Nationalism constitutes not just politics but the very shape of thought

Evidence

Nationalism is not just a political formation; it is both an ontological and an epistemological formation in the first order. True, it creates the national subject, but it does so only after creating the subject as a particular identity, and creating it as a knowing, thinking entity, with a particular mode of rationality. There is no citizen, student, scholar—Orientalist or not—who can entirely escape this ontological and epistemological formation and, importantly for our concerns later, the occasional loosening of the grip and shaking off of the dogmas of this formation cannot occur except post eventum, which is to say that the freeing, or partial freeing, of the subject from this status happens within the givens of this status. There is no modern subject who can exist in a state originally free of this ontological and epistemological status; and when one frees oneself from it, it is, ipso facto, against this very status that one must struggle. This is precisely what central paradigms mean: to be against or outside of them is to resist them; it is not to be able to conceive or operate in the world, whether in harmony or contrariety, without first presupposing them. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 201 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Externalizing socialist practice leaves nationalism as the only conceptual frame available — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 364; Nationalism constitutes a totalizing epistemology no modern subject can escape — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 201; Nationalism must be read against prior cultural systems, not political ideologies — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 58 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Nationalism constitutes a totalizing epistemology no modern subject can escape #expands (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 201