THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?is no doubt as a result of that disassociation that the state acquires its great might, that
the characteristic impersonality of its operations allows it to subdue all social activities
and relations to its interests and even to foster the illusion that it is a great individual,
that everyone has to recognize its will as its own, to paraphrase Hegel. But it is equally
certain that this tendency is held in check, because the political competition and social
conflict mobilized by the democratic process of contesting the exercise of power led to an
indefinite transformation of right and to a modification of the public space. Reason of
state threatens to become an absolute, but it is powerless to assert itself, because it remains
subject to the effects of the aspirations of individuals and groups in civil society and,
therefore, to the effects of such demands as can be inscribed within the public space.
When we evoke the nation, we look to it as the source of a religious faith. But do we not
have to ask how it is defined, and to evaluate its debt to the discourse that enunciates it?
Do we not have to ask how the nation and the feelings it inspires were, in Europe, trans-
formed as a result of the discourse of the French Revolution and, in the nineteenth cen-
tury, as a result of the new constructs of the historians who contributed so much to the
formation of a new political consciousness? In the case of France, we have only to think
of the role Thierry, Guizot, Mignet, or, somewhat later, Michelet played in portraying the
nation’s destiny, in introducing a new perspective, in reshaping values, in giving events a
new depth, and in breaking history down into significant sequences. We have only to
observe how effective this ‘‘composition,’’ which was modified as a result of both the
progress of knowledge and ideological imperatives, was in molding our collective mem-
ory, how it is imprinted on monuments, commemorations, place names, school text-
books, popular literature, and both major and minor political discourses. We would be
wrong to conclude that a new religion is inscribed within this phenomenon simply be-
cause it implies the depiction of the origins and permanence of a community, for all signs
and symbols that mobilize belief lend themselves to interpretation, to reinterpretation,
and are bound up with modes of anticipating the future, with the idea of the goals that
social actors imagine to be real and legitimate. The idea of the nation does not refer to a
text that exists prior to the commentary; it is, of course, supported by an accretion of
materials and representations, but it can never be separated from a discourse on the
nation—a discourse that, while it enjoys a privileged relationship with the discourse of
power, is still not amenable to appropriation. Paradoxically, it is because it is a historical
entity that the nation eludes the religious imagination, which always tries to establish a
narrative, to master a time that exists outside time. While the nation bestows a collective
identity, it is at the same time implicated in that identity. It remains a floating representa-
tion, and the origins of the nation, the stages of its foundation, and the vectors of its
destiny are therefore constantly being displaced and are always subject to the decisions of
social actors—or those who speak for them—who want to establish themselves within a
duration and a time that allows them to name themselves.
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