spectacular nationism in colombia: making war make sense

8/12/2019 Spectacular Nationism in Colombia: Making War Make Sense

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Spectacular Nationism in Colombia

Spectacular Nationism in Colombia: Making War Make Sense

Killing and dying for what?What is the relationship between the nation and a soldiers willingness

to kill and die? Over thirty years ago, Benedict Andersons ImaginedCommunities (1983) kicked off a resurgence of academic interest in thenation by speaking directly to that question. Anderson defined the nation in a

particular and what turned out to be very popular and now famous way: asan imagined political community . It has to be imagined because itconsists mostly of people who do not know each other, yet in the minds ofeach lives the image of their communion (6). This communion is importantfor Anderson; he goes on to argue that the nation, this communion orcommunity, is ima gined always as a deep, horizontal comradeship (7).

Nonethelss , says Anderson, nations are also, always, imagined as limited,with finite boundaries, beyond which lie other nations (7). Thislimitedness also seems to be key for Anderson, for at the end hisintroduction, he poses the problem that interests us not only in thiscontribution, but in the entirety of the present volume, but in this curiousway : Ultimately it is this fraternity [this deep, horizontal comradeship] thatmakes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of

people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imagin ings(7). In other words, it is the nation understood as anonymous but fraternalcommunity that makes it possible for people to kill and die for the nation

understood as a limited entity. More curious still is what immediatelyfollows: These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings ofrecent history generate such colossal sacrifices? (7). But has he notalready told us? Has he not already answered: fraternity, community,comradeship?

In what follows I build on the insights and lacunae offered byAnderson, in an attempt understand how the killing and dying of

professional soldiers is produced in Colombia. Pace Anderson, I suspect thatimage of national communion most likely does not live in the minds ofeach member of the population in question; that at best, at certain times, itmight spring to mind, but it is mostly absent. Here I will argue that this isindeed the case for Colombia, where the image of national communion is forthe most part absent, made almost impossible by the particular history of thecountry, and thus needs to be constructed in this case by a concertedspectacular public relations campaign. I will look specifically at three


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commercials 1 that are part of the Heroes really do exist in Colombiacampaign, which also includes billboards and print media, in an attempt tocreate or conjure up the image of the nation out of (almost) nothing. Morespecifically, I argue that the commercials are engaged in the spectacular

production of nationism . Not nationalism , since there is plenty of thatalready in Colombia. Nationalism here 2 is understood as a superficial almostreflexive affirmation of national identity and pride; nationism should beunderstood as a deeper, a fundamental and perhaps doxic belief in the nationas such, as a historical force and entity in its own right. Thus we might saythat nationism is to nationalism as deism is to religion.

With this distinction we can perhaps better appreciate whyAnderson is perplexed by the question of killing and dying because though he speaks ofnations as imagined communities, his imagination or definition of thenation is itself all too limited, all too shrunken. While, theoretically

speaking, nations might really be imagined, no one who actually thinks ofhimself (or herself) as a national thinks that he is merely imagining it. Hesimply recognizes a brute fact. Second, it is not inherent to or a natural partof the definition of a nation that it be thought of as limited. Imperialismwould seem to be an all-too at-hand example. But even when borders arerespected, within them the nation does not really feel itself to be in any waylimited; its sovereignty a third characteristic of the nation adduced byAnderson (7) is in fact the very affirmation of its limitlessness. ButAnderson makes much, as we have seen, of the limitedness, of theshrunkenness of the nation and thus it is not surprising that he struggles toanswer the question, why would so many millions kill and die for such athing or idea? Why indeed? If the idea of the nation is really part of theexplanation of the soldiers sacrifice, then it must be very much less lessimagined as imagined and as limited and more more imagined assovereign, as fraternal and solidarous than Anderson thinks it is.

