Sovereign Bodies Unto Themselves

Abstract

The final chapter of this book brings together the arguments of preceding chapters. I argue that through interconnected fantasies of flesh, land and law, nationalists engage in what Žižek refers to as “perverse self-instrumentalisation”, whereby they construct themselves as privileged agents who act not only on behalf of the nation, but in the name of the nation. In this position, they are not primarily concerned with realising their avowed political projects, but instead, with enjoying their imagined status as (self-)ordained defenders of the nation. As elucidated in Chapter 7, this means that which threatens the nation can paradoxically have a fortifying effect upon defence nationalists, by legitimising and securing the way they see themselves with/in the nation. Ultimately, I argue the jouissance they derive from defending the nation salvages a symbolic life within the nation that is always-already dead to begin with.