{"id":634,"date":"2017-11-07T15:16:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T20:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/?p=634"},"modified":"2017-11-17T15:22:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T20:22:03","slug":"american-origin-of-nationalism-an-etymological-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/2017\/11\/07\/american-origin-of-nationalism-an-etymological-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"American Origin of Nationalism: An etymological approach."},"content":{"rendered":"

This past week, Professor Arnout Van Demeer, come to discuss the origins of nationalism in Southeast Asia. While I could summarize the tale of Soemarsono igniting change and deconstruct the analogy of the oil lamp, I feel more compelled to search for our origins of nationalism. Now, to be clear, \u201cour\u201d refers to the American origins of nationalism, and that in itself contains a number of complications. So I care to ask, just as I have scrawled in my notes: can we be nationalistic despite not being a native. Yet, though not a native American (note how I\u2019m not capitalizing native), I am still an American national. This of course, opens a further can of worms, stemming from questions of national identity. Thus, I\u2019ll start at the root: \u2018nat\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nat\u2019, as in nation, nationalism, and native directly means \u2018to be born\u2019 or \u2018to spring forth\u2019. Yet, the majority of our country has familial roots spanning multiple nations, thus \u2018international\u2019 and \u2018internationalism\u2019 seem a better. Therefore I question that, unless you are indeed a nat<\/b>ive American, wouldn\u2019t it be better to refer to your nat<\/b>ionalism as internat<\/b>ionalism. With such a minute percentage of native Americans, isn\u2019t then nationalism re-branded internationalism under the guise of a unifying umbrella nation? Perhaps the suffix clarifies this ambiguous derivation…<\/p>\n

The suffix \u2018al\u2019 is simple, meaning \u201cof a kind or pertaining to\u201d; therefore \u2018national\u2019 means \u2018concerned with or pertaining to a nation\u2019.1(<<apparently I cannot superscript) Does that not therefore deem my previous assessment of nationalism invalid? The final suffix, \u2018ism\u2019, is merely means \u201cthe distinctive doctrine or theory of\u201d. Therefore, nationalism is the doctrine pertaining to a nation, and I care to argue that my previous logic is actually backwards. Instead of nationalism being exclusive to those tied to the nation from birth, perhaps nationalism, in a way, ties those who share the unifying ideals of a nation regardless of birthplace as \u2018nat\u2019 suggests. Of course, this is only an etymological view of nationalism, but it seems to suggest that anyone — immigrant, national, or otherwise — is as much as an American as those born in America*.2<\/p>\n

Now where does this fit in with the larger theme of origins? I\u2019m not sure if it does…yet<\/p>\n

With such a large uprising in \u201c<\/b>nationalism\u201d surrounding the recent elections, it\u2019s hard not to notice the hypocritical rhetoric that helped our president into Washington. Threats of deportation and slogans of \u201cmake America great again\u201d don\u2019t exactly mix with the idea that Americans are any people who agree with core \u201cAmerican values\u201d (and yes I do put this in quotations because, I believe, ideals of equality and freedom aren\u2019t exclusively American). However, I do believe that we, as Americans, in the upcoming years must bring this issue of inclusive nationalism to light, and find order in our self-referential chaos.<\/p>\n

* The fine print here being: as long as they share the ideals of the nation as a whole.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sidenote: Notice how \u2018foreign national\u2019 is one who does not belong to the nation where they preside. Yet, when taking the root \u2018nat\u2019 literally, every immigrant, citizen or not, is a foreign national.<\/li>\n
  2. Revisiting the preceding footnote: With the understanding of national and nationalism I have just derived and ignoring legal classifications, a \u2018foreign national\u2019, \u00a0is not so different from \u2018immigrant\u2019. More reading here: https:\/\/medium.com\/reportedly\/the-language-we-use-foreign-vs-immigrant-4e70f955f56b<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This past week, Professor Arnout Van Demeer, come to discuss the origins of nationalism in Southeast Asia. While I could summarize the tale of Soemarsono igniting change and deconstruct the analogy of the oil lamp, I feel more compelled to search for our origins of nationalism. Now, to be clear, \u201cour\u201d refers to the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[378099],"tags":[1150,280484,379050,379055,161902,378973,1031],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}