Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question

298 Pages·2002·1.32 MB·English

by  Joan Cocks

1. Cover
2. Passion and Paradox
3. Copyright
4. Contents
5. Acknowledgments
6. Introduction
7. Chapter One Karl Marx Uncovers the Truth of
National Identity
8. Chapter Two Imperialism, Self-Determination, and
Violence Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and
Frantz Fanon
9. Chapter Three On the Jewish Question Isaiah Berlin
and Hannah Arendt
10. Chapter Four Are Liberalism and Nationalism
Compatible? A Second Look at Isaiah Berlin
11. Chapter Five In Defense of Ethnicity, Locality,
Nationality The Curious Case of Tom Nairn
12. Chapter Six Cosmopolitanism in a New Key V. S.
Naipaul and Edward Said
13. Conclusion
14. Notes
15. Bibliography
16. Index

Passion and Paradox
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Passion and Paradox
Intellectuals Confront The
National Question
JOAN COCKS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright 2002 by

Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University
Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY

All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data Cocks, Joan, 1947– Passion and
paradox : intellectuals confront the national question /
Joan Cocks.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and
index.
ISBN 0-691-07467-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-691-07468-2 (pbk. :

alk. paper) 1. Nationalism–Philosophy. I. Title. JC311 .C6135 2002
320.5401—dc21 2001038755

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been

composed in Sabon and Bernhard Printed on acid-free paper.

www.pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of

America 12345678910
12345678910 (Pbk.)

FOR PETER
The First World War and the collapse of Europe’s
MARK
MAZOWER
Dark Continent: old continental empires signalled the triumph not
Europe’s Twentieth only of democracy but also—and far more en-
Century duringly—of nationalism. With the extension of
the principle of national self-determination from

western to central and eastern Europe, the Paris peace treaties cre ated a pattern of
borders and territories which has lasted more or less up to the present. Yet the
triumph of nationalism brought bloodshed, war and civil war in its train, since the
spread of the nation-state to the ethnic patchwork of eastern Europe also meant the
rise of the minority as a contemporary political problem. Where a state derived its
sovereignty from the “people,” and the “people” were defined as a specific nation,
the presence of other ethnic groups inside its borders could not but seem a

reproach, threat or challenge to those who believed in the principle of na tional self-
determination.

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Universality is the war-cry of the

underprivileged “Exit Visas and Entry . . . [and] Jews were underprivileged . . .
univer-Tickets: Paradoxes of sally . . . The Jews, in [Isaac] Deutscher’s poi-Jewish

Assimilation” gnant words, “dwelt on the borderlines of var ious civilizations,
religions and national cultures . . . they lived on the margins . . . of their respective
nations.” As for the great Jewish prophets of universality, like Spinoza, Heine, Marx,
or Rosa Luxemburg, “each of them was in society and yet not in it. It was this that
enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above

their times and genera tions, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and
far into the future.” The idea of redemption through universality was . . . at home in
Jewish history. . . . [But it] was the most perverse paradox of emancipation that,
under the banner of universality, it promoted a new particularization. In practice, it

meant the renun ciation of a specific Jewish particularity . . . at the price of embrac
ing a new one, be it of a religious, national, or cultural kind.

AIJAZ AHMAD Partitions make it seem as if liberation comes in the form of a
series of surgical invasions.
Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1

Karl Marx Uncovers the Truth of National Identity
CHAPTER ONE
18

Imperialism, Self-Determination, and Violence:
CHAPTER TWO
Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon 45

On the Jewish Question: Isaiah Berlin and Hannah
CHAPTER THREE
Arendt 71

Are Liberalism and Nationalism Compatible? A
CHAPTER FOUR
Second Look at Isaiah Berlin 92

In Defense of Ethnicity, Locality, Nationality: The
CHAPTER FIVE
Curious Case of Tom Nairn 111

Cosmopolitanism in a New Key: V. S. Naipaul and
CHAPTER SIX
Edward Said 133
Conclusion 158
Notes 167
Bibliography 201
Index 213
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