ABSTRACT
Postcolonial and postmodern literary scholar Homi K. Bhabha has drafted a theory of nation which, he claims, goes beyond the theoretical concept of nation formulated in the social sciences.1 Bhabha criticizes the social sciences for providing an inadequate description of nation building: in his view, they are all too fi xated on the perspective of the dominating élite, which seeks to indoctrinate the people with its own idea of national identity. He contends that such an approach cannot even adequately address the situation of the 19th century, let alone that of a contemporary world in which globalization poses a permanent challenge to existing power structures, and millions of migrants unmask existing national self-images as mere ideology. For Bhabha every nation is subject to dissemination; national identity can only be thought of as the result of a negotiation that emerges in a third space between dominant élites, who speak for the majority of the people, and newly arrived minorities.
