Filozofski vestnik Letnik/Volume XXII • Številka/Number 2 • 2001 • 199-213 
ART AND NATION-STATE* 
LEV KREFT 
A Nation-State is a centralized and sovereign organization of political power. 
To be sovereign means that the system is self-sustainable, self-manageable 
and independent . It represents a kind of power which has no other artificial 
power of human-origin above it. A Nation-State is a power which has its one 
and only centre in itself. 
But, the theories and ideologies which have legitimized Nation, State 
and Art in modernity are today somehow de-constructed, or, at least, they 
have experienced what we usually call "cultural turn". 
1 A New approach to "Nation " 
Ernest Gellner has built foundations, together with quite influential Eric 
Hobsbawm's ideas on the subject, for new theories of nation and nation-
building processes. It is his idea that liberals and Marxists alike shared the 
same error when they forgot about the power of romantic nationalism. 
"Nationalism feeds on cultural differences; it turns from them into a principle 
of political loyalty and social identity (true). Cultural differences are 
systematically eroded by the processes which constitute the coming of modern 
society (true). So the more modern societies become, the less material there 
is for nationalism to work on. (The conclusion follows irresistibly from the 
premises which are true.) Ergo, nationalism is on the way out. QED."1 But this 
syllogism proved to be completely wrong, and by explaining why it is so we 
can arrive at a better theory of nation and nationalism. 
* This paper is one of the results of a Tempus Phare Individual Mobility Grant which 
made possible my research and stay at the Centre for the Study of Democracy (University 
of Westminster) in London f rom March to June 2000. 
' Ernest Gellner, Nationalism, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1995, p. 2. 
LI:v K k k f t 
If we put the syllogism into Central, Eastern and Southern European, or 
Mediterranean perspective, we will see a way of reasoning which was and still 
is present there. When has such reasoning been used in actual political 
circumstances and by whom? This kind of Western liberal and Marxist leftist 
social science has always been mobilized when the interests of the already 
existing Western, Soviet, or world order colluded with new national liberation 
movements. There is not much difference between this kind of syllogisms, 
and the Hegelian theory of historical and non-historical nations, the first raised 
on the level of independent statehood and the second doomed to submit to 
them o r / a n d disappear. We are not dealing here just with a case of a false 
conclusion due to an absent third factor, as Gellner thinks. We have at the 
same time a case of false pretensions on the side of the speaker of this syllogism, 
who puts himself or herself on neutral ground, as someone untouched by 
nationalist discourse. Both premises deny to the Others, i.e. primitive and 
undeveloped people, the ability to complete their emancipation from the 
cultural to the political sphere. The historical use of the syllogism was to 
confirm the inevitable and unchangeable difference between democratic 
European nations and backward Balkan, Slavic, Oriental or African organic 
and primitive societies; or, to describe national movements as movements in 
the wrong direction, which sometimes might be used for a revolutionary 
perspective and at other times annihilated in the name of the same perspective. 
From Gellner's position of criticism, it becomes clear that nations were 
products and constructions of modernism and not something pre-existent, 
which at the same time means that this organic and primitive image of 
uncivilized nations which have to be put under inspection and despotic rule 
is the constructed result of modernization as well. And, by the way, some 
theories of globalization have just extended to global application this syllogism 
criticized by Gellner, and announced the end of the nation once again. 
