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1 Rethinking the nation
From recognition to postcolonial politics
In 2015, a group calling itself Reclaim Australia emerged onto the Australian political scene, holding a number of rallies across the country to protest the threat supposedly posed by radical Islam to the national way of life. While the rallies themselves were mostly disorganised and reasonably small, typically facing off against counter-rallies double or triple in size, Reclaim Australia nevertheless received an inordinate amount of attention in the media and popular discourse. Their Australian flag-bedecked protests were perhaps the most overt nationalist spectacle witnessed in the country since the Cronulla Riots some ten years earlier,1 with the participation of a number of aggressive young white men â often with flags wrapped around their faces â worryingly reminiscent of those who crowded the beach in 2005, launching bottles at police and attacking passers-by of Middle Eastern appearance. Protestors held up signs like âYes Australia, no Shariaâ and âImmigration is the elephant in the roomâ, blasted songs by classic Australian bands like Midnight Oil and Goanna2 and donned national symbols like the Union Jack and the Southern Cross; some even dressed up as tubes of Vegemite, the ubiquitous Australian breakfast spread. A handful of politicians attended the events, most prominently the populist nationalist Pauline Hanson, whose recent re-entry into mainstream Australian politics was facilitated by an anti-Islam platform. For the most part, however, Reclaim Australia has framed itself as a movement by ordinary Australians for ordinary Australians, concerned about the damage being wrought to the nation by Islam and politically correct âbleeding heart Leftiesâ supportive of immigration. A real Australian, according to the Reclaimers, is one who treasures and respects Australian laws and culture. As much as Reclaim Australia has been careful not to afford this any explicit ethnic and racial content (their Facebook page proudly declares that people of European, Asian, Middle Eastern and Indigenous backgrounds are Australian insofar as they love the country), their proclaimed ethnic-inclusiveness is belied by a heralding of a Judaeo-Christian heritage, as well as the periodic involvement of white ultra-nationalist groups with neo-Nazi ties, such as the United Patriots Front.
Reclaim Australia naturally garnered a great deal of discord. Counter-rallies, variously made up of anti-racists, pro-multiculturalists, trade unionists and members of radical left groups like Antifa and the Socialist Alliance, were vigorous in their opposition and at times directly combative, with rival crowds facing off through a police picket. Some counter-protestors made a mockery of the very thing the Reclaimers professed to be reclaiming, brandishing signs in the black, yellow and red of the Aboriginal flag with âNot yours to reclaimâ and âReclaim Aboriginal Australia from mining companiesâ. Members of the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance burnt an Australian flag, extending their protest from the national symbols claimed by Reclaim Australia to the state itself (Green Left Weekly, 2015). Outside of the rallies, public opposition to Reclaim Australiaâs vision of national identity flourished from all quarters. Musicians whose songs had been played at Reclaim Australia protests denounced their co-option by the group and forbade their future use. Jimmy Barnes, for instance, objecting to the use of his song Khe Sanh in Reclaim Australia promotional material, declared âthe Australia I belong to and love is a tolerant Australia. A place that is open and giving. It is a place that embraces all sorts of different people, in fact is made stronger by the diversity of its peopleâ (Herald Sun, 2015). Various social and political commentators lamented the mainstreaming of right-wing nationalism and its tacit facilitation by the governmentâs politicisation of immigration and national security issues, particularly counter-terrorism efforts at home and overseas. Academic and politician Anne Aly juxtaposed the politics represented by Reclaim Australia with the type of nation âweâ deserve, which âstands together, not apart, in the face of adversityâ (2015); writer Randa Abdel-Fattah called for a different love of country that would inspire defiance of racism, a willingness to confront national complicity in injustice and a commitment to forging a âhealthy political realmâ (2015). Civil society actors, too, weighed in on the debate. Welcome to Australia, a multiculturalist organisation initially founded by Christian pastor Brad Chilcott, mobilised the #saywelcome campaign, which seeks to promote ârespect, compassion and inclusivenessâ as the âtrue Australian spiritâ.3 Adelaide artist Peter Drew crowdfunded two poster projects to be pasted around the country, one with the bolded slogan âReal Australians Say Welcomeâ and another with a picture of the early 20th century Afghan cameleer Monga Khan emblazoned with the word âAussieâ.4
The politics of Reclaim Australia are particularly concerning, not least because they are implicated in what seems to be a global revival of populist nationalisms which draw on civilizational creeds of âusâ and âthemâ, spout exclusionary and protectionist doctrines and feed the politicisation of cultural diversity and migration along with the militarisation of border security. While there is good reason to believe that the movement has lost much of its initial momentum, with its reputation tarnished by a visible neo-Nazi presence at rallies and communities declaring a moratorium on engaging with similar protests from splinter organisations (Brisbane Times, 2016), Reclaim Australia nevertheless remains representative of the dark potentiality of nationalism and its dangerous xenophobic predilections.
