balibar_the nation form

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Research Foundation of SUNY

The Nation Form: History and IdeologyAuthor(s): Etienne Balibar

Reviewed work(s):Source: Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 329-361Published by: Research Foundation of SUNY for and on behalf of the Fernand Braudel CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241159 .

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The Nation FormHistory nd Ideology*

EtienneBalibara "past" that has never been present,andwhichwill never be

(Jacques Derrida, 1982: 21).PART I: TERMINOLOGY

theory fthenationwill be discussed here not for ts own sake,buttoclarifynother uestion,thatofthe causes and "deep"struc-turesofcontemporary acism. Thinkingabout racism led us back tonationalism,and nationalismto uncertainty bout the historicalre-alities and categorizationof the nation.This uncertaintys of course the resultof modernhistoriographybecause itsdesignationof its"objects"of study, ts temporal period-izations and choice ofspatial boundaries has constituted he basis ofthedominantdiscourse about the nation of certain nations in par-ticular. In the strongversion, it considers that nations alone have ahistory,hat shave had processesor transformationshatcan be givena "meaning" nations, r other particularities"hatmaybe constructedanalogously. We could show that this remains true even when con-temporary istoriography,reakingwiththe "historicism"r"positiv-ism"of earlierperiods, opts to center ts research on socio-economictransformationsf ongueure hichhave theappearanceofbeingpriorTranslatedy mmanuelWallersteinPart ) and ChrisTurner Part I). Part I willappear s chapter ive n EtienneBalibar& ImmanuelWallerstein, ace,Nation, lass Lon-don: Verso, 1990).

REVIEW,XIII, 3, SUMMER99O, 329-61 329

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330 Etienne alibar

(ende) o national ifferentiations.ut this s also truewhen tpre-fers o concentraten "cultural"henomenonrthe tudy f mental-ities"whichhavetheappearanceofgoingbeyond au del) hembyutilizingarger nthropologicalomplexeshat re lesstiedto"polit-ical"boundaries.What s the West," hose deasaboutdeath rmar-riagepatternswe study, ther hanthe outerwrapping f a specificset ofnations?)I shall ome n a moment otheparticularroblemsosedbyMarx-isthistoriography,ut tdoesnotfundamentallyhange nythingnthisregard, iven hefact hat t was builtfrom hevery eginningon itsturningachconcept psidedown.Still,what critical eadingofour inherited istorical iscourse hould uggest,t seemsto me,is not heUtopia f "non-national"istory.t is rather hatwe shouldbegin o delineate owtheobject nation" as constructedn thefirstplace andto startwith, odiscussndetail he ircumstancesndmo-dalities f its nstitutionalefinition);hereby istoricalcience anbegintheanalysis f ts own nationalism.Let usbegin-as wemust- with he onceptf he tate. wo ontra-dictorytruths"re asserted. n theonehand, t s said that hemod-ern state s a nation-state,r a national tate.On the otherhand, tis said that here s a persistentmperfect atchbetween state"nd"nation,"n varying egrees o be sure,but never otally bsent. nshort,he tates end o becomenations, ut thenations onot lwaysform tates, r at leastthestates o not cover ll their sociological"aspects.It seems lear hat heperceptionf hedegree ffit epends ponthe historicalra, the social or political iewpoint,he rolea givennation's onstructionlays nthe nternationalrena,and so on. Butbothtruthsre alwaysvalid to someextent. heyrefer,t seemstome,to the amereality.n our modern sage whichwascrystallizedor abeled ntheperiod fthebourgeois evolutions,eginningt theend of theeighteenthentury),he rise of the nations n historyspresenteds a succession f stateformationsr ofattemptst stateformation.orrelatively,t wasbybecomingnational"hat he tatestransformedhemselves, ore r esscompletely,ntowhatwe call themodern tate,with ts deologynd collectiveovereignty;tsuridicaland administrativeationality;tsparticularmodeofregulatingocialconflicts,speciallylassconflicts;ndits strategic"bjective fman-



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THE NATIONFORM 331

aging tsterritorialesources ndpopulation o enhance ts conomicandmilitaryower.t is this ery orrelation hich ontainshegermsofthe mbivalencentheconcept nation-state,"hichmeans hat tsunity s constantlyplit ntotwoopposing spects.Thus, in theend,the historical ations re societieswhich akethepolitical orm f a state hat s "national." ither he states ameinto xistenceendogenously,"eeminglyutonomously,ntandemwitha process fnationalizinghe statethatwas already ocated n thatterritory,rthey ame nto xistence ia"nationalist"or"nationalib-eration")movements,y trugglinggainst ational tates hat lreadyexisted rwere eing reated,ragainstnon-national"overeigntates(suchas "multinational"mpires,which herebyameto seem nach-ronistic).nreality,he deaofnations ithoutstate,rnationsbefore"thestate, s thusa contradictionn terms, ecausea state lways simpliednthehistoric rameworkf a national ormationeven fnotnecessarily ithin he imits f tsterritory).ut this ontradictionsmaskedbythe fact hatnational tates,whose ntegrityuffersrominternalonflictshat hreatents urvivalregional onflicts,ndespe-cially lassconflicts),roject eneath heir olitical xistenceoa pre-existingethnic"r"popular" nityintothepast, ntothedepths f"civil" ociety).Or such historical ollectivitiestrugglinggainstna-tional tatesustifyheir laims oautonomy ydrawingn ideal tra-jectory oing rom more r essmythicalriginlinguistic,eligious,cultural, acial)toward n end considered o be theonlyhistoricallynormal ossibility,he creation f ts ownnational tate tructure.notherwords, o matter hetherhe onstructionf nation-statesuc-ceeds" rwhethert"fails,"r whethert s held ncheckfor periodthatmaybe quite ong),there s asserted o be a preestablishedar-monybetween "national"ociety nd a "modern"tate nd yet i-multaneouslyherelative utonomy f each of these.Furthermore,each of hesethe tate, henation) an serve heother s theoppositepoleof heunitywhich ociety eeds o overcometsown ntagonisms.These symmetricalivisions ecessarily eepthequestion for-iginsunresolved,hat s,which amefirst,henation hat reated hestate r the tate hat reated henation.As though ne or theotherof these wo oncepts, mergingmiraculouslyut of thepastwith tsown dentity"French,"German,"Algerian"),adtobe themodel ndcauseoftheother.A dilemmawhich,nturn,nduceshistoriansnd



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332 Etienne alibarsociologistso intrude ther oncepts: or xample, he national dea(orconsciousness,r deology,rculture), rattheother xtreme henational conomyormarket,r division f abor, runequaldevel-opments). t is quiteremarkable ow suchconceptsmaybe usedtosupport ither ne of the twostandard esponses o thequestion forigins: he state reates henation utof an idea,orinresponse oeconomic onstraints,r thenationbuilds he state s a wayof fulfil-ling heneedsof tscollectiveonsciousness,r ofpursuingtsmater-ial interests,n each case one of these reflecting"heother.In this egardMarxisthistoriographyas foundtselfn a difficultparadox.Wemight aveexpectedt couldfind wayoutofthis ircle(theback-and-forthameof ocating he origins"fthenation nthestate nd viceversa)for t least two reasons:(1) The key xplanatoryariable fMarxism s theclassstruggle,which s a type fhistoricalonflictrthogonalo the deaofnationalunityand whosefunction,t is not difficulto see, s always,n onewayor another, o relativize he mportancef classconflict,fnotto deny tsvery xistence);(2) Itstheoreticalrojects to reconstructhegenesis fpoliticalforms n thebasis of heirmaterial auses, ocated n thefinalnalysisin thedynamic fthe relations fproduction.In fact, heend result fclassicalMarxist nalyses as been to re-produce ndifferentanguage he tandard lternativesf bourgeois"historiography.heyoscillate etween functionalistrgumentthenation s theexpressionfthecapitalist ivision f abor, specificstage nthedevelopmentfproductiveorces,n instrumentfbour-geoishegemony)nd a historicistrgumentthenation s ananthropo-logicalunitywhosevery tabilityas the ffectfoverdeterminingheclassstruggle,yprovidingor ta "natural"rameworkr, n the on-trary, yadding nto t thedisturbingmpact f these survivals").Undertheconstant ressuref mmediatevents,ndrarelybletotaketimefor bjectivenalysis,Marxistdebates bout the nationhaverepeatedlyome tothe ogical mpasse f all ornothing. ome-times hey eintroducedhehistorical henomenonfnationalityrethnicitys the"real" ubstratumorwhich hecategoriesfcapital-ism or socialismwouldhavesubstitutedbstractionsbutthis read"wasthen efinednthemost raditionalfways).And sometimesheysoughtoencompasshese henomena ithin he oncept f ideology,"