Everyday expressions which distinguish between First, Second, and Third 
Worlds are carved from the same iceberg that hides under the surface of 
integration into a multicultural and unified humanity, a nationalism of the 
Nation-State firstcomers and earlycomers. Beside romantic nationalism as the 
forgotten third partner in the game, as mentioned by Gellner, there is a hidden 
ghost-partner of non-romantic nationalism in the first two premises. The first 
premise hides the fact that the nationalism that successfully turned cultural 
differences into a systematic principle of political loyalty and social identity, 
is the nationalism which successfully constituted the Nation-State of the speaker 
of this premise. It hides the fact that the modern liberal democratic state, a 
model offered for new democracies, was and is a product of nationalism as 
well. 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
The need to construct new theory of nation and nationalism arose from 
the failure of the prevailing theories of the past to account for actual events 
and movements, because nations and nationalisms did not follow the inevitable 
conclusion of the syllogism. What old theories could do finally was just to put 
more or less stress on the evil strength of the atavistic natural forces of blood, 
soil and language which may triumph over modernist progress, or, on the 
other side, glorify the eternal power of the same forces. A new way had to be 
tested with a new premise: nations are not as old as history, they are products 
of modernism.'2 While we may agree that nations were formed and even 
produced in the modern period, it is still useful to remember that this shift 
f rom p remodern roots to modernist construction still allows modernist 
differentiation between premodern as natural and organic, and modern as 
artificial and constructed. If nation is believed to be premodern, it is treated 
as a state of nature that has to be transcended in the manner of Hobbes, or 
embraced, as in the manner of Rousseau. That is what even new titles inform 
us of, as The Invention of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm in 1994, who in 
his introduction claims that there are three categories of the systems of social 
management, the first being: "...a) those establishing or symbolising social 
cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial (underline added by 
L. K.)".3 
This shows very well that a shift from the allegedly "natural" or "eternal" 
existence of nations to their "modern" and "artificial" construction was 
necessary and long due. But, at the same time it keeps in the field the modernist 
division between natural and artificial, and between modern and premodern. 
The short and, at first view unimportant, introduction of real or artificial groups 
is the consequence of such primary divisions, and it certainly provides a basis 
for speaking of, for instance, people as a real community and a nation as an 
artificial one, or a monogamous family as natural and "promiscuity" as artificial. 
The liberal fight against the spectre of nationalism sooner or later brings out 
the distinction between people and nation as two unreconciliable principles, 
the first being liberal democratic and second being fundamentalist; and an 
enlightenment fight against the kingdoms of darkness sooner or later brings out 
the distinction between progressively oriented societies, and those which are 
2 In preface to his "Nations and Nationalisms since 1780", Hobsbawm mentions as 
fathers of such statements Charleton B. Hayes and Hans Kohn, and its development links 
first with Karl W. Deutsch, and later with Miroslav Hroch, Ernest Gellner, and a group of 
their followers in the eighties (Eric Hobsbawm: Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 
Cambridge UP, Cambridge 1993), p. 8. 
3 Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction", in: The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm, 
(Cambridge, Cambridge UP: 1994), p. 9. 
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LKV KREFT 
backward, primitive and thus necessarily b rough t u n d e r some special 
disciplinary rule of control and punishment untill they reach the level of self-
controlled and progressive communities. 
I do not claim that these kind of differences are useless, as they are used 
everywhere and have been in all eras, f rom "barbarian" and "Greek", to 
"Christian" and "pagan" onwards4 but it is certain that they cannot be defended 
on the grounds of new theories of nation, because they give us, as in Hegel 's 
terminology, two kinds of nations. They were cons t ruc ted , speaking 
metaphorically, as Volk theory against People theories.4 Both kind of theories 
had to answer the question of where the power of the community resides, to 
find the location of the overwhelming and radiating unique power which 
gives shape and presence to these all-embracing unities of human social life. 
Their logic was di f ferent and can show us where and how the above 
differentiation between natural and artificial, or premodern and modern , 
has been articulated. For that purpose we can take the examples of The Federalist 
Papers and o f j o h a n n Gottfried Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of 
the Mankind. 
The Federalist Papers were the first effective marriage of representation 
and democracy. "Where is the centre of all political power in such a system? In 
the people, the Papers declared, and they had in mind a communi ty of 
individualized members, and this community of men gives decision-making 
power to their representatives. In his first text on nations and nationalisms in 
1972, Eric Hobsbawm confirmed the difference between people and nation 
in case of the U.S.A.: "Americanism, whatever its present political connotation, 
was originally a universal programme as well as a definition of what the citizen 
of the USA ought to represent: an invitation to all men to become Americans 
if they so chose, as well as an ideal description of those who already were. This 
has not prevented it from turning into a strongly nationalist slogan."1' In spite 
of all the other changing ideas about nation, here we have, beside the already 
mentioned distinction between natural or real, and artificial communities, 
another distinction which has as a consequence a dichotomy between those 
4 It is interesting that Greeks, when introduced to Christianity, were called Christians, 
while those who were not were called Greeks (see, for instance, documents of the seventh 
Ecumenical Council of Nicaea from 787, in Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos (Toronto: 
University of Toronto Press, 1986), p. 59 ff.). 
