“Tensions of Transnationalism” by Malgorzata Fidelis was a valuable piece to consider the global influence on the formation of global movements and the gradual prominence of nationalism in legitimizing arguments against the state. Fidelis did a great job of managing multiple scales in this work, as not only do they contrast the difference of the student movements in the 60s in Poland compared to other European countries, but they also emphasize the differences between the elite youth who imagined themselves as a part of a global struggle compared to the rural populations who depicted the dissatisfaction with the state through nationalist images and arguments. I appreciated their consideration of local differences, as it was helpful to understand how people within a territorially bounded space (even if the social sciences portray them as culturally resonant) can share common concerns about their country, yet, due to their personal experiences, interact with and express these concerns in different ways. As such, Presthold’s definition of the transnational imagination and people framing local circumstances within a global historical trajectory in a manner that shapes collective desires was a useful term to add to my toolbelt. In general, I have found that reading works that problematize transnational communication rather than understanding these interactions as solely positive and empowering, as other scholars have portrayed them, has been fruitful to my understanding of the transnational perspective, especially by helping me understand their strengths and differences.
It was very insightful for my own work, reading about how different actors and parties handled this balance between the global and the national and how that shaped future discourses, especially as Poland shifted to utilizing nationalism to legitimize their claims after the state violently squashed youth protest movements and began an anti-semitic campaign that emphasized “proper” belonging to the nation based on ethnic groups and a rejection of cosmopolitan culture and incorrect forms of internationalism. In a way, this shift echoes how the right in my research essay simultaneously promotes nationalism while shaping their ideology through international communication, as their own use of global networks is deemed proper because it does not challenge the sanctity and loyalty of their respective states.
The overlap of this back-and-forth struggle in Poland is interesting when considering my own project on political movements on the right, as both Fiedelis and I study political movements that comment on the role of the state and the importance (or lack thereof) of the nation in a rapidly globalizing world. Fidelis’s focus on examining the way contemporary actors understood and articulated their feelings about a rapidly interconnecting world to interpret local events is quite resonant with my own work. Furthermore, similar to Fidelis, I also attempt to showcase the entanglement between transnational connections/networks and articulations of nationalism.
