Civiltà all'italiana

Quando per la prima volta sono venuta a Bologna, anni fa, ed iniziavo a farmi capire in italiano, le domande erano le tipiche che si pongono sicuramente ad ogni studente erasmus: Come ti chiami? Cosa studi? Di dove sei? Rispondendo a quest'ultima, quasi invariabilmente il dire ”Danimarca” veniva seguito da un'altra domanda ancora: lì al nord sono più civili, non è così?

Da buon'antropologa non capivo proprio la domanda, perchè sentivo la parola 'civile' nel suo senso scientifico; esseri umani si organizzano insieme, vivono insieme in gruppi più grandi di un certo minimo, c'è un certo livello di organizzazione, magari uno stato, ma forse anche no. Nei nostri tempi difficilmente si trovano umani che non vivono in civilizzazioni in una forma o altra, perciò siamo tutti civili. O no?

Troy: The National Order of Things 3000 Years Ago

For reasons not to be elaborated upon here (full disclosure: they involved Eric Bana) I recently chose to use 3 hours of my precious holidays watching Troy again, after spending approx. 7 years on forgetting why I didn't like it. It's (very loosely!) ”inspired” by the Iliad, but I have no intentions of going into all the reasons why I think that was not a successful venture – let it suffice to say that when I studied “knowledge of ancient times” (aka “old-øvl”) in high school, when asked to let us watch Troy in class as “relevant to the subject” (we had been reading and analysing excerpts of the Iliad), our teacher actually preferred to let us watch Disney's “Herkules”, as that was deemed closer to its original source material. Yeah.* But before I digress even further, to what I want to treat you today is a lecture on nationalism and the National Order of Things, inspired by how it was allowed to seep into a film that is supposed to take place more than 3000 years ago, where the very concept of nation would not make any sense whatsoever. Spoiler warning: I am not impressed.

Society Against the State

In 1648 a bunch of guys sat down and decided that the best way to end wars of religion would be to create states. Sovereign states with sovereign rulers, and what happened inside those states was no one's business but the rulers'. People eventually stopped warring over religion, at least in Europe – they started warring “internationally” instead, as states became nations and saw in themselves something intrinsically unique to their respective nations that must be defended at all costs. Bloodshed ensued. Within the last 100 years the entire planet has been fitted into a neat pattern of nations, states, nation states, term it as you please, nice coloured spaces on the map, characterised by their internal affairs being nobody's business but their own. It is seen as a result of 'development', as something inevitable, as all societies must eventually progress towards having a State, and this is a Good Thing. While we're at last shedding some of the “my genocide is nobody's business but my own” thinking, and people are also beginning to get a grip of why “everybody must develop so as to be as civilised as us” may be deemed offensive, that a state should be inevitable is not so easily forgotten. Historians and other clever people sought out evidence in the sources of history to show why all peoples must eventually develop state structures in order to govern themselves, as not having a ruling power is equal to being Neanderthals, to paraphrase only slightly. Which brings me to what I want to present to you today. Is the State inevitable?