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The Daily Creation of the Nation-Self and The THE DAILY CREATION OF THE NATION-SELF AND THE PROBLEM OF THE BORDER by TERRY HUGHSTON UTZ L. MCKNIGHT, COMMITTEE CHAIR STEPHEN BORRELLI STEFANIE FISHEL DANIEL LEVINE JOSEPH SMITH A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2019 Copyright Terry L. Hughston 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This dissertation is an attempt to give a more accurate answer to the perennial question of “What is a nation?” by offering a novel theory of the nation-as-self. The theoretical foundation of this theory is largely built upon the works of Ludwig Feuerbach, Carl Schmitt, and Friedrich Nietzsche by arguing that the nation is created through a regular (if not daily) process by which a rational self-reflective agent generates a conception of nation as an alienated version of the politics of that self. Nation essentially possesses the political and personal characteristics of the self yet stands, abstractly, in distinction to the self. The individual then uses the nation-self to examine other claims of nation by other selves as a way of determining whether they are similar enough to the self to warrant a tenuous and temporary designation as a conational or be designated as exception. After establishing this theory of the nation-self, I will examine the potential of civic compassion as a method by which we can relax the view of nations as essentially bordered and imagine a paradigm of boundless political identities without states of exception and exclusion. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to first offer my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Utz McKnight for nearly a decade of guidance, inspiration, encouragement, and support through this entire dissertation process. I would also like to thank the members of my committee for their input, suggestions, and creative support for my theories and arguments. This committee agreed to work with me on this project despite their own work loads and though some of them have relocated across oceans. Additionally, I would not have made it through this process were it not for my theory cohort and my friends: Andrew Fletcher, Thomas Beaumont, Ali Fuat Birol, and Lindsey Smith. Though our projects were different, their intellect was both a challenge and an encouragement to me. The work, the reading, the study, and their companionship made me a better theorist and convinced me to continue through this process to its completion. My parents, Lynn and Theresa Hughston, and my sisters Sarah and Hannah have been faithful sources of prayer and encouragement. They have helped me develop into the person I am today and what achievement I have is, in no small part due to them. Further thanks and consideration are owed to Joe Cernut to teaching me to love philosophy, Carl Doerfler for teaching me to love politics as a science, the music of The Mountain Goats for giving me clarity of mind, and Jesus Christ for my salvation and for teaching me to love one another and demonstrating to me the meaning of compassion. Lastly, my academic career and this project would not be possible without the love and support of my wife, Candyce Osburn Hughston. She is my encouragement and strength when I iii have had none, my conscience when I needed guidance, my inspiration in my many moments of insecurity and doubt, and for her continued and firm assertion that my best is good enough. I owe her more love and devotion than I could ever hope to show and would not be here without her. This project is dedicated to her. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE DAILY CREATION OF NATION ........................................................ 13 Miller, Abizadeh, Smith and the Criteria of Nation .................................................................. 14 Renan's National Spiritual Family ............................................................................................ 26 Tne Daily Creation of the Nation-Self ...................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER TWO: ON FEURBACH, NIETZSCHE, SCHMITT, AND GENERATING THE ALIENATED NATION-SELF ..................................................................................................... 41 Feurbach's Alienation of God and Self ..................................................................................... 41 The Nation-Self in Schmitt's Political Theology ...................................................................... 62 Nietzsche, Warren, and Liberal Secularization ......................................................................... 69 CHAPTER THREE: ON FRANK AND ANDERSON’S CONSTITUENT MOMENTS AND NATIONAL IMAGININGS ......................................................................................................... 78 Frank's Constituent Moments .................................................................................................... 79 Anderson's Imagined Communities .......................................................................................... 88 v Beyond Constituent Moments and Imaginings ......................................................................... 98 CHAPTER FOUR: BORDERLINE COMPASSION AND COMPASSION AT THE BORDERLINE ........................................................................................................................... 100 Compassion, Empathy, Fear, and Love................................................................................... 101 Cosmpolitan Border Relocation .............................................................................................. 107 Du Bois, Diagne, and the Limits of Cosmpolitan Imagining .................................................. 110 The Contemporary Retreat Within the Borders ...................................................................... 115 Miller's Open Borders ............................................................................................................. 120 Truth and the Boundaries of Metaphorical Borderlines .......................................................... 124 Human Empathy and the Borderline Nationality Neuroses .................................................... 130 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 135 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 147 vi INTRODUCTION “We are a people of compassion and we are a people of law. But there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws,” said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a statement to assembled press on the ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (designed to allow certain undocumented persons who had entered the United States as children to apply for work visas) (Sessions, 2017). Many of those same media outlets immediately brought appeals to anything except a loosely and conveniently construed notion of executive overreach into question1. However, this notion of a compassionate rescinding of a law that allowed many from outside the Trump administration’s recognized sphere of American nationality merely to live and work despite having entered the country at a young age and under no volition of their own as minors speaks to a reading of compassion similar to that expressed in the 1917 eugenics propaganda film, The Black Stork, which asserted that “There are times when saving a life is a greater crime than taking one” (Wharton & Wharton, 1917). Such a view on a notion of compassion to underscore the exclusivity of nation in defense of those not only within the nationality but also outside the nationality relies on a construction of nation that is more narrowly defined than most scholars (or even former Attorney General Sessions himself) would acknowledge. 1For an exception to this see (Kurtzelben, 2017). 1 Such a narrow definition presents us with questions of how nation is constructed, how nation works, and how nation is active in the contemporary political landscape of the United States and other nations as well in light of an increased focus on immigration and refugees alongside a resurgence of openly displayed neo-fascism and right-wing racism in those same countries. Nation thus defined betrays an idea that is not entirely dissimilar to the “epistemology of ignorance” that Mills identifies as part of the Racial Contract (Mills, 1997, p. 18). Both operate similarly in their classification of default in-groups and out-groups based on something that is alleged or assumed to be obvious to those being classified (whether those classifications are being chosen, assumed or forced). However, nation as an epistemological phenomenon does not have the willful ignorance that is a feature of the Racial Contract. While nationalists often see their nation and the classification on which it is based as something that is as natural as the Racial Contract seems to be to its signatories and beneficiaries, there is a subtle
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