The Ernest Gellner Nationalism Lecture: Nationalism and the crises of global modernity

Abstract

Whether or not there is a direct causal relationship, nationalism is at the heart of all the crises in the modern world and becomes entangled in its effects. As the fundamental source of authority for all modes of governance in the world, we are beholden to its capacity to resolve these cascading crises. I argue that the nation form is the ‘epistemic engine’ driving the globally circulatory and doxic Enlightenment ideal of the conquest of nature and perpetual growth that sustains the runaway technosphere. The cascading crises that we have already witnessed in this century—financial, economic, epidemic and climatological—are rooted significantly in this technosphere. At the same time, we will have to find our way through and out of these forms to secure a sustainable planet. I explore the interstitial spaces and counter-flows of social movements that are seeking to develop a post-Enlightenment and a planetary, rather than a global, cosmology.