- 1 We would like to express our warm thanks to Marie-Paule Hille for her valuable insights during the (...)
1In this issue of Archives en Sciences Sociales des Religions,1 we take up the challenging question of how religion and nationalism intersect, focusing on one of the most elusive aspects of what is sometimes described as the “second wave of globalization,” which gained momentum in the 1970s: the use of religious language across diverse political settings to articulate notions of collective identity – of who belongs to “us.” In the face of the variety of contemporary configurations – from India and Turkey to Brazil, Poland, Israel, and Russia – the articles assembled here examine the place of explicit religious affiliations within the political field, in national contexts shaped by distinct historical trajectories.
2The interactions between religion and nationalism have been widely investigated over the past several decades by researchers in the social sciences. Historians have explored the full range of affinities linking the two through the lenses of conflicts, mutual instrumentalization, and cross-legitimations. However, this relationship has often been approached from two distinct perspectives, by specialists in nationalism on one side and in religion on the other. Yet what the contemporary period shows is their ambiguous intertwining. Still, within the shared space of politics and religion, questions remain about the dynamics at play and the order of inclusions (religion in politics or politics in religion). The rise of the notion of what Mark Juergensmeyer (1993) termed “religious nationalism” exemplifies the current proliferation of these unstable combinations and underscores the need for renewed analysis.
3We therefore welcomed contributions from across the social sciences, provided they shed light on contemporary manifestations of these intertwined relationships. In particular, we sought to address the resurgence of religious, nationalist, and identity-based modes of thought and action, beyond simple traditionalism and the ferment of the new religious movements that emerged within twentieth-century democracies. These movements, we contend, neither embraced the individualistic values of modernity nor promoted greater pluralism, as set out in the frameworks of civil religions (Rousseau 1762; Bellah 1974) and cultural religions (Lemieux 1990). On the contrary, they generally represented a more or less radical rejection of these values. Manifest across a wide spectrum of dissent, from fundamentalism and extremism to various forms of national populism or ethno-nationalism, as well as more moderate forms of re-confessionalization, these religious reactivations often advance in violent surges that expose the sociological depth of the conflicts they embody.
4It is important, first of all, to emphasize the inherent difficulty of describing and naming with precision the phenomena that feed into today’s global conflicts – phenomena which, although not entirely new, have become more sharply defined in the post–Cold War era. The question remains, however, whether the heterogeneous constellation of identity-driven passion and religious reactivation within established political orders can be subsumed under a single, overarching concept. Hamit Bozarslan, for instance, has recently drawn attention to the convergence of worldviews espoused by what he terms the “anti-democracies” of Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Despite their many differences, these regimes share an aspiration toward a common “anti-Western” restoration, articulated at times through the rhetoric of “sacrifice for the nation” and at others through that of a “community of believers” from which the nation is said to have organically emerged. Central to this discourse lies a blend of universalist claims, dreams and nostalgia for imperial grandeur, and the glorification of national identity (Bozarslan 2021). Yet one may ask whether these developments truly correspond to what Danièle Hervieu-Léger (1997, 179) described as “the convergence of ‘neo-traditionalist’ religious resurgences and nationalist stirrings in the most advanced contemporary societies.”
- 2 “Having a nation is not an inherent attribute of humanity, but it has now come to appear as such.” (...)
5For the contemporary world, shaped by multiple historicities, resists simple or unified diagnosis. The diversity of notions invoked in this issue – religious nationalism, national populism, populism, illiberal democracy, national patriotism, ethno-nationalism, traditional-imperial nationalism, and others – reflects this complexity. Far from becoming standardized, the postcolonial world is marked both by the generalization of the nation-state model and by the diverse ways in which it has been reappropriated within distinct political and cultural contexts (Badie 1992). Through processes of transfer and translation, political and social actors have taken up categories of belonging originally devised in Europe, while simultaneously reshaping their own. The very concept of “nation” has changed, its essence transformed under the conditions of globalization. As Pascal Ory observes (2020, 198), “as a Western concept, the nation is, simultaneously and unevenly, imported (economic metaphor), assimilated (political metaphor), and adopted (cultural metaphor), according to the whims of each culture.” In Europe, the polysemous nature of the word nation has long been apparent, sometimes referring to the people as citizens, sometimes to the people as ancestors. Today, this interpretive plurality has become global, with the term nation used universally and gradually coming to constitute a seemingly natural2 framework for collective identification, despite the wide variability of its meanings.
