CATION OF CULTURE demand for verisimilitude and aw. Folly is a form of perjury fg 8 ace to the Code of Gentoo Laws, no Bj delight and horror, however, we \ciatory splitting that I have been af DISSEMINATION alhed writes, mpatible with each other and ut Time, narrative and the margins of the jon, knowledge and conviction. modern nation’ tably delineated in Cervantes, fons and at the same time complel ry juridical and sociological explang| lie persists in the pages of power g orts in the 1920s. What is the truth gf THE TIME OF THE NATION tle of this chapter ~ DissemiNation - owes something to the wit wrisdom of Jacques Derrida, but something more to my own experi fee of migration. I have lived that moment of the scattering of the ple that in other times and other places, in the ations of others, fomes a time of gathering. Gatherings of exiles and émigrés and refu- y gathering on the edge of foreign’ cultures; gathering at the fron- fas; gatherings in the ghettos or cafés of city centres; gathering in the life, halflight of foreign tongues, or in the uncanny fluency of “s language: gathering the signs of approval and acceptance, , discourses, disciplines; gathering the memories of underdevel- of other worlds lived retroactively; gathering the past in a ritual revival; gathering the present. Also the gathering of people in the ora: indentured, migrant, intemed; the gathering of incriminatory Linto speaking a Christian truth hed indu denies the evidence of his eyes ne as he perjures himself. Or so weg » be textualized as the truth of the ambivalently incorporated in the ard t like the geographical detail that is 4 part like ‘folly’ that is untranslata ete ek aaa {genealogy of that lonely figure that John Berger named the seventh und and deste of fa raxalsnical The gathering of clouds from which the Palestinian poet Mahmoud rality Its strategy, as Karl Abrahamg Darwish asks ‘where should the birds fly after the last sky? poration; a form of incorporation of its body in that its integrity may Bg lar importance. More deliberately than any other general historian, Hobsbawm? writes the history of the modem Western nation from perspective of the nation’s margin and the migrants’ exile. The tlie and the next and the next - gence of the later phase of the modern nation, from the mid- ou will remember, had to lie as he mov jeenth century, is also one of the most sustained periods of mass the Belgian boudoir. As he replaces “migration within the West, and colonial expansion in the East. The the Intended we read in that palimp Hon fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin, and ams that loss into the language of metaphor. Metaphor, as the ety- 138 139THE LOCATION OF CULTURE across those distances, and cultural differences, that span the imagined community of the nation-people ‘The discourse of nationalism is not my main concer. In some way. it is the historical certainty and settled nature of that term against which I am attempting to write of the Western nation as an obscure an¢ ubiquitous form of living the locality of culture. This locality is more around temporality than about historicity: a form of living that is more complex than ‘community’; more symbolic than ‘society’; more connotative than ‘country’; less patriotic than patrie; more rhetorical than the reason of State; more mythological than ideology; less homogeneous than hegemony; less centred than the citizen; more collective than ‘the subject’; more psychic than civility; more hybrid in the articulation o cultural differences and identifications than can be represented in any hierarchical or binary structuring of social antagonism. In proposing this cultural construction of nationness as a form of social and textual affiliation, I do not wish to deny these categories their specific histories and particular meanings within different political languages. What I am attempting to formulate in this chapter are the complex strategies of cultural identification and discursive address that function in the name of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ and make them the immanent subjects of a range of social and literary narratives. My emphasis on the temporal dimension in the inscription of these political entities — that are also potent symbolic and affective sources of cultu identity — serves to displace the historicism that has dominated dis cussions of the nation as a cultural force. The linear equivalence of event ‘and idea that historicism proposes, most commonly signifies a people, ‘2 nation, or a national culture as an empirical sociological category or a holistic cultural entity. However, the narrative and psychological force that nationness brings to bear on cultural production and political p jection is the effect of the ambivalence of the ‘nation’ as a narrat strategy. As an apparatus of symbolic power, it produces a continual slippage of categories, ike sexuality, class affiliation, territorial paranoia, or ‘cultural difference’ in the act of writing the nation. What is displayed in this displacement and repetition of terms is the nation as the measure of the liminality of cultural modernity. Edward Said aspires to such secular interpretation in his concept 0 ‘wordliness’ where ‘sensuous particularity as well as historical contin gency... exist al the same level of surface particularity as the textual object itself’ (my emphasis). Fredric Jameson invokes something similar in his notion of ‘situational consciousness’ or national allegory, ‘where the telling of the individual story and the individual experience cannot but ultimately involve the whole laborious telling of the collectivity itself ‘And Julia Kristeva speaks perhaps too hastily of the pleasure of exile ‘How can one avoid sinking into the mire of common sense, if not by 140TION OF CULTURE DISSEMINATION ural differences, that span the imag maga stranger to one’s own country, language, sex and identity?" 1 E realizing how fully the shadow of the nation falls on the 5 not my main concer. In some Hott of exile - which may partly explain her own later, labile ettled nature of that term against Mons with the images of other nations: ‘China’, ‘America’. The te Western nation as an obscure Int of the Nation is its metaphor: Amor Patria; Fatherland; Pig ality of culture. This locality is m F Mothertongue; Matigari; Middlemarch; Midnight's Children; One historicity: a form of living thatl fe Years of Solitude; War and Peace; 1 Promess! Spsi; Kanthapura; ‘> more symbolic than ‘society’; II Apart atriotic than patre; more thetorical rust be a tribe of interpreters of such metaphors ~ the trans- rust be >gical than ideology; less homogeng Df the dissemination of texts and discourses across cultures - who n the citizen; more collective than | B efor what Said describes as the act of secular interpretation. a per ations than can be represented in ay Bake account of this horizontal, secular space of the crowded + of social antagonism Baie of the modern nation ... implies that no single expla- BP on sending one back immediatly to a single origin is adequate, fad just as there are no simple dynastic answers, there are no pe discrete formations or socal processes?” ntifcation and discursive address t ole’ or ‘the nation’ and make them of social and literary narratives. \ sion in the inscription of these political abolic and affective sources of cult historicism that has dominated di | force. The linear equivalence of even 2s, most commonly signifies a peopl an empirical sociological category or the narrative and psychological force cultural production and political pro valence of the ‘nation’ as a narrativ bolic power, it produces a continual ty, lass affiliation, territorial paranoia, f writing the nation. What is displayed) a of terms is the nation as the measure rity. 2cular interpretation in his concept off ticularity ag well as historical contine urface particularity as the textual object meson invokes something similar in | sness’ oF national allegory, ‘where the the individual experience carinot but rious telling of the collectivity itself.” s too hastily of the pleasure of exile = the mire of common sense, if not by zontal. Their metaphoric movernent requires a kind of ‘doubleness’ iting; a temporality of representation that moves between cultural tions and social processes without a centred causal logic. And feultural movements disperse the homogeneous, visual time of the Eee horizontal critical gaze if we are to gyre the nonsequeniial flied historical memory and subjectivity’ iis appropriate nara- Faahority, We need another time of writing that will be able to Bibs the ambivalent and chiasmatic intersections of time and place {ow does one write the nation’s modernity as the event of the every and the advent of the epochal? The language of national belonging. es laden with atavistic apologues, which has led Benedict Anderson youth? The nation’s claim to modernity, as an autonomous or ign form of political rationality, is particularly questionable if, 140 5 11