmopolitanism ensured that I spoke and understood english as well as spanish, and a little russian when we moved. I didn't have much trouble (compared with other immigrant studies) switching to just english for school, and reading was easy. Still, assimilation is hard when you know you're different. And school is almost entirely about assimilation.


One of the greatest joys of being a teenager is in finding creative ways to call your elders liars. Being able to claim moral high ground on your captors, as it were, never got old. And so it was that in high school, I began to look more critically at our history books for what was missing and what was there. It was obvious pretty quickly that what we were being told was not in fact history, but the national narrative from which our identities were to be formed. We associate with this country because it has done x, y, and z. We choose to forget the rest of the alphabet. This so profoundly offended my sensibilities as to guide my every intellectual interest since sophomore year, whether I knew it or not.

And in fact I couldn't quite put my finger on it until monday afternoon. Even as I wrote the following proposal for summer research, I didn't know quite what I was getting at:

"I am interested in the shaping of national identity through retellings of history. As the First World War is generally seen as a watershed event that ushered in the worst the twentieth century had to offer, a transformative moment in which the degree of change was visible on the ground at the time, I am interested in discovering the ways in which the War's significance and lessons were reprocessed for French and British children—both nations came out of the war nominally as victors, but both sustained immense human and economic losses. In this comparative approach, I am interested to find how the war fostered or reinforced their differing national identities—identities which, it has been argued, were forged in opposition to one another."

But Monday morning, I had my interview for citizenship, I was sworn in that afternoon, and spent the rest of the day in a profoundly ambivalent mood about what I had just done.


Here's my confession: After waiting in line at the Mexican consulate for 8 hours just to renew a passport, the conveniences of attaining citizenship in the place I'd always lived started to look practical, if not intellectually appealing. A few months later, it was announced that the cost to apply would almost double. My rational self prevailed, and I applied. This included swearing that I wasn't and am not a communist or a terrorist (that prompt is part of the same segment, implying that either association is equivalent to the other), that I would go to war for the country if required (I would certainly not), and that I swore I'd tell the truth "so help me god" (Clearly, I didn't, and anyway I'm an atheist.). I had my swearing in yesterday, which included more offensive questions and lies (are you mentally or physically disabled? Are you sure you're not a communist? Do you support the US foreign and domestic policy? Etc.), an announcement of "welcome" from "president" George W. Bush, and saying the oath, which I mouthed but didn't speak.

As a student of history, I find it deeply disturbing to have associated myself by choice, when I'm old enough to know better, with a country whose policies have generally been disgraceful for the last few centuries. On principle, I don't like answering a question about the virtues of the constitution with the words "freedom of speech," and then being asked to confine my worldview to "not communist." I don't like being shown a video for the army and being reminded that the men on the tape "died for my freedom," when this country hasn't fought a defensive war in over a hundred years (we can argue about wwii later). I don't like the way the government uses its past to draw the entirely wrong lessons. I sold out.

I like a bit of poetry in my politics.

Until recently, I was convinced that inspirational politics, in the sense of a leader rising up and inspiring citizens to aspire to greater heights, was the stuff of history, if it ever really existed at all. I find it hard to imagine generations past who actually had to fight to effect change--what could compel them to forget themselves for long enough to storm the Bastille? What nobility there must have been in the souls of the Mexican peasants who, at the dawn of the past century, decided that they'd had enough. Those who have been as fortunate as I grew up a bit jaded; we saw what happened to the generations of the '60s and '70s. We've watched them decay in suburbs. It never occurred to me that it might take a special kind of inspiration to act as a catalyst for self-investment in political life, or that that inspiration could come from a politician.

Barack Obama's candidacy has had me reflecting on a lot of different issues, but the theme that emerges the strongest, which my recent training may have given me the ability to see more easily than others might, is that some times are simply more able to effect change than others--Obama knows this; this is why he quotes Dr. King's masterfully phrased line: "the fierce urgency of now." He also knows that his candidacy is not entirely about himself, but largely about what hopes and aspirations people my age project onto the newness he offers. This feels like a turning point in history; those of us who are hopeful will either be vindicated, or disillusioned, and soon. Obviously, I hope for vindication; but even in disillusionment's, I will have learned something valuable about what it is like to be profoundly affected by the charisma of a time, place, and person, and if nothing else, my scholarship will be better for it.

Maybe it'll get you too, at least a little. Here's part of his concession speech from New Hampshire-- you'll see what i mean:

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.

...

Together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can.