Portrait of a member of the local elite of Western Georgia (Colchis, alias Lazica) during the Roman period. This amethyst, set in gold, wasfound at Kedeeti and is now held at theJanashia Museum in Tbilisi.
The Nation, a Real Myth
David Braund
David Braund is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter.
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." So President William Jefferson Clinton in his inaugural address of January 1993 [1]. He referred not to America as a geographical concept, nor even to America as a political entity, a state of states. Although 'America' may evoke geography and political organisation, Clinton's principal appeal was to the nation. The nation was to be the focus of a new unity, overwhelming the divisions of the electoral process, which had made Clinton President. The nation was presented as both distinct from politics and more important than politics. It encompassed polarities of ideological division: it was old and it was new, it was traditional and it was revolutionary.
Accordingly, Clinton characterised the transfer of presidential power from Bush to himself as "a spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy that brings forth the courage to reinvent America". The old and traditional evocations of 'brings forth' combine with the novelty of post-modernist 'reinvent' to bracket a theme of the appeal, 'courage'. The language is appropriately epic: the task is huge, as is the commitment expressed by the speaker and demanded from his audience. The nation is to be reinvented, like an inanimate thing or record. It is also to be reborn, like an animate being: here, it seems, the nation is its people, whose courage blurs with the courage of the nation. Hence the nation is readily presented as a larger-than-life human-being, whether male, like Uncle Sam, or female, like Britannia: such figures encapsulate the nation, while their roles may even approximate to those of protecting deities.
Clinton's nation was an emotional construct presented as essential, real and alive. He offered no hint that the nation is a figment, real only as a real myth, a shared fantasy, however variously understood. Why should he? After all, the political effectiveness of Clinton's rhetorical strategy has often been recognised. As early as 1922, Mussolini had a powerful understanding of the reality of the myth that is 'ration':
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is a passion. It is not necessary that it be a reality. It is a reality by the fact that it is a good, a hope, afaith, that it is courage. Our myth is the Nation, our myth is the greatness of the Nation! And to this myth, to this grandeur, that we wish to translate into a complete reality, we subordinate all the rest.[2]
Of course, Clinton's idea of nation was not that of Mussolini. However, though their political agenda differ, their respective rhetorics play on much the same emotions and even offer the same association of nation and courage, courage and nation. Both appeal to imagined superlatives.
Clinton's nation was a democracy: fittingly, for he is a Democrat. A Republican would doubtless have agreed that America is a democracy, but might have preferred to stress that it was a Republic. Moreover, Clinton's America was not simply a democracy, but a superlative democracy. And its specialness is located in antiquity. The claim is striking. Antiquity is rare in American identities, wherein the innovation and invention of the frontier predominate. Moreover, it is usually Greece in general and, more plausibly, Athens in particular that claim the right to tee 'tine world's oldest democracy' Indeed, in the very year of Clinton's speech, the 2500th. anniversary of Athenian democracy is to be celebrated in grand style in Greece and abroad, as far afield as Manchester (whose own name evokes Communism for generations of erstwhile Soviet citizens, schooled in the biography of Engels). Of course, democracy is like apple pie: it is perceived as quintessentially right to the extent that it is seldom seriously challenged, though it may well be re-defined. And because of its rightness, also like apple-pie, democracy can be deemed American. It may also be Greek, even British, for is not the British Parliament the 'Mother of Parliaments'? Nations regularly seek to appropriate their own large slice of democracy.
Emotional appeals to the nation require and pre-suppose forms of rational truth. They must be valid to the extent that they can be defended against attack from those outside or inimical to the nation. Clinton might observe, for example, that Greek claims to be the oldest democracy overlook much of Greek history from, say, 338 BC to the later 1970s AD, whereas American democracy has been continuous. However engaging, such debating-points are unproductive and unconvincing, not least because they are designed to serve the nationalist ideologies which create them. National(ist) claims to antiquity beg a 'So what ?'to which there seems to be no cogent non-national(ist) answer. Even if such claims could be submitted to agreed tests, in what sense could it be significant that one nation was the oldest democracy? It is the current democracy that is at issue and which requires attention, not a past that is disputable and malleable. In consequence, the current celebration of Athenian democracy tells us nothing about the Greece of the past and everything about Greece of the present. Similarly, Clinton's claim reveals not the American past, but the American present and Clinton's conceptualisation of both present and future.
Yet the nation craves antiquity. If at all possible, the nation must be prehistoric, an essential feature of Nature itself. And that antiquity must be remarkable in ways which impinge on contemporary self-images. In that sense, in the emotional discourse of the nation, the 'So what?' question loses all power and even all relevance: it is beyond asking and does not require or deserve an answer.
