Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

KINGA-KORETTA SATArespectively, Sándor Makkai, a well-known writer and Calvinist bishop.Makkai’s account of the problem will be discussed later. In fact, Reményik’stexts preceded Makkai’s in time, and claimed to be a general account of thenature of nationhood, valid for all nations.Reményik’s ideas on the nation were formulated on the occasion ofhis dispute with the editors of the rival, so-called “progressive” journal,Napkelet. On his opponent’s intervention that the notion of nationhood heprofessed had an offensive, belligerent character, he responded:National consciousness, in my opinion, does have some sort of militant andcombative character; this is a fact, but an unavoidable fact. Sometimes thismanifests itself only in spiritual confrontation, sometimes in the physical,armed conflict of the different national consciousnesses. The latter is infinitelysad; but it derives from the laws of life, of nature. Where values areproduced, there struggles originate around the values and among the values.In this fight the issue is simply that whoever tires out, lets himself goor proves to be weaker, will perish. The one who disarms physically willperish in his physical, let’s say, state existence; the one who abandons himselfspiritually, whose ancestral roots of consciousness perish, loses hisunique nation-specific colors and will be absorbed beyond recovery. 12This concept of the fighting nation as derived from the laws of the natureis very close to the set of ideas known as “social Darwinism,” though itclaims at the same time to be Christian. This strange amalgam of theprominent social ideas of the late 19 th century is conducive to the wellknownparadigm of dividing the nations of the world into superior andinferior: “Due to this organization of existence, one party always must beinferior.” 13Reményik’s ideas are somewhat different from the usual 19 th centurydefinition of the nation, asserting the necessity of differentiationbased on the criterion of development. What Reményik considersindicative of the stage of national development is cultural excellence.He speaks about cultural values both as conducive to struggles and asdeciding the outcome of those struggles. He nevertheless introduces theelement of power in this conflicting inter-relationship of national consciousnessand claims thatfrom his own point-of-view every collective consciousness asks rightfully:why me, why us should be the defeated? … That is why this question isclearly the question of perspectives on the one hand, and of power on theother, and it cannot be elevated, for the time being, to the high sphere ofsome general moral or human truth. 1446