I do not begin with the group, however, to impugn its politics or cry foul on its uses and abuses of nation. Rather, I begin with Reclaim Australia to make a far more general point: nation, as an âimagined political communityâ (Anderson, 1991: 6), is a site of contestation and competing claims. It is easy to associate the discourse of nationhood with groups like Reclaim Australia, just as it is easy to do so in the context of Donald Trumpâs pledge to âMake America Great Againâ, UKIP in the United Kingdom or Germanyâs Alternative fĂźr Deutschland. These big-N nationalisms are loud, they employ the language and symbols of nation and they proclaim to speak exclusively on its behalf. They also represent all our worst fears of nationalism as a doctrine and nation as a concept, wielding the rhetoric of national unity and authenticity in an exclusivist and oppressive way that is demanding of affiliation and assimilation. Yet, these flag-waving folk with their sea of bright colours do not tell the whole story of nation, nor do their claims to representation go unchallenged. Those weighing in on the Reclaim Australia furore likewise employ the language and symbols of nationhood, whether presenting their own visions of what a ârealâ Australian is or should be, imagining a different type of national community or even just by speaking of a national âweâ. These interventions similarly appeal to rhetoric of national commonality in order to garner their âsymbolic forceâ (Bhabha, 1990: 1). The contents of this commonality, however, differ quite markedly, as do the political ideals they mobilise, which are far more benign than those of Reclaim Australia and their counterparts. They may not be as ostentatious, but such interventions do similar work in the business of âmaking the nationâ. They, too, imagine what âitâ is and who âweâ are, and they importantly show that claims to nation are never fixed or settled. To the contrary, any claim to represent the âtrueâ nation will always be contested. What the nation âisâ is perhaps best located in these contestations and the ways in which they vie for the crown of ultimate representativeness.
In this book, I am interested in how the idea of nation is woven into political discourse, the uses to which it is put and the struggles it inaugurates and perpetuates. That is to say, my interest is what we might call little-n nationalisms: how nationalism as a discursive formation that structures conceptions of identity, belonging and culture (Calhoun, 2007) shapes social reality and understandings of the political. To engage these little-n nationalisms is to acknowledge the essential contestability of nation, as well as the powerful ways in which the idea of nation remains resonant in contemporary life as the dominant form of political community.
This is not to say that nation is the only marker of political community, of course. The era of globalisation has made possible new ways of creating and locating identity, belonging and community outside of the national paradigm, and many scholars have accordingly sought to move their analyses into the realm of the transnational, the diasporic or the cosmopolitan. There is no doubt that globalisation has profoundly changed both the contours and contents of nation. Given the resurgence of big-N nationalisms, however, and the concomitant temptation to write off nation as a dark and exclusionary force, there is an urgent need to engage the multiplicity of ways in which little-n nationalisms shape contemporary politics â lest we leave it to the Reclaims, Trumps and UKIPs of the world. Moreover, as much as it may seem that nation has little to offer a globalised world and that our hopes for democracy are best set beyond the borders of the nation-state (e.g. Spivak, 2003), we risk throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. It would not only be pre-emptive but perhaps a little contemptuous of the work nation does in organising social and political life to suggest that it is no longer relevant, or should no longer be relevant, to progressive and inclusionary politics. As I suggest throughout this book, nation does not just continue to provide the âframework and language of almost all political discussionâ (Harris, 1990: 269), but can in fact play a productive role in political discourse as a rubric for democratic inclusion and belonging â even if we must always remain assiduously wary of its potential for abuse.
Paying attention to the variety of ways in which nation figures and is contested in political struggles allows us to not only develop a more nuanced account of its contemporary manifestations, but also to strip problematic nationalisms of their claims to exclusive representativeness. The façade of national unity always belies the serious contestations that take place under its rubric, and while this contestation is invariably conditioned by certain limits, these limits too are contestable. This book works from the premise that the tendency to gloss over this contestability is testament to the power of nationalist rhetoric, and may just be complicit in it insofar as it tacitly reinforces essentialist ideas of nationhood. It is only by coming to an understanding of the persistence of nation in our social and political imaginaries that we may hope to comprehend the type of work it does for people of different political persuasions, as well as harness its potential for democratic politics.
Multicultural politics of recognition
My particular focus in this book is how ideas of nation are woven into what I call multicultural politics of recognition as they take place in culturally diverse Western societies. This is perhaps somewhat of a counterintuitive route, given that the representation of national unity is only made possible by the repression or suppression of certain differences and typically at the expense of minorities. Indeed, the drive towards homogenisation that is central to nationalist rhetoric is, in significant ways, counter to the cause of difference and diversity, although, as the varieties of âmulticulturalâ nation-building efforts across the Western world demonstrate (Uberoi, 2008), it is not incompatible with it. On the one hand, nationalism as a discursive formation is directly âimplicated in the widespread if not problematic treatment of societies as bounded, integral wholes with distinctive identities, cultures and institutionsâ, an imaginary that often excludes the presence of minority groups and makes the existence of societal diversity difficult to acknowledge or accept (Calhoun, 2007: 40). On the other hand, minority groups have suffered the most at the hands of state nation-building practices and nationalist rhetoric, which typically privilege âmembers of the majority cultureâ and render minority differences (such as languages and cultural practices) precarious (Kymlicka, 2002: 348). It is thus not surprising that much scholarship has tended to focus on the ways in which minority groups are negatively affected by nationalist discourse, whether they are its explicit targets (like Muslims in Reclaim Australiaâs platform) or its implicit exclusions. Alternatively, scholarship has considered how the rapid diversification of societies combined with the uncertainties of globalisation have shored up exclusionary discourses of nation and national identity, where certain minorities are deemed part of a wider undermining or destruction of âauthenticâ national culture.
