ABSTRACT
Since the development of the modern nation state at the beginning of the capitalist epoch a conscious and unconscious reproduction of the national culture has been one of the most powerful, insidious and damaging ways dead generations have lived on in the present. One remarkable exception to this, Tom Nairn's The break-up of Britain (1977), a committedly Marxist analysis, starts its concluding chapter by admitting that "the theory of nationalism represents Marxism's great historical failure". Nairn discusses nationalism with reference to the nation state defined in terms of a national market and national law. What needs to be explained in nationalism is the co-presence of ‘white’ and ‘black’ nationalism. British post-structuralism has adapted its concern with subjectivity to analysis of signifying practices and the possible effect of texts in positioning their readers. It calls for institutional transformations within the academy, though it is hard to see this taking place apart from wider institutional change.
