which the logic of capitalist accumulation has already invaded every previously uncommodified area of existence by becoming both extensive and intensive by ruling over social reproduction by governing the impulses, thoughts, desires and emotions of individuals.(Gonzaga, 2009) Drawing from Mojares (1997), Gonzaga directs our attention to sites that provide illusions of ease and wealth – best exemplified by malls – which he calls transnational spaces. They remain imaginary however as “the moment [they] leave their domain they find themselves transported back to a world where they are choked once more by the oppressiveness of the heat and the pollution, the unruly traffic of crowds and vehicles, and the ubiquity of privation and indifference.” (p. 3) “Although the totalizing structure of the nation may have weakened, its worth has certainly not diminished. Because it can potentially form a community among disparate individuals, the nation remains for many a possibility of resistance against the oppressive domination of local and international elites and the helpless feeling of dislocation and alienation caused by global flows” (p. 3). “The nation has been a figure of desire and contemplation [by providing] a fulcrum of hope and resistance for subaltern populations, a sense of belonging for migrants displaced by the world market, and an instrument of control for totalitarian bureaucracies, capitalist oligopolies, and elite democracies” (p. 15). Political nationalism vis-à-vis cultural nationalism
An examination of EDSA as the primary
example of the operation of official nationalism Citing Hardt and Negri, Gonzaga makes clear that the nation-state “transforms the radical multiplicity of the multitude into the homogenous identity of the people. A sovereignty has authority because it is said to be constituted by a people who express a single, general will” (p. 17). The State “striates its entire territorial domain and captures all existing flows in order to augment its power… harnessing its sources to manufacture and maintain every norm within its domain, the State transforms the chaos of heterogeneity and multiplicity into a manageable order and reality” (p. 17-18) “in order to transform or nationalize autonomous individuals into compliant citizens, the nation-state relies on institutions or factories of subjectification Foucault calls enclosures” (p. 18). Despite its totalizing character, the State however is not as omnipotent as it presents itself to be for as Gonzaga shows, the resources at its command are not inexhaustible and thus, there will always be what he calls errant flows: “that which escapes capture… populations that cannot be nationalized” (p. 19). underground economy, squatters, private armies, dissident nationalisms NGOs OFWs IPs “Errant flows are confined by the State to the recesses of its territory: squalid prisons, low-cost housing projects far from the urban centers, or squatters’ areas that are boarded up from sight when foreign luminaries visit the country or burned down to make way for new infrastructure.” (p. 19) Transcendent power Immanent power
Universal deception Point of subjectification
Subject of enunciation Nomad White wall of signifiance Black holes of subjectification
“Faciality thus has two fuctions of
biunivcalization: the distribution of facial units in biunivocal relations like inside and outside, good and bad, ruler and ruled... and the reduction of subjective choice to a series of “yes-no” decisions with those demanding alternatives being rejected from society.” (p. 21) Gonzaga, E. (2009). Globalization and Becoming-Nation: Subjectivity, Nationhood, and Narrative in the Period of Global Capitalism.