It is worth recalling, in this context, the Battle of Valmy of 1792,which saw a numerous but somewhat disorderly force of French nationalconscripts and professional soldiers send their formidable royalist Prussianadversaries packing, with a conviction embodied in the battle cry, for the

1 One can find the commercials on YouTube here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoFZtEb9s&feature=related , or on the website of Colombias Army, here:http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=228741&pag=2 . 2 Nationalism, like ideology, is one of those ubiquitous, almost useless conceptswhose referents are so vague or too multiple to be of consistent value. Here I givenationalism a provisional, working definition, for the purposes of this chapter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoFZtEb9s&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoFZtEb9s&feature=relatedhttp://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=228741&pag=2http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=228741&pag=2http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=228741&pag=2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoFZtEb9s&feature=related


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first time in history, Vive la nation! (Doyle 2002). Of course those soldierswere not invoking some community imagined in the shrunken terms

parsed by Anderson. But to what were they then referring? Those soldiersmay well have been inspired by, among other discourses in circulation, thatof the Abb de Sieye s who wrote this in 1789 in his text What is the Thir dEstate:

The Nation exists before all things and is the origin of all. Its will isalways legal, it is the law itself ... Nations on earth must be conceivedas individuals outside the social bond, or as is said, in the state ofnature. The exercise of their will is free and independent of all civilforms. Existing only in the natural order, their will, to have its fulleffect, only needs to possess the natural characteristics of a will. Inwhatever manner a nation wills, it suffices that it does will; all forms

are valid and its will is always the supreme law. (as cited in Smith,2010: 47)

This description of the nation may not sound much to cynical ears, butnonetheless, it is redolent with at least potential grandeur, and might did inspire some to embrace homicide and self-sacrifice, believing that such amarvel, such a monstrosity, actually existed, and that they were a constituentand in some sense equal part of it, as the Abb argues in the rest of hisdiscourse (1989).

If the Abbs classic formulations of 1789 serve to exemplify the waythe nation was (and is still) uncritically articulated by some thinkers, justover a hundred years later in 1882, the classic critical statement on themodern nation was pronounced by Ernst Renan. The Abb asked What isthe Third Estate? and responded that it was the nation , the origin of all, awill unto itself. Renan asks, What is a nation? and after having refuted theidea that nations are linguistic, geographic or racial communities, offers thatthe nation is a spiritual family ( 1989: 19), or, what seem to be synonyms,a soul, a spiritual principle (19). Two things constitute this soul, this

principle, and thus this family. One is the possession in common of a rich

legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to livetogether, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has receivedin an undivided form (19). In many respects Renan but echoes the Abb, asoul standing in for an origen, a spiritual principle being part of a naturalorder, a will being a will. Still, we need to return to antiquity to understandhow these formulations relate to a willingness to kill and die.


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In his Funeral Oration Pericles (Thucydides 1954) discoursesspecifically on what is worth killing and dying for, expending less timeextolling the fallen than that for which they fell: Athens. He could point to areal community that was worth dying for, in order to protect it and assure itscontinued vitality. He could speak of what we have now Renansheritage thus : a system of government that is a model to others,wherein power is in the hands [] of the whole people; where everyoneis equal before the law; a system of rewards and opportunities in whichwhat counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual abilitywhich the man possesses; and he observes that also, in public affairs wekeep to the law. This is because it commands our deep re spect (145, para.37). We can, thus, appreciate Athens as the the kind of city for which thesemen, who could not bear the thought of losing her, nobly fought and noblydied (148, para. 42).

Anderson was perplexed by why people would kill and die for thenation. His puzzlement stems from his failure to properly understand thenation as men and women live it: not as a meagre limited, shrunken entity

but as a shining, compelling light for oneself and others; not as a relativenation among other equal nations but as an absolute nation, primus inter

pares . It may be well and good for a social scientist to understand the nationas a sovereign, limited imagined community, how many people would killand die for such a thing. Sieyes, Renan, and Pericles put us on the righttrack. Reflecting on their words, we begin to get a sense not of what thenation is in any political-science sense, but of what it is in the minds of men,of what women and men who arent necessarily given to systematic inquirythink about when they think about the nation. It is something glorious,something great, and therefore something compelling.

But what if it isnt?

