Page 175 - Contribution To Phenomenology

168 ALGIS MICKUNAS

series on the Mahabaratta. It is of note that some archaisms, such as
fascism, may weU be antimodern with respect to modernistic cos-
mopolitanism. There may appear postmodern nationalisms—in the case
of Vaclav Havel
If we trace the phenomena of the more established nationalisms, we
shall find that nationaUsm has exhibited, on a variety of cultural levels of
modernization, symboUc designs that appeal to diverse groups with various
positive and negative intensities. Such nationalisms may be associated
solely with the tolerance of varieties. This means that nationalistic culture
is grounded, in modernity, in the possibility of everyone partaking and
actively participating in a chosen variety of cultural work. In this sense
nationalism of this type is more resilient than a major monistic cultural
movement which has a much lesser chance of survival. It could be well
argued that in the current setting, the resiliency of modernizing national-
isms will confront the fundamentalist absolutisms of archaic type, although
each, in its particular universality, will claim to be the universal culture.
This does not imply that the relationship between modern nationalism
and monistic mythologies does not contain modifications in their relation-
ships. Monistic mythologies too have undergone modernizing modifica-
tions. Thus, an effort in the U.S. to promote a fundamentalist for the
highest office would create a fusion of the American nation and
monistically rigid mythology; that is, the nation would be absorbed into
mythology. But modernist nationalism can maintain peaceful coexistence
with a tolerant mythology and a mutuality of diversity, which is apparent
in mainstream Protestanism. Even in case of conflicts, the latter is willing
to accept resolutions on the grounds of mutually established rules. No
doubt, modernist nationaUsm can find affinities with monistic fundamen-
talisms either by using them in cases of national defence or by treating
them as one among other cultural claims. Yet in some cases, monistic
fundamentalisms may tend to rule over their nationalisms in the face of
secular modernization, as is the case in Islam. In other cases the degree
of their influence depends on the extent to which modernist national
culture, with its inherent postmodern capacity to resonate, has become
generally pervasive, as is the case in the U.S. It goes without saying that
archaic nationalism, joined with some typical monistic fundamentalism,
would oppose, in principle, the modernistic tolerance of mythologies. All
this depends on institutions that have, within them, the capacity to
resignify themselves in a postmodern sense.