5 "People" in English and "Volk" in German should have approximately the same field 
of signification, and they had at first, but today the usual translation of "Volk" in English 
is "Nation". 
(i Eric Hobsbawm, "Some Reflections on Nationalism", in: Essays in Memory of Peter Nettl: 
Imagination and Precision in the Social Sciences (London: Faber&Faber, 1972), p. 395. 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
Nation-States which were built on an ideology of People, and those which were 
a product of ideologies founded on nation and Volk ideology. If we say that 
this difference is undoubtedly real, and connect People as a principle with 
the revolutions of democratic first-comers (England, USA and France), while 
the Volk-principle is more obvious for those who developed their Nation-
States later, there is still something problematic about the idea of people 
being a "universal programme". First, it might be "universal" in 1972 to 
ment ion "invitation to all men", but today we all feel the need to add 
immediately that women (and for that matter, children) were excluded. But 
they were not the only exclusion, and beside Native Americans there were 
black slaves, ancestors of the African Americans of today, even in Jefferson's 
own house.7 
In Herder 's work we find the idea of the human community as an organic 
structure growing into an indivisible entity by human mutual responsibility 
for each other, and here we find the above mentioned mediaeval concept of 
corpus mysticum in a secular form. The responsibility, namely, is notjust between 
existing members of the community, but to those long gone as well - in the 
form of responsibility for tradition. It has to be a responsibility to those who 
will arrive in the future as well, because today's membership in an organic 
community means building the tradition for tomorrow. This is what Volk is 
about: the community of dead, alive and members yet unborn. In essence, 
the difference between people and Volk theories of the nation is not embedded 
in the universal humanism of the former and particular nationalism of the 
latter. We can hardly find that kind of nationalism in Herder anyway. The 
difference lies in the structural idea about the society, and in the Leitmotiv 
linking the members of respective communities together. In the first case, 
and in it's radical formulations (USA republicanism is not that radical and it 
is much more similar to Herder 's ideas than is usually admitted) society is just 
a sum of individuals. They are linked together by interests which enable a 
kind of mutual agreement to respect law and order for the benefit of all. In 
the second case, society is the basic unity or corpus, and individuals are the 
members of this corpus, linked together by the eternal responsibility for 
maintaining this unity - the real existing subject of progressive or redemptive 
history. 
There is nothing universal about Nation-State, be it founded on the people 
concept or on the Volk concept. Any kind of state is based on some kind of 
7 It is now well known that he not only have slaves, but also had sexual relations with a 
slave who gave birth to his child. Americans were so appalled by such allegations that a 
complete medical re-examination had been necessary to prove beyond any doubt (O.K., 
beyond 96% doubt) that Jefferson was the father. 
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LEV KREFT 
exclusion and limitation. The difference between people and nation is not, 
of course, the difference between natural and artificial, but it is not a difference 
between "universal" and "limited" approach either. They are different ways 
of producing limitations. 
2 Even art is not what it used to be 
Art and its theory have experienced a similar cultural turn as theories of 
nation did. But it does not mean that conceptual developments were 
simultaneous. That is precisely the reason why postmodernism got its first 
legitimization from art theories, as there were already existing grounds for 
the criticism and negation of modernity. 
Peter Bürger8 defined the historical avant-gardes that contested the 
concept of art as movements of "bringing the arts back into life". Their direct 
opponent was estheticism, the final stage of the installment of the "Institution 
Kunst" as special bourgeois and capitalist formation. The avant-garde attack 
on the institution failed, avant-garde thus became historical, and its anti-art 
was included into the artistic institutions of the capitalist society. 
On the other hand, especially in the States, this historical dimension of 
avant-garde vs. modern art and its failure did not get much attention, and was 
e m b r a c e d in terms of b r o a d e r c o n c e p t of modern ism. ' 1 T h e m a i n 
preoccupation was to find a definition of art which would not embarrass the 
definer at the first reversal in the arts, as happened to Clement Greenberg. 
