Spectral Nationality

Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation

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by Pheng Cheah

Columbia University Press

Due/Published January 2004, 432 pages, paper

ISBN 0231130198

This far-ranging and ambitious attempt to rethink postcolonial theory's discussion of the nation and nationalism brings the problems of the postcolonial condition to bear on the philosophy of freedom. Closely identified with totalitarianism and fundamentalism, the nation-state has a tainted history of coercion, ethnic violence, and even, as in ultranationalist Nazi Germany, genocide. Most contemporary theorists are therefore skeptical, if not altogether dismissive, of the idea of the nation and the related metaphor of the political body as an organism. Going against orthodoxy, Pheng Cheah retraces the universal-rationalist foundations and progressive origins of political organicism in the work of Kant and its development in philosophers in the German tradition such as Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. Cheah argues that the widespread association of freedom with the self-generating dynamism of life and culture's power of transcendence is the most important legacy of this tradition. Addressing this legacy's manifestations in Fanon and Cabral's theories of anticolonial struggle and contemporary anticolonial literature, including the Buru Quartet by Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and the Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's nationalist novels, Cheah suggests that the profound difficulties of achieving freedom in the postcolonial world indicate the need to reconceptualize freedom in terms of the figure of the specter rather than the living organism.

"Spectral Nationality is a beautiful and startling book. It is dazzlingly, relentlessly erudite, but also remarkably clear and simple in its focus: how freedom has been pursued in the past and how we can best realize it today. This is an extremely important intellectual and political project." -- Michael Hardt, Duke University, and coauthor of Empire"Elegantly argued, original, and deeply insightful, Pheng Cheah's new book situates nationalism at the heart of the Western intellectual tradition. Its examination of organicism shows this to be anything but an innocent metaphor. Philosophy's dualisms did not remain stable, and Western philosophy did not stay at home. Cheah brilliantly shows how its implications intertwined with different material circumstances and cultural traditions in postcolonial Asia and Africa. Bildung and Bandung were not quite worlds apart. A must read." -- Craig Calhoun, New York University

"A rare scholarly achievement, Spectral Nationality adds a critical new dimension to the work from which it draws much of its inspiration, namely Derrida´s Spectres of Marx. Cheah´s exemplary account of the development of organicism from Kant through Marx will doubtless change the manner in which this difficult and delicate topic will henceforth be discussed." -- Peter Fenves, professor of German and comparative literature, Northwestern University

"Pheng Cheah has written an important book that will genuinely stir up productive discussion, breathe new life into postcolonial discourse, and raise the subject to a new and necessary level of serious engagement." -- Harry Harootunian, New York University

"Pheng Cheah's stimulating contribution to postcolonial studies stands out on two counts: for the sustained attention it gives to European thought and for shifting the focus of the discussion to Southeast Asia and Kenya. It is the combination of these two elements that gives Spectral Nationality its distinctive vigor and merit." -- Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago

Contents

Introduction: The Death of the Nation?

Part I: Culture as Freedom: Territorializations and Deterritorializations
The Rationality of Life: On the Organismic Metaphor of the Social and Political Body
Kant's Cosmopolitanism and the Technic of Nature
Incarnations of the Ideal: Nation and State in Fichte and Hegel
Revolutions That Take Place in the Head: Marx and the National Question in Socialist Decolonizaton

 Part II: Surviving (Postcoloniality)
Novel Nation: The Buildung of the Postcolonial Nation as Sociological Organism
The Haunting of the People: The Spectral Public Sphere in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet
Afterlives: The Mutual Haunting of the State and Nation
The Neocolonial State and Other Prostheses of the Postcolonial National Body: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Project of Revolutionary National Culture

Epilogue. Spectral Nationality: The Living-On of the Postcolonial Nation in Globalization