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THE NATION FORM 333but at thepriceofreducinghem o thefleetingtatus f a discourse,a formf onsciousness,ven n illusion. imilarly, ith he xceptionof omeremarkablerief iscussions,nparticular yGramsci,Marx-istshavewavered etween wo qually bstract ositions n the rela-tionship etween ational onstructionnd the classstruggle. ithertheyttributedhe ole f natural" ational-builderoa class, ndowedwith n autonomous istoricaldentityusually hebourgeoisie,morerecentlyhepeasantryr eventheproletariat);rthey escribed a-tionalconstructions the historical ormwithinwhich,figurativelyor iterally,he lassstruggleades way nthe onstitutionf "wholepeople,"whoseunity f nterestsnd culturewinsoutover tssocialdivisions.1 arelywas the nalysisble togobeyond hese lternativesandstudy ational nity s anhistoricalealitynfact ivided ecauseofantagonisticlassstrategies,r even s the ong-termonsequenceof a continuous ransformationf"class" dentitiesnd the unstableequilibria stablished etween pposingnterests.No doubtwe can think f everal easonswhy his pistemologicalobstacle houldhavebeensopersistent.he foremosteasonwasthatMarxism mergedn a political ituation that fthe firstalf fthenineteenthentury-n which he social uestion,"endered cutebythe ndustrialevolution,asdebated nterms f wodirectlyppositeconcepts funiversal istory,ne theheirofrevolutionaryosmopol-italism nd theother synthesisfsociological onservatismnd na-tionalism,uch hat class" nd "nation" ere utforwards competingcandidates or hepostof "historicalubject,"nd one was requiredto choose etween hem. urthermore,herewas thefact hat he trug-glebetweenn organized evolutionaryroletariatnd thedominantclasses ontrollingstate hat ad nowbecome onstitutedntheformof national tate irtuallyequired hehistoricalonfusionfnationand state. hereupon,Marxism ad nochoicebut o dentifyhepros-pectof the"end" f the national tatewith he"end" f the state outcourt.hus the tagewasunknowinglyetwithintself or he return"-both heoreticallyndpolitically- fthestate nd thenation, lwaysindissolublyinked.Havingfirst ejected hecategory f the nation(even f twasalwaysatentn theanalyses f socialformations"ndin itsrevolutionaryrograms),t thenwas forced oreorganizet, na noncritical ay, s a so-called nbudgeable reality,"ynationalizingsuccessivelyheproletariat,heparty,nd the socialist tate.



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334 Etienne alibarNonetheless,mid the misadventuresf Marxism n itsconfron-tationwith he"national uestion" vertwo ongcenturies fsocialhistory,uringwhichMarxism uccumbedo nationalismo thepointoftransformingtself nto tsopposite s the efficaciousanguageofrevolutionaryationalism,here xists heextraordinaryossibilityofrethinkingurhistoriographieategories. his mustbe a criticalrethinkinghichmplies hatwe mustdeconstructadicallyhecon-ceptof historical ationalism"2s thedenigrationf he lassstruggle(indeed s theprimenstance fsuchdenigration)s well s thecon-ceptof"historicalmaterialism"n its reduction fsocialrelationsoan abstractepresentationf conomic ntagonisms.his s thedirec-tion nwhich intend ogo,concentratingnalysis nwhathas beentheblindspotoftheir onfrontation.

Social ormation,ationorm,tatesystemThreegeneral oncepts provisionalbstractionsseem ndispens-able as a starting oint.The firsts social formation.n the anguageinherited romMarx,this s buta scholarlywin ftheconcept fso-ciety,rofcivil ociety. hat is tosay, t gnores henature fthepo-litical nstitutions,hereupon onferringn them hederived tatusof a superstructure.t remainsmpregnatedythedualism f iberaltheoreticians,ho contrast hesocial and thepolitical.AndbeyondMarx, it contains nothermeaning, hatof historicalpecificity,utat theprice f ccepting urelyndsimplyhe deal entities roposedbystate deologies.When one speaksofa "Russian" r "French" r"Chinese" ocialformations though heyweregiven nnature,whatthatmeans s thatonehas straightforwardlyncorporatedhepostu-lateof thetranshistoricalxistence fnations, urninghem ntotheframeworkithin hich ccurs hehistoryf hemodes fproduction.Weought o use socialformationo meanrather constructionhoseunity emains roblematic,configurationf ntagonisticocial lassesthat s notentirelyutonomous, nlybecoming elativelypecificnitsoppositiono others nd via thepower truggles,heconflictingnter-estgroups nd ideologieswhich redeveloped ver he ongueureythisvery ntagonism.The problemposedbythe existence f socialformationss notmerelyhat f heir eginningrtheir nd,butprimarilyhat f heirreproduction,hat s, the conditions nderwhich hey an maintain



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THE NATIONFORM 335this onflictualnitywhich reates heirutonomyveronghistoricalperiods. t is also thequestion ftheconditionsnderwhich, espitethe ncessant isplacementnd "denaturing"f the class structures,such ntitiesemain oundedby frontiers"uch hatwe cancontinuetocall them ythe amename, nd thereforelaimfor hem n"iden-tity." ow suchnames "France,"Germany,"U.S.A.") repolitical.nthis ase,theconcept f social formations ouldnot ead to a fetish-izationofthestate rof national dentity,ince t wouldhave us askwhy,ndwithin hat pace-timeoundaries,heproper ames f tateswere nvested ith social dentity. istorys onegigantic emeteryofnames f tatesndnationswhich ever ttainedutonomy,r whichlost t. Butthis pproach equires s toanalyze he centrality"fthestate nthehistoryf ocialrelations,hat s,to consider he ransfor-mation fthe statenotas an epiphenomenonutas the distillation"ofall the various ocialantagonisms.Is then very ocialformationnational"s, onceagain,previousconceptualizations ightead one to think? bviouslynot.First fall because,quiteaside from he old question f"statelessocieties,"it seemsclear thatnumerous olitical ormsxisted istorically,uc-cessivelyr ncompetition ith achother, eforeheform fthena-tional tate rystallizedndspreadfromneentityo theother, hichledinturn othe mergencef nationalist"r "subnationalist"ollec-tivemovements.nd thenbecause,right p totoday r at leastuntilvery ecently,heform fthe national tatewas not theonlyone inexistence. nlesswekeepthat nmind,we can comprehend eitheritsunequaldevelopmentwhich, fter hefact,we record y sayingthat omestates remore advanced"nd othersmore backward"nnation-building)oraboveall the resistancesnd theextraordinarilyviolentonflictshat urrounduchnation-building.Colonizationnddecolonizationonstituteuch onflicts,rprovokehem, utthey renottheonly uch nstances, espite heir nusualvisibility.)inally,it s bynomeansoutofthequestion hat oday, nderourvery yes,weareobservinghe reationf postnational"ocialformationshosefuture eareseekingopredictndwhose ormstransnational?upra-national?)we are tryingo identify.Tomakemore oncretehevery eneraldea of socialformation,we needa second oncept,hat f henation orm.Weneedtopondertheprogressivemergence f the nationformn history:ts"place"



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336 Etienne alibarand the conditionsunder which it emerges,the causes of its spreadand of tsvariations.As always n questionsof historical ategorizing,we are navigatinghere between the shoals of essentialism nd form-alism. The nation form ertainly id notappear out ofnowhere,per-fectly ormed even iftherewere in some sense prototypes, ome ofwhichplayedthe decisive role ofgiving t itsname). But neitherwasit infinitelylastic even if,after certainpoint in time a relativelyrecentone- therapporteforcesn theworld became such thata modelof "international elations" ook over and requiredthe universalizationof state-constructionnd the autonomizationof social formations).believe that a reasonable middle waybetween these shoals will havebeen foundifthe idea of the "nationform" ets us articulate:

(1) analyses of domination understandingwhycertainpoliticalformshave come to dominate others,eliminatethem or make themsubject to their own reproduction;(2) analysisof the trends n transformation understandingwhythehistorical dentities fmodern ocialformations,lthough heyhavemoved in the directionofresembling ach other,have not convergedentirelynto singlehomogeneous world" pace,eventhough hemainthrust fthe capitalist economy, he principalforce n destructuringexisting ocial relations,has been to organize itself s a transnationaleconomy;(3) analyses of transition by which I mean (to be discussed be-low) the need to understand not only in what way the nation formhas "stabilized" ertainsocial changes whichexplainstheaura ofper-manence, partially llusory, hat it conferson the historyof humancollectivities)but also in what way it ensures the passage fromonehistoricalworld to another, rom he worldbeforenations to the worldafter hem,while not trying o impose upon thisevolutionsome pre-established model.When I speak of the nation formbeing the dominantformof theso-called "modernization" f social formations,nd of tsbeinga formofhistorical ransition, nce again I am notthinking fa set of char-acteristics f the nation formbut ratherof the questionswe need toanswerto givetheoretical onsistency o thisconcept.But theseques-tions are linked to a thirdconcept,that of the statessystem, r to bemore exact the systemof competingstates,which is an unstable re-lationshipof conflictual quilibrium.



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THE NATION FORM 337Ifwe need proofof the inescapable impactof thissystem,we findit n the form f warfare hathas become typical n theera of nationalstates,bothin termsof territorialwars and in termsof economic andculturalwars,that s as "total"wars n whichall the material nd moralresourcesup to and includingthe whole of the population are com-mitted,with ts rebound effectpon thecreationofpoliticalunity.Thiskind ofwarfarewas unknown not only in the cities ofAntiquitybutintheempiresor thepoliticalentities nified y"universalisreligionsinthe Middle Ages (lineagewars,dynasticwars,holywars).This formofwarfare sprobablyreaching ts historical imits oday, ut not with-out endless "survivals" Balibar, 1983).What thispermitsus to see is first f all that the nation form srealized onlywithin plurality fnations.And then that the corres-pondence betweenthe nation form nd all otherphenomena towardwhich t tendshas as itsprerequisite complete no "omissions") ndnonoverlappingdivisioningof the world'sterritorynd populations(and therefore esources) mong thepoliticalentities, uch thatno so-cial "property"-materialor in therealm of deas- can escape nationaldetermination or can anybe nationallyoverdetermined. o each in-dividual a nation,and to each nation its "nationals."The principleofcuius egioiusregio as already a step in thisdirection, o be replacedby the "principleof nationalities"based on the ideal correspondenceofpeoples, states, anguages, currency,nd so on. Finally, t was thefact hat ucha precisedivisioningwashistoricallympossible becauseof the nterweavingf inguistic rontiers, igrations, ynastic laims,conflicts vercolonies, revolutions,wars ofreligion, nd so on- thatthe generalformof thehistory fnational stateshas been the insta-bilityoffrontiersnd theirconstant redefinition,"ith ts direct m-pact on theexternaland internalperceptionof"national identity."nthecitiesofAntiquity, rontiers ereunchangeable."Colonization"wascarriedoutbycreating newcity.And in the ancientempireswhich,quite theopposite,extendedtheirhegemonyoverheterogeneous er-ritories nd populations, the idea of a frontier emained fundamen-tally imprecise, inked to a continuumof degrees of allegiance andtribute, epeatedlyundone and reconstituted long totallynew lines,sometimes vercenturies, ometimes n a day. In thisway Egypt,af-ter the destruction f tsown empire,could pass from hehand ofthePersianstotheGreeks,and from he GreekstotheRomans, theArabs,



