Abstract

The mise en scène of resistance against a global society. An analysis of (a)symmetrical distinctions The concept of oikophobia is often used as an answer and rebuttal to the accusation of xenophobia that is often raised against nationalist groups. Oikophobia denounces the image of nationalists as people who first and foremost hate what is foreign or the foreigner. They describe themselves, on the contrary, as having a strong attachment to their own culture and their opponents as having a fear of or aversion to their origin or (cultural) home. This game of asymmetrical descriptions is the subject of this contribution, which focuses on the logic of distinctions that lies behind this resistance to (hostile) images. What then also lights up is that the global polarization we see between nationalist and cosmopolitan movements also concerns the status of asymmetrical distinctions themselves. The nationalist resistance to world society can be interpreted as a resistance to the becoming symmetrical of existential distinctions, i.e. distinctions that create identity and belonging.