That meant that it would have to satisfy Weitz's notion of art as an "open 
concept", but step over his claim that making definitions of art is in itself a 
fruitless endeavour. The institutional theory of art gives us the crucial 
definitions of the territory where its prerogatives, procedures and legislation 
have to be obeyed: "A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented 
to an artworld public".1" Here, the definition of the artworld as the totality of 
8 Peter Burger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974) 
9 The central figure here is Clement Greenberg, and his "Modernist Painting" f rom 
1960 is often mentioned as the best example (see Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays 
and Criticism Vol. 4-Modernism With a Vengeance, 1957-1969, ed. by john O'Brian (Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1995). 
111 George Dickie, Introduction to Aesthetics. An Analytic Approach (New York - Oxford: 
Oxford University Press 1997), p. 92 (with additional definitions: "An artist is a person 
who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art. A public is a set of 
persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object 
which is presented to them. The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems. An artworld 
system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld 
public."; ibid., p. 92.). 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
all artworld systems might ring a bell: it is an astonishing parallel to the 
modernist idea of the world order as a totality of Nation-States entering as 
individuals into the inter-national system. Dickie's theory of artworlds is a 
similar theory of a world system of artistic Nation-States. 
This kind of theory, a theory of Art-States and their procedures, is quite 
conservative really. To preserve art as a certain definable sector, against attacks 
from new-born artworks and art-theories, the theory is ready to forget art's 
historical mission and eternal values, but not the institutional procedural 
character of the artistic order. Instead, it insists on the institutional framework 
and a certain procedure. Starting with Duchamp and Warhol it arrived at 
discussions about gorilla and chimpanzee art11. Whatever the outcome of these 
discussions, this kind of theory is ready to embrace relativism just to preserve 
established procedural rules governing the artworld. That is what makes it a 
State - it is a safe haven from the natural state of a war of everybody against 
everybody else. Beside that, it is worth mentioning that it describes contempo-
rary post-modern artistic activity in terms of folk-art. In folk-art, it is not the 
anonymity of creation which makes it something collective, but its institutional 
collective "censorship" which forgets all about artworks which were not 
accepted, or omits unacceptable parts from otherwise accepted artworks. 
Taking the institutional theory of contemporary art seriously, we would say 
that the problem is not in recognizing artworks as artworks, but in what is 
worth remembering at all. To be recognized as an artist, or that your works 
are recognized as artworks, does not mean much. In our world, there are 
more artists spread around us than Brillo Boxes available. So, it is more 
important to get noticed at all, than to be recognized as producer of artworks, 
and even more important to be remembered for anything at all. Mass and 
industrial production of artworks have made us unable to see the line which 
provides an autonomous artistic territory inside the empire of culture, and 
thus have put all art, highbrow and lowbrow, elite and mass together into 
something institutionally quite similar to the functioning of folk-art.12 
If we are allowed to proceed to conclusions, nation is now an artificial 
product of artists and intellectuals, its ultimate goal is nation state as a sovereign 
body which includes Institution Kunst as one of its artificial constructive pillars. 
Art, on the other hand, is a multiplicity of artworlds, organized in respective 
institutions which obey certain rules of procedure for an artwork to achieve 
" George Dickie, ibid., p. 85; see also the discussion between George Dickie and Arthur 
Danto in Danto and his Critics, ed. Mark Rollins (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). 
12 This feature brought up an interesting insight in contemporary folk studies. See 
Michael Owen Jones, Exploring Folk-Art:Twenty Years of Thought on Craft, Work, and Aesthetics 
(Ann A r b o r / London: UMI, 1987), and other works of (post) modern folk studies. 
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L e v KRF.FI' 
status. Avant-garde art attacked the institution but failed, institutions won the 
battle, bu t the price is that there are no criteria left beside an empty 
institutional gesture. 
3 Slovenia and Africa 
Slovenia is not "haunted" by its history but by its lack of it, and no kind of 
idealised or diminishing image in the eyes of the West presents the real 
problem. The problem is the lack of any identity at all. This absence in eyes of 
the beholder is well evidenced if we read the diaries and other texts of foreign 
travellers. It seems that they crossed directly from the "West" to the "Orient", 
or to the "East", without any perception of this "in-between" Slovenian passage. 