6The same can be said of the seemingly straightforward concept of nationalism in late nineteenth-century Europe. Once a particular national form had taken hold, it began to erode the principle of equal citizenship, shifting political discourse from the civic to the ethnic register and operating, in essence, as an exclusionary force restricting full political participation to the original “us,” defined in religious, ethno-religious, or racial terms, depending on the context. By reinvesting political life with questions of origin – ancestry, filiation, and genealogy – nationalist ideologies collided with key tenets of modern political thought, notably the autonomy of the political sphere and the principle of civil equality. As with the nationalisms of the “humiliated” peoples of the nineteenth century (Berlin 1988, 366), postcolonial nationalisms initially arose in opposition to external domination, producing an ambivalent relationship with the legacies of empire and European culture. The resurgence of religious references in political mobilizations has often taken place within the movement of reappropriating postcolonial subjectivities. One might then ask whether the long-standing religion/nationalism issue – so central to European history – is now reasserting itself on a global scale.
- 3 Among many other examples, issue no. 133 (1992) of the International Social Science Journal, devote (...)
7A closer look at contemporary societies reveals political-religious configurations that resist reduction to a single paradigm. Faced with this indeterminacy, scholars are often tempted to multiply descriptive and analytical studies in an effort to document these specific dynamics with precision. In this context, most of the contributions gathered here focus on particular case studies, with limited comparative perspective. To some extent, the “new world” that has taken shape over the past half-century appears to be accelerating the social sciences’ shift toward increasingly singularizing forms of knowledge rooted in anthropological and historical approaches, while broader, generalizing frameworks struggle to offer meaningful insight into the growing diversity of situations. For several decades now, social scientists have been grappling with a question implicit in this shift3: is it necessary to devise a new, sufficiently well-defined conceptual language – shared, perhaps even cohesive – in order to pursue cumulative knowledge? This challenge unfolds within a global context marked both by the fragmentation of political and religious experiences and by the diversity of categories through which social actors name these experiences and describe their world.
8Although the articles selected for this special double issue are monographic in nature, each illuminates crucial aspects of the contemporary realities while contributing to theoretical debates on interrelations between religion and nationalism across a wide range of cultural contexts, from the United States to Japan, Poland, and Russia; Turkey, Israel, and Iraq; as well as India, Myanmar, and China. A number of countries that are highly representative of the religion-nation nexus, including Brazil, are not featured here, owing to the lack of sufficiently compelling submissions. Their absence, however, is partially compensated by the diversity of political situations (democracies, illiberal democracies, autocracies...) and religious traditions examined (Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Sunni and Shia Islam, as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto). The comparisons emerging from the juxtaposition of these varied political and religious contexts reveal both divergences and convergences that preclude any attempt to essentialize the cases discussed, whether in terms of the processes through which religions and nationalisms intertwine, or the forms of violence these processes may produce.
9Across most of these contexts, a politically-driven dynamic of religious affirmation is at work in diverse forms. The phenomenon is particularly striking when viewed in light of prevailing conceptions of democratic modernity in the United States. Examining Ronald Reagan’s 1983 proclamation of the “Year of the Bible” – well before the “Trump era” – Philippe Gonzalez demonstrates how the idea of the nation was appropriated through a religious discourse that gradually erodes constitutional pluralism, in part by emptying the notion of civil religion of its substance. More broadly, Gonzalez, drawing on the work of Claude Lefort, explores the reactive dynamics of democratic systems that lead to a reversal of the religious-political “disentanglement” upon which they were founded.