Killing and dying for what in Colombia?In Colombia it isnt. 3 Colombia of course is recognized as a nation

and Colombians are quick to invoke and proclaim their national pride, butthere is in fact little social solidarity in Colombia. A heroic past, great men,glory , this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea(19), argues Renan, yet these things are lacking in Colombia. ThoughSpanish rule ended almost two centuries ago, independence has lessconsisted in heroism, greatness and glory than in more or less endless civil

3 I am sure one could say the same about many other so-called nations; I arguespecifically about Colombia because I have studied it for more than ten years.


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wars, territorial loss, and oligarchic domination, right up to the present day(Hylton 2006; Lobo 2009; Safford & Palacios 2002).

Evidence of the precariousness of the nation is offered by nothing lessthan the Museo Nacional . This institution dedicated to narrating the nationthrough various cultural artefacts can only make it to the year 1948, the yearin which the leader of a national-populist movement, was assassinated. Whatfollowed was a wave of impotent destructive violence, political repression,and the emergence of the modern guerrilla movement. Along the way, adrug economy and paramilitary organizations funded by large landlords

provided further impediments to any sort of national cohesion (Hylton2006). Unable to narrate the nation after 1948, the museum opted to closeout its permanent exhibition with some modern art works by Colombianartists, aesthetic modernism appearing as a sort of stand in for national material, social modernity (see also Vallejo Pedraza 2010).

Another indication of this national precariousness is the very title ofthe most popular English-language history of Colombia, The Making of

Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Bushnell 1993). Thoughsympathetic to Colombia and the people who live there, the authors narrative suggests at best a nation in name only. There is nothing of thegreatness that supposedly inspired the warriors of Athens that might inspireColombian warriors today. There are little of the great men and the heroics

pointed up by Renan. But reflecting on what gives rise to the spiritualfamily that is the nation elsewhere in his text, Renan reminds us indeed ofthe fact that suffering in common unifies more than joy does (19). If thiswere simply true then no doubt Colombians would constitute a grand nation

for as Bushnells book makes quite clear, Colombians have suffered. The problem is that this suffering has not really been in common in the senseused by Renan: they have not suffered together against an unifying outsider;rather, Colombians have suffered each other, have waged war againstthemselves, producing a history of violence, recrimination and revenge,centrifugal social forces, unmitigated by interest in or opportunity for theconstruction of a social, cultural and political order that would cohere thevarious competing interests at large in the country.

I ask then, on what basis scan the ongoing war against the guerrillas inColombia be waged? The fighting members of the armed forces tend, as inother countries, to be drawn from the least favored among the population,which raises the question of their motivation. Killing and dying is certainly

part of the job description, and the job pays, but there must also be a moraland ideological motivation, a sense of the value of what one is doing.Meanwhile, much of the population at large would seem to have become


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to talk to you on nights like this. Smiles like yours make one feel reallygood. I heard that they approved y our loan for the corner store t houghthey nearly didnt. 5 All the while his eyes dart from the viewer tosomewhere off-screen, suggesting an attentive concern for potentialintruders, enemies. He is alert, but also chatty. He continues, now filling upthe left side of the screen, But itll be a success in the neighborhood. He

pauses, attentive, alert, thoughtful. Listen, he says, you want me to tellyou something? Its a rhetorical question. He is going to tell us somethinganyway. He continues, his eyes now unmovingly fixed on the camera, theviewer, Even though I dont know you, Im ready to give my life for you.The music here swells, and he gives a signal. There is a cut to a long view,which gives us a better sense of the general terrain, and from it we observefive more soldiers rise, then a cut to the right shows several more. A whole

platoon seems to be out there, strangers to us, yet ready to die for me, the

viewer. The music now dominates the soundtrack and the affirmationappears on the screen: Heroes really do exist in Colombia. Before the fadeto black the insignia of the Colombian Army appears front and center on thescreen.

