ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of some key theoretical and literary methodological approaches to the concepts of the nation, state, and nation-state. In diverse fields, scholars have largely agreed that the nation is both a fictional construct and a source of real effects in the world. Moreover, this combination of fictionality and power is fundamentally violent, in terms of both its discursive erasure of difference and its abetting of exclusion, imperialism, and war. Literary scholars have made the nation a central concept in their work, at times suggesting a relationship of collusion, and at other times antagonism, between literature and the nation. However, as this chapter argues, the disciplinary organization and methodological approaches of literary scholarship remain deeply influenced, if not structured, by the very nations and states that critics interrogate. Finally, through an analysis of some of the major writings and political projects of Simón Bolívar, this chapter demonstrates that American and British literary scholars’ dependence on national borders and linguistic homogeneity has overlooked powerful and influential accounts of the nation.
