Against Paranoid Nationalism

Against Paranoid Nationalism:
Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society

Ghassan Hage

Paranoid nationalism is all around us – the ‘us’ and ‘them’ –, and the demonisation of ‘them’.

Why has Paranoid nationalism become such a powerful part of mainstream political culture?

When leaders can give no sense of hope or progress, is this the next best thing? Is it time again for a ‘good’ war?

Hage brings insights from political economy and psychoanalysis, defining societies as mechanisms for the production and distribution of hope. He argues that the rise of paranoid nationalism throughout the world is linked to the shrinking of western nation-states’ ability to distribute hope among their citizens. Neo-liberal policies have loosen social bonds, diminish our hopes for a better life and make us anxious and worried.

“We need books like this. Whether he is writing about hope, the dispossession of indigenous peoples, collective responsibility, national identity and what it means to be an immigrant, or suicide bombers, Ghassan Hage makes one think hard. Speaking for myself, he has exposed assumptions I did not know I held and enabled me to appreciate possibilities I had not seen before. In a voice distinctively his own Hage speaks in many tones – analytical, polemical, caustic, ironic, compassionate. Few writers engage so uncompromisingly the whole of oneself.”
Raimond Gaita, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of London, King’s College.

CONTENTS: – Preface: Camera obscura, or the unbearable lopsidedness of being - Introduction - Transcendental capitalism and the roots of paranoid nationalism - On worrying: the lost art of the well-administered national cuddle - Border dis/order: the imaginary of paranoid nationalism - A brief history of White colonial paranoia - The rise of Australian fundamentalism: reflections of the rule of Ayatollah Johnny - Polluting memories: migration and colonial responsibility in Australia - The class aesthetics of global multiculturalism - Exighophobia/ homoiophobia: 'Comes a time we are all enthusiasm' - A concluding fable: the gift of care, or the ethics of pedestrian crossings - Endnotes - Bibliography - Index

xiv, 174 pages