The second commercial opens with bright sunlight streaming throughthe spaces between the leaves and branches again of a jungle setting,reflecting off the water of a clear looking stream, highlighting the activity ofa solitary ant. After three cuts which present these images to us we finallysee the soldier protagonist, his weapon ready, pointing in our direction butoff to our right; not directly at us, but past us, perhaps at someone who might

be looking to catch us unawares, from behind. The sound track includes thesame music and a similar track of animal and insect sounds. We see him

before he sees us. Its almost as if we are creeping up on h im, but when hequickly turns and sees us he is not surprised. We get the sense that he canclearly distinguish between people like us his constituency in a certainsense and his targets. He sees us, then, almost as if expecting us, and asks,How is everything? The view cuts away from him, to another soldierwhom we see from behind, negotiating his way through the jungle, while thefirst soldier, the one were becoming acquainted with, continues to speak.

Hows your family? How are you doing? Theyve told me youre doing well, he says to us, as we see his

comrades searching the terrain, weapons aimed, looking for the enemy.Were doing well, we understand, while theyre out there look ing for badguys to kill. His face is more expressive than the soldier from the previous

5 The translations are mine.


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commercial, and perhaps a little more begrudging. His mouth draws itselfinto a straight line and he nods, as if to himself, as if to confirm that ofcourse were all fine, while he and his are out there in the shit. He doesntsmile, but simply describes how things are. He doesnt seem particular lyhappy with the situation, with his situation. He simply describes it. And withlittle mirth, manifesting little enthusiasm but quite a bit of determination, helooks straight at us as declares, Im taking care of you guys, somewhatlike a harried parent might tell an ungrateful and even wantonly waywardchild. Then, changing the emphasis, he assures me, the individual viewer, Iam carrying you, right here and we see him positioning his right hand overhis heart, giving himself a couple of soft strikes there. Suddenly were rightup in his face and he goes on: You know what? he asks. Me? I dontknow you. He is shaking his head here, his lips pull into a smile, but withthe eyes turned down. Theres a sadness, a sort of unreq uitedness to it. Then,

nodding, But Im ready to give my life for you, he finishes . He looks backover his shoulder to see who is with him. Are we with him?, seems to be thequestion. Whatever the answer, we in fact see that there are other soldierswith him at least. Again, amidst the swell of the music, the words appear onthe screen affirming that heroes really do exist in Colombia, and the Armysinsignia closes things out.

The third commercial opens on the profile of a soldier looking downand to the right, out the doors of a helicopter in flight whose thud-thud isdominating the soundtrack. He turns and looks at us and, smilingly, as ifgenuinely happy, speaks loudly above the sound of the blades , Theyve toldme that your little plot of land is finally producing something. The shotswitches to a perspective which puts us behind another soldier, Afro-Colombian, also looking out the helicopters doors. The speaker continues aswe cut to a view of the control board of the helicopter, That it was prettyhard work getting it into shape. And then, Your family has to be happy,right? he surmises, as we see the tail of the helicopter and then anothe r,

behind it. They also told me that your wife is feeling better, he says,looking concerned, perhaps thinking about his own wife. I remember her[your wife], he says, and we now see the land from the perspective of

fligh t, I remember her because when ever we were passing through here, shewould always offer us lemonade. She was always so nice. Pausing, thehelicopter in flight, we then return to his face. You know? Even though Idont know you, I would give my life for you. Then once more we observethe helicopter which, as it banks up to the left, reveals the words, again:Heroes really do exist in Colombia, followed by the insignia close out.


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I focus on these three commercials as examples of the spectacularattempt to conjure up the moral conscience that nation about whichRenan speaks. My argument is that these commercials, a form of spectacularnationism, are an attempt to make the war in Colombia make sense, by

producing a nation, something beyond me, that is worth all of me, and morethan me. The messages attempt to aid in the creation of that linking of

people to people, of that shared belonging, of that belonging to each other,of that solidarity that is perhaps described as national. They attempt totranspose or transform the empirical community, one that is riven bysuspicion and indifference, into a cosmic or spiritual one, the nation asrendered in the Abb de Sieyes and Renans discourse, the great communityas orated by Pericles. They are necessary because the history and thefolklore that would otherwise constitute the structure of feeling of the nation,or the context of the moral conscience that is the nation, are, in Colombia,

quite absent. The sort of community of which Pericles gives and account, thehistorical centripetal experiences alluded to by Renan find no referent inColombia. The nation as compelling, solidarous, horizontal community doesnot exist and therefore it must be called into existence, for if not the nation,then what? Under what other pretext can a huge military force be recruited,financed and put into action other than the pretext of the nation?