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338 Etienne alibarand theTurks.) he era ofnational tateswith heir wn mperialism)was the era of the"partition"ftheworld mongcompetingentersofthe nationalization"fsocietythat s,ofthe ndividualsnthem)whichweresimultaneouslyenters fexploitationf the workforceand the "commodification"f social relations. he frontiersere a-beled "natural" rontiersBazin & Terray, 982;Joxe, 1979).Allthese erminologicalonsiderationsavebeenmeant o setthestagefor hediscussion. o formulate oreprecisepropositions, ehave to turn o thehistoryf the nationform.PART II: HISTORY

The historyfnations, eginning ith urown, s always lreadypresentedo us in the form fa narrative hich ttributeso theseentities hecontinuityf a subject.The formationf thenation husappearsas the fulfillmentfa "project"tretchingvercenturies,nwhichthereare differenttagesand moments f comingto self-awareness, hich heprejudices f thevarioushistorians illportrayas more r essdecisivewhere re we tosituate heorigins fFrance?with ur ancestors heGauls?theCapetianmonarchy?herevolutionof1789?)butwhich,nanycase,all fit nto n identical attern:hatof the self-manifestationfthenational ersonality.ucha represen-tation learly onstitutesretrospectivellusion, ut t alsoexpressesconstrainingnstitutionalealities. he illusion s twofold.t consistsinbelievinghat hegenerations hich ucceed ne another ver en-turies n an approximatelytableterritory,nder n approximatelyunivocaldesignation, ave handed downto each other n invariantsubstance. nd t consistsnbelievinghat heprocess fdevelopmentfromwhichwe select spects etrospectively,o as to see ourselvesstheculminationfthatprocess,wastheonly nepossible, hat trep-resented destiny. roject nddestinyre the wo ymmetricaliguresof he llusion fnationaldentity.he "French"f 1988 one nthreeofwhomhas at least one "foreign"see Noiriel,1988)ancestor- recollectivelyonnected o the ubjects fKingLouisXIV (nottospeakoftheGauls) onlybya succession fcontingentvents hecauses ofwhichhavenothingo do eitherwith hedestinyf France,"heproj-ect of"itskings" r theaspirationsf "itspeople."This critique houldnot,however,e allowed opreventurper-



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THE NATION FORM 339

ceivingtheeffectivity-s felt n thepresent ofmyths f national or-igins.A singleperfectlyonclusive xampleofthiswould be the FrenchRevolution, ythevery act fthecontradictoryppropriationso whichit is continually ubjected. It is possible to suggest withHegel andMarx) that, n thehistory feverymodernnation,wherever he ar-gumentcan apply,there s never more thanone single foundingrev-olutionary vent whichwouldexplainboth thepermanent emptationtorepeat tsforms, o mitate tsepisodesand characters, nd thetemp-tationfound mongthe"extreme" arties osuppress t,eitherby prov-ing that national identityderives frombefore the revolutionor byawaitingthe realizationof that dentity rom newrevolutionwhichwouldcomplete hework fthefirst). he myth forigins nd nationalcontinuity, hichwe can easily see being set in place in the contem-poraryhistory fthe"young"nations whichemergedwiththeend ofcolonialism like India or Algeria), but which we have a tendency oforgethas also been created over recent centuries n the case of the"old"nations, is therefore n effectivedeological form n which theimaginarysingularity f national formations s constructeddaily bymovingback fromthe present nto the past.Fromthe"Prenational"tate to theNation-State

How arewe to take thisdistortionntoaccount?The "origins" fthenationalformation oback toa multiplicityf nstitutions atingfromwidelydifferingeriods. Some are in factveryold: The institution fstate anguagesthatweredistinct oth from he sacred anguagesoftheclergy nd from local" dioms initially orpurely dministrative ur-poses,butsubsequently s aristocraticanguages- goesback inEuropeto theearlyMiddle Ages. It is connectedwith heprocessbywhichmo-narchicalpowerbecame autonomousand sacred.Similarly,heprogres-siveformationf bsolutemonarchy roughtwith t effectsfmonetarymonopoly, dministrativend fiscalcentralization, nd a relativede-greeof standardization f the egal system nd internal pacification."It thusrevolutionized he nstitutionsf the rontiernd theterritory.heReformation nd Counter-Reformation recipitated transition roma situation n which hurch nd state ompeted rivalry etween heec-clesiastical nd the aystate)to one in whichthe twowerecomplemen-tary in theextreme ase in a statereligion).All thesestructures ppear retrospectivelyo us as prenational,e-



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340 Etienne alibarcausetheymadepossible ertain eaturesf henation-state,ntowhichtheywereultimatelyo be incorporated ith aryingegrees fmod-ification.We can thereforecknowledgehefact hat henational or-mation s theproduct f a long"prehistory."owever,hisprehistorydiffersnessential eatures rom henationalistmyth fa lineardes-tiny. irst,t consists fa multiplicityfqualitativelyistinctventsspreadout overtime,none of which mplies nysubsequent vent.Secondly,hese vents o not of their ature elong o thehistoryfone eterminateation.Theyhave occurredwithinheframeworkfother olitical nits rom hosewhich eemto us today ndowedwithan original thical ersonalitythus,ust as in the twentiethenturythe state pparatuses f the"youngnations"wereprefiguredn theapparatuses fthecolonialperiod, o theEuropeanMiddleAgessawtheoutlines fthemodern tate mergewithin heframeworkf Sic-ily,"Catalonia,"r"Burgundy"). ndthey o notevenbelongbyna-ture othehistoryf henation-state,ut oother ival ormsfor xamplethe imperial"orm).t is not line ofnecessaryvolutionuta seriesof onjuncturalelations hich as inscribed hem fter he ventntotheprehistoryf the nationform. t is thecharacteristiceature fstates f lltypesorepresenthe rder heynstitutes eternal,houghpractice hows hatmore or less theopposite s thecase.The fact emains hat ll these vents, n conditionhat hey erepeated r integratednto newpolitical tructures,aveeffectivelyplayed role nthegenesis fnational ormations.his haspreciselyto do with heir nstitutionalharacterndwith hefact hat hey ausethe tate o ntervenentheformwhich t assumed ta particularmo-ment. n otherwords,non-nationaltate pparatuses iming t quiteotherfor xample, ynastic) bjectives aveprogressivelyroducedtheelements fthenation-state,r, foneprefers,hey avebeen n-voluntarilynationalized"nd havebeguntonationalize ociety- heresurrectionfRomanlaw, mercantilism,nd the domesticationfthefeudal ristocraciesreallexamples f his.And the loserwe cometo the modern eriod, hegreaterhe constraintmposedbytheac-cumulation f these lements eems to be. Which raisesthe crucialquestion fthe thresholdf rreversibility.At what moment nd forwhat reasonshas thisthreshold eencrossed,which, n the onehand,caused theconfigurationf a systemofsovereigntates oemerge nd,on theother,mposed heprogrs-



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THE NATION FORM 341sive diffusion f the nation formto almost all human societiesovertwo centuries of violentconflict? admit that this threshold whichit is obviously mpossibleto identifywith a singledate3) correspondsto thedevelopment f the market tructuresnd class relations pecificto moderncapitalism in particular, heproletarianization fthe aborforce, processwhichgradually xtracts tsmembersfrom eudalandcorporatist elations).However,thiscommonlyaccepted thesisneedsqualifying n severalways.It is quite impossibleto "deduce" the nation formfrom apitalistrelationsofproduction.Monetarycirculation nd theexploitationofwage labor do not ogically ntail one eterminate orm f state. More-over, herealization pacewhich s impliedbyaccumulation theworldcapitalistmarket has within tan intrinsic endency otranscend nynational limitations hatmightbe instituted ydeterminate ractionsof social capital or imposed by "extra-economic"means. May we, intheseconditions, ontinue o see the formationfthe nation as a "bour-geois project"? t seems likelythat this formulation taken over byMarxism from iberal philosophiesofhistory-constitutesn its turna historicalmyth.However, it seems that we might overcome thedifficultyfwe take up the point ofview of Braudel and Wallersteinwhich sees this constitution f nations as beingbound up not withtheabstraction fthecapitalistmarket, ut with tsconcretehistorical orm:thatofa "world-economy" hich s always alreadyorganizedand hier-archized nto a "center" nd a "periphery,"ach ofwhichhave differentmethodsof accumulationand exploitation f aborpowerand betweenwhich relationsofunequal exchangeand domination are established(Braudel, 1982; 1984; Wallerstein,1974; 1980).Beginningfrom he center,national units formout of the overallstructure f theworld-economy s a function f the role theyplay inthat structuren a givenperiod. More exactly, heyform gainstoneanotheras competing nstrumentsn the service of the center'sdom-inationoftheperiphery. his firstualification s a crucial one becauseit substitutes or the "ideal" capitalismof Marx and, particularly, ftheMarxist economists, n "historical apitalism" n which a decisiverole is played by the precocious phenomena of imperialismand thearticulationof wars withcolonization. In a sense, everymodern na-tion is a productof colonization: it has alwaysbeen to some degreecolonized or colonizing,and sometimesboth at the same time.



