민족주의 연구를 둘러싼 새로운 시각 (Some New Approaches to Nationalism)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 대구사학회
· 수록지 정보 : 대구사학 / 117권 / 301 ~ 328페이지
· 저자명 : 박용희

초록

Most recently a flurry of theoretical activity has made the nation and nationalism one of the most debated topics of contemporary theory. After a short overview of some key theories of nationalism this paper tried to illustrate two latest attempts at retheorising nationalism.
For a long time, the nation was seen as something natural and objective. Most of theorists saw nationalism on the assumption that the world was inevitably and fatally divided into nations and national self－realization was a legitimate and positive goal of political struggles. But the more recent trends to which many theorist draw attention move from this primordialist, essentialist notion of the nation to the currently dominant view of the nation as constructed or invented one. With these in mind, some approaches are worthy of note in going beyond this naive nativist understanding of nation.
Presently, a new understanding rises that the discourse and rhetoric of nationhood play a decisive role in the establishment of national identity, and it is important to regard national discourse as an analytical framework that can be used in the study of nationalism. Nationalism is in this sense a discourse that constantly shapes our consciousness and the way we constitute the meaning of the world. It determines our collective identity by producing and reproducing us as 'nationals'. It is a form of seeing and interpreting that conditions our daily speech, behaviors and attitudes.
This new approach may enable consciously to avoid nativist understanding of nation in favour of an awareness of the formation of national discourse in modern societies. Moreover, it offers the formation of many different discourses which played an important role in modern societies. National discourse is one, but by no means the only one, of the forces that has shaped and continues to shape the modern world, and its development, like other discourses － regional, transnational etc. －, has to be seen in its complex context.
In addition to this, the discourses of post－colonialism and subaltern studies allowed us recently to reflect nationalism non－european societies in a new way. The number and diversity of the studies of nationalism increased in the latest decades under the impact of the experience of decolonization and the 'proliferation' of new states in Asia and Africa. But it is no doubt that the researches depended on the western theories of nationalism. But an indian researcher once asked, if nationalists have to choose their "imagined communities" from European models, as Benedict Anderson maintains, what do they have left to imagine? Is the postcolonial world only the consumer of modernity? He answers that postcolonial nationalism, in fact, has been based, not on an identity with the "modular" forms that Anderson proposes but on a difference with the modern West. With these in mind, many researchers nowadays insist on the necessity for further investigation on national discourses non－european societies in order to provide a more solid basis for a non－eurocentric interpretation of nationalism.
As a result, the Eurocentric character of the 'classical' debate on nationalism has been nowadays transcended by studies which have drawn our attention to such issues as the experience of nationalism in postcolonial societies and the specific contributions of the people on the national margins, that is the 'hybrids', to the construction of national identities and the like. In addition to this is under discussion the complex dialectic between Europe and its Others in the construction of nations. Especially it is now no doubt, that "colonial experience and its knowledge" in the non－european societies had a crucial bearing on the structure of national discours inside Europe. The recent trends of postcolonial studies open fruitful fields of inquiry in this regard.

영어초록

Most recently a flurry of theoretical activity has made the nation and nationalism one of the most debated topics of contemporary theory. After a short overview of some key theories of nationalism this paper tried to illustrate two latest attempts at retheorising nationalism.
For a long time, the nation was seen as something natural and objective. Most of theorists saw nationalism on the assumption that the world was inevitably and fatally divided into nations and national self－realization was a legitimate and positive goal of political struggles. But the more recent trends to which many theorist draw attention move from this primordialist, essentialist notion of the nation to the currently dominant view of the nation as constructed or invented one. With these in mind, some approaches are worthy of note in going beyond this naive nativist understanding of nation.
Presently, a new understanding rises that the discourse and rhetoric of nationhood play a decisive role in the establishment of national identity, and it is important to regard national discourse as an analytical framework that can be used in the study of nationalism. Nationalism is in this sense a discourse that constantly shapes our consciousness and the way we constitute the meaning of the world. It determines our collective identity by producing and reproducing us as 'nationals'. It is a form of seeing and interpreting that conditions our daily speech, behaviors and attitudes.
This new approach may enable consciously to avoid nativist understanding of nation in favour of an awareness of the formation of national discourse in modern societies. Moreover, it offers the formation of many different discourses which played an important role in modern societies. National discourse is one, but by no means the only one, of the forces that has shaped and continues to shape the modern world, and its development, like other discourses － regional, transnational etc. －, has to be seen in its complex context.
In addition to this, the discourses of post－colonialism and subaltern studies allowed us recently to reflect nationalism non－european societies in a new way. The number and diversity of the studies of nationalism increased in the latest decades under the impact of the experience of decolonization and the 'proliferation' of new states in Asia and Africa. But it is no doubt that the researches depended on the western theories of nationalism. But an indian researcher once asked, if nationalists have to choose their "imagined communities" from European models, as Benedict Anderson maintains, what do they have left to imagine? Is the postcolonial world only the consumer of modernity? He answers that postcolonial nationalism, in fact, has been based, not on an identity with the "modular" forms that Anderson proposes but on a difference with the modern West. With these in mind, many researchers nowadays insist on the necessity for further investigation on national discourses non－european societies in order to provide a more solid basis for a non－eurocentric interpretation of nationalism.
As a result, the Eurocentric character of the 'classical' debate on nationalism has been nowadays transcended by studies which have drawn our attention to such issues as the experience of nationalism in postcolonial societies and the specific contributions of the people on the national margins, that is the 'hybrids', to the construction of national identities and the like. In addition to this is under discussion the complex dialectic between Europe and its Others in the construction of nations. Especially it is now no doubt, that "colonial experience and its knowledge" in the non－european societies had a crucial bearing on the structure of national discours inside Europe. The recent trends of postcolonial studies open fruitful fields of inquiry in this regard.

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