>There's nothing particularly vague about the deformation that Nestor was
>referring to. Allende could have been overthrown without the U.S.
>intervention, but not so easily. ...
no doubt. but this is the point. US intervention, on the side of the failing ruling class of Chile, was not an instance of the deformation of chilean nationalism as it is in your and nestor's terms, but rather the use of US resources and force in the service of putting down anti-capitalist movements and reforms in chile, and by implication in the region. so, i'll repeat what i've been saying all along: what was "vague" was NOT the political and economic realities that led to pinochet's rule, but rather nestor's invokation of an imaginary nationalism that might have existed outside imperial and colonial history had latin america, africa, etc had their own periods of absolutism. ie., THIS NOSTALGIA is rhetorical, necessarily vague and ignores the centrality of absolutism in constructing the enclosures which formed the basis both of nation-states and without which proletarianisation would have been impossible. (read perry anderson's _lineages of the absolutist state_, for instance, as well as linebaugh's most recent book whose title and co-author i forget.) and, since this isn't a set of co-ordinates one intends to plug into a time machine to hurtle entire regions back to the middle ages, it's nothing more than an apologia for the capitalist state.
in short, you insist that the nation-state is an instrument capable of being wielded by whomever "takes power".
>For instance, a question like that already implies a kind of Platonic
>essence. There's no such thing as an ideal type of nation.
indeed. but see, i'm not the one insisting on nationalism, and nor do i cite wishful 'if-we-only-had-our-real-nationalisms' posts to defend my arguments. given the centrality of nationalism to your arguments, the onus is on you to define it; and defining it in the terms of 'it's a result of history' means absolutely nothing. might i suggest de brunhoff's _state, capital and economic policy_ for something amounting to a more precise notion of the scope of state action.
Angela