How Collective Identity (Nationhood) Challenges Self-Identity
By: J. Garcia
Tags: Politics, Literature, European Literature, Literary Criticism, Nationalism

Nationhood, as a concept, is centered on a common or collective identity espoused by a group of individuals who organize and establish a nation-state. The concept can be based on historic, military, linguistic or folkloric self-narratives. “One such feature is the decisive character… [in other words] the outcome of common decisions” (Kiss 48). War leads the individual to challenge the notion of nationhood against self-vested interests and, therefore, challenging the decisive factor. It leads the individual to either accept the common identity as their own or fight it. In the novels, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass the concept of nationhood and the concept of self-identity compete.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul finds that his youth and life is sacrificed at the altar of national pride, patriotism. The decisive factor, war, which propels the narrator and his young compatriots to fight was an overly zealous notion of nationhood. Paul states, “with our young, awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into renunciation of personality” (Remarque 19). In this case, self-identity is at odds with nationhood. The narrator had to give up or renounce the idea of self to adhere to the decisive reaffirmation of nationhood at the beginning of the war and, later, during war. The novel emphasizes the wasteful sacrifice of the self in order to satisfy the whims of nationhood.

We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. (Remarque 46)

Endre Kiss in “A Typology of Nineteenth-Century Concepts of Nationhood” argues a two-fold approach to 19th-century nationalism, which we can extend to the 20th century and modern times. Kiss states, “The first basic approach… lies in the analysis of modernizing elements of “nation-building;” the second key approach focuses on the notion of statehood.” Therefore, rapid shifts in technological advances led to coalescing elements within society to build up a nation from a group of individuals. These very people then cast aside local and individual ideas in an embrace of a statehood or nationhood with a wider reach.

In Doctor Zhivago, self-identity confronts collective identity, nationalism through dissent. The doctor explains, “trains… served as… refuge for criminal and political fugitives in hiding, the involuntary vagabonds of the time” (Pasternak 339). The collective, the nation, judged the actions of some as unacceptable. “The decisive components of the concept of nationhood entail the creation of new subjects of politics. ‘Nation’ and the ‘people’ will become the new subject, the representatives of which will of course not correspond to the representative system of the existing status quo” (Kiss 48). Therefore, as the class or ideological shift in the concept of nationhood sets up a confrontation between the main character and the system in a struggle to define self-identity against the backdrop of collective derision for being part of the previous status quo.

The Tin Drum also expresses conflict between the nation and self-identity. Oskar is thrust into the middle of a national crises. He asks, “after all, Poland was at stake, not my drum. If they insisted Poland be lost, be lost in red and white, must my drum, rendered suspect by its fresh coat, be lost as well?” (Grass 209). Oskar navigates his self-identity against the backdrop of changing national boundaries and lines.

He balances his identity against the concept of nationhood. Oskar purposefully aligns himself with the Germans when they invade Poland. In that situation, his self-preservation trumps individual self-expression. He casts aside any preconceived notions and takes on another role. He even joins the Germans as an entertainer in their army. Oskar’s self-identity is muted by concepts of nationhood, but he does not let them interfere with his own interests. He drums on throughout the novel regardless of the shifty collective notions of nationhood.

Concepts of nationhood and self-identity clash in all three novels. The characters negotiate self-identity against a backdrop of changing decisive components in each book. When nationalism riles their collective environment the characters in all three novels either embrace these notions, reject them, or navigate a middle ground. However, there is a direct struggle between nationhood and self-identity. This struggle plays out—with war ever-present—even now and has become increasingly important to recognize because the costs can be devastating.