This absence in time and space is what haunted the Slovenian national 
movement, and presents a problem even today. Whatever is tried to present 
and represent Slovenia as a special and different entity seems to fail. It has a 
name, but it gets mixed up with Slovakia and Slavonia. It has a flag, but it gets 
mixed with a Russian flag, and these red-blue-white flags are all so similar 
anyway. It would like to be seen as the first bastion of the West on its far East 
frontiers, but it is usually invisible, like a midland with no identity, or 
recognized as Ex-Yugoslav post-communist Balkan country in transition (what 
a disaster of mapping!). It is a case worth comparing to Dickie's plumber 
walking over the artwork without noticing that it is one.13 In the case of 
Slovenia, this "being-walked-over-unrecognized" feeling is all over the territory, 
and all over its history. 
We have no time to deal with the long history of our dream nation. What 
we can do here is just get a glimpse on one of the moments of this "longue 
durée" history of cultural building and fighting. The moment is after 1848 
when Austria emerged from its "Bach phase" of surveillance and repression 
against "Nationalists" and "Liberals". The atmosphere, with still restrained 
democracy and with unfriendly German nationalism more or less endangering 
all the others, softened enough to allow for some political activity. The 
Slovenian cultural scene has divided itself into two bitterly opposed camps, 
conservatives and liberals. There were still no political parties, so these two 
camps fought cultural battles. In the middle of these battles was Fran Levstik, 
a liberal who introduced the demand for "realism" into Slovenian literature, 
and defined his realism as a kind of literature which would enable "Slovenian 
to recognize Slovenian as in a mirror". This formula tells very well what had 
13 George Dickie, Aesthetics: An Introduction, (Indianapolis : Pegasus, 1971), p. 99. 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
been the aim — the artistic representation of the Slovenian nation which would 
organize Slovenians into a nation. The addressee of literature, and its real 
hero, should be the Slovenian people, the rural population who spoke the 
untainted language and needed just a bit of nationalist encouragement to 
strengthen their Slovenian roots into an unbeatable national fortress against 
the Germanization which attacked the towns and cities. The literary reality of 
this style was what they call in national literary science "romantic realism", 
but Levstik's problem was that, himself a more or less romantic poet, he could 
not be satisfied with what the Slovenian prose of that time had to offer. His 
friend Josip Jurčič misunderstood him and went onto describe "ordinary rural 
people" in a manner which introduced weird marginal characters from the 
country pub into an otherwise romantic love story, like putting three or four 
Falstaffs faltering through Romeo-and-Juliet tragedy. So, as is the usual 
outcome, Levstik himself had to show what a proper Slovenian national 
mirroring narrative should be. "Martin Krpan" was his answer, written in a 
"demotic" proposal for a national literary language and style, and telling a 
story which has remained a must of all curricular introductions into Slovenian 
literature untill present times. And here it is. 
Habsburg Empire is, once again, in danger. A mighty Turk called Brdavs 
arrives in Vienna and challenges the Emperor's best fighters, killing them 
one after another. When all hope is lost, somebody brings up the name of 
Martin Krpan, a simple Slovenian well known to the Emperor 's customs 
officials, tax collectors and policemen, because he has been evading paying 
his duties and survives by smuggling salt, while giving a beating to the Empire's 
officials even when they totally outnumber him. A culturally unspoiled man 
from the "demos", a self-made man, he was a Christian (Levstik tells us that 
his home is on St. Trinity Hill) and thus he obeys, if reluctantly, the Emperor's 
request to come and help. In Vienna, they try to make a real knight of him, 
but he destroys all the armour, and declines all the best horses from the 
Emperor 's stable. Instead of this he chooses a tree which the Empress liked 
the most for her afternoon shadow-napping, and makes himself a weapon 
f rom it. He goes into battle with his mule, a Slovenian version of Don 
Quichote's Rosinante, and, unlike the Spanish knight, wins the fight and 
beheades the Turk in a matter-of-fact manner, without any hate and with 
compassion, as a real Christian. After this triumph on the streets of Vienna, 
his victory becomes a problem and embarrassment. The Emperor's prime 
minister suspects that Krpan will want a reward in political terms, may be 
even hisjob, while the Empress hates him because he is so simple and because 
he deconstructed her shadow. The Emperor is a good man, but he cannot 
fight against governmental intrigues and his own wife, and Krpan stays in 
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LKV KREFI 
Vienna because, afraid of his strength and popularity, they do not know how 
to get rid of him. Finally, when asked what he would like as a reward, Krpan 
answers that the best reward would be to let him go home, as he is already 
homesick, but if the Emperor wants to give him something of use, let it be a 
permit which would give Krpan the permanent right to smuggle. It is not that 
it presents a real problem, but beating the Emperor 's officials on an everyday 
basis is in itself an unnecessary nuisance. 