Historians often claim the power to cut through the Gordian knot of the nation's rationalised emotions and emotionalised rationalities. They imagine that they can apply pure, scientific methods to national questions: they think that they possess the agreed tests and can put them into action. At best, they are deluded. At worst, they are tools, willing and aware, of the ideologies that they seek to promote. As Hayden White has argued, historians are themselves entangled in the knot which they seek to cut through, even, at their most presumptuous, to untangle.[3] It is their dilemma, not their integrity, that gives them so prominent a role in debates on and of the nation. Historians play a double game: they claim to be both scientific and artistic, though different historians would emphasise their claims differently and might be regarded differently again. As scientists, historians claim to be uncommitted, rational and non-ideological. However, as artists they are creative, selecting and constructing, sometimes denying all creativity in the process. History does not write itself.
In the end, the scientific pretensions of the historian are easily crushed by the emotional commitment of the great majority, who are not professional historians, but who nevertheless are confident in their knowledge of their national past. The collective, imagined past belongs to the pool of communication within which the nation is given and takes some shape.[4] Language is another large constituent of that pool and a principal criterion (though neither necessary nor sufficient) for inclusion within the nation. Claims to the specialness of a national language recur: not only its antiquity, but also its purity, its linguistic peculiarities, its expressiveness, its beauty and more. Poets of the past often figure in such claims: for English, Shakespeare shoulders much of the burden. In that sense, the creation of canons is often a nationalist agendum.
Not only language and the past, but also religions, value-systems, social practices, dress and physiognomy, all form part of the pool of communication which constitutes the nation's self-image. They offer a range of criteria for distinguishing 'us' from 'them'. However, the application of those criteria is an uncertain matter. Many inhabitants of the nation may satisfy all criteria, but many will not. For example, they may share language, but not religion. They may share language and religion, but may dress differently or be physically distinct by colour, size or (in)capacity. Gender-related issues abound throughout: if, with Norman Tebbit, we apply the 'cricket-test' to determine nationality, the majority of women are excluded from the reckoning, an irrelevance, for (like much of the male population also) they do not engage with cricket and therefore cannot even sit the test, let alone pass it. Of course, such tests and their interpretations vary with the interpreter, who will favour different tests and may operate a more inclusive or a more exclusive model. However, though various criteria may be differently applied, the endeavour is the same, namely to mark out those of the nation from those not of it. 'Of/not of', because here the familiar polarity of inside/outside may mislead. One may be physically located inside the nation, but reckoned outside it for all meaningful purposes: indeed, such inside-outsiders tend to be the focus of particularly vehement nation-related debate and hostility, being regarded as traitors, as 'the enemy within'.
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Portrait of a member of the local elite of Western Georgia (Colchis, alias Lazica) during the Roman period. This amethyst, set in gold, wasfound at Kedeeti and is now held at theJanashia Museum in Tbilisi. |
The new Republic of Georgia offers a convenient case-study. It may immediately be objected (a Georgian Clinton would) that it is not a new Republic of Georgia, but a restoration of an old one. Predictably enough, it is impressively old, for the nation prefers not to be new. It is an old democracy to boot, like Clinton's America, for a form of parliament is located in the Georgian middle ages. In other words, communism was never natural to the nation: it was a foreign import, specifically from the Russian oppressor. Naturally, Georgian history is that of a great nation, beset by enemies on all sides - Turks, Persians, Russians etc. - who serve to define its nationhood, to explain the limited practical benefits of its greatness and to take the responsibility and blame for its sufferings and difficulties, past, present and future.
There now seems scant doubt (although the point is still debated by the apparently disinterested) that the nation depends upon its enemies, actual or potential, to define it. That is, without 'them' there is no 'us': without 'otherness' there is no 'sameness' and, arguably, no need for it. Characteristically, nationalists support the opposite view. For them, the nation simply is. For them, there are fundamental features common within the nation which set its members apart and above: on that view, others are merely contingent, however irritating or threatening.
Within the Georgian Republic there is an essentialist myth of nationhood which is known and regularly repeated by Georgians, not least for the benefit of foreigners. The myth is related with a smile, for in rational terms it is not taken to be true. However, its currency and popularity suggest that it is not simply false either. Rather, the myth encapsulates much of the Georgian self-image, or 'tine Georgian character', as a nationalist might put it. Since the myth is very much part of an oral tradition, its details vary, but its key features seldom change. A recent, well-informed guidebook commits the myth to paper in a form in which I have often heard it:
The Georgians themselves tell the following story about how they came to possess the land they deem the most beautiful in the world. When Cod was distributing portions of the world to all the peoples of the earth, the Georgians were having a party and doing some serious drinking. As a result they arrived late and were told by God that all the land had already been distributed. When they replied that they were late only because they had been lifting their glasses in praise of Him, God was pleased and gave the Georgians that part of earth he had been reserving for himself [5]
However false as a rational account of Georgian prehistory, the story has an emotional appeal: such is the discourse of the nation, as we have seen with Clinton's America.
