ABSTRACT
Expressions of nationalism and defense of sovereignty were many at the World Social Forum in Dakar. In this historically international and internationalist event, nationalist symbols and slogans – Brazilian flags, Palestinian keffiyeh, T-shirt “Guinea is back,” Congolese hymns – seem to be ordinary activist repertoires as long as they are not contested by other groups of participants. Why and how do nationalism and sovereignty become legitimate repertoires of internationalized activist claims? Our main hypothesis is that the World Social Forum is a delocalized place of encounters where people often gather around basic national ties as well as around some common causes based on “working misunderstandings” (M. Sahlins). Disconnected from their own territories, these claims benefit from this distance and match the diverse expectations of the participants: nationalist intellectuals from the South, anti-imperialist activists from the North, and politicians from everywhere invest nationalist symbols and discourses for their own purposes and along their own schemes.