Obviously, Martin Krpan represents the Nation in a situation when art is 
an Ideological Apparatus of the Invisible Slovenian State. In him, we find a 
simple and unspoiled barbarian who is capable of taking care of himself, and 
his natural wit belittles all modern ways of great Empire. He has a culture of 
his own, living on the margins of Order as a smuggler. Order has no power 
over him. However, as a good Christian he is also a good and obeying Subject. 
His humorous contempt for the Emperor, who cannot reign his own Empire, 
and for the Empress and ministers who dominate his will with their private 
interests, and his physical force and symbolic power over them - all that makes 
us think about Hasek's Svejk on one side, and about Micic's Zenitist Balkan 
Barbarogenious on the other. His political sting is obvious, but not dangerous: 
leave me alone to my ways, as that will hurt no one. When you need me as the 
last resort against the Others, just call me, for I know how degenerate and 
helpless you are, and feel pity for you. You need me on the frontiers, and the 
payment I want is not democracy or independence, it is being left alone to my 
small businesses on the margins of the Order. If you do not touch me, I will 
make myself invisible. 
That is, of course, quite a conservative program for a liberal, but you 
should view the images of the national from the conservative side. Even in its 
anti-modernist disguise, this demophillia turned into something quite different 
without any problem just a generation after Levstik, when Ivan Cankar, the 
writer offin-de-siecle modernism, announced that the Slovenian Nation was a 
Proletarian Nation. By that he did not mean that we have numerous families, 
and not only that we are in the position of a slave-nation. The proletarian 
position is one of universal insight, and of universal redemption. In Martin 
Krpan story the big dreams of a small nation are hidden, to be revealed just a 
historical moment later. 
Africa might make for an interesting appendix. To understand the African 
situation of today when it is depicted as a "black hole" on the globe, and as a 
narrative of unending massacres between primitive tribes and cannibalistic 
politicians, we have to formulate the problem of African identity on the 
background of its historical roots in colonialism. Here is the beginning of 
Mamdani's book Citizen and Subject 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
"Discussions on Africa's present predicament revolve around two clear 
tendencies: modernist and communitarian... The liberal solution is to locate 
politics in civil society, and the African solution is to put Africa's age old 
communities at the centre of African politics. One side calls for a regime that 
will champion rights, and the other stands in defence of culture. The impasse 
in Africa is not only at the level of practical politics. It is also a paralysis of 
perspective."14 You could without problem put any possible country in place 
of Africa here. This paralysis of perspective, and confrontation between 
modernism and communitarianism, is the national dilemma of the post-
modern, or post-industrial, or global (whatever label you like most) condition. 
Art is still involved in these confrontations, on both ideological sides; the 
problem is that there is a feeling of forgery on both sides as well. It is not that 
just the "Eurocentric" side is "imported", the same goes for "the Native" and 
"African" side as well. They are both artificial, products of colonialism, or, if 
you prefer, the state of modernity. The coloniallist/native question has been 
reformulated into an African national question, but the relation between 
Eurocentrism and Africanism, between modernisation and communitarianism 
is still the relation of the daily African journey. Confronted with a bad image 
of Africa, Africans may themselves say sometimes that this is just the childhood 
of new nations. If they don ' t say it, we say it for new-born nation-states of the 
Balkans. 