The Georgian myth is essentialist: the Georgians were a nation from the first and received their territory then. Moreover, its national territoriality is sanctioned (in fact, created) by God: it is not a matter of historical chance. Indeed, the myth shows Georgians enjoying a special relationship with God in several respects. They claim to have been specially engrossed in praising him, more, it is implied, than all the other peoples of the earth: theirs was/is a true concern for God, to the extent that they put their national territory at risk. And their special treatment of God is reciprocated: they receive a territory that had been set aside as God's own country. As the myths of many nations, so the Georgian myth presents a chosen people in a chosen land. For a nation which prizes its Christianity, hedged about by Islam, the claim is particularly potent.
At the same time, the Georgians of the myth are self-confident in their rituals and in their eloquence, a self-confidence that is confirmed by their success. Ritualised feasting is an appropriate diversion, both because of its religious associations (God is praised) and because in everyday experience the rituals of the table are central to Georgian social life. In Georgian society the foreigner is never more visible than at table, where rituals abound and are relished, especially by the menfolk who dominate them. At table, the formal toast governs all consumption of alcohol (largely wine) and is an embodiment of the eloquence that persuaded even God.
Another reading is also to be found in the myth, though there is a certain tension between it and the more sober reading which is more commonly stressed and which has been set out here so far. The Georgians were late: they had broken the rules. The model appeals to one contemporary Georgian self-image: Georgians are seen to be clever and resourceful, properly concerned with pleasures. They are seen not to be concerned with punctuality, for Georgians often pride themselves explicitly on their disregard for the constraints of time as for other rules and limitations. Georgians often speak of themselves as clever rule-benders, cunning and intelligent. Such a self-image had particular appeal for a people who lived in a land closely regulated by an alien authority. For the modern Georgian, the Georgians of the myth got their priorities right, whether they are taken really to have been praising God or not. The latter question is improper and divisive: I have never heard it asked.
Like the origin-myths of other nations, the Georgian myth offers an escape from present problems. Moreover, it not only afffirms the real, essential value of the nation and its territory, but also grounds a hope of return to past glories. Here, the past is not only the present, but also, as Clinton's speech tends to suggest the future.
Academic discourse is more at home with the rational than with the emotional, wherein the nation resides. In consequence, academics who do not specialise in the nation are often uncomfortable with the concept. Further, the nation and nationalism bring with them a baggage which generates widespread abhorrence and may spark emotion even in the rationalist: for example, the above citation of Mussolini beside Clinton will enrage and outrage some readers, perhaps many. Of course, such rage is misplaced. Few relish the label 'nationalist' and few speak of the nation in everyday discourse, while all have some feeling for the term at an emotional 'gut' level. For the great majority, these are negative terms, usually replaced in English by more positive half substitutes: 'patriot', not 'nationalist', 'country' not 'nation'. Similarly, and for much the same reasons, most Georgians do not see themselves as nationalists and do not wish to be characterised as such. The fact that Russians, for example, often describe them in just those terms serves only to confirm their dislike. Nation has become a dirty word in Britain and elsewhere, but, as with the nation itself, there is nothing essential about that: it is not the word or the myth that is negative and dangerous, but some of its potential applications. Accordingly, we may recoil from acknowledging the reality of the myth that is the nation. Yet we cannot do so, for in the very act of abhorring the applications of nationalism we have already offered that acknowledgment.
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Ariadne and Dionysus in a banquet scene. They constitute the centeral scene of a mosaic from Dzalisi (ancient Dzalissa) in Eastern Gorgia (Transcaucasian Iberia). The mosaic forms the floor of a large room which is connected with a baths complex. The style of the mosaic dates to around AD300. |
Notes:
1 The Daily Telegraph, Jan. 21, 1993, p. 1. (return)
2 H.Finer, Mussolini's Italy (New York, 1935) p. 218, further elaborated by R.Jay, 'Nationalism', in R.Eccleshall et al. (eds.), Political ideologies (London, 1984) pp. 185-217.(return)
3 Particularly incisive is his formulation of the issue in Tropics of discourse: essays in cultural criticism (Baltimore, 1978). (return)
4 A dynamic summary of recent work on nation and communication is A. D. Smith, National identity (London, 1991).(return)
5 From R.Rosen, The Georgian Republic (Hong Kong, 199 1). Compare the more impressionistic, but also 'true'account of M.Russell, Please don't call it Soviet Georgia (London, 1991). On the Soviet experience and the problems of the recent past, see R. Conquest, The nation killers: the Soviet deportation of nationalities (London, 1970), more concerned with the North Caucasus than with Georgia, andJ.Aves, The rise andfall of the Georgian nationalist movement, 1987-91, in G.Hosking et al. (eds.), The road to Post-communism (London, 1 992), pp. 157-79.(return)
