Anti-Colonial Nationalism and the West: Toward a Critique of Recent, Western-Based, Anti-Nationalist Scholarship

Although nationalism was the single most successful form of anti-colonial resistance in the Third World, recent Western-based scholarship, especially within the field of post-colonial literary and cultural theory, has generally tended to repudiate nationalism and delegitimise the modern nation (-state). While the traditional scholarship views nationalism as an exclusively Western idea, simply inappropriate to non-Western societies, socio-anthropological critics see the emergent nation-state in the Third World as consolidating imaginative colonial geographies and repeating a colonial practice of excluding or suppressing internal tribal and ethnic differences. Moreover, deconstructive critics argue that nationalism, by remaining locked up in a counter-discourse to Western imperialism, reproduces all the terms and structures of colonial discourse, and thus colludes with Western imperialism. Acknowledging some of these objections to anti-colonial nationalism, the article points out some of their serious critical shortcomings. Simultaneously, it draws attention to alternative ways of conceiving nation and nationalism, beyond the too simplified notions of “imitation,” “importation” and “imposition.” Finally, the article stresses the continued necessity of nationalism in the struggle against imperialism, and argues that although nationalism is in some sense the product of imperialism, nationalism’s objectives are not completely determined by its antagonist.