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342 Etienne alibarHowever,a second qualification s necessary.One ofthe most m-portant f Braudel and Wallerstein's ontributionsonsists ntheirhav-ingshownthat, n thehistory fcapitalism,othertateormshan he ationhave mergednd have for certaintimemaintained themselvesn com-petitionwith t,beforeultimately eingrepressed r instrumentalized:The formof empirend, most importantly,hat of the transnationalpolitico-commercial omplex,enteredupon one or severalcitiesBrau-del, 1984; Wallerstein,1974). This form hows us that therewas nota single nherentlybourgeois"politicalform, utseveralwemight akethe Hanseatic League as an example;however,hehistoryftheUnitedProvinces n the seventeenth entury s closelydeterminedbythisal-ternativewhich echoes through hewhole of its social life, ncludingreligiousand intellectual ife). In otherwords,the nascent capitalistbourgeoisie eems tohave "hesitated"- ependingupon circumstancesbetween several formsof hegemony.Or let us rathersay that thereexisteddifferentourgeoisies,ach connectedto differentectors fexploi-tation of the resourcesof the world-economy.f the "national bour-geoisies"finallywonout,even before he ndustrial evolutionthoughat the cost of"time-lags" nd "compromises" nd therefore f fusionswith therdominant lasses),this s probablybothbecause theyneededto use the armedforces f theexisting tatesexternally nd internally,and because theyhad to subject the peasantryto the new economicorder and penetrate hecountrysideso turnthem ntomarketswherethere were consumers of manufacturedgoods and reservesof "free"labor power. n the last analysis it is therefore he concreteconfigu-rations oftheclass struggle nd not "pure"economic logic which ex-plain the constitution fnation-states, ach with tsownhistory,ndthe corresponding ransformationf social formationsnto nationalformations.

The Nationalizationf SocietyThe world-economys not a self-regulating,lobally nvariant ys-tem,whose social formations an merelybe regardedas local effects:it is a systemof constraints, ubjectto the unforeseeabledialecticofits internalcontradictions. t is globallynecessarythat controlof thecapitals circulating n thewhole accumulation space should be exer-cised from hecenter;but therehas alwaysbeen struggle verthe ormin whichthis concentrationhas been effected. he privilegedstatus



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THE NATION FORM 343ofthenation orm erives rom hefact hat, ocally,hatformmadeitpossibleat eastfor n entire istoricaleriod) or trugglesetweenheterogeneouslasses to be controlled nd notonlyfor "capitalistclass"but lso for ourgeoisiesroperlyo-called oemerge romhesestate ourgeoisiesoth apableofpolitical,conomic,nd cultural e-gemonyndproducedy hathegemony.he dominant ourgeoisiendthebourgeois ocialformationsormed ne another eciprocallyn a"processwithout subject," y restructuringhe state n thenationalform ndbymodifyinghe tatus f lltheother lasses:Thisexplainsthe simultaneous enesis f nationalism nd cosmopolitanism.Howeverimplifiedhishypothesis aybe, thas one essentialon-sequencefor heanalysis f the nation s a historical orm:Wehaveto renounceineardevelopmentalchmas nce and for ll,notonlywheremodesofproductionreconcerned, utalso in respect fpo-liticalforms. hereis, then,nothing o prevent s from xaminingwhether,n a newphaseof theworld-economy,ival tate tructuresto that f thenation-statere nottending o form nceagain.In re-ality,heres a close mplicitonnectionetween he llusion f nec-essaryunilinear volution f social formationsnd the uncriticalacceptance fthenation-states the ultimateorm" fpoliticalnsti-tution, estined obe perpetuatedoreverhavingfailed o givewayto a hypotheticalendof theState").4Tobring ut therelativendeterminacyftheprocess fconstitu-tion nddevelopmentf henation orm,etusapproachmatters romtheperspectivefa consciously rovocativeuestion:Forwhomodayis it too ate?n otherwords,which re the socialformations hich,in spite ftheglobalconstraintf theworld-economynd of thesys-temof states owhich thas given ise, an no ongerompletelyffecttheir ransformationntonations, xcept n a purely uridical enseand at thecostof nterminableonflictshatproduceno decisive e-sult?An a priori nswer,ndevena general nswer,s doubtlessm-possible, ut t s obvious hat hequestion risesnotonly nrespectof the"newnations" reated fter ecolonization,he transnationali-zationofcapital ndcommunications,hecreation fplanetary ar-machinesnd so on,butalso inrespect f oldnations"which re to-dayaffectedythesame henomena.One might e temptedosaythat t s too ate for hose ndepen-dent tateswhich reformallyqualandrepresentednthe nstitutions



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344 Etienne alibarwhich are precisely tyled international,"ll to become self-centerednations,each with tsnational language(s) ofculture, dministration,and commerce,with ts ndependentmilitary orces,tsprotectednter-nal market, tscurrency nd itsenterprises ompeting n a world scaleand, particularly,with tsruling bourgeoisie whether tbe a privatecapitalistbourgeoisieor a State nomenklatura),ince in one wayor an-othereverybourgeoisie is a statebourgeoisie.Yet one mightalso betemptedto saytheopposite: The fieldof thereproduction fnations,of thedeployment f the nation form s no longeropen today exceptin the old peripheries nd semiperipheries; o far as the old "center"is concerned, thas, to varyingdegrees,enteredthephase of thede-compositionof national structureswhichwere connectedwith the oldforms f tsdomination,even ifthe outcomeof such a decompositionis both distant nd uncertain. t clearly eems, however,fone acceptsthishypothesis, hat the nations of the futurewill not be like thoseof the past. The fact that we are today seeing a general upsurgeofnationalismeverywherenorthand south,east and west)does not en-able us to resolve this kind of dilemma: it is part of the formaluni-versality of the international system of states. Contemporarynationalism,whatever ts anguage, tells us nothingof thereal age ofthe nation form n relation to "world time."In reality,fwe are to cast a littlemore lighton thisquestion,wemusttake nto account a furtherharacteristic fthehistory f nationalformations.This is what I shall call thedelayedationalizationf ociety,whichfirstf all concernsthe old nations themselves nd is so delayedthat tultimately ppears as an endlesstask. An historian ikeEugenWeber has shown as have othersubsequent studies)that n the caseofFrance,universalschoolingand the unification fcustomsand be-liefsby nterregionalabormigration nd military ervice nd the sub-ordinationofpoliticaland religiousconflicts o patriotic deologydidnot come about untiltheearly yearsof the twentiethenturyWeber,1976). His demonstration uggests hatthe Frenchpeasantrywas onlyfinally nationalized" at the pointwhen it was about to disappear asthemajority lass (thoughthisdisappearance, as we know,was itselfretardedbytheprotectionismhat s an essential characteristic f na-tional politics).The more recentworkof Grard Noiriel shows n itsturnthat since the end of the nineteenth entury, Frenchidentity"has continuallybeen dependent upon the capacity to integrate m-



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THE NATION FORM 345

migrantpopulations.The question arises as to whether hatcapacityis todayreaching ts imit or whether t can in factcontinue to be ex-ercised in the same form Noiriel, 1984; 1988).In ordercompletely o identifyhereasons for he relative tabilityof the nationalformation,tis not sufficient erely o refer o the in-itial threshold f itsemergence.We must also ask how theproblemsof unequal developmentof town and countryside, olonization anddecolonization,wars and the revolutionswhichtheyhave sometimessparked, he constitutionfsupranationalblocs and so onhave inprac-ticebeen surmounted, ince theseare all events and processeswhichinvolved t leasta risk fclass conflicts riftingeyondthe imitswithinwhichtheyhad been more or less easily confinedby the "consensus"of thenational state.We may saythat n France as, mutatismutandisin theotherold bourgeoisformations, hat made itpossibleto resolvethecontradictions apitalismbroughtwith t and to begin to remakethenation form t a pointwhen it was not evencompleted or to pre-vent t from omingapartbefore twas completed)was the nstitutionof thenational-socialtate,hat s, of a state"intervening"n theveryre-productionof theeconomyand particularlyn theformation f indi-viduals, nfamily tructures,he structuresfpublichealth, nd, moregenerally,n thewhole space of"private ife."This is a tendency hatwas presentfrom hebeginningof thenation form a pointto whichI shallreturn elow- but one whichhas become dominantduringthenineteenth nd twentieth enturies, he resultofwhich is entirely osubordinate heexistence f the ndividualsof all classesto their tatusas citizensof the nation-state, hat is, to the fact of theirbeing "na-tionals."5Producing hePeopleA social formation nlyreproduces tself s a nation to theextentthat,through network fapparatuses and daily practices,the indi-vidual is instituted s homo ationalisrom radle to grave,at the sametime as he/she is instituted as homooeconomicus,oliticus, eligiosus. . .That iswhy hequestionof thenationform,f t s henceforthn openone, is, at bottom,the question ofknowing n what historical ondi-tions t is possibleto institute uch a thing:byvirtueof what internaland externalrelationsof force and also by virtue ofwhat symbolicformsnvested n elementarymaterialpractices?Askingthisquestion