How, then, do the commercials help produce the nation and thus makethe war make sense? We might first observe that the clear, unambiguousmessage of each of them is that heroes do in fact, really, exist in Colombia.

Now, the very need to articulate and insist upon this existence suggests that,indeed, the general perception is that heroes do not exist in Colombia. I havereferenced Colombias lack of heroic men , its unglorious past. Regarding themilitary the perhaps natural home of heroes, one would think Klinereports that traditionally Colombias elite has sought to keep too much

power out of the militarys hands, for fear of being usurped (1999: 11) by a potentially populist authoritarian regime. It has always kept the military at bay, in other words, seeing it not as the fount of national heroes but of potentially jealous and well-armed expropriators. The present need toinsist on the existence of heroes stems from, again, the absence of the sort of

history understood as a national history that would actually have produced them. Here, however, the very rhetoric of the commercials produces not only heroes, but by logical necessity the (great) nation of whichthey would be heroes: if there are really heroes, there must really be anation. And not only that. Pericles, as is often not, preferred to expound atlength on the community for which the fallen fell, rather than on the fallenthemselves. But after doing so the reader familiar with his oration will recall


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that he then observes: I have sung the praises of our city; but it was thecourage and gallantry of these men, and of people like them, which made hersplendid (148, para. 42). The logic here is exactly the logic of thecommercials under analysis. Though he has declined to wax lyrical on theheroic acts of the fallen, though he has preferred to expound the qualitiesand the quality of Athens as the reason why soldiers have given their lives,Pericles concludes with a brilliant rhetorical move which leads us tounderstand that what really makes a place, a community, a city and byextension a patria , a country, a nation splendid is not its character at all,

but the courage and gallantry of those who would kill and die for it: if peopleare killing and dying, then, ipso facto , there must be something worth killingand dying for, and what they are killing and dying for must be great Athens, or, in more general terms, the community to which they belong,nowadays known as a nation. But it must be more than simply a nation, for

according to a glib nationalism, anyone can invoke nationness. It must be agreat nation. And if its attributes are not enough to count it as great, then thefact that some are disposed to kill and die for it must make it so.

But what else is going on in this spectacular discourse? In eachmessage a soldier takes a few moments out from pursuing the (our) enemy,looks directly at an individualized spectator and declares to him (it is in eacha case a him) : Even though I dont know you, I will give my life for you.It is cast almost as a tragic declaration of love, and, if ones cynicism knowsat least some bounds, it is very powerful. Especially so, because for yearsColombians have been prone to thinking of soldiers as dupes or at any ratecannon fodder rather than heroes, dying, in the end for little or no reason atall. The commercials insist that there is purpose noble purpose in theirdeath (and their killing): they are doing it for me, even though we arestrangers. The soldier does not say that he is ready to give his life forColombia, or the nation, but for the viewer, a person whom, he makesexplicit, he does not know. But for what kind of stranger does someone die?

Not just any stranger. Only a stranger who is also, so the logic goes, a brother, or perhaps a sister, a fellow national: fraternity. Thus there must bea nation. Thus the killing and the dying is not only justified, not only

rational, but best of all, honorable, a point of legitimate pride.Indeed, this is the most important thing the commercials do: create

that anonymous but solidarous bond that is the quintessential national bond.Soldiers in full battle gear appear to be pursuing the enemy in the jungle orfrom the air. Any Colombian will recognize these soldiers being deployednot on foreign ter rain but in Colombias own formidable landscape. And thissame Colombian will understand that the unseen enemy, the unseen danger,


