Artistic rendering by Ari Kachadoorian (used by Greenfeld in recent lecture).
Liah Greenfeld's Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity changed the course of my Honors Thesis on the post-communist transition period in Eastern Europe. I love her lens. Her current work-in-progress, the final member of her "trilogy", explores how modern culture impacts the mind and how it gives rise to certain mental illnesses (which she maintains are biological though highly influenced by culture).
The central argument of the book is that nationalism (modern culture) causes mental diseases of unknown etiology - schizophrenia, manic depression, and major unipolar depression. Nationalism is understood in the terms developed in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity and applied in The Spirit of Capitalism as a fundamentally secular view of reality (focused on this world to the complete disregard of transcendental forces), and in-so-far as the social sphere is concerned, regarding the essential equality of membership and popular sovereignty as the basis of the natural and legitimate community, referred to as "nation". Our existential experience is deeply and directly affected by the secular focus of nationalism and the two principles embodied in the society constructed on its basis. All three of these place the individual in control of his or her destiny, eliminating the expectation of putting things right in the afterlife, making one the ultimate authority in deciding on one's priorities, encouraging one to strive for a higher social status (since one is presumed to be equal to everyone, but one wants to be equal only to those who are superior) and giving one the right to choose one's social position and therefore identity. But this very liberty, implied in nationalism, both empowering and encouraging the individual to choose what to be - in contrast to all the religious pre-national societies, in which no one was asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" since everyone was whatever one was born - makes the formation of individual identity problematic, and the more so the more choices for the definition of one's identity a society offers and the more insistent it is on equality. A clear sense of identity being a condition sine qua non for adequate mental functioning, malformation of identity leads to mental disease.
It sounds like a prompt for multiple delicious conversations about modern identity and the mediated facilitation of identity politics. Ideally, Daniel Chirot would also be present. As would Kay Redfield Jamison. I hope that Liah's latest firmly chides Huntington for Who Are We?, though I suspect an endnote is more likely.
Related trinkets:
- Mind in Modernity blog post about Greenfeld's work-in-progress observes how it is emphatically not Szasz or Foucault.
- Greenfeld's view on the end of history and the clash of civilizations.
- The Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences offers many great posts on the Greenfeld's current thinking as well as little bits of Arendt sprinkled in quiet corners. Greenfeld directs the IASS. The Institute’s research focus is on modern culture and nationalism with the understanding that nationalism is modern culture.
- More artistic renderings by Ari Kachadoorian.