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346 Etienne alibaris anotherwayofaskingoneselfwhat transitionn civilization hena-tionalization of societiescorrespondsto, and what are the figures findividualitybetween whichnationalitymoves.The crucial point is this: what makes thenation a "community"?Or rather n whatway s theform fcommunitynstituted ythena-tion distinguished pecifically romotherhistoricalcommunities?Let us dispenseright waywith he antitheses raditionallyttachedto thatnotion, the first f which is the antithesisbetweenthe "read"and the "imaginary" ommunity. veryocial ommunityeproducedy hefunctioningf nstitutionss imaginary,hat s, it is based on theprojectionof individual existence nto the weftof a collectivenarrative, n therecognition f a common name nd on traditions ived as the traceofan immemorial ast evenwhentheyhave been created and inculcatedin the recentpast). But thiscomes down to acceptingthat, n certainconditions, only maginaryommunitiesre real.In thecase ofnational formations, he imaginarywhich nscribesitselfn the real in thisway is that of the"people." t is thatofa com-munitywhichrecognizes tself n advance inthe nstitutionfthestate,whichrecognizesthat state as "its own" n oppositionto otherstates,and, in particular, nscribes ts political struggleswithinthehorizonof that state: For example by formulatingts aspirationsfor reformand social revolution s projectsfor he transformationf "itsnationalstate."Withoutthis,there can be neither monopolyoforganizedvi-olence" Max Weber),nor"national-popularwill" Gramsci). But sucha people does not existnaturally,nd even when tis tendentially on-stituted, t does not exist forall time. No modern nation possesses agiven ethnic" asis, even when t arisesout of a national ndependencestruggle.And, moreover,no modernnation,however egalitarian" tmaybe, fulfills hemode ofthe extinction f class conflicts. he fun-damental problemis therefore o produce the people. More exactly,it s tomake thepeople produce continually as nationalcommunity.Or again, it is to produce the effect f unity by virtue of which thepeople willappear, in everyone's yes, as a people," hat s, as the basisand originof political power.Rousseau was the first o explicitly onceivethequestion in theseterms: "Whatmakes a people a people"? Deep down, thisquestion isno different rom heone which arose a momentago: How are indi-vidualsnationalized, r inotherwords, ocialized n thedominantform



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THE NATION FORM 347ofnational elonging?Which nablesus toputaside from heoutsetanother rtificial ilemma: tis not a question fsetting collectiveidentitygainst ndividual dentities. ll dentitys individual,ut thereis no individualdentityhat s nothistorical,r, notherwords, on-structed ithin field f socialvalues,norms fbehavior,nd collec-tivesymbols.ndividualsnever dentify ithone anothernotevenin the fusional"racticesfmassmovementsr the intimacy"f ffec-tive elations), or,however,o they ver cquire n isolateddentity,which s an intrinsicallyontradictoryotion. he read uestionshowthedominant eferenceoints f ndividualdentityhange ver imeand with hechangingnstitutionalnvironment.To thequestion f the historical roductionfthepeople or ofnational ndividuality) e cannotmerely e content oreplywithdescriptionfconquests, opulationmovements,nd administrativepractices f "territorialization."he individuals estined o perceivethemselvess themembers f a singlenation re either atheredo-getherxternallyrom iverse eographicalrigins,s inthenationsformedy mmigrationFrance,U.S.A.) or elsearebroughtmutuallytorecognize ne anotherwithin historical rontierhich ontainedthem ll. The people s constitutedutofvarious opulations ubjectto a commonaw.However,nevery ase,a model ftheir nitymust"anticipate"hat onstitution:he process funificationthe ffective-nessofwhich an bemeasured, or xample,ncollectivemobilizationinwartime,hat s,the apacity o confronteath ollectively)resup-posestheconstitutionf a specificdeological orm.t must t one andthe ametimebe a massphenomenonnda phenomenonf ndivid-uation; t must ffectn "interpellationf ndividualss subjects"Al-thusser) hichs muchmore otenthan hemerenculcationfpoliticalvaluesor rather ne that ntegrateshis nculcationnto moreele-mentaryrocesswhichwemay ermprimary")ffixationf he ffectsof ove ndhate, ndrepresentationf he self." hat deological ormmustbecomean a priori ondition f communicationetween ndi-viduals the citizens")nd betweenocialgroups notby uppressingall differences,utbyrelativizinghem nd subordinatinghem oitselfnsuch way hat t sthe ymbolicifferenceetween ourselves"and"foreigners"hichwinsout and which s lived s irreducible.notherwords, o use theterminologyroposed yFichte nhis Rede ndieDeutscheation f1808, he external rontiers"f the Statehave to



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348 Etienne alibarbecome "internalfrontiers" r- which amounts to the same thing-externalfrontiers ave to be imagined constantly s a projection ndprotection f an internal ollectivepersonality, hicheach personcar-ries withinhim/herselfnd enables him/her o inhabit the space ofthestate as a place where one has alwaysbeen- and whereone alwayswill be - at "home."What might hat deologicalformbe? Depending upon thepartic-ular circumstances, t will be called patriotismor nationalism:Theevents whichpromoteits formation r which reveal its potencywillbe recorded and its originwillbe traced back to politicalmethodsthecombinationof"force" nd "education" as Machiavelli and Gram-sciput it)- which enable the state to some extent o createpublic con-sciousness. But this creation is merelyan externalaspect. To graspthe deepest reasons for ts effectiveness,ttentionwill turnthen,astheattention fpoliticalphilosophy nd sociologyhave turnedfor hreecenturies, oward the analogy ofreligion, akingnationalismand pa-triotism ut to be a religion ifnot ndeedthe eligion ofmodern imes.Inevitably, here s some truth n thisresponse.Not onlybecause,formally, eligionsalso institute orms f communityby starting utfrom souls" and individual dentities nd because theyprescribe so-cial"morality,"utalso because theological iscoursehas providedmod-els for he dealizationof the nation and the sacralization of thestate,whichmake it possible fora bond of sacrifice o be created betweenindividuals, nd for hestampof truth"nd "law" o be conferred ponthe rules of the legal system.6 verynational communitymust havebeen represented t some pointor anotheras a "chosenpeople."How-ever,thepolitical philosophiesof the classical age had already recog-nized the inadequacy of this analogy, which is equally clearlydemonstratedby the failureof attemptsmade to constitute civil re-ligions," ythe fact hat the "statereligion" ltimately nlyconstituteda transitoryorm fnational deology evenwhenthistransitionastedfor long timeand produced important ffects y superimposing e-ligious upon national struggles), nd bythe interminable onflict e-tweentheological universality nd the universality f nationalism.In reality,heoppositeargument s correct: ncontestably, ationalideology involves deal signifiersfirst nd foremost he veryname fthe nation or "fatherland") n to whichmaybe transferred he senseofthe sacred and the affects f ove,respect, acrifice, nd fearwhich



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THE NATION FORM 349have ementedeligiousommunities,ut hat ransfernly akes lacebecause notherypef ommunitys nvolved ere.The analogys tselfbased on a deeperdifference;f t werenot, t would be impossibleto understand hynationaldentity, ore r esscompletelyntegrat-ingtheforms freligiousdentity,ndsup tendingoreplace t,andforcingtselfo become nationalized."FictiveEthnicitynd Ideal NationI apply he erm fictivethnicity"othecommunitynstitutedythenation-state.his is an intentionallyomplex xpressionnwhichthe erm iction,nkeepingwithmyremarksbove,mustnotbe takenin thesenseof a pureand simple llusionwithout istoricalffects,buton thecontrarynderstoodyanalogywith hepersonaicta fthejuridical raditionn the senseof an institutionalffect, "creation."No nation ossessesn ethnic ase naturally,utas socialformationsare nationalized,hepopulationsncludedwithin hem,dividedupamong hem r dominatedythem reethnicized,hat s,representedin thepastor in the futures iftheyformed natural ommunity,possessingf tselfn identityforigins,ulture,nd interests hichtranscendndividualsnd socialconditions.7Fictive thnicitys notpurely nd simplydenticalwith he dealnationhich s theobjectofpatriotism,ut s not ndispensableo it,forwithoutt thenationwouldappear preciselynlyas an idea oran arbitrarybstraction:atriotism'sppealwouldbe addressed o noone. It is fictivethnicity hichmakes tpossiblefor heexpressionofa preexistingnity o be seen n the state ndcontinuallyo mea-sure he tate gainst ts historic ission"nthe ervice fthenationand,as a fictivelythnic nity gainst hebackgroundf universal-istic epresentationhich ttributesoeach ndividual ne andonlyone ethnicdentityndwhich hus ivides pthewhole fhumanitybetween ifferentthnic roups orrespondingotentiallyosomanynations, ational deology oesmuchmore hanustifyhe trategiesemployedy he tate o controlopulations.t nscribesheir emandsin advanceto a senseofbelongingn the doublesenseof the term:that s,bothwhat t s thatmakes nebelong ooneselfnd also whatmakesonebelong o other ellow umanbeings.Whichmeansthatonecanbe interpellated,s an individual,n he amef he ollectivitywhosenamepreciselyne bears.The naturalizationfbelongingnd



