Towson University: Critical Patriotism: What The Past Can Teach Us About Our Future

Press release from Towson University:

Bethany Pace

June 22, 2021

TU professor’s new book examines patriotism and its lessons

With the recent Flag Day and impending July 4 celebrations, Americans have an opportunity
to consider the virtue of patriotism and its role in our country.

Is there something about it we can learn from other countries and cultures? What if
patriotism is less about flag waving and more about the ways in which we connect to
one another across communities and experiences?

In his new book “Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe,
1870–1945,” Salvatore Pappalardo, Ph.D., associate professor in English, explores questions
of patriotism and nationalism in 19th- and early 20th-century Europe.

The TU Newsroom spoke with him recently about how Americans might consider reframing
what it means to be patriotic and how the pursuit of critical patriotism may be the
key to creating a more just and inclusive society.

Generally speaking, what is the biggest misconception about patriotism and why might
misconceptions exist?

We often think that being patriotic means taking pride in the accomplishments of a
group to which we belong. I am not sure, however, that saying “We are the best and
the brightest” is necessarily a patriotic gesture. Nor is there much merit in viewing
the nation as an exclusive club to which only certain members are welcome. In 19th-century Europe, the nation was imagined as a community that speaks only one language,
has one culture, one religion and is ethnically and racially homogeneous. The problem
with this is that this is not how human beings work. We tend to have ties to different
cultures.

Monolingualism, speaking one language, is the exception around the world and often
the result of targeted policies that discourage the use of multiple languages. Nationalism,
therefore, is often the celebration of an exclusionary abstraction. But we need to
be more constructive and inclusive than this. What we need is a critical patriotism,
a renewed sense of belonging that thinks critically about our shared histories.

You frame patriotism in two related, yet opposing, ways. Can you explain how patriotism
can build a community of inclusion?

The idea of the nation promises solidarity among its members. For instance, say you
are Italian. Baked into this idea of national belonging is that you feel some kind
of affiliation and sympathy with other Italians. Being a patriot means building this
community of inclusion by showing concrete and committed solidarity like contributing
to the greater good and giving back to your community.

But while patriotism promises inclusion—and we're very painfully aware of this—often
it becomes a mechanism of exclusion. “Giving back” all too often focuses on existing
strengths and does not cross the lines that divide us from other Americans. To be
truly patriotic we need to invest in the public good and contribute across boundaries
to include those beyond our immediate communities.

How is patriotism—especially in the context of nationalism—used a mechanism of exclusion?

One way of illustrating this is the relationship between patriotism and the patriarchy.
The terms share the same origin—the Latin pater, meaning father—which results in a nation that is imagined as a male space in which
women do not enjoy full membership. Nationalists do not tend to be feminists.

Nationalism grips what we usually call the “primary identifications” of an individual.
We tend to identify ourselves using certain categories, which can be gender, class,
geographic origin, sex, language and religion, which means we all participate in different
and intersecting groups. Nationalism claims primacy and absolute supremacy over our
categories of identification.

Therefore, before one can recognize oneself as a man or a woman; a Jew or a Protestant;
a teacher or a carpenter; gay, straight or non-binary, one has first to be German,
Italian, French, American, etc. When the nation becomes this kind of regulatory force,
it can easily exclude a particular identification and argue that to be a full member
of a given nation, you cannot profess a certain religion, speak a certain language
or have a particular skin color.

We need a different way of thinking about belonging and inclusion, and a different
way of talking about patriotism and the relationship between citizenship and nationality.
These are very urgent questions. We should reimagine a patriotism that tackles our
social inequities and allows us to reflect critically on our historical responsibilities
as a nation.

How do the multilingual residents of 19th-century Trieste provide a framework for reimagining American patriotism?

In my book, I show how the inhabitants of Trieste, a port city on the Adriatic Sea,
often cultivated different kinds of cultural and national affiliations. Because it
was a very busy Mediterranean port and the only major commercial outlet to the sea
for the Austrian Empire, people had to speak at least four languages. It did not necessarily
mean that you had to speak them equally well, but you had to negotiate differences
in your everyday interactions.

What struck me was that people there were able to inhabit different cultural communities
and, for a long time, the city kept the rise of nationalism at bay. In Trieste, nationalism
had to compete with different ways of belonging: a multicultural and multilingual
patriotism, a constitutional patriotism as well as state patriotism that allowed for
people of diverse backgrounds to be fully integrated citizens.

Where there is difference, there is going to be conflict. But we need to manage and
solve social conflicts in the name of our shared sense of belonging. It is going to
be a long road, but we can change, and we can start by having a conversation about
the relationship between our individualism and our responsibilities toward others.
We need to think more broadly about inclusion and shared leadership. As I said before,
think of it as a garden in need of cultivation—the cultivation of an emotional investment
and public commitment to the ethics of a critical patriotism.

Media interested in speaking with TU faculty experts, such as Salvatore Pappalardo,
can contact Matt Palmer at mpalmer@towson.edu.

This press release was produced by Towson University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.