Relating global tensions: modern tribalism and postmodern nationalism

Abstract

What is the relationship in the contemporary world between the abstract global ‘peace’ of state-initiated violence from above, and the embodied violence of persons hacking into others with machetes as they lay on the ground? Can this be explained simply in terms of the difference between the rationalising modern nation–state and resurgent tribalism? This essay explores the contradictions associated with peace and violence in a globalising–localising world, both generally and in relation to violence in Rwanda and Bosnia–Kosovo. The essay is intended predominantly as a political essay opening up lines of understanding. It argues that the postmodernists hope that postnationalism will offer a way out of the mess is thoroughly misplaced. This is particularly so given that those states that swept militarily into Kosovo from above, now project themselves across the globe with the same new enthusiasm for pax postnationalism as the postmodernists themselves. Show more