Recreation of Girard's "Scapegoating Mechanism" in Discourse of National Identity Politics.

Notions of the nation-state and national identity are universally regarded as natural and "enhabited" concepts (i.e. from routine formation, or enhabitation), (1) even in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (2) nation-states, where independence is fairly new. GCC nation-states have experienced shifts from a principally tribal system of governance to states with "modern" constitutional governments and oil based economies. These nation-states are notable for the transience of their populations and frequent flows of people in and out of the region, with Kuwait having had the third largest net migration rate globally of 16:1 in 2007. (3) Furthermore, the population of nationals in GCC nation-states represents a much lower fraction of the total population. In Kuwait for instance, non-nationals make up 70 percent of the population. (4) With ever-evolving populations in an urban environment, how do Gulf governments maintain a sense of collectivity and national identity? A common thread with GCC nation-states is the extensive nostalgic use of the past to construct their imagined community, (5) which lies principally in the pre-oil era and the early decades following the discovery of oil. The large populations of non-nationals often go unnoticed in the historical narrative of these GCC nation-states, which could be likened to a form of a lesser caste system due to its divisionary nature. (6) In his paper, Willbrink discusses how language and nation-building go hand in hand. (7) That is, language creates knowledge, but also represents bias. (8) While this could mean language use in terms of social interactions and sociolinguistics, political and public discourse are also a major influencer of how national identity is perceived and the imagined community is maintained. Using the case of GCC nation-states--and in particular, Kuwait--this paper argues that modern national identity discourse enhances the collective self and diverts attention from internal conflict through processes of scapegoating and victimage.

To achieve this, first the processes associated with identity construction will be presented. Second, discourse and how it relates to power relations and dynamics in a nation-state, followed by Girard's mimetic theories with relation to discourse, then the previous will be contextualized in terms of the GCC's imagined community in general and how it has been impacted by state formation post-colonially. Finally, the theoretical framework is contextualized in the aforementioned Kuwait case study before concluding.

Identity processes and theory

As social animals, humans have the need to belong to a group larger than themselves. For this reason, identity formation is fundamentally a very important cognitive process. (9) The need for an ingroup is always prevalent, with diasporas presenting such an instance. Differences in methods and processes of identity creation and maintenance however, have been found to be inherently unconfined to specific cultures, (10) meaning that identity processing is common to all human societies.

Berzonsky refers to these processes of social association as identity "construction," in that they are largely artificially specified by social interactions and norms. (11) The use of the word "construction" and the connotations associated with it are reiterated in the themes of identity processes specified in Willbrink's article. Willbrink identified the themes found in identity theory studies and scholarship as: the direct identity formation (i.e. "bottom up") where the intellectual foundation of an individual is created, and the indirect identity construction (i.e. "top down.") (12)

Although multiple theories to explain identity processes exist, they all commonly explore dichotomies such as "the self and the whole" or "us vs them." (13) Identity is constantly forming and re-forming to match the grand social landscape. Although direct identity formation occurs in institutionalized settings which foster and outline the contours of national identity, (14) the normative dynamics of relationships among other groups and the ingroup (as well as members within the ingroup) are conditioned and modeled through indirect identity "construction" as one interacts with immediate family, friends, and peers. (15) In order to maintain conformity and cohesion of the ingroup, "diffuse-avoidant" processes could be used to highlight differences of the Other and obscure shortcomings or negative traits of both the self and the ingroup as a whole. (16)

Why is possessing identity an essential need? According to Berzonsky, identity formation regulates how one views the "time continuum" (i.e. history), and provides a framework to "organize, encode, and understand experiences" as core values are identified. (17) In short, when an identity is threatened or ceases to exist as it should, anomie results and the integrity of societal order is jeopardized.

Billig described society as being the "heart" of social science, but also as "created in the image of the nation-state," (18) which has led to the widespread assumption that social differences related to ethnicity and other ascriptive qualities are "natural" to humanity. (19) With the nation-state being a socio-political construct following a social contract, the intertwined relationship between social identity and national identity becomes more clear.

Dominance: Power and Knowledge

MacDonnell describes discourse as, "[A] particular area of language use...identified by the institutions to which it relates and by the positions from which it comes and which it marks out for the speaker. The position does not exist by itself, however. Indeed, it may be understood as a standpoint taken up by the discourse through its relation to another, ultimately an opposing discourse." (20)

This definition details the utility of discourse as an institutional and positional tool, as well as the existence of opposing discourses (and thus opposing identities.) Relatedly, Foucault asserts that discourse as a medium could never "mirror" reality. (21) Foucault famously connected the production of discourse to knowledge and power. Foucault's ideas are supported by Gidden's classification of power density distribution, which is based on four factors: information surveillance, capacity for extra-economic organization, instrumentalization of force as a coercive tool, and the use of ideology to legitimize domination. (22) All the previous factors define the nation-state and the sovereign rights of government, as well as other state-associated institutions.

Miller regarded discourse as a system that denies the desirability and feasibility of evaluation, effectively creating some degree of ambiguity within discourse. (23) Similarly, Watts Miller described modern ideals associated with culture as being rather abstract, which leads to conflicting interpretations and constant power struggles in the maintenance of national, ethnic, and cultural conceptualizations (i.e. "the nation," "the people," etc.) akin to struggles of class. (24) At its root, discourse aims to consolidate a particular ideology into an image and certain worldview (i.e. as with Anderson's imagined community). Through discourse, the public is confined to a specific moral space. (25) More particularly within the context of national identity; national identity politics is the state's process of recognizing differences and actualizing social divisions, which effectively suppresses radical difference and the materialization of new agent social identities within the nation-state which might threaten the nation-state's built solidarity. (26)

Similarly, Foucault regarded power as coming into being through knowledge. Knowledge is then dispersed to the public to regard as their own collective perception. (27) Meaning in discourse is a subjective reality which promotes "coercive normalization," as recursive communication could be a method of repression when other discourses and narratives are suppressed, which is determined by power relationships in society. (28) This expression of power however, was described by Foucault as being akin to a "chain" (29) in that members within the prevailing institution's sphere of influence perpetuate and disseminate the subjective meaning within and through dominant discourse, further fortifying the "correctness" of constructed knowledge and the institutional power it begets the nation-state, in this case. Relatedly, Tilley recognizes nation-state elites as both conductors and regulators of what identifies a national. (30) Elites symbolically ascribe value to a particular set of qualities associated with language, religion, and culture to construct a distinct ethnic identity for the national ingroup. (31) This process is directly related to the theme of "top down" identity processes or identity "construction" presented by Willbrink and suggests a clear asymmetrical power dynamic in the construction and maintenance of the national identity and imagined community of a nation-state. Due to a dominant ideology of a very small faction of society defining the reality of the nation-state and the socio-political dynamics within it between the members of the ingroup and the outgroup(s), nationalism has been studied from both Gramscian and Marxist lenses. (32)

Akin to Foucault's denial of discourse's objectivity, Girard defines myth as: "distorted reflections of natural phenomena," which evolve over time based on cultural and societal factors. (33) Myths most characteristically portray reality in extremes and stereotypes, (34) and Girard compares them to texts of persecution used to vilify a certain person or group.

As discourse is ideological in nature, it could be linked to philosophy. Bubbio regarded philosophy and religion as being of essentially, a singular origin. (35) Discourse represents the basis of the "civil religion" of nationalism. (36) Additionally, Bubbio described philosophy as possessing both "ritual"...

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