Abstract
The equation between nation, state, and people, which Eric Hobsbawm takes to be the mode of modern nation state's existence, can be approached from the angle of the individual's identification with the state as a national superego, of loving the fatherland as one's father. The most dramatic cases of such identification can be found in the military-dictatorial mobilization of the masses as national soldiers sacrificing their lives for the country, of which Napoleon's army offers the classic example. Yet the more peaceful versions of identifying with the state-as-nation also reveal the dangers of such an identification, which appears all the more pathological when the (post)modern state as a mechanism of power increasingly tends to be indifferent to its subjects other than as objects to be controlled by its apparatus of capture epitomized in taxation.
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