IDENTITY and PERSUASION How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures

IDENTITY AND PERSUASION How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures By CONSUELO CRUZ* DENTITY politics now occupies center stage. It is on explosive dis- Iplay in a wide range of settings, from Africa to the Balkans. And it is more subtly at work in the democracies of the West: NATO leaders must reexamine their own guiding principles in the face of multiple human- itarian disasters brought about by tribal, ethnic, and religious hatreds, while simultaneously dealing with increasingly heterogenous popula- tions at home and ceaseless migrant flows from east and south. It is no surprise, then, that identity should figure prominently in scholarly debates about conflict resolution, migration, citizenship, transnational alliances, democratization, nation and state building, and even globalization. Nor is it a puzzle that long-standing debates about identity should have produced the two clearly defined camps that we know as primordialists and constructivists.1 What is perplexing is the current failure to investigate systematically the complex linkages between identity formation and the expressive practices of political actors. After all, we approach reality rhetorically—that is, with an intent to convince.2 This is why persuasion is the hallmark of effective leader- ship. Short of pure coercion, it is the most direct way to mobilize or paralyze a group. And this is why rhetorical power—recognized as cen- * I would like to thank Peter Hall, Jeffrey Legro, Sheri Berman, and Mehmet Tabak for their in- sightful suggestions on a previous version of this article. I am also grateful to Deborah Yashar, Anna Seleny, Paola Cesarini, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the present version. Any errors that remain are my responsibility alone. 1 A third approach, instrumentalism, concentrates less on identity formation and more on the ra- tional incentives that motivate political entrepreneurs to mobilize their “primordial” constituencies. In this article the role of political leaders is also emphasized (although I explore the popular dimension of identity formation elsewhere, in Cruz, “World Making in the Tropics: The Politics of Fate and Possi- bility” [Book manuscript]). But leaders’ mobilizational motivations and capabilities, as well as ratio- nality itself, are treated here as embedded in the broader political-cultural conditions shared by their respective groups. A more detailed discussion on this point follows in the text below, with reference to David Laitin’s work. 2 J. Gusfield, Kenneth Burke: On Symbol and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 13, 29. World Politics 52 (April 2000), 275–312 276 WORLD POLITICS tral to the workings of the polity since classical antiquity—is deployed by the full range of political agents, from aboriginal chiefs in recondite regions of South America to professional politicians on Capitol Hill.3 This article makes two arguments. The first is that we cannot grasp the nature and dynamics of political identity—and collective identity more broadly—unless we understand the rhetorical frames that emerge as dominant at critical junctures in the history of a group or a nation. Indeed, we will see that it is precisely because identity, memory formation, and rhetorical frames are so closely entwined that identity has both the appearance of naturalness emphasized by primordialists and the constructed properties emphasized by constructivists. The logic here is as follows. Collective memory, by its very nature, impels actors to define themselves intersubjectively. Shaped by past struggles and shared historical accidents, collective memory is both a common dis- criminating experience (this was right, that was wrong) and a “factual” recollection—a seemingly veridical narrative—of the group’s past “as it really was.”4 Thus whether in war or in peace, a collectivity expresses and defends its identity by declaring, “We are as we are because the world has made us this way; and because we are who we are, we can change our world only so much without changing ourselves.” This declarative imperative does not suggest, however, that identity is reducible to a rhetorical manifesto. Rather, it simply suggests that while the impetus for identity formation arises from collective memory and contextual changes, identity is ultimately contingent on a “realis- tic” description of the world and on a relatively strict understanding of the permissible and the forbidden. And on neither of these counts can collective self-definition be completed without the active participation of those living the identity. At critical points, for example, rival political leaders and entrepreneurs seek to persuade themselves and others that things must either remain as they are or be changed in significant ways. In their efforts at persuasion, rivals must appeal to the national group’s sense of practical competence (its sense of mastery over the 3 For a superb exploration of the role of eloquence in tribal politics, see Pierre Clastres, Society against the State (New York: Zone Books, 1989). 4 This view of collective memory hinges on the narrative construction of history while at the same time eschewing the presumed split between the normative and cognitive thrusts behind narrative construction. For some, like Hayden White, the objective behind the construction of sequenced history is to impose a normative claim to authority. For others, like Louis O. Mink, narrative construction is a cognitive enterprise. See White, Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); idem, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., On Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Mink, “Everyman His or Her Own Annalist,” in Mitchell. For a succinct discussion of the split, see David Carr, Time, Narrative and History (Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press, 1986). IDENTITY AND PERSUASION 277 world) and to its convictions about the possible (what the group can or cannot do; and normatively, what it must or must not do). In brief, rivals seek a political grip on the constitutive elements of collective identity.5 This they cannot do at will, however. They must advance their competing visions and agendas within a dominant rhetorical frame—a discursive structure that articulates in accessible ways the fundamental notions a group holds intersubjectively about itself in the world and that allows or disallows specific strategies of persuasion on the basis of their presumptive realism and normative sway. The second argument this article makes is that the (trans)formation of collective identity shapes a nation’s political and economic development.6 The logic of this second argument is closely related to that of the first. Because actors situate their struggles within a dominant rhetorical frame, political contests between them engender a collective field of imaginable possibilities, which I define as a restricted array of plausible scenarios of how the world can or cannot be changed and how the future ought to look. This field’s boundaries are established at critical points, along with new sets of power relations and the rhetorical settlements that accompany their construction. Within such boundaries, actors routinely make claims to vocality, manipulate the positive and negative values assigned to past defining experiences, generalize from these claims and experiences to craft “simply is” statements about reality, and drawing on this generalization, identify viable routes—be they conservative or transformative—to a better future. But since a collective field of imaginable possibilities is both a system of meanings (attached to vocality, past experiences, reality, and the future) and an arena for the play of rhetorical practices, it is also inter- nally vulnerable to endogenous shifts. Indeed, actors’ rhetorical struggles can introduce disorientation into the field and, by extension, challenge the dominance of a particular rhetorical frame.7 Here the mi- crodynamic is simple. Competing political leaders and entrepreneurs 5 This claim is congruent with the notion that national-identity formation is inseparable from the interplay of actors’ other political identities and agendas. See Prasenjit Duara, “Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When,” in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 6 Development is not conceived here as a fixed end point. Rather, development is the ongoing, effective creation of institutional conditions that (1) a critical mass of agents deems necessary for the ra- tional pursuit of economic prosperity and that (2) allow for the establishment of a viable system of political legitimation, thus making possible the relatively smooth distribution of material resources and the stable allocation of authoritative functions and prerogatives among rulers, officials, and citizens. 7 Even in the natural sciences, individuals live with doubt, to which they respond in a variety of ways, ranging from isolated tinkering to heated debate and paradigmatic discovery. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 278 WORLD POLITICS intuit Edmund Burke’s dictum that “it is one thing to make an idea clear and another to make it affecting to the imagination.”8 And so they seek at least one of two goals. Political leaders and entrepreneurs aim to (re)cast a particular agenda as most appropriate to a given collective reality

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