ABSTRACT
Culture's remarkable malleability makes it a political resource to which all nationalisms, whether 'Western' or 'Eastern', have resorted. The political nationalism born in the wake of the French Revolution around a long-established and powerful State is said to contrast with a cultural nationalism nourished by the language and history. The role of organic agent of nationalism played by the intelligentsia is hardly a thing of the past. The intelligentsia continues, on the contrary, to assume it fully because they control a culture they have an objective interest in defending, even in making prosper. Nationalism probably does not have the same appeal for all intellectuals. Some resolutely take the opposite road of post-nationalism, striving to go beyond the nation. The spread of the French language and the confinement of regional tongues to an increasingly narrow circle of speakers met a dual objective.
