Nativism’s inauthenticity charges rest on an unstable, misdrawn topology of identity

Evidence

As Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, the charge of inauthenticity is an inherently unstable one:Nativists may appeal to identities that are both wider and narrower than the nation: to ‘tribes’ and towns, below the nation-state; to Africa, above. And, I believe, we shall have the best chance of re-directing nativism’s power if we challenge not the rhetoric of the tribe, the nation, or the continent, but the topology that it presupposes, the opposition it asserts. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 412

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘topology’ critique of nativism dovetails with the polyad’s colonial/land/place strand — challenging mapped oppositions rather than the identities they posit. — connects to: Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality; Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other; Social identity derives its value from comparisons against out-groups — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2718 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality #corroborates (0.75)
• Authenticity as full self-identity is impossible because iterability makes self-presence unattainable in principle #corroborates (0.75) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 767
• Persistent ethnocentric judgments provide the subsoil in which nativism later grows #expands (0.72) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 149
• The constitutive outside makes alterity both possible and impossible for identity #qualifies (0.72)
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #corroborates (0.70)
• Social identity derives its value from comparisons against out-groups #corroborates (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2718