10At the other end of the spectrum, Marie-Paule Hille’s contribution offers a particularly illuminating counterpoint to the unstable fusion of nation and religion, focusing on the case of China. Drawing on the experience of a religious leader within the Hui (Chinese Muslims) community, Hille highlights the shifting modes of recognition granted to this group, contingent on the State-Party’s varying conceptions of nationhood. This case exemplifies the regime’s strategy of “controlled pluralism,” deployed during periods of reform to mobilize and revitalize different sections of society. It then shows the evolution toward a hegemonic vision of “Chineseness,” and, by extension, of the “Chinese nation.” One consequence of this strategy has been the silencing of the Muslim community, which had previously represented the model of an exemplary “Chinese Islam.”
11Similar tensions can be observed in contexts such as Israel, Poland, India, Turkey, and Russia, each shaped by its own specific socio-historical trajectory. Proponents of the intertwining of nation and religion – whether through the confessionalization of politics or the politicization of religion – have, to varying degrees, succeeded in setting the terms of public debate. Generally aligned with conservative or far-right political sectors, these movements are referred to by Gonzalez as the “Christian right” in the United States, and by Jacob Copeman and Vishav Bharti as the “Hindu right” in India. Yet, the instrumentalization of religion in politics extends well beyond these circles. Rachel Werczberger, Dana Kaplan, and Nadia Beider’s study of Israeli Judaism exemplifies this dynamic, while in India, even the historically secular Congress Party occasionally adopts practices belonging to the religious repertoire in order to meet what it perceives as the expectations of a “Hindu electorate” in a political landscape dominated by Hindu nationalist ideology.
- 4 And the discussions remain lively, as illustrated for example by two issues of the Revue du MAUSS p (...)
- 5 This was precisely the point made by Patrick Michel with regard to the notion of the “nation” (1999 (...)
- 6 Which we understand, following Max Weber (1971), as a shared belief in a common origin – real or im (...)
12It is important to stress that the analytical challenges do not arise solely from the fragmentation of the “nationalism and religion” object resulting from the plurality of cases examined. They also stem from the highly polysemic nature of the concepts mobilized by researchers to describe these experiences. The diversity of conceptual tools and interpretive frameworks inevitably produces divergent understandings of the ways in which nationalism and religion intersect. While the Tower of Babel imagery is often invoked to describe the definitional profusion surrounding the notion of religion (Lambert 1991) – whether conceived in terms of the sacred or heteronomy, function or substance4 – the concept of nationalism is equally polysemic and, in consequence, equally confusing.5 Within academic literature, “nationalism” may refer to a nation-state ideology, a reactionary and anti-democratic impulse to re-politicize ethnicity, 6as a form of social cohesion, a doctrine, or even a “state of mind” (Berlin 1988).
- 7 The contribution of Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) and of historians such as Reinhart Kose (...)
13Beyond the characteristics of the specific fields under consideration – nation, nationalism, and religion – historians, anthropologists, and comparative political scientists face a further challenge: understanding what is at stake in the passage – at times a genuine act of translation – from the language of researchers to that of the actors themselves, especially in “non-Western” societies. This challenge is compounded by the fact that many of the categories used in the social sciences (state, nation, religion, individual, and so forth) are themselves products of European history and culture. Since the nineteenth century, these categories have circulated widely, giving rise to multiple translations and neologisms, first within Europe, then beyond. The risk of anachronism, or indeed of ethnocentrism, is thus ever-present, making it all the more necessary to elaborate a truly comparative historical semantics of scholarly concepts.7
- 8 See below for a definition of the notion.
