Search

Stefano Bianchini's comprehensive work Liquid Nationalism focuses on the frequent redrawing of state borders, especially in Eastern Europe, the fluidity of the contours of nations, and the vagaries and idiosyncratic nature of political changes in the European continent from the 19th to the 21st centuries. The title of this work takes its inspiration from Zygmunt Bauman's famous work, Liquid Modernity (2000). Bauman's work, which was published in 2000 in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and also Yugoslavia that resulted in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, first posits the obvious – that fluids cannot hold their shape as solids do because the structural arrangements of solids, unlike liquids, bind their atoms together. Bauman characterizes solidity as having hardened contours and belonging to a pre-modernity with its unchanging or slowly changing social, political, and economic mores. Modernity, on the other hand, is likened to liquids in that, like time, there is a fluidity and a fast-moving quality associated with it brought about by the European Enlightenment and the development of democracy and capitalism. As he states, "When describing solids, one may ignore time altogether; in describing fluids, to leave time out of account would be a grievous mistake. Descriptions of fluids are all snapshots, and they need a date at the bottom of the picture" (2). The lightness of touch, the quickness of response to changing times that liquid modernity promised, he points out, has resulted in postmodernity or late capitalism as "deregulation, liberalization, 'flexibilization', increased fluidity, unbridling the financial, real estate and labor markets, easing the tax burden, etc." (5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe is Stefano Bianchini's magnum opus , reflecting a lifetime of working on the issues of ethno-nationalism in Europe, from Southeast Europe through Central Europe and the former Soviet space to all of western Europe. It is more than a book; it is an entire seminar, ranging not only geographically but also historically, from the Enlightenment to the second decade of the 21st century. Simply a list of the gems I learned would usurp all the space I have been given for this essay and much more. I choose to focus on one small part, what I take to be the primary motivation behind this book, namely his anguish over the lessons for western Europe "not learned from the dismemberment of Yugoslavia" (the title of Chapter 10), a case he knows so well. That chapter then begins with a quotation from another specialist on Yugoslavia, Jacques Rupnik, in Le Monde in 2014, "the greatest obstacle to the Europeanization of the Balkans is the Balkanization of Europe" (185). Nor are Bianchini and Rupnik alone in this concern. Already in 2012, Ivan Krastev convened two parallel seminars at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna on what he called, "The Logics of Disintegration" – of the Soviet case (Part I) and the Habsburg and Yugoslav cases (Part II) and their lessons for the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a long career of research into the history of nationalism and ethnic politics in Europe, Stefano Bianchini has written an erudite book on how the nationality factor affects European politics – state formation and state partition in particular. He presents a wide-ranging survey over la longue durée, and also argues a case: that state partitioning should be avoided whenever possible, as it creates many more problems than it solves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]