Ghassan: The rise of nationalism initially
was the rise of optimism and involved benevolence,
tolerance, et cetera, with all the negative
parts on the side of the nation, but the resurgence
of nationalism is the resurgence of this sense
of power, a sense of decline, and therefore
we find more and more cruelty, viciousness,
whether towards migrants or towards refugees
or towards working class or towards all kinds
of categories.
Gerhard: Which is what you talked about in
"Paranoid Nationalism." One of the readings
is actually the chapter on the national cuddle.
I think one of the interesting things—I
think it's in there—is when you talk about—and
you often bring psychology in—when you talk
about longing in the sense of belonging somewhere,
which is linked to a longing of being someone
with a place to call home but also belonging
to a nation and also seeing the nation belonging
to me and becoming very possessive over what
that should mean. Rather than having a space
where we can discuss or talk about the many
varied ways of belonging, it becomes almost
a zero-sum game. If I belong, you can't belong.
If you belong, I can't belong. That's where
I think a lot of the tension comes from in
this non-euphoric way of imagining this.
Ghassan: Yes, I mean, when belonging is territorial,
that means—I think that's where multicultural
reality but also the reality of colonial settler
societies, so not just the cultures of migrants
who come after colonization to places like
Australia or the United States or Canada,
but the indigenous people and their cultures,
which should never be just part of multiculturalism
as if they are one culture among others. Obviously
the relation of power behind those cultures
and their destination is very important to
take in their specificity.
When you have this situation of a multiplicity
of cultures, a multiplicity of forms of existence
in the nation, then the question of territorial
belonging becomes increasingly problematized.
That's why it raises actually the imagination
of the possibility of non-territorial nationalism
and non-territorial belonging or the capacity
of existing of two or three or four cultures
belonging to the same space without this exclusionary
mode of thinking.
Gerhard: There's a story you've told many
times, and I wonder if you could tell it again,
that I think is really this—is a nice way
of explaining some of those processes of othering
and some of the way white multiculturalism
has played out, which is the story about the
refugee who comes and lives in the community
in the hut by the sea, which I think is a
fictional account from someone.
Ghassan: Yes, it is semifictional. It is a
semifictional account by Loubna Haikal, a
Lebanese-Australian author. Yes, it's a lovely
story. It's about this very progressive green
community up the North Coast of New South
Wales. They are committed to be nice, like
all these communities. They're nice to everybody,
and they want to be very nice to refugees,
so much so that they decided that they want
to be nicer than the normal nice to refugees.
They said all these people support refugees
or support asylum seekers when they are detained,
but when these asylum seekers get out of detainment,
they forget about them, and so they decided—they
were supporting this Iraqi asylum seeker,
and they got him out of detention, so they
asked him to come and live with them. The
Iraqi came to live with them. They said, “Go
and choose yourself a very nice plot of land
here.” The Iraqi looked around and found
this beautiful view of the sea but also found
a palm tree and said, "This where I want to
be because the palm tree reminds of my home.
I can remember home and enjoy the sea and
be part of…” Everybody was happy. He started
living.
Until one day at the castle, because they
are deep green community, somebody said, "Actually
this palm tree is not native, and we are committed
to native vegetation here. I think we need
to remove this palm tree." They go to the
Iraqi and say to him, "We have to remove the
palm tree." He says, "No way. This palm tree
means everything to me, and that's why I'm
here."
The story starts suddenly showing how the
people start turning on him in a racist way.
They would say, "Who do you think you are?
We have invited you here. We are the ones
who gave you this land,” et cetera. So,
yes, the story shows how conditional the integration
of a person can be when it is done in this
mode. Even when it is super nice, when you
leave that little bit of power left to the
dominant culture whereby when the crunch comes
and if it annoys them, they would use it.
In a sense, the aim of any progressive multiculturalism
is the removal of this residual power. It's
the capacity of just living among each other
without power over…
Gerhard: So it would go beyond tolerance?
Ghassan: Go beyond tolerance.
Gerhard: To, I think, what you call a politics
of negotiation where—be amongst equals rather
than…
Ghassan: Well, what I call the politics of
negotiation which is here—because negotiation
has many meanings. It's very important to
differentiate. Negotiation is not like negotiating
over the table in a diplomatic way, but negotiating
like when you negotiate a river and you are
in a canoe. It's about being attuned to others
and being continuously sensitive, into sensitivity
to the other in every possible way.
Gerhard: In fact, throughout the episodes,
one thing we're looking at is relationships
between things, relationships between people
and things, and relationships between people.
I think that's where anthropology has a lot
to offer in describing this inter-subjectivity,
the space in between, I guess.
Ghassan: I think anthropology is definitely
moving to gather strength from something which
it had throughout its tradition of not thinking
of otherness simply in terms of human otherness.
The fact that we have such a rich history
of studying people who do not make sharp distinctions
between humans, culture, and nature, and the
fact that there are such varieties of ways
that we experience, we can bring all of these
together and make them relevant to our lives.
I think that's always what attracts me, the
political element of anthropology that always
attracts me, that it is always capable of
giving us forms of otherness, forms of different
ways of living that we can use to haunt our
own culture into making it better.
