Culture wars and nationalism

Abstract

Culture war, as an analytical category, is a modern means of cultural struggle between antagonistic positions that seeks monopoly over the legitimate representation of one’s own identity. It constructs culturally contestable relations between substantive elements such as life, religion, nation, status or race, which are heavily invested with sacredness, turning the world of values into a fundamental battleground within the civil sphere. The culture war, more than a conflict of ideological interpretations, is a struggle for meaning, and therefore directly affects the question of identity, as particularly affected by the return of emotions. Hence its link with nationalism. From this perspective, and attending to the North American and European, more particularly French, spheres, the article has a bearing on the nature and characters of nationalism as fuel for cultural wars, with the aim of rethinking nationalism and its relationship with patriotism in order to arrive at a renewed idea of patriotism as an antidote to national-populism, constituted today as a privileged place for national worship and cultural warfare.