Race, Religion and Refugees: Arendt’s Ambiguous Analysis of Nation-States

Abstract

While there may be fewer nation-states across the globe, the logic that led to the creation of the nation-state remains ever present. According to Arendt, the nation-state is, from its start ‘faulty’. I begin by inquiring why this is the case according to Arendt. Next, I turn to my recent work in conceptual history on the intersection of the categories of race and religion in Europe. My contention is that race and religion are co-constructed categories and potentially exclusionary. The role of the race-religion constellation, I contend, has been masked in the creation of the Westphalian nation-state, and only when made visible, can we truly understand the ‘faulty start’ of the nation-state. I develop this in section two and then return to Arendt who, in my view, was unable to recognise this because of the illusion and lure of ‘secularism’ and her unacknowledged Jewish exceptionalism. Arendt affirms the secular myth which relies on a problematic binary between religion/secular, a binary that is used to justify assimilation, racism and dehumanisation – past and present. It is this blind spot, which is widely shared today in academic and political circles, that prevented Arendt from seeing the constitutive relationship between the race-religion-state which not only produces ‘the refugee’ but constructs ‘the other’. In this vein, this blind spot sustains state/structural Christian power and privilege. To demonstrate this, I return to Origins as well as her essay We Refugees. I argue that this blind spot must be rectified if we are to understand and challenge the ongoing denial of plurality and the exclusion of difference from the nationstate, as well as the different faces of contemporary racism.