Translated by Zero Schizo
Beginning with our neo-structuralist approach, we recognize nationalism as a complex structure, a framework of intersubjective relations which is of a particular post-formative essence, thus, we do not share the thesis of Gellner (1997) and Guaresti (2000) that identify nationalism with a particular foundational essence, that precedes y gives shape to Nations and States, meaning that – according to these authors– first there would be Nationalism, and then the Nation and then the State, to which we prefix and join to the critique of John Hall (2000), who in his book «The State of The Nation», analyzes Gellner’s theory, concluding that, effectively, not every society is a nation. Thus we conclude that first, the concepts of State and Nation (cultural and politico-juridical) emerge, and finally, that of Nationalism as an exaltation of this latter two.
Then, if nationalism doesn’t give origin to States and Nations, what does? From this point emerge the following questions: What gives origin to cultural nations? What gives origin to politico-juridical nations? Are the concepts of cultural nation and politico-juridical nation opposites? Regarding all these questions, we consider that to talk about any type of nationalism, makes us necessarily refer to the concepts of State and Nation, categories that in a formative process do not exist yet, precisely, because they are in construction. Being that the formation of cultural nations, is a socio-cultural process derived from the interaction between ethnicities that decide to come together and form a cultural nation, but this process could not be called cultural or ethnic nationalism, in so a doctrine or a system of thought cannot be formed from something which its correlate is but a proto-category, from that same vein this is applied when we talk about the formation of a politico-juridical nation; so that the processes of formation of cultural and politico-juridical nations, we will name processes of nationification or statization of societies, divided at the same time in process of cultural and politico-juridical nationification, respectively. All of it for the sake of remarking the fact that, nationalism is a post-cultural nation and post-politico-juridical nation phenomenon, which doesn’t participate in the formation of those concepts rather, it precisely emanates from these ones when they are already consolidated and formed through their respective processes, while the theory of Gellner has generated the situation in which nationalism is conceived as an entity a priori, falling into the fallacy of arguing the existence of nationalism as a motor and not as an effect of, before the emergence of the categories that give sustenance to that very same, and not as an a posteriori phenomenon (Tejada, 2014).
On the other hand, we consider that the classical dichotomy which confronts or see the concepts of cultural or ethnic nation with the one of politico-juridical nation as opposites and contradictories, and from which emerges the concepts of ethnic nationalism and politico-juridical nationalism, does not correspond to the phenomenal reality anymore, in which it is impossible to consider a politico-juridical nation without the ethnic or racial factor, just as it is impossible to consider a cultural nation without the politico-juridical factor, as perceived as self-determination of a collective will, just as is demonstrated in the case of Catalonian nationalism (Silveira, 2007). Being so, our structural concept of nationalism foresees, precisely, the full comprehension of this dichotomy and the construction of a dialectical synthesis between those categories in the verge of a structural concept.




















