I agree with Jim Devine that presenting the State as the only possible
alternative to local warlords and the most tolerable coersive apperatus
is a dangeres position. Furthermore, the notion that the State and
nation can be seperated in a way that one does not coencide with the
other represents a misregonition of the relations between State and
nation. The distinction between 'public' and 'private' education
does not coencide between education that interpellates individuals as
citizens of the State or, members of the hegemonic culture/national
identity and, on the other hand, counterhegemonic projects. The State
is much more than its legal definition. The State and nation coencide
in terms of certain epistimic rules. That is, the modern State and
nationalities are necessarily tied into each other in their performative
functions of reproducing each other on the level of knowledge. Modern
forms of knowledge are dependent upon certain epistemic rules, constituted
by nation and State, that allow for learning. As such, the State/nation
is an epistemic subject - it is charecterized by certain rules of dispersion
that grounds modern forms of knowledge and their selectivity. I have noted
six such epistemic rules that constitute the modern State and will be happy
to discuss them if other members of the list are intersted. This is not to
say that you cannot have a national identity without having a State, there
are various exampels of this. It is to say that States and nationalities
share a similar structure in their epistemic construction and that counter-
hegemonic projects must necessarily be non-nationalistic (Pierre Troudeu
aside).
That's it for now,
Peter Bratsis
CUNY Grad. Center