14In this special issue, contributors explore various forms of interrelation between religion(s) on the one hand, and the nation or nationalism on the other, across different regions of the world. Drawing on their respective areas of research, they employ categories and designations that serve multiple purposes: to define and situate contexts using the terms mentioned above, and to construct categories by contrast that better account for unique configurations. For instance, the expression “soft nationalism,” coined by Werczberger, Kaplan, and Beider in their analysis of Israeli Judaism, designates an inclusive form of nationalism, as opposed to an exclusionary variety often described as “populist,” “right-wing,” or “illiberal.” The former can be associated with a democratic ethos, or with what Yaël Tamir (1993) has termed liberal nationalism, while the latter rejects the principles of democratic pluralism. Notably, the adjective soft is also employed in the Indian context to describe the Congress Party’s invocation of religion in its discourse and practices, commonly referred to as soft Hindutva. 8Conversely, and to denote an opposite orientation, Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière uses the expressions “ultra-nationalism” or “extreme nationalism” in her analysis of the shifting relations between the state and Buddhist institutions in Burma.
15Some of the phenomena observed are designated by terms originating within specific traditions, either by reference to history or through the creation of neologisms. Such is the case, respectively, with Zionism and Hindutva. Yet, these terms, which have integrated the vocabulary of everyday political discourse and from the outset designate composite realities, are difficult to mobilize as operational definitions, particularly with regard to the issues examined here. Simply asking what “we” mean by Zionism is enough to reveal how deeply the term is saturated with ideological connotations. While religion was kept at a distance in the original Zionist project – Herzl’s vision being explicitly secular – its political independence remains, in Alain Dieckhoff’s words, “a fragile victory” perpetually exposed to two opposing dangers: on the one hand, that of an organic or religious nationalism embodied in the messianic and apocalyptic neo-Zionism of today’s far right; on the other, the reduction of politics to a logic of pure domination (Dieckhoff 1993). By contrast, Hindutva is a more stable notion that combines the term “Hindu”, which was coined by Muslims upon their arrival in India to designate the populations of the Indus region, with a Sanskrit suffix. The resulting neologism refers to the ideology of those commonly described as Hindu nationalists, whose theorists conceive of Indian nationhood as being exclusively and ontologically bound to Hinduism (Jaffrelot 1993; Mohammad-Arif and Naudet 2020; van der Veer 1994).
16Other neologisms are associated with particular figures. Erdoğanism, for instance, examined in this issue by Ozan Sousbois, refers to both a nationalist ideology and a mode of governance characterized by the will to restore an Islamic moral order under a charismatic leader, combining populist rhetoric with authoritarian practices.
17This issue also offers an opportunity to revisit the terminology used by scholars to describe the nationalism-religion nexus. One example is “orthodox nationalism,” a term employed by Thierry Guthmann (2021) to characterize Japanese nationalism. However, as Edouard L’Hérisson notes in his contribution, this notion must be approached with caution, as it carries implicit normative connotations in a Japanese society that has undergone profound change since the end of the Second World War, when Shinto and the idea of Japanese nation ceased to be inextricably bound. Paul Zawadzki, for his part, examines the ambiguities of the notion of “religious nationalism” – a concept widely invoked but seldom defined – which, in his view, possesses only limited heuristic value.
18These phenomena are sometimes very closely intertwined, making it difficult to grasp the distinction between the religious and political fields. Noting that many researchers have emphasized the plural forms of Russian nationalism and raised the question of this intertwining, Kathy Rousselet analyzes “the co-construction of a civilizational Russian nationalism by political and religious actors.”
19While researchers have shown a sustained interest in this question, so have the actors concerned. Brac de la Perrière observes that in Burma, for example, even the very definitions of what constitutes the “political” and the “religious” are subject to debate, given their deep interconnection. These questions are part of critical and dissenting discourses challenging the moral and political legitimacy of religious leaders who claim to speak on behalf of Buddhism. These issues are particularly relevant insofar as the category of “religion” itself remains highly contested – both among scholars and among the protagonists – across most traditions (Asad 1993), though this is more pronounced in some traditions than in others like Hinduism and Shinto. L’Hérisson demonstrates how secularization processes in Japan have relegated “religion” to the private sphere, effectively separating it from the “rites” performed in Shinto shrines, which remain historically and politically tied to imperial worship.