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are not foreign troops not Brazilians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians,Panamanians or Venezuelans (all populations bordering on Colombia); andcertainly not Chinese or Americans but other Colombians: guerrillas, leftwing, whose expressed intention is to over-throw the state. Stating that I,who do not know you, am willing to die for you, the soldier is stating(affirming, producing in effect) the nation. This is because the commercialsare monologues staged as dialogues, as conversations, between a soldier andhis interlocutor, which is the viewer. Conversation, as Berger and Luckmann(1996) point out, is crucial, fundamental even, for generating, modifying andmaintaining a particular sense of reality (152 ff ), insofar as it takes placeagainst a background of a world that is silently taken for granted (152). Theconversations of the commercials assume the nation as a backdrop, for in noother context would such an asseveration I do not know you, but I will diefor you make any sense whatsoever. They produce the very context in

which they would make sense, a context which history itself did not. Theviewer is interpellated as the sort of subject who recognizes and values thesoldier, who understands the soldier to be a potential martyr and therefore ahero, for doing what is most noble dying for me, for an anonymousfraternity, for a nation.

And therein lies the key to understanding what we might think of asthe ruse of these commercials. The soldier tells me he will give his life forme. He does not say he will do it for Colombia. In fact, other aspects of thiscampaign invoke a Faith in the cause and other such empty but grandsounding concepts. But never do we understand what is so great aboutColombia. There may be heroes in Colombia, but why? What are theirheroics for? Just me, the individualized but now nationally related viewer.

Never do we understand or learn why it is good and right to die forColombia. Colombia is not great because the qualities that would make itgreat are missing. It is only great because it has heroes.

And so, for a moment however fleeting a nation exists. And that isenough. It is enough because the real challenge in Colombia is not, in theend, that of constructing a nation. The challenge is to impede theconstruction of a coherent opposition that could produce a more egalitarian

and just social formation. It that sense, while there have been and willalways be efforts to rally passionate support, active and wholeheartedconsent to the status quo , it would seem that the most important ideologicalinterventions aim at simply defusing the obverse: the accumulation andarticulation of an enthusiastic opposition to things as they are prettymiserable for most, mostly dandy for a few. The goal is to create a sense ofreasonable doubt regarding the charges made against the Colombian


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oligarchy, regarding the accumulation of evidence that would suggest thatColombia is something other than a nation, a venal system where privilege

protects itself and equality before the law is something of a contradiction interms. This series of commercials attempts, precisely, to create thatreasonable doubt, to leave the impression that Colombia is a nation, that it isthus great and worthy of the expenditure and loss entailed by war, that thewar makes sense. But if that were so then the commercials themselves wouldhardly need to exist. In this sense, we can thus conclude that they negatethemselves, that these attempts at ideological manipulation mark the verylimits of the same at least in a place like Colombia, where the spectacularcannot, finally, obliterate the contrary lived experience of much of the

population.

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism . London: Verso.Berger, Peter & Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: ATreatise on the Sociology of Knowledge . Garden City: Anchor Books.

Bushnell, David. 1993. The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself .Berkeley: University of California Press.

Debord, Guy. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle Donald Nicholson-Smith (Trans.).New York: Zone Books.

Doyle, William. 2002. The Oxford History of the French Revolution . Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Hylton, Forrest. 2006. Evil Hour in Colombia . London: Verso.Kline, Harvey. 1999. State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986-1994 .

Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Lobo, Gregory. 2009. Colombia: algo diferente de una nacin . Bogot: CESO-EdicionesUniandes.

Renan, Ernst. 1990. What is a Nation? Nation and Narration . Homi K. Bhabha (Ed.).London: Routledge, pp. 8-22.

Safford, Frank & Palacios, Marco. 2002. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society .New York: Oxford University Press.

Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph. 1989. Qu es el Tercer Estado? Madrid: Alianza Editorial.Smith, Anthony. 2010. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History . 2nd Edition.

Cambridge: Polity Press.Thucydides. 1954. Pericles Funeral Oration. History of the Pelopponnesian War .

Trans. Rex Warner. London: Penguin Books.Vallejo Pedraza, Diana Catalina. 2010. El modernismo como la modernidad: cierre

ideolgico en la sala 17 del Museo Nacional . Unpublished masters thesis,Universidad de los Andes, Bogot, Colombia.


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spectacular nationism in colombia: making war make sense

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