Database nationalism

Abstract

This chapter uses Azuma Hiroki’s postmodern database theory to argue that nationalist symbols have become ‘database-ised’: disaggregated into component parts, which then become elements in the pop-cultural database of images. Pop-culture texts can then pick freely from this database and mix elements in ways that are incongruous and surprising. The result is that apparently nationalist symbols are deployed disconnected from their traditional narratives. Consequently, these texts can rehabilitate nationalist symbols by juxtaposing them with new discourses, or they can subvert them by doing the same. As is not uncommon in postmodern culture, these pop-cultural texts often paradoxically do both simultaneously.