20Perhaps endorsing the thesis that the sacred and the social are consubstantial, some authors employ the notions of “sacred” and “sacralization,” thereby rendering secondary the issue of the religion–politics relationship. Building on these notions, Werczberger, Kaplan, and Beider describe the evolution of political arena in Israel, marked by the growing integration of elements borrowed from religious language and symbols. L’Hérisson likewise draws on the notion of “sacred” to elucidate perceptions of the “nation” and “the imperial figure” in Japan.
21Moreover, how can we analyze the extent to which the revival of religious language is driven by instrumentalization versus convictions and/or projects? Here too, the contributions reveal a broad spectrum of realities and interpretations, reflecting both the diversity of socio-political contexts and the multiplicity of intersecting processes. In the case of Burma, Brac de la Perrière interprets religion primarily as a lever of legitimization within an authoritarian context – one in which legitimacy cannot be secured through popular suffrage. The phenomenon thus appears as a form of religious instrumentalization through politics, and conversely, of political instrumentalization through religion. As the author shows, such mobilizations are far from one-sided: in Burma, the State and Buddhist institutions – historically aligned since the period referred to as “Buddhist royalty” – remain mutually dependent.” In the case of Israeli “soft” nationalism, religion is mobilized as a means of access to both material and symbolic resources through deliberately visible forms of public performance. Yet mobilization in this case cannot be reduced to instrumentalization alone, insofar as the broader integration of religion responds to the expectations of a segment of the movement’s supporters. Similarly, while Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, undoubtedly entails a dimension of political instrumentalization of religion (Brass 1997), the contribution by Copeman and Bharti demonstrates that it is above all part of an ideological project of purification whose ultimate goal is to assert control over the very definition of Hinduism.
22Consequently, Hinduism as interpreted by Hindu nationalists, like other traditions discussed in this issue, is transformed into a religion of exclusion, both internally and externally. In a similar vein, early projects of “civil religion,” conceived as attempts to unite all, or nearly all citizens within an idealized community, have in recent decades shifted toward more “orthodox” foundational interpretations of religion – and, by percolation, toward greater closure. In response, certain actors have sought to distance themselves by proposing alternative narratives, invoking new categories such as “spiritual” or “cultural.” The situation in Iraq is particularly illuminating in this respect: there, the state has mobilized Sufism in the name of “national reconciliation” – in other words, to promote more consensual and unifying forms of Islam in the face of the polarizing radicalization of Sunni and Shia Islam (David Jordan). However, it should be noted that Hindu nationalism challenges the notion that the spiritual aspects of a religion are invariably linked to a “soft” form of religious nationalism: many of Hinduism’s gurus and other “spiritual” figures are fervent supporters of Hindutva (Copeman, Duggal, and Longkumer 2023). In Turkey, too, as Sousbois observes, the principle of manevî – traditionally associated with forms of individual, or even secular, spirituality – has gradually become politicized. This process began prior to the rise of Erdoğan and has led to a more institutionally structured and standardized interpretation, articulated within an authoritarian and polarizing nationalist project.
23Inevitably, these various dynamics have generated and perpetuated conflicts rooted in a multiplicity of shifting realities, many of which are examined in this issue.
24As we have seen, some researchers use the notion of “soft nationalism” to describe phenomena arising from the evolution of democratic cultures. The adjective “soft” itself speaks volumes about the violence inherent in the idea of religious nationalism – so much so, the expression “soft nationalism” almost sounds like an oxymoron. Even in the Israeli case examined here, the process of confessionalization – that is, the integration of Jewish rituals – has led to the exclusion of certain categories of the population, notably Palestinian Israelis, from occasions of formal declarations of commitment to democracy, which are usually expected to transcend confessional affiliations. In the other cases examined here, the intertwining of religion and nationalism has clearly generated increasingly radical forms of conflict, first expressed in discourse and often manifested in acts of violence.
