Ovi Magazine Issue #24: Nationalism - Published: 2013-01-31

Theme
Emanuel L. Paparella has a BA (major in philosophy) “St. Francis College, NYC”,
an MA “Middlebury College, Vt” in Italian Literature, an M.Ph. in Comparative
Literatures and a Ph.D. in Italian Humanism from Yale University. A former professor
of Italian at the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Central Florida
where he was director of the Urbino Summer Program from 1998 till 2001. He is
currently retired, residing with his wife Cathy and his three daughters.
negative nationalism chauvinism and xenophobia.
It declares “my country right or wrong.” To use
a metaphor, if my mother happens to be a drunk,
the best way to help her is to first acknowledge the
truth that she is a drunk and then try to help her,
while continuing to love her even as a drunk. The
chauvinist instead proclaims “my mother, drunk
or sober.” This is an important distinction often
overlooked by those historians and scholars who
collapse the word patriotism into nationalism.
A common language is very important but does
not necessarily result in instant nationalism. In Italy,
the modern European nation I am most familiar
with, there was a common literary language
in place since the 13 th century, as exemplified
in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s
Canzoniere and Boccaccio’s Decamerone.
Politically, however, we need to wait
six more centuries (1860) for Italian
national unification to become a
reality. I shall return to this theme
of nationalism vis a vis universalism
further down in the essay.
the invading oriental Persian “barbarians” at
Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Those Spartans were
sacrificing themselves for a common Greek culture,
a culture spread for a short while all the way to
India by Alexander the Great. So, paradoxically,
the universalism of an empire succeeded where
nationalism as we know it failed. In the Roman
Empire too we see an empire with Latin as a lingua
franca, as a unifying principle beyond military
might. That empire lasted a bit longer, some two
thousand years if we include the Byzantine empire
which is a continuation of the Roman empire.
To better discern the above
mentioned distinction we
need to go back to ancient
Greece where there was
indeed a common
language and culture
and yet they were not
able by themselves
to overcome
centrifugal
political forces
and unify the
city states into
one country.
There was however
patriotism best exhibited
by Leonidas’ small force
of 300 Spartans confronting
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