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350 Etienne alibarthesublimation f the deal nation are twoaspectsof the same process.How can ethnicity e produced? And how can it be produced insuch a waythat tpreciselydoes notappear as fiction, ut as themostnatural oforigins?Historyshows us that there re twogreatcompet-ingroutes o this: anguagend race.Most often hetwooperatetogether,foronly theircomplementaritymakes it possible for the "people" tobe represented s an absolutelyautonomous unit. Both expresstheidea that the national character whichmightalso be called its soulor itsspirit) s imminentn thepeople. But bothoffer means of tran-scending ctual individuals nd politicalrelations.They constitutewowaysofrootinghistoricalpopulations n a factof "nature" the diver-sityof languages and the diversity f races appearing predestined),but also twowaysof givinga meaning to theircontinuedexistence,of transcending ts contingency.By force of circumstance,however,at times one or the other s dominant,fortheyare not based on thedevelopmentofthatsame institutionsnd do not appeal to the samesymbolsor the same idealizations of the national identityThe factof thesedifferentrticulations f,on the one hand, a predominantlylinguistic thnicitynd, on theother, n ethnicityhat spredominantlyracial has obvious political consequences. For thisreason, and for hesake ofclarity fanalysis,we mustbegin by examiningthetwo sep-arately.The language community eems themore abstractnotion,but inreality t is the more concretesince it connects individualswith anoriginwhichmay at any moment be actualized and which has as itscontent he commonctof theirownexchanges,oftheirdiscursive om-munication,usingthe instruments fspoken anguage and thewholeconstantly elf-renewingmass of written nd recordedtexts. This isnot to say that thecommunity s an immediateone, without nternallimits,any more than communication s in reality transparent" e-tween all individuals. But these limits are alwaysrelative: Even if itwere the case that ndividuals whose social conditionswereverydis-tant from ne another were never n directcommunication, heyarebound together yan uninterruptedhain of ntermediate iscourses.They are not isolated either de jure or de facto.However,we should certainlynot allow ourselves to believe thatthis situation s as old as the world itself. t is, on the contrary, e-markablyrecent.The old empiresand the Ancien Rgime societies



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THE NATION FORM 351were till ased on theuxtapositionf inguisticallyeparate opula-tions,on thesuperimpositionfmutually ncompatiblelanguages"for hedominantnd thedominated,nd for he acred nd profanespheres. etween hese here ad tobe a whole ystemf ranslations.8Inmodern ational ormationshe ranslatorsrewriters,ournalists,and politicians,ocialactorswhospeakthe anguageof the"people"in a waythat eems all the morenaturalfor heverydegreeofdis-tinctionhey herebyring o it. The translationrocess as becomeprimarilyneof nternalranslation etween ifferentlevels f an-guage."ocialdifferencesreexpressednd relativizeds differentaysof peakinghenationalanguage,which uppose common odeandevena commonnorm see Balibar,1985).This latters, as weknow,inculcatedyuniversalchooling, hoseprimaryunctiont s toper-form reciselyhis ask.That iswhy heres a closehistoricalorrelation etween hena-tionalformationnd thedevelopmentf schools s "popular"nstitu-tions, ot imitedospecialized rainingr to elite ulture, ut ervingtounderpinhewholeprocess f he ocializationf ndividuals. hattheschool hould lso be the site ofthe nculcation f a nationalistideology- ndsometimeslso theplacewhere t s contested isa sec-ondary henomenon,ndis,strictlypeaking, less ndispensables-pect.Let ussimply ay hat choolings theprincipalnstitution hichproducesthnicitys linguisticommunity.t isnot,however,he nlyone: The state, conomic xchange, nd familyife re also schoolsin a sense, rgans fthe dealnationrecognizableya commonan-guagewhich elongs o them as their wn." orwhat s decisive ereisnot nly hat henationalanguagehould erecognizeds the fficiallanguage,but,muchmorefundamentally,hat t shouldbe able toappear s thevery lement f he ife f people, herealityhich achpersonmay ppropriatenhisorher wnwaywithouthereby estroy-ing ts dentity.here is no contradictionetween he nstitutingfonenational anguage nd thedailydiscrepancyetween and clashof- class anguages"which re precisely ot differentanguages. nfact, hetwothings re complementary.ll linguistic ractices eedinto single love fthe anguage"which s addressed otto thetext-booknormnor toparticular sage,but to the "motherongue,"hatis, to the deal of a common riginprojected ackbeyond earningprocesses nd specialist orms fusage and whichbythatveryfact



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352 Etienne alibarbecomes themetaphorfor he ove the nationals feelforone another.9One might henask oneself, uite apartfrom heprecisehistoricalquestions which the historyof national languages poses- fromthedifficultiesf theirunification r imposition, nd from heirelabora-tion into an idiom that is both "popular" and "cultivated"a processwhich we know s far frombeing completed todayin all nation-statesin spiteof the abors oftheir ntellectualswiththe aid ofvarious nter-national bodies) - why he anguage ommunitys not lone ufficiento pro-duce ethnicity.Perhaps this has to do with the paradoxical propertieswhich,byvirtue of tsverystructure,helinguistic ignifieronfers n individ-ual identity.n a sense, it is always in the elementof language thatindividualsare interpellated s subjects,forevery nterpellations ofthe order ofdiscourse. Every"personality"s constructedwithwordsin whichlaw, genealogy,history, oliticalchoices, professional ual-ifications,nd psychology re set forth. ut the inguistic onstructionof dentitysbydefinitionpen.No individual"chooses"his/hermothertongueor can "change" t at will. However, t is always possibleto ap-propriateseveral anguages and to turn oneself nto a different indof bearer of discourse and of the transformationsf language. Thelinguistic ommunity nduces a terribly onstraining thnicmemory(Roland Barthes once went so faras to call it "fascist"), ut it is onewhichnonetheless ossesses strange lasticity:t mmediately atural-izes new acquisitions. It does so too uicklyn a sense. It is a collectivememorywhichperpetuates tself t the costof an individualforgettingof"origins." he "second generation" mmigrant a notionwhich inthiscontextacquires a structuredignificance inhabitsthe nationallanguage (and through t the nation itself) n a manner as spontane-ous, as "hereditary,"nd as imperious o far s affectivitynd the mag-inaryare concerned,as the son of those nativeheathswhich we thinkofas so veryFrench and most ofwhichnot so long ago did not evenhave the national language as theirdaily parlance). One's "mother"tongue s notnecessarily he anguage of one's "real" mother.The lan-guage communitys a communityn the resenthichproducesthe feel-ing that t has alwaysexisted,but which aysdownno destinyforthesuccessivegenerations. deally, it "assimilates" nyone,but holds noone. Lastly, t affects ll individuals in their nnermostbeing (in thewayin whichtheyconstitute hemselves s subjects),but itshistorical



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THE NATION FORM 353

particularitys onlybound to interchangeablenstitutions.When cir-cumstancespermit, tmay servedifferent ations as English,Span-ish, and even Frenchdo) or survive the "physical"disappearance ofthe peoples who used it (like "ancient"Greek and Latin or "literary"Arabic). For it to be tied down to the frontiers fa particularpeople,it therefore eeds an extradegree (un supplment)f particularity,ra principleof closure,of exclusion.This principle s that of being part of a common race. But herewe mustbe very arefulnot togiverise tomisunderstandings. ll kindsof somatic or psychologicalfeatures,both visible and invisible,maylend themselves ocreating he fiction f a racial identitynd thereforetorepresentingatural ndhereditary ifferencesetween ocialgroupseitherwithin he same nationor outside its frontiers. have discussedelsewhere,as have others beforeme, the developmentof the marksofrace and the relation heybear to different istorical igures f socialconflict.What I am solelyconcerned with here is the symbolickernelwhichmakes it possible to equate race and ethnicity deally,and torepresent nity f race to oneself s theoriginor cause of the historicalunity fa people. Now,unlikewhatapplied in the case of the inguisticcommunity,t cannot be a questionhere of a practicewhich s reallycommon to all the individualswho form politicalunit.We are notdealingwith nythingquivalent o communication.What we are speak-ing of is therefore second-degreefiction.However,this fiction lsoderives ts effectivenessrom verydaypractices,relations which im-mediatelystructure he "life" f individuals. And, most importantly,whereas the language communitycan only create equality betweenindividualsby simultaneously naturalizing" he social inequalityoflinguisticpractices,the race communitydissolves social inequalitiesin an even moreambivalent similarity";t ethnicizes he social differ-ence which s an expressionof irreconcilable ntagonismsby lendingit the form f a divisionbetween the"genuinely" nd the"falsely" a-tional.I thinkwe may cast some lighton thisparadox in the followingway.The symbolickernel of the idea of race (and of itsdemographicand cultural quivalents) s theschema ofgenealogy, hat s,quite sim-plythe dea that thefiliation f ndividualstransmits romgenerationto generationa substance both biological and spiritualand therebyinscribes hem n a temporal communityknown as "kinship." hat is



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354 Etienne alibarwhy s soon s national deology nunciates hepropositionhattheindividuals elonging o thesamepeopleare interrelatedor, n theprescriptiveode, hat heyhould onstitutecircle f xtended in-ship),we are in thepresence f the secondmode ofethnicization.The objectionwill no doubtbe raisedherethat ucha represen-tation haracterizesocieties nd communitieshich avenothing a-tional about them.However, t is precisely n thispointthattheparticularnnovation inges ywhich he nationforms articulatedto themodern dea ofrace.This idea is correlative ith he endencyfor private"enealogies,s (still) odifiedytraditionalystemsref-erentialmarriagend ineage, odisappear.The dea f racialommunitymakests ppearancehen herontiersfkinshipissolvet the evelf he lan,the eighborhoodommunity,nd, heoreticallyt east,he ociallass,obe mag-inarilyransferredothe hresholdfnationality:hat is,whennothing re-vents lliancewith nyof one's fellow itizens"whatever,ndwhen,onthe ontrary,uch n alliance eems heonly ne"normal"r"nat-ural."The racialcommunityas a tendencyorepresenttselfs onebigfamily r as thecommon nvelope ffamily elationsthecom-munity f"French,"American"r "Algerian" amilies).10rom thatpoint nward,ach ndividual as his/heramily, hateveris/hero-cial condition, ut thefamily- ikeproperty- ecomes contingentrelation etweenndividuals.n order o considerhis uestion urther,weought hereforeo turn oa discussion fthehistoryfthefamily,an institutionhich ereplays role very it s central s that layedby he choolnthediscussionmmediatelybove, ndonethats omni-presentn the discourse frace.TheFamilyndthe chool