25When nationalism acquires what a number of contributors describe as a hegemonic dimension, religion itself becomes a justification for violence, violence typically directed against religious minorities and intensified when processes of ethnicization – whether of the self or of others – are grounded in a shared religious foundation, as with Hinduism in India, Buddhism in Burma, or Judaism in Israel. In China, by contrast, faith-based violence is legitimized through the State-Party’s redefinition of religious normativity (in this instance, Islamic), to enforce conformity with the hegemonic culture (Hille).
- 9 Historically, Eric Hobsbawm notes, “religion is a paradoxical cement for protonationalism and indee (...)
26In any event, despite the many entanglements, affinities, and complementarities between nationalist particularism and universalism inherent in transcendent religions, relations between the two have always been uneasy.9 Sometimes opposition to nationalist discourses that instrumentalize religion and prioritize identitarian self-defense over universalist teachings is found within religious circles themselves, whether in Polish Catholicism, Israeli Judaism, or Burmese Buddhism – raising the question of whether religious passion and religious identity indeed belong to the same world.
27For violence justified on religious grounds can be observed across a wide spectrum. The most frequent forms are lexical, with the use of expressions like “enemies within,” “anti-nationals,” or “deviants,” alongside more context-specific denigrations, such as “Bengalis” to signify the Rohingyas’ outsider status (Brac de La Perrière) or “Wahhabis,” “Safawis,” and “Ba’thists,” to disqualify rival groups in Iraq (Jordan). Similar forms of symbolic violence are also evident in binary hierarchical logics rooted in civic and moral criteria, such as “good” vs. “bad” citizens (for example, Jews in Israel [Werzberger, Kaplan, and Beider] or Muslims in China and India), as well as through censorship and legal action targeting individuals perceived as threats to the perception of what a united nation should be (Copeman and Bharti). In China, as Hille shows, such symbolic violence can take the form of the erasure of religious and cultural markers, for instance, the removal of minarets and Arabic inscriptions from public spaces. Violence can also manifest within the legislative sphere, through the enactment of anti-minority laws, as in Burma (Brac de la Perrière), or the reactivation of old legislation, as in India – often, it should be noted, falling under the rubric of blasphemy, despite the concept being foreign to Hinduism. Other forms, as in China, include the coercion of government officials to renounce Islam, and the subjection of religious authorities’ activities to increasingly stringent controls.
28Lastly, violence can also take the form of physical attacks at multiple levels: targeted assassinations – for instance, against Indian rationalists, as described by Copeman and Bharti, whose skepticism towards Hinduism is perceived not as individual heresy but as a threat to the cohesion of the imagined community – as well as riots, lynchings, and ethnic cleansing.
29Only when nations are plunged into chaos do the principal perpetrators consider scaling back the conflict to levels that allow for the prospect of viable governance. Such was the case in Iraq, in the post-Daesh context analyzed by Jordan, where a specific conception of religion was invoked to bring about national reconciliation. Yet even then, the intertwining of religion and nationalism persists, reconfigured around new forms of conflicts in which other issues – such as those relating to gender – now prevail over the older antagonistic visions of the nation rooted in competing religious movements.
30Regardless of the frequently decisive role played by the central ruling body, non-state actors often play an equally crucial part in fueling and disseminating nationalist ideas on a daily basis – by force, if necessary. This is the case in India, with the Hindu nationalist militias described by Copeman and Bharti, and in Turkey, with Erdoğan’s “project men,” as Sousbois calls them.
31In this day-to-day dissemination work, the mobilization of “visceral” affects (Béneï 2008) is particularly significant, given that nationalism is marked by a high degree of emotion and passion. Max Weber had already noted this in Economy and Society: “if ‘national’ refers at all to a uniform phenomenon, it refers to a specific kind of passion [Pathos]” (1971, 427). This passion is regarded as legitimate, and its darker side manifests in multiple forms: the hatred of the “Other”, for one, as Brac de la Perrière illustrates in the violence against the Rohingya, but also in anxiety-driven rage (Appadurai 2006), as seen in the case described by Copeman and Bharti, where it plays a crucial role in the collective action of Hindu nationalists against rationalists in the Indian Punjab, and more broadly against religious minorities and the liberal and intellectual classes.
