Interrupting mythic community

Abstract

If nation is increasingly perceived as a less than honourable institution formed through war, invasion and geo-political territorialisation, and government is widely denounced as the site of political intrigue and the means of subjectification of citizen-voters, community appears to escape this critique and to be viewed as an idyllic formation based on bonds of affinity. However, this romancing of community is disrupted by trans-cultural and sub-cultural formations that expose the fantasy of harmonious, homogenous community. While community is often conceived as arising organically from familial, tribal or cultural similarity, or as constituted through a common history and shared cultural institutions, this totalising conception of community is interrupted by the demands of difference and heterogeneity and by a questioning of the idyll of community authenticated in myths of archaic origin