4 Conclusion 
Let us begin the conclusion with some remarks on the introduction of 
the "artificial" character of nation. If confronted with the previous theories of 
nation as a "natural" community, it is a very reasonable move. But, when 
combined with the differentiation between "artificial" and "real" communities, 
it becomes confused and suspect. The reason for suspicion is the obvious use 
of such differentiation to prevent new nations from building their artificial 
communities: "In all these views I believe, there is a marked (and, in my 
opinion, ahistorical) discomfort with non-western societies acquiring national 
independence, which is believed to be 'foreign' to their ethos. Hence the 
repeated insistence on the Western provenance of nationalist philosophies 
that are therefore ill-suited to, and likely to be abused by Arabs, Zulus, 
14 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late 
Colonialism (Kampala - Cape Town - London: Fountain Publishers/David Phillip 
Publ ishers /James Currrey Ltd., 1996), p. 3. 
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LKV KREFI ' 
Indonesian, Irish, or Jamaicans."15 We have quite a political situation here, 
and to deal with it correctly, we will say that Edward Said is on the right side 
against these kind of remarques as much as "artificial" theory of nation is on 
the right side against "natural" one. 
Still, there is something wrong here, and if we leave political problems 
aside, what is wrong is the vocabulary. In discourses on nation and new nations, 
we have constantly, after the "natural" background of nation has been dropped 
out, found the conceptual pair of artificial against real, and invention as a 
method. But we know that the correct pairs are natural vs. artificial, and 
fictitious vs. real. If nations are not natural but artificial, it does not mean that 
they are not real. Fictions have no existence, but artificial things are quite 
real. And today it is hard to tell sometimes what is the difference. To make 
something artificial out of something natural, you need invention a n d / o r 
discovery. To make something fictitious real, you need production. That artists 
and intellectuals invented nation sounds agreeable in the post-modern 
condition, but it is not true. Intellectuals and artists have been very busy 
"naturalizing" their respective nations, and thus making their artificial 
character invisible, but they did not invent nations. Artists and intellectuals 
were involved in the p roduc t ion of this f ic t ion. With la tecomers to 
modernizat ion, this involvement became even more necessary. The i r 
involvement is quite understandable. To produce an artificial real mechanism 
by putting together natural and fictitious parts it takes scientific and artistic 
technique/techne. Theories which suggest that we could get rid of nations if 
artists and intellectuals would stop inventing them, or theories which offer a 
possible easy deconstruction of nations because they are artificial constructions 
anyway, and theories which involve the cathegorization of nations into the 
camps of real and artificial ones - all these theories are not just politically 
incorrect. They are theoretically incorrect. 
With this correction of theories of nation we will now move to art. Artists 
have not invented the nation, but they did naturalize its artificial existence, 
and produce its real presence from fictitious, artificial and natural parts. What 
might be of interest is not the "historical responsibility" of artists and 
intellectuals for producing such a monster, or their glorious authorship in 
producing such a heroic soul of world redemptive projects. What is so special 
in art that it has to be involved in naturalizing and productive social processes? 
The answer most cherished by our discipline is - the aesthetic. Already in 
Baumgarten it has a special position. With Kant's criticism, aesthetic achieved 
the honorary position which it, more or less, still holds today, albeit in an 
15 Edward W. Said, Cultural Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 261. 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
indebted and mortgaged empire: "The powerful interest that governs the 
third Critique is lodged in the image of the gap, gulf, or separation of realms 
that divides our interests in the world of appearances (nature) from our 
interest in achieving existence in a 'realm of ends'."16 There is a gap to be 
bridged, and through the transcending of this gap, we do not arrive just to a 
safe passage from one side to the other. We produce "the whole" literally -
over the hole. Our secular world, as Lacanians could well explain us, is not 
built on a rock, but on a void. 
Identif icat ion between art and aesthetic function has been nearly 
complete, even if Kant did not leave any rules which would point in that 
direction. The representational form of mimetic art has been the best means 
for naturalizing artificial communities, and for producing real ones from 
natural and fictitious materials. The Prague School was the first one to point 
to the aesthetic function as the function present in all discourses and languages 
and not just in art, while on the other hand it underlined that artwork is a 
discourse in which aesthetic functions dominate, organizing all the other 
functions around it. And aesthetic functions as a kind of turn which instead 
of using language as the means of communication turns our attention to the 
means of communication themselves. 