32Weber’s concept of passion refers specifically to those aroused by the power of the state. In the case of religious nationalism, however, notions of the sacred and the sacrilegious are more explicitly at play. From this perspective, the absence of emotion – perceived as an absence of respect – can set different social groups against each other in the field of affects. Copeman and Bharti explain that the “insensitivity” of Hindu rationalists is perceived by Hindu nationalists as an offense to Hindu religious sensibility – in short, as a mocking attitude tantamount to sacrilegious. These observations can be extended through a closer look at the invocation of “hurt feelings” in public spaces (Favret-Saada 2017), which has been legitimized politically in South Asia (Ramdev, Nambiar, Bhattacharya 2016) and elsewhere. In contrast, dominated groups – minorities and other targets of the proponents of religious nationalism – are often denied the right to express their emotions publicly (Blom and Tawa Lama-Rewal 2020). Beyond the risk of fueling cycles of violence and deepening nationalist resentment, this silencing also attests to the political delegitimization of the emotions of dominated groups.
- 10 The role of resentment in nationalism has been explored by numerous authors, including Isaiah Berli (...)
33Resentment, often closely linked to hurt in its most raging form, is among the other emotions explored in the contributions presented here. While the nationalist Pathos identified by Weber builds on a hubris of power, resentment can give way to sad passions. Described following Nietzsche as impotent and reactive ruminations, they are rooted in long-standing memories of prejudice and feelings of injustice. Scholars of nationalism often accord resentment a place of prominence.10 The contributors to this special edition approach it from multiple angles. Using the example of Turkey, Sousbois highlights the dimension of political instrumentalization: reactivated resentment opens up a repertoire of victimhood conferring upon the state a restorative role, thereby helping to consolidate its legitimacy. In other contexts, such as Poland, identity-driven passions feed on anti-liberal resentment directed against political autonomy, democratic individualism, and the liberalization of social mores.
34These ethnic-religious tensions, whose violent nature is reflected in both historical experience and contemporary events, are compounded today by new divisions centered on sexual and gender-based issues. As several authors note, these contemporary issues do not necessarily supplant the older relationship between nationalism and sexuality, explored by George Mosse within the framework of fascist culture in his classic analysis (1985, 1987), but rather overlap with it. We are therefore witnessing new configurations in which these questions are interwoven, rearranged, and reinvented.
35Sousbois, for example, examines how the Turkish government’s virilism functions as a counterpoint to the perceived “feminization” of sexual minorities who are accused of weakening the nation’s social and political fabric. More broadly, the questioning of gender hierarchies and the destabilization of both gender identities and roles assigned to men and women frequently elicit extremely intense reactions. In Turkey, Russia, and Poland, LGBT activism and gender studies are increasingly framed as civilizational threats, purportedly undermining the traditional order that guarantees the continuity of national identity.
36These arguments are often put forward on the grounds of defending the “nation,” understood here as a civilization, in the ethnographic rather than 18th-century sense of the term. Rousselet examines this tendency in the context of Russia, particularly in light of Russia’s recent war against Ukraine, while Zawadzki highlights its controversial character in the Polish context.
37But the tensions discussed above are not confined to authoritarian or illiberal regimes (Raison du Cleuziou 2019). As shown by Céline Béraud and Philippe Portier in their recent study of protests against the legalization of same-sex marriage in France, anti-gender politics – and more broadly, backlash against identity politics – have become central to the political organization of Catholic conservatism in France (Pelletier 2012). For these anti-genderism Catholics, “it is a question of avoiding another victory of subjectivity over their cherished idea of moral civilization.” (Béraud and Portier 2015, 159). These polemics invite reflection on a regrettable omission: the absence of contributions engaging with the French case, which might otherwise suggest that a definitive dissociation between nationalism and religion has already been achieved.