New Nationalism and Old Ideologies

Valluvan argues that one core aspect of challenging the nationalist capture involves properly reckoning with its conjunctural affinity to multiple ideological repertoires, some of which we mistakenly consider to be inured from such trends. These repertoires include: classical values-liberalism; a resurgent anti-market Left communitarianism; neoliberal individualism and the particular racial pathologization of poverty that sits within its moral economy; some nominally feminist rhetorics regarding sexual freedoms and liberation; strands even of bucolic environmentalism; and, of course, a more familiar conservative nostalgia for the putative unity, stability and public morality of pre-war, colonial whiteness.