On Fragile Nationality
I wrangled this piece from a mess of incomplete thoughts in June 2017, when I was tasked to write a 200 word manifesto. Though I’ve scarcely touched the text since, I’ve long mulled over its ideas. More soon. More one day.
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A nation is a cultural community. Each is based on an ideology—a language, a faith, a history, or even a food—and those who subscribe to it are by definition nationals. We form these groups to comfort ourselves with the knowledge that there are others who see the world the way we do—that we are not alone—then we disseminate our understandings for further corroboration: recruiting new members to join us as we revel in the notion that prevalence is a measure of worth.
With time, these once benign communities start feeding off the validation. Our nations transform from intersectional aggregates into fused wholes, rebuilding themselves in the increasingly refracted images of their own performance. In clamouring for their stereotyped identities—to be ‘American’, ‘Hindu’, or a ‘Millennial’—we entrench our nations in the delusion that if they stopped proclaiming their existence, they would vanish.
This is an age of fragile nationality, where we build walls with solid air to prove that we exist. Architecture is the manifestation of these insecurities—of our fear of meaninglessness—but it should prompt us to grapple with that absurdist reality, not languish in comfortable delusion. It should help dismantle today’s concept of the nation, not prop up its tyrannous reign.