Kiš (who was of Jewish descent) was piled on by people in the Communist intelligentsia who were ostensibly criticizing him and his literature for being exactly that term and stirring up "fake accusations of nationalism", but when the masks came off in 1988-91 turned out to be exactly the sort of nationalists they called him (and ended up praising people like Milorad Pavić who really were what they seemed on the tin). Kiš's essay has to be situated in that context. When he talks about the "national key" he is calling out the Communist party policy of ethnic parity via rotation as being an eyewash because the apparatchiks are closet people "who see themselves only in others"