Nationalism can only be judged through its particular instances, not abstraction

Evidence

The issue of nationalism is much more difficult to settle, because nationalism is no unitary thing, and so many different kinds of ideologies and political practices have invoked the nationalist claim that it is always very hard to think of nationalism at the level of theoretical abstraction alone, without weaving into this abstraction the experience of particular nationalisms and distinguishing between progressive and retrograde kinds of practices. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 45

Categorization

• QUESTION: Useful for the reader’s question about collective over individual strategic identity: whether any collective-national identity claim can be kept ironic given nationalism’s irreducible range of concrete practices.
• XREF: connects to: Poststructuralist critique rejects nationalism wholesale instead of judging its specific historical forms — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 169; Nationalism lacks fixed essence; its value depends on who wields it — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 395; Nationalism must be read against prior cultural systems, not political ideologies — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 58

Broader Connections

• Nationalism must be read against prior cultural systems, not political ideologies #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 58