| Review of: | The Illusion of Cultural Identity by Jean-François Bayart |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Ben Jones |
| Reviewed in: | Nations and Nationalism |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 341-367 |
Book Reviews
At points in the text it is clear that Bayart wants to confront what he feels is a basic misperception in how the world is understood - both by academics and the public - and attacks what he calls the 'culturalist' position. Chapter 2 refers repeatedly to the problem of culturalism - which this reader took to mean the way people use of 'culture' as a lazy shorthand for a number of more complex political, social and cultural configurations. The person held up most often as the proponent of the 'culturalist' worldview - the 'culture determines everything' argument - is Samuel Huntington.
In going for Huntington, Bayart seems to be aiming at too low a target. Do most scholars of the social sciences base their research on the idea that 'culture' has an irreducible core to it? Given the metaphors which dominate sociological research at the moment - network, flow, subjectivity, space, ambiguity, contingency - one feels that it is Huntington, not Bayart, who is in the more marginal position. The dated quality to this attack is partly a reflection of the fact that the French edition of the text emerged in 1996, a time when Bayart's arguments probably had greater bite. This later English edition of
In other words, much of what is written is anachronistic, and it is clear that while policy-makers and populations at large may choose to see things from a culturalist vantage point - 'The War on Terror' could be brought in under such a worldview, and so too could
Bayart's assertion that culturalism, a belief in the primordial basis of society, is so central to our way of seeing things, at times appears overly complicated, at times too simple. The author swings between addressing culturalists in the academy, and attacking culturalists in the wider world, going for the latter when criticism of the former does not hold. This misses the more interesting question of why, when we know the complexities of history and the ambiguities of our own lives, we prefer to go back to the sorts of simple narratives offered by a more culturalist disposition. (That said, Bayart may well have addressed this problem, and that his discussion of it was lost in the confusion of this particular reader.)
One can sense in Bayart's own writings, the desire to tell stories, and what could be labelled a sort of 'culturalist' shorthand helps the author bring the reader into his way of thinking. The gift of the telling anecdote has always been a part of Bayart's work, and in
And yet, there is something of value at the heart of the book. As is often the case with Francophone scholarship, the philosophical pretensions of the researcher, the openness to stepping far beyond the limits of ordinary scholarship, allows for a braveness unavailable to the more earth-bound scholarship of English or American academics. Though I realise that the previous statement may mean that I have also fallen into a sort of culturalist trap - contrasting the French philosopher-king, with the dry English empiricist - it is fair to say that Bayart develops his arguments in ways that confound the narrow thinking of many of his peers across the Channel. His most imaginative contribution comes in chapter 3, in an essay titled 'The Imaginary Polis', where the author does the painful work of setting out what is usefully meant by the word
Bayart's extended discussion of the
'Rational', 'centralised', 'bureaucratic' and 'disillusioned' societies are just as imaginative as older, 'traditional' societies that are supposed to be dominated by a magical or religious conception of the world. Nationalism is an 'imagined community' ...and today capitalist countries or multilateral institutions celebrate a 'market democracy' that is also a myth ...it may enchant or reassure, but it does not really correspond to the actual functioning of the contemporary economy. The very idea of the market is based on a 'fiction', whereby labour, land, and money are commodities' (p. 137).
This is a statement of belief, and at this moment we are offered Bayart's view of things. It is a position that is fresh and persuasive, and what follows after this statement is a working out of his conception of
In short, though Bayart's book makes for frustrating reading, there is no denying his brilliance as a scholar.
From the perspective of the stylist, however, I would add that there are certain problems with the text which a more fearsome editor would have addressed. Aside from the presumption that the reader approaches the text with a fore-knowledge of isomorphism, oneiromancy, pleonasticity, and a number of other Latinate terms, there are matters of tone. Perhaps, the British provenance of this particular reviewer meant that I was particularly provoked by the puzzling assertion that Queen Victoria was 'psychologically reticent'. Aside from the fact that scholarship on Victoria suggests her sexuality was far-removed from the 'values' later ascribed to her reign, it introduces a certain campness to the text.
To end on a more serious note, it is worth considering what the book means in a world where many researchers have to use English or French as a second language. For many people