These are not just worthy lines of inquiry but crucially important. However, one of the implications that emerge from them is that minorities are somehow positioned in opposition to nation, drawing a line between an imagined national centre and a minority margin (or margins) â a presumption that simply cannot hold, given the rapid diversification of Western societies over the past few decades. This book suggests that exploring how minorities, particularly those at the national periphery, employ and put to use the discourse of nation in their struggles for recognition allows us to gain an alternative insight into the workings of nation, its discursive pervasiveness and essential contestability. In so doing, I by no means intend to submerge or assimilate minority differences into the national imaginary, nor do I mean to suggest that minority struggles are somehow secondary or epiphenomenal to wider national politics. Rather, my key interest is how minority struggles for recognition work in and across different discursive registers; the national is but one, but I suggest that it is a potentially revealing one for gaining a sense of the nuances of struggles surrounding difference as well as their wider resonances.
Multicultural politics of recognition refer to claims from minority groups for the public acknowledgement, affirmation and esteeming of their distinctive identities, which can range from challenges to dominant patterns of cultural representation to demands for the institution of group-specific rights to accommodate unique cultural practices, traditions and beliefs. They thus have significant overlap with âidentity politicsâ and âthe politics of differenceâ (Young, 1990). The theoretical paradigm of recognition has come to be a matter of both debate and controversy in recent years, with various scholars challenging its potential to promote freedom and equality for minority groups. This book, however, works from the contention that political theories of recognition (e.g. Taylor, 1994; Honneth, 1995; Fraser, 1997) offer rich resources for illuminating the dynamics of difference-related struggles. Firstly, as much as theorists of recognition disagree on what the affirmation of difference entails, they are in broad agreement that what compels such struggles is the experience of âmisrecognitionâ; that is, having oneâs difference disrespected or denigrated, which includes stereotyping, inferiorising (rendering certain cultural differences inferior) and various patterns of social exclusion (Thompson and Yar, 2011: 171â2). In this regard, theories of recognition speak as much to the social conditions that compel struggles for recognition as they do to those struggles themselves. Secondly, and relatedly, political theories of recognition are well equipped to demonstrate how multicultural demands for recognition are never purely in the service of difference but are instead implicated in, and seek to shape, wider horizons of justice and morality. As such, they offer us a means to reflect upon how the affirmation of difference is entangled with the rearticulation of political identity, that is, who âweâ are and what defines us as a political community.
This book argues that conceptions of nation play an important role in contemporary experiences of misrecognition in Western multicultural contexts. Specifically, I argue that ideas of national belonging are critical in framing minority claims for the recognition of difference in culturally diverse societies, insofar as exclusion from or marginalisation in dominant regimes of national belonging constitute a specific form of social disrespect, insult and contempt. National belonging refers to the feeling of being âat homeâ in the nation and all those things that come along with feeling at home â comfort, security, continuity and a sense that one can speak and be heard.5 It thus has an affective dimension, wherein it relates to the hopes, longings and desires of attachment (Probyn, 1996), and a political dimension, where it denotes a sense of the rightfulness of presence and the legitimacy of participation. National belonging is patterned by certain indices that construct the inclusion or exclusion of different people, groups and social categories and is connected to prototypes of the âimagined nationalâ. After all, as Nira Yuval-Davis (2011: 76) writes, âwe need a notion of the nation before we can decide if people belong to it or notâ.
This has significant consequences for minority groups and those deemed not to have (or have enough of) purported ânational characteristicsâ, particularly with regard to who may âlegitimatelyâ have a say and a stake in the political community of the nation. Through reading the ways in which the language of nation comes to figure in minority struggles for the recognition of difference, I argue that the construction of certain differences as more or less ânationalâ â and the implications of this for conditioning rightful political participation â is an important dimension of the experience of inequality and injustice in culturally diverse societies. There are two further contentions that derive from this argument. The first is that we are unable to separate the claim for the recognition of difference from the national imaginary that helps to shape, position and give meaning to this difference (although, again, not exclusively so). The second is that paying attention to the ways in which minorities invoke the language of nation in their demands for recognition allows us to understand such multicultural politics as actively engaged in contesting the unequal distribution of national belonging, wher...
