Sketch 2: Group identities and the discursive levelling of existing differences
The "nation" is among the most commonly known and most visible group identities. While in most countries schools, official media and other official sources educate people to think of themselves as part of a "nation", the affirmation of belonging to that group seems to be more developed, or perhaps just more visible, in some countries than in others. Having grown up in Switzerland where there is non-negligible anti-nationalist subculture has apparently pushed everyday nationalism into the defensive to a point, I was surprised to often hear people in Bulgaria use the pronoun "we" in utmost identification with "Bulgarians", and to see how the Bulgarian media write "we", "ours" and "us" when meaning "Bulgarians".
The "nation" is a rather recent invention among the instruments of control that have been historically developed by ruling elites. It came along with the French revolution, with the rise of the capitalist class that replaced the religious legitimization of social stratification of feudal times that had been transparent and acknowledged, by an ideologically more elaborate mystification that pretended to give the same rights to "all". Whether you live in the role of a man or a woman, whether you are assigned by scientific or everyday racism to be white or non-white, whether you own production facilities, employ other people and impose rationalization and formalization of work processes on them or are employed and oppose your living wits to the forceful impoverishment of your perceptory experience — you are supposed to be part of the "nation", indistinguishable to a first approximation from any other person in the "nation". Thus the "nation" is a discursive means of making differences and conflicts between exploiters and exploited invisible, of concealing them behind the facade of a common "national cause". The exploited who relate to a "nation" will not turn against their expoiters, against the ruling elite, but against the "enemies of the nation" defined as such by the founders of the "nation", the ruling elite. Thus the "nation" is functional on two levels for the elite — in discursively levelling existing differences and social conflicts, and as a tool for directing the anger, frustration and creative energies of the people against competing elites outside the "nation".
It may be possible to define group identities which do not to the same extent level differences, and quite possibly group identities have served struggles for emancipation at times. Groups which are defined according to a common interest in struggling against existing power structures and the mechanisms that perpetuate them may play a positive role in building a future for Balkania, for a way of living together without obeying the ruling elite’s call to be part of the "national" herd. Note, however, that even when groups are defined according to struggle interests, they often do level differences. Such is the case of the concept of "proletariat" as formulated by orthodox Marxists, who consider class disparities to be the main contradiction to deal with, economistically subordinating gendered and racist oppression to that main economic system of exploitation. According to Marxist orthodoxy, patriarchy and colonialism are a side effect of capitalism and will automatically be abolished once "the" revolution has done away with capitalist power structures. The discursive trick of creating the group identity of the "proletariat" allows white male workers to keep their privileges relative to other people of the so-defined proletariat.
Intermezzo — Guest artist
"It is important to notice at this point that histories as such can not even be disentangled within hypertextual paradigms, as the psychology of the narrative can not escape the linear perception within the cause and effect chain — after all, this is what history ultimately implies: the story." (Micz Flor, debugging history, Vienna, in print)