I’m discovering that the best theoretical writing on fluidity / postnationalism is being done by scholars of Basque literature. And believe me, I’ve looked everywhere. Since Zygmunt Bauman’s death, I’ve done nothing but look. And until I got into the Basques, all I found were the inane bleatings about how the erosion of the nation-state is about to bring immediate liberation and extreme wonderfulness to the oh-pressed.
I want to credit myself with an inhuman intuition and an intellectual potency of uncommon proportions and claim that I was drawn to the Basque studies because I intuited that the peculiar nature of Euskadi as a nation without borders that is not a third or second-world country positions it perfectly as a place where insights can be generated.
But that’s not even remotely true. This was nothing but a fluke.
Of course, now I’d have to start making an argument that the tiny Basque Country nobody knows about is a source of important ideas about fluidity, and nobody will want to hear it. But screw that. I’m having fun.

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