peter nesteruk
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Inter/national (Rescue).
All states, all nations, are internally policed (when
not we regard them as failed), however the relations
between nations recognise no such control or law. We accept for international
relations what we would never accept within the confines of the nation state.
With the result that international relations are still liable to plunge back
into a state of affairs not unlike that of the school play ground, with smaller
entities at the mercy of larger entities, the defacto reign of bullies. Conservative and left nationalist opinion alike work with a
definition of self interest not far from that of theft, or brigandage and so
urge passivity in clear cases of international humanitarian intervention.
Or they countenance intervention only to help groups deemed similar, ‘same’, or
in very clearly in ‘our’ camp, ‘our’ community (however defined). All features
tat would be dispensed with, overcome (at least in their overt manifestations)
by the rule of law on the national field of play.
Why this acceptance in the international realm of that
which has been banished elsewhere (outside of those states deemed ‘failed’ or
otherwise outside of the rule of law)? The notion of nation is still very much
the default limit of community (still the notion of community most other
communities and interest groups hide behind in their rhetoric). Amongst other
candidates for the honorary notion of 'us' are language,
religion, colour or class, shared gender bias or other 'strait-jackets' of
exclusionary practices (or a sadly typical combination thereof). However they rarely
trump the ace of national identity (one such is ‘Radical’ Islam). The idea of
nationhood still provides a geographical base (‘home’) and a speech community
(the language we feel ‘at home’ in). Together these constitute a shared
identity within which we expect a (token) equality, or recognition, when
compared with others (excepting perhaps the internal hierarchies of the tribe
and the ritualised presence of internal 'others'). This is the place from which
we look with a jaundiced eye at others.
The ideology of national unity (even for those who
consider themselves unmoved by the national flag) just as in the case of honour
codes, functions according to an economy of identity where those outside of the
zone of mutual recognition (‘Us’) are to be left to their own devices,
relegated to a unpoliced, uncivilised, jungle. This
is a place where the survival of the fittest reigns and therefore a breeding
ground for bloody dictators – a place where even humanitarian intervention is
never free from national interest...
Identity might be defined as how we see ourselves (and
whom it is we see ourselves with); the field is that
of recognition, of identity exchange, of honour and self-projection onto a
collective ground. This is an underrated pole of human behaviour often
exceeding economics and material or political self-interest as a source of
motivation and justification. As can be seen from unprofitable wars (of
religion, for example) and the desire to accumulate beyond any possibility of
consumption (even ‘conspicuous’ in its old sense of public performance). What
is increasingly desired here is the advertising (precisely the image, the
recognition) of the fact that one possesses x number of y (houses, cars,
commodities, and dependants - people) and not their use value. Rather it is
their sign value on the market or exchange of signs that is important (their
use value is given by their sign value). We are all advertisers, advertising
the fact of possession. The desire for commodities (and for commodified
chunks of experience, be it of land, people, or even emotion) is therefore also
fostered by the desire for recognition, the desire for a given identity,
desires triggered by a given identity. Commodity exchange, the means by which
we circulate objects and services, was thought to have turned gift (identity)
exchange to is own ends; it rather appears that it is the latter which has
simply adapted itself to a new form of generalised exchange, yoking it to its
own ends. Finally, it is identity exchange that determines our international
loyalties much as it does our national and other community affiliations.
And identity, unlike the pragmatic realities of
economics, can be changed by the word.
To be part of a world community, partaking of a world
identity (such as operates with environmental awareness, for example) what
sacrifices would such an identity involve? For an
identification with the interests of the world as a whole, an
identification not grounded in local interest; a new universalism would be no
step forward if it only promoted the interests of another (local) dogma.
Nevertheless the sense of a new international community of goodwill, plural and
tolerant, is one that attracts many disturbed by the daily eruption of
inhumanity on our screens. Might not such an identity be preferable to the
collective egoism of the nation state? But would this
creation, of a body of world law, and more importantly a body to police it, not
also be (as it was the solution to the incessant warring of the ancient Greek
city states) a defacto
world empire?
Copyright
2004 Peter Nesteruk.