디아스포라와 민족주의 담론의 현재성

Diaspora and Contemporariness of Nationalist Discourse

This paper scrutinizes the possibility and contemporariness of nationalist discourse even in the era of postmodernism. With the declaration of the end of modernity, nationalist discourse has been criticized as an old-fashioned discourse of modernity, especially from the perspective of post-colonialism. As one of the representative key words of post-colonialism, the term, ‘diaspora,’ has been effectively used to attack the exclusiveness and separatism of nationalist discourse. Within the anti-essentialist critique of modern, nationalist discourse, post-colonialists maintain that a nation is an imagined community which functions as a competitive and oppressive boundary within and among nations. For example, nationalism has constituted its identity emphasizing its regional and cultural homogeneity. In doing so, it excludes not only multi-cultural immigrants but also its diaspora. Nationalist discourse, however, still has a positive effectiveness, for the logic of global division of labor of capitalism penetrates from powerful western countries to poor non-western ones, and economic and cultural invasion and exploitation occur in the meanwhile. As David Huddart states, if “community has to be created and negotiated,” rather than denying nationalism as a regressive ideology, we should realistically appropriate nationalist discourse in accordance with economic, politic and cultural topography of the global era.