Nationalism, modernity and postmodernity: comparing the South African and Australian experiences

ABSTRACT

South Africa and Australia emerged into the twentieth century sharing similar racist (white‐Anglo) modernist nationalist projects – one created by Lord Alfred Milner the other by Alfred Deakin. However, these two societies leave the twentieth century with what seems like fundamentally different futures. In large measure this is because South Africans and Australians have responded quite differently to the economic and cultural trends associated with globalization, postfordism and post‐modernity. Since 1983 Australians have systematically destroyed their old modernist and nationalist social order built upon the “Deakin Settlement”. In its stead, they have dived headlong into the uncertainties of engaging with globalization and post‐fordist economic restructuring and have immersed themselves in a world awash with postmodern (and ‘post‐national') significations. South Africans, on the other hand, appear to be content to leave the old modernist and nationalist frameworks unchallenged — hence their post‐1994 project appears to have become the construction of a modernizing (black) nationalist state built ironically upon the foundations originally laid out by Lord Milner's (white) racist‐modernist state. So in true South African fashion, the ‘new’ South African project may turn out to be a highly conservative venture when measured against trends in the rest of the world. It seems as if South Africa may yet be steered into a modernist cul de sac, substantially isolated from global post‐fordism and its related postmodernization trends. The two different paths of South Africa and Australia will be explored.