Civic and ethnic dichotomy and the myth of US nationalism

In this article, I aim to demystify the hegemonic conception of US nationalism in two ways. First, the literature on nationalism has chiefly focused on non-Western nationalisms depicted as pathological and delayed versions of Western nationalisms and as projects cast away and abandoned by the progressive multicultural West. In this literature, US nationalism is figured as the default and unproblematic type, and hence, exempt from examination. By interrogating this assumption, I take the first step toward demystifying US nationalism. Second, after establishing the need to study US nationalism, I analyze and question civic-ethnic binary and associations with US nationalism. While Western nationalisms in general, and French and US nationalisms in particular, are claimed to be progressively civic, ample evidence testifies to the opposite. I reveal some of the inherent contradictions of such claims to explain how US nationalism, like any other, is defined upon and sustained through exclusionary discourses and violent practices. In conversation with other scholars who question the utility of civic-ethnic binary, I argue for its retention as an analytical lens that can disclose the mechanisms and dynamics by which US nationalism has masked its violence.