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By: Michaele L Ferguson

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Simon Stow invokes Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations to distinguish his account of Black patriotism from that offered by Maxwell Burkey and Alex Zamalin.2 Where Burkey and Zamalin associate Black patriotism with “being a certain way” and “internalizing [an] identity,” Stow rejects what he characterizes as their “personal orientation” in favor of conceptualizing patriotism as a language. By appealing to the Philosophical Investigations, Stow implies that his theory of the language of patriotism will reject the referential picture of language that Wittgenstein famously argued in that book held philosophers captive. Nonetheless, he quickly moves away from thinking about how the “word ‘patriotic’. . . is used.” Instead, he shifts to thinking about patriotism as “signified by a number of words, sounds, symbols, or ideals associated with a nation.”3 As I have argued elsewhere, this focus on the referents of attachment is characteristic of much democratic theory on patriotism, and misunderstands patriotism as fixed, rather than as a dynamic and agonistic activity of collective meaning-making.4 While Stow also wishes to give such an account of patriotism, his continued attachment to a referential logic leads him to offer an account of patriotism that is much more conventional than I think he (dare I say it?) intends. As a result, he holds up Black patriotism as exceptional, when in fact it illustrates the rule that reveals the language of patriotism to be unanchored to any particular referents. All of us have the capacity to play with the language of patriotism, to subvert conventional views of patriotism, to signal about patriotism with a double-voice, because the language of patriotism—like all language—is ever available for subversion and reconfiguration.