We hererunup against he acunae in family istory, subjectwhichremains rey o the dominant erspectivef awsrelating omarriage n the onehand,and on theother, f privateife" s a lit-erary ndanthropologicalubject. he great heme ftherecent is-tory fthefamilys theemergence f the "nuclear" r smallfamily(constitutedytheparental oupleand their hildren)ndheredis-cussion s focused n whethert is a specificallymodern"henome-non eighteenth-nineteenthenturies)onnected ith ourgeois ormsofsocialitythethesis fAries nd Shorter) rwhethert s theresultofa developmenthebasis ofwhichwas aid down longtimebefore



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THE NATION FORM 355

byecclesiasticalawand thecontrol fmarriage ytheChristian u-thoritiesGoody'sthesis) Aries,1975; Shorter, 975;Goody,1983).In fact, hesepositionsrenot ncompatible. ut,most mportantly,they end opush nto he hadewhat s for s themost rucial ues-tion:What s the orrelation hich asgraduallyeenestablishedincethe nstitutionfpublicregistrationnd thecodificationfthefamily(ofwhich he Code Napolonwas theprototype)etween he disso-lution frelationsf extended"inshipnd thepenetrationffamilyrelations ythe nterventionfthe nation-statehich unsfromeg-islationnrespect f nheritanceo theorganizationfbirth ontrol?Let us note here that n contemporaryational ocieties, xceptfora fewgenealogyfanatics"nd a fewwho are"nostalgic"or hedaysof thearistocracy,enealogys no longer ither bodyoftheoreticalknowledge or an objectof oralmemory,or s it recorded nd con-served rivately:oday t s the tate hichraws pand toreshe rchiveffiliationsnd lliances.Hereagainwe have odistinguishetween deepanda superficiallevel.The superficialevel s familialistiscourseconstitutivefcon-servativeationalism) hich t a very arly tagebecame inkedwithnationalismnpolitical radition particularlyithin heFrench ra-dition.The deeplevel s the imultaneousmergencef privateife,"the"intimatesmall)familyircle" nd hefamily olicy fthestate,whichprojectsntothepublic sphere henew notionofpopulationand thedemographicechniques ormeasuringt,of thesupervisionof tshealth nd morals, nd ofitsreproduction.he result s thatthemodern amilyircle squite heopposite f n autonomousphereat thefrontiersfwhich he structuresf the statewouldhalt. t isthe pheren which herelationsetween ndividualsre mmediatelychargedwith "civic" unctionnd made possiblebyconstant tateassistanceeginning ith elations etweenhe exeswhich realignedtoprocreation.his is also whatenablesus to understand heanar-chistic one hat exuallydeviant"ehavior asily akes ninmodernnational ormations,hereasn earlier ocieties tmoreusually ookon a toneofreligious eresy. ublic health nd socialsecurity avereplaced he fatheronfessor,otterm or erm, utby ntroducingboth new freedom"nda newassistance, newmission nd there-fore lso a new demand.Thus, as linealkinship, olidarityetweengenerations,nd theeconomic unctionsfthe extended amily is-



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356 Etienne alibarsolve,what takes theirplace is neithera naturalmicrosocietynor apurely"individualistic" ontractualrelation,but a nationalizationofthefamilywhichhas as itscounterparthe dentificationfthenationalcommunitywith symbolickinship ircumscribed yrulesofpseudo-endogamy nd with tendencyess toproject tselfnto a senseofhav-ing common antecedentsas a feelingofhaving commonescendants.That is whythe idea ofeugenics is always atent n thereciprocalrelationbetween the"bourgeois"family nd a societywhich takesthenation form.That is whynationalismalso has a secretaffinity ithsexism:Not so muchas a manifestation f thesame authoritarian ra-ditionbut insofar s the nequalityof sexual roles n conjugal love andchild-rearingonstitutesheanchoring ointfor he uridical,economic,educational, and medical mediation of the state. Lastly,that is whytherepresentationfnationalism s a "tribalism"-hesociologists' randalternative o representingt as a religion is bothmystificatoryndrevealing. Mystificatoryecause it imaginesnationalismas a regres-sion to archaic forms fcommunitywhich are in reality ncompatiblewiththe nation-statethiscan be clearly een from he ncompletenessof the formation f a nation whereverpowerful ineal or tribal soli-darities stillexist). But it is also revealingof the substitution f oneimaginary fkinship or nother, substitution hich he nationeffectsand whichunderpinsthe transformationf thefamily tself. t is alsowhat forces s to ask ourselves o what extent henation form an con-tinue to reproduceitself ndefinitelyat least as the dominantform)once the transformationfthefamily s "completed,"hat s, once re-lations of sex and procreationare completelyremovedfromthe ge-nealogical order. We would then reach the limit of the materialpossibilities fconceivingwhat human"races" re and of nvestinghatparticular representationn the process of producing ethnicity. utundoubtedlywe have not reached thatpoint yet.Althusserwas notwrong n his outline definition f the"Ideolog-ical StateApparatuses" o suggest hatthe kernel f the dominant deo-logyofbourgeoissocietieshas passed from hefamily-Churchoupleto thefamily-school ouple (Althusser,1971). I am, however, emptedto introducetwo correctives o thatformulation. irst, shall not saythat a particular nstitution f this kind in itself onstitutes n "Ideo-logical State Apparatus":What such a formulation dequately desig-nates s rather hecombinedfunctioningf everalominant nstitutions.



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THE NATION FORM 357I shallfurtherroposethat thecontemporary mportance fschoolingand the familyunit does not derive solelyfromthe functionalplacetheytake in the reproduction f labor power,but fromthe factthatthey ubordinate hatreproduction o the constitution f a fictive th-nicity,hat s,to thearticulation fa linguistic ommunity nd a com-munityof race implicit n population policies (what Foucault calledbya suggestive ut ambiguous termthesystem f"bio-powers")Fou-cault, 1977). School and family erhapshave otheraspects or deserveto be analyzed fromotherpoints of view. Their historybegins wellbeforethe appearance of the nation form nd may continuebeyondit. But what makesthemtogether onstitute he dominant deologicalapparatus in bourgeoissocieties- which s expressed n theirgrowinginterdependence nd in their endency o divide up the time devotedto the trainingof individualsexhaustively etweenthem is their na-tional mportance, hat s,their mmediate mportancefor heproduc-tionofethnicity.n thissense,there s onlyonedominant"IdeologicalStateApparatus"in bourgeoissocial formations sing the school andfamily nstitutions or ts own ends- togetherwith other nstitutionsgrafted n to the school and thefamily- and theexistenceof thatap-paratus is at the root of thehegemonyofnationalism.I must add one remark in conclusion to this hypothesis.Articulation even complementarity- oes notmean harmony.Lin-guistic thnicitynd racial or hereditary) thnicityre in a sense mut-uallyexclusive. suggested bove that he inguistic ommunitysopen,whereas heracecommunityppears nprinciple losed since t eads-theoretically- o maintaining ndefinitely,ntil the end of the gen-erations, utsidethecommunity r its inferior"foreign"margins hosewho,by tscriteria, re notauthentically ational). Both are ideal rep-resentations.Doubtless race symbolism ombines the elementof an-thropological niversalitynwhich t sbased (thechain ofgenerations,the absolute ofkinshipextendedto thewhole ofhumanity)withanimaginaryofsegregation nd prohibitions.But in practice migrationand intermarriage re constantly ransgressing he limitswhich arethusprojected even where coercivepolicies criminalize"interbreed-ing").The real obstacle o themixing fpopulations s constitutedatherbyclass differences hich tendto reconstitute aste phenomena. Thehereditary ubstanceofethnicity onstantlyhas to be redefined:Yes-terday t was "German-ness,"theFrench," r "Anglo-Saxon" ace, to-



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358 Etienne alibarday it is "European-ness"r "Western-ness,"omorrow erhaps he"Mediterraneanace." onversely,heopenness fthe inguisticom-munitys an idealopenness,ven houghthas as itsmaterialupportthepossibilityftranslatingrom nelanguage o another ndthere-fore he apacity f ndividuals o ncrease herange f heiringuisticcompetence.Though formallyegalitarian, belonging to the linguisticcommunity-hieflyecauseofthe fact hat t is mediatized ytheinstitutionf he chool immediatelye-createsivisions, ifferentialnormswhich lsooverlapwith lassdifferencesoa very reat egree.The greaterhe role takenon bythe education ystemwithin our-geoissocieties,hemoredifferencesnlinguisticand thereforeiter-ary, "cultural,"nd technological) ompetencefunction s castedifferences,ssigningifferentsocial estinies"o ndividuals.n thesecircumstances,t is notsurprisinghatthey houldbe immediatelyassociatedwith orms fcorporal abitustousePierreBourdieu's er-minology)which onfer n theact ofspeakingn itspersonal, on-universalizableraits hefunctionfa racialorquasiracialmarkandwhich till ccupy verymportantlaceintheformulationf"classracism"):foreign"r"regional"ccent, popular" tyle f peech, an-guage"errors"r,conversely,stentatiouscorrectness"mmediatelydesignating speaker's elongingoa particular opulationndspon-taneouslynterpreteds reflecting specific amily rigin nd an he-reditarydisposition.11 he productionof ethnicitys also theracialization f anguage nd theverbalizationf race.It is not n irrelevant atter- ither rom he mmediate oliticalpoint fvieworfrom hepoint fviewofthedevelopmentfthena-tionform r its future ole nthe nstitutingf social relations thata particular epresentationfethnicityhouldbe dominant ince tleads to tworadically ifferentttitudeso theproblem f ntegrationand assimilation,wowaysofgroundinghe uridicalorder nd na-tionalizingnstitutions.12The French revolutionaryation" ccorded privileged lacetothe ymbolf anguagen ts wn nitial rocess fformation:t boundpolitical nity losely olinguisticniformity,hedemocratizationfthe state o the coercive epressionf cultural particularisms,"ocalpatois eingtheobjecton which t became fixated. or itspart, heAmerican revolutionaryation" uilt tsoriginaldealson a double



