The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we haven't sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today. Frantz Fanon
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In the past, the claim to a national culture in a country helped to rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. Today, those same ideas are responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we haven't sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.

This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today. In particular, I think that our societies have outgrown this old idea of national cultures as mere symbols of statehood. In most places where there is no political propaganda or warfare going on, there is no need for nationalism.

When you live in a country where people simply live their lives without worrying about their nationality, they tend to forget about their ethnicity and they become more comfortable with one another regardless of their backgrounds. However, today we live in countries where nationalism is becoming more prominent and relevant to both governments and societies at large – North Korea being one example – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all people want to adopt those ways as their own identity.

Source: The Wretched Of The Earth

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