Introducing nietzsche to the study of nations

Abstract

According to Lyotard, modernity can be identified by the pre‐eminence of the meta‐narrative, which holds out the promise of the realization of truth if the correct scientific methods and axioms are applied to the object of inquiry. This article commences by revealing the ways in which the study of nation formation has been dominated by two such meta‐narratives, contextualism (labelled elsewhere as primordialism) and constructionism (or modernism). It goes on to show how these have limited the study of nations. Following a survey of accounts of nation formation, the article considers how a Nietzschean understanding of perspectives can be used to study nation formation, overcoming the problems of the meta‐narrative.