Identity as discourse: National identity in a theoretical perspective

How can we best theorise national identity? This article sets out to bring some new reflections on the nature of national identity, based on Benedict Anderson's 15 year old insights. His basic idea that identities are real, no matter how much they are supported by material or other "facts", is still valid and important. It opens for a dynamic view of identity which is not tied up to today's nations, but which also can be used on other kinds of political imagined communities. But Anderson's theory needs to be supplied. First, he overlooks the importance of an Other in the identity formation, an insight most other students of identity take for granted. To bring this in also opens up for the so-called "liminars", i.e. those who don't really fit into any of the Self/Other categories, and thereby remind us of that all collective identities are political by nature. Second, by regarding the ongoing identity formation as a discourse in Michel Foucault's terms, the production of identity as a result of a discursive struggle is stressed. Further, this implies applying Foucault's view of power as something productive and without a clear locus, to the process of identity formation. In this way we can achieve a flexible and dynamic theory which might be better fitted to today's changes in national (and other) identities than are most of the present theories of nationalism.