Today, even this seems to be saying too much. There is still art which has 
the aesthetic function as a dominant one. But, "Does the aesthetic definition 
of a r t . . . supply a sufficient condition for art? No, and for reasons with which 
we are already very familiar. Many non-artworks are intended to have the 
capacity to promote the kind of attention and contemplation that the aesthetic 
definition of art ascribe to all and only artworks."17 This is the first change, 
well known through the theorizing, for instance, of Wolgang Welsch - the 
whole world is full of aesthetic, it is an aestheticized world, and as art has lost 
its primacy in the representational-mimetic function, it is loosing the battle 
for its instalment as the prevailing producer of aesthetic affects. On the other 
hand, "There is a popular tendency to use the notion of aesthetic experience 
as a synonym for experiencing art in general... Undeniably, these responses 
are among the most important experiences to be derived from artworks in 
general. However, they are not the only ones, nor the only legitimate ones, 
nor are they even the most important ones with respect to every single 
artwork."1^ 
AnthonyJ. Cascardi, Consequences of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1999), p. 82. 
17 Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art. A Contemporary Introduction (London and New York: 
Routledge, 1999), pp. 179-180. 
18 Ibid., p. 200. 
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LEV KKEFT 
It is not art as such that is involved in nation-making but the aesthetic 
possibility to represent, to bridge and to universalize on a territory without 
any certain grounds and limits, across the gap. To cross a gap which frightens 
you, you have to turn your attention to the things above and forget about the 
abyss down there. This shift of the attention is what the aesthetic function 
does. Art, especially in the nineteenth century, has been the main means of 
producing these aesthetic effects. Today, its sublime and missionary role is 
over, and the dominant position of the aesthetic function in artworks might 
be over too. In any case, there are already artworks which have no aesthetic 
function at all, and there are artworks which have other dominant functions. 
Both might be new in the Western culture of modernity, but are nothing 
special if discussed in the framework of different historical or contemporary 
cultures and positions that art and artworks occupied and occupy in them. 
The coincidence of globalization, which isjust the final outcome of nation-
making movements, or, better stated, of two Western inventions ( the 
centralized sovereign nation-state and the international system of states) 
become universal, with global aestheticization, very probably means that this 
new global world is not without its gaps, and is in that way not so very different 
from the nineteenth century. The need to forget about the abyss with the 
help of an aesthetic shift of a t tent ion might be even greater . Global 
aestheticization is a certain sign of existing gaps which have to be transcended, 
and a certain sign of a global which given its lack of universality has to 
(re) produce itself using aesthetic naturalization and production. Which 
means, if we phrase it along the lines of Kant and Cascardi, that our global 
world at least has some of the "constitutive opacity".1''' What such an opacity 
needs is Kant's kind of rigorous criticism which, among other things, would 
show that "art cannot unify but can at best render possible a transition between 
them [i.e., the 'two worlds' bridged into a 'whole' one]".20 And if art is no 
longer the main constructor of bridges (and it certainly was not for liant) any 
more, and as we care about art more then we care about the global world, 
otherwise we would not be aestheticians - what is the fate of art, and its noble 
function? 
Well, while to produce some pleasure, fun and even just peaceful leisure 
time might not be an endeavour to unworthy for the lofty status of art, there 
is still another possibility which is already at work, invented by avant-garde 
art. Jean-François Lyotard has found it in Marcel Duchamp's Given. "This 
uncommentab le thing has no th ing mystical abou t it: it 's simply the 
10 Anthony Cascardi, op. cit., p. 91. 
20 Ibid., p. 98. 
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A R T AND NATION-STATE 
incommensurable brought back into commentary. Commentary will perforce 
be incongruent with the work."21 
With this possible func t ion , art is dist inguishable and very well 
distinguished from other ways of culture. And that kind of effect or function, 
working in reverse compared with art's productive and affirmative function, 
will become very important, even politically important, if our feelings and 
predictions about globalization are correct. While the art well embedded into 
cultural context, alike to a nation, tells us to proceed without loosing sight of 
far-away horizons of progress, the other kind of art, distancing itself from the 
seemingly productive endeavours of building the whole on the bridge over 
the abyss, is producing signposts diverting our gaze to the ground: "Mind the 
gap! 
21 Jean-François Lyotard, Duchamp's TRANS,/formers (California: Venice Lapis Press, 
1990), p. 11. 
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