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THE NATION FORM 359

repression:hat fthe xterminationftheAmerindian natives"ndthatof thedifferenceetween ree White"men and "Black" laves.The linguisticommunitynheritedrom heAnglo-Saxon mothercountry"idnotposea problem at east pparently- ntilHispanicimmigrationonferredpon it thesignificationf classsymbol ndracial feature.Nativism" as alwaysbeen implicitn thehistoryfFrenchnational deology ntil, t theend of the nineteenthentury,colonizationn the onehand,and an intensificationf the mporta-tion f abor nd the egregationfmanualworkersymeansoftheirethnic rigin n theother,edto theconstitutionf thephantasm fthe "French ace." t was,bycontrast, ery uicklymade explicitnthehistoryf theAmerican ational deology, hich epresentedheformationf theAmerican eoplenotonlyas themelting otofanewrace,butalsoas thehierarchicalombinationf hedifferentth-nic contributionst thecost of difficultnalogiesbetween uropeanor Asian mmigrationnd thesocial nequalitiesnherited rom lav-eryand reinforcedytheeconomic xploitationf the Blacks.13These historical ifferencesn no sense impose any necessaryoutcome- heyreratherhe tufffpoliticaltruggles-ut hey eeplymodifyheconditionsn whichproblems fassimilation,quality frights,itizenship,ationalism,nd internationalismreposed.Onemighteriously onderwhethernregard o theproductionf fictiveethnicity,he"building fEurope"-to the extent hat twillseek totransferothe Community"evel unctionsndsymbolsf henation-state-willorientatetselfredominantlyowardhe nstitutionf a "Eu-ropean o-lingualism"and if o,adoptingwhichanguage)orpredom-inantlynthedirectionf the dealization f"Europeandemographicidentity"onceivedmainlynoppositiono the southernopulations"(Turks,Arabs,Blacks).14 very people," hich s theproduct f na-tionalprocess fethnicization,s forced oday ofind tsown meansofgoingbeyond xclusivismr identitariandeologyn theworld ftransnationalommunicationsnd planetary elations f force.Orrather: veryndividuals compelled ofindnthe transformationfthe maginaryf"his/her"eoplethemeans to leaveit, n order ocommunicate ith he ndividuals fother eopleswithwhichhe/sheshares he same interestsnd, to someextent, he same future.



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360 Etienne alibarNOTES

1. Thesetwopossibilities aybe combined ypresentinggiven lass as theonly na-tional" lass,one which nder ertain onditionsxpresseshe nterestsf thewholepeople,or one which s able to imposeon the others statewhich s apparentlyabove lass."2. A phrase have takenfromRen Gallisot.3. Ifonedid,however,ave o choose datesymbolically,nemight oint othemiddleof he ixteenthentury:he ompletionf he panish onquest f heNewWorld, hebreak-up of theHabsburgEmpire, he end of thedynasticwars n England, nd thebeginningof the DutchWar of ndependence.4. From his oint fview, here snothingurprisingbout hefact hat he orthodox"Marxist heoryf the inear uccession f modesofproduction ecamethe officialoctrinein the SovietUnion at thepointwhennationalismriumphedhere, articularlys itmadeitpossiblefor he"firstocialist tate" o be representeds thenew universal ation.5. Forsomefurtheremarks n this amepoint, eemy tudy,Propositionsur a ci-toyennet"Balibar, 1988).b. On all thesepoints, he work t Kantorowiczs clearly f crucial ignificance:eeMourir our a patrie t autres extes1985).7. I say includedwithinhem,"ut should lso add "or xcluded ythem,"ince heethnicizationf the others"ccurs imultaneouslyith hat f the nationals":here renolonger nyhistorical ifferencesther han thnic nes thus heJews lsohavetobe a "peo-ple").On the thnicizationf olonized opulations,eeJ.-L.Amselle ndE. M'Bokolo 1985).8. ErnestGellner1983)and BenedictAnderson1983),whose nalyses re as opposedas "materialism"nd "idealism,"othrightlytress hispoint.9. Jean-ClaudeMilneroffersomevery timulatinguggestionsn thispoint, houghmore n Les Nomsndistincts1983: 43ff.) han in LAmoure la langue1978). On the"classstruggle"/"languagetruggle"lternativen theU.S.S.R. at thepointwhenthepolicy f "so-cialismnonecountry"ecamedominant,ee F.Gadet,J.-M.Gaymann, . Mignot, . Rou-dinesco, Les Matres e la langue1979).10.Let us add thatwe havehere sure riterionfthecommutationetween acism ndnationalism:very iscourse n thefatherlandr nationwhich ssociates hesenotionswiththe defencefthefamily"- ot tospeakof the birth ate is already nsconcedn theuni-verse fracism.11. See P. Bourdieu, Distinction1984), and Ce queparler eut ire:L'conomieeschangesin-guistiques1982),and thecritique ythe Rvoltesogiques" ollectivenL'Empireu ociologue(1984),whichbearsessentiallyn thewaythatBourdieu ixesocial roles s "destinies"ndimmediatelyttributeso theantagonism etween hem functionfreproducinghe"to-tality"thechapter n language s byFranoiseKerleroux).12. See some mostvaluable remarks n thispoint nGadet& Pecheux 1981:38tt.).

13.On Americannativism,"ee R. Ertel,G. Fabre,& E. Marienstras1974:25ff.)ndMichaelOmi & HowardWinant 1986: 120). t is interestingosee a movementevelopingtodayntheUnited tatesdirectedgainst atinAmericanmmigration)alling or nglishto be made theofficialational anguage.14. Right t the heartof this lternativeies thefollowingruly rucialquestion:willthe dministrativend educationalnstitutionsfthefutureUnited urope" cceptArabic,Turkish,r even ertainAsian or Africananguages n equal footing ith rench,German,and Portuguese,r will those anguages e regarded s "foreign"?REFERENCES

Althusser,ouis (1971). Ideology nd State deologicalApparatuses,"n Lenin ndPhilosophyandOtherssays. ondon:NLB, 127-86.



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THE NATION FORM 361Amselle,J.-L. & M'Bokolo, E. (1985). Au coeur e 'ethnie:thnie,ribalismetEtatenAfrique. aris:

La Dcouverte.Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined ommunities:eflectionsn theOriginndSpread fNationalism.London: Verso.Aries, Philippe (1962). CenturiesfChildhood,rans. Robert Baldick. London: Cape.Balibar, Etienne (1982). "The Long March forPeace," in Edward Thompson et al., eds., Ex-terminismnd Cold War. London: Verso, 135-52.Balibar, Etienne (1988). "Propositions sur la citoyennet,"n C. Wihtol de Wenden, d., LaCitoyennet.aris: Fondation Diderot.Balibar, Rene (1985). L'institutionu ranais: ssai sur eco-linguismees arolingiensla Rpublique.Paris: Presses Univ. de France.Bazin, Jean; Terray,E., et al. (1982). Guerrese lignagetguerres'Etat nAfrique. aris: Ed. desArchivesContemporarines.Bourdieu, P. (1982). Ce que parler eut ire:L'conomiee changesinguistiques.aris: Fayard.Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction,rans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Braudel, Fernand (1982). CivilizationndCapitalism,I: The WheelsfCommerce,rans. Sin Rey-nolds. London: Collins.Braudel, Fernand (1984). CivilizationndCapitalism,II: ThePerspectivef heWorld,rans. SinReynolds. London: Collins.Derrida,Jacques (1982). "Diffrance,"nMargins f hilosophy.hicago: Univ. ofChicago Press,1-29.Ertel, R.; Fabre,G. & Marienstras, E. (1974). EnMarge:Les minoritsux Etats-Unis. aris: Mas-pro.Foucault, Michel (1977). A History f exuality,, trans. Robert Hurley. London: Allen Lane.Gadet, Franoise & Pcheux, Michel (1981). "^anthropologie linguistique entre le Droit etla Vie," in La Langue ntrouvable.aris: Maspro.Gadet, F, et al. (1979). Les Matres e la langue.Paris: Maspro.Gellner, Ernest (1983). Nations nd Nationalisms.xford. Blackwell.Goody, Jack (1983). TheDevelopmentf he amilyndMarriagenEurope.Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press.Joxe, Alain (1979). Le Rempartocial. Paris: Ed. Galile.Kantorowicz, Ernst E. (1985). Mourir our apatrie t utres extes. aris: Presses Univ. de France.Milner,Jean-Claude (1978). LAmour e la langue.Paris: Ed. du Seuil.Milner,Jean-Claude (1983). Les Noms ndistincts.aris: Ed du Seuil.Noiriel,Grard (1984). Longwy:mmigrst roltaires,880-1980. Paris: PressesUniv. de France.Noiriel,Grard 1988). Le Creusetranais: istoiree 'immigration,IX-XXsicles. aris: Ed. du Seuil.Omi, Michael & Winant, Howard (1986). Raci

balibar_the nation form

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