Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question

From Kosovo to Quebec, Ireland to East Timor, nationalism has been a recurrent topic of intense debate. It has been condemned as a source of hatred and war, yet embraced for stimulating community feeling and collective freedom. Joan Cocks explores the power, danger, and allure of nationalism by examining its place in the thought of eight politically engaged intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the antagonist of capital, Karl Marx; the critics of imperialism Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon; the liberal pluralist Isaiah Berlin; the neonationalist Tom Nairn, and the post-colonial writers, V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said. Cocks not only sheds new light on the complexities of nationalism but also reveals the tensions that have inspired and troubled intellectuals who have sought to lead lives between detached criticism and political passion. In lively, conversational prose, Cocks assesses their treatment of questions such as the mythology of national identity, the right to national self-determination, and the morality of nationalist violence. While ultimately critical of nationalism, she engages sympathetically even with its defenders. By illuminating the links that distinguished minds have drawn between thought and action on nationalism in politics, this stimulating work provides a rich foundation from which we ourselves might think or act more wisely when confronting a phenomenon that, in fundamental and perplexing ways, has shaped our world.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter One Karl Marx Uncovers the Truth of National Identity 18 Chapter Two Imperialism, Self-Determination, and Violence: Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon 45 Chapter Three On the Jewish Question: Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt 71 Chapter Four Are Liberalism and Nationalism Compatible? A Second Look at Isaiah Berlin 92 Chapter Five In Defense of Ethnicity, Locality, Nationality: The Curious Case of Tom Nairn 111 Chapter Six Cosmopolitanism in a New Key: V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said 133 Conclusion 158 Notes 167 Bibliography 201 Index 213

About the Author :
Joan Cocks is Professor of Politics and Chair of the Program in Critical Social Thought at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of The Oppositional Imagination: Feminism, Critique, and Political Theory.

Review :
"The nuance, complexity, and clarity of this volume are refreshing."--Choice "This book is much more than a compilation of essays--it is a systematic and thought-provoking work of political philosophy on a continually pressing set of issues."--Philip Spencer, Political Studies Review