Imagined Communities

Imagined Communitiesby Benedict Anderson, 1983

Ch 1: IntroductionNation, Nationality, and Nationalism are innovative, recent concepts, artifacts created in late 18th century due to historical circumstance, but easily transplanted to the rest of the worldlack definitions and defy analysis, arouse deep attachments

Three paradoxes of Nationalism1) Objective modernity of nations vs. their subjective antiquity2) Formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept vs. irremediable particularity of concrete manifestations of nationality3) Political power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and incoherence

Definition of nationAn imagined political community that is both limited and sovereignImagined because members cannot all know each otherLimited because no nation encompasses all of mankind, nor even aspires toSovereign because nations came into being during Enlightenment and strive for freedomCommunity because a nation is conceived of as a horizontal comradeship of equals

Why?Why is it that these limited imaginings of fraternity, which have existed for only two centuries, have inspired millions of people to be willing kill and die for them?The answers lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.

Ch2: Cultural RootsWhat was happening in Europe in 18th c?Religious modes of thought were decliningEnlightenment and rationalist secularism were prevailingThe idea of a nation gave a new sense of continuity to the cycle of life and deathNations imagine themselves as an expression of a glorious past headed toward a limitless future

Cultural SystemsPrior to the advent of nationality, the primary cultural systems were:Religious communitiesorDynastic realms

Religious community:linked by a sacred language/text which was superior to vernacularspotentially encompass all humanity via conversionsuggested a unique hierarchy, unique access to truthultimately eroded by world exploration/discovery of other great religions and vernacularization

Dynastic realm:Kingdoms focused on centers, not bordersRuled over heterogeneous populationsSexual politics of dynastic marriagePopulation is subjects, not citizens, part of a divine hierarchyPrinciple of automatic legitimacy withered away and dynasties gradually took on nationalist features

Apprehensions of timeReligious world view based on concept of time where there is a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous presentInnovation of novel and newspaper create a new concept of homogeneous empty time and a new concept of simultaneityA nation can move calendrically through this new time

CH3: The Origins of National Consciousness Development of print as a commodity makes it possible for a community that is horizontal-secular, transverse-time to existCapitalism helped to make the concept of nation popular

Print-capitalismPrinting begins in 15th c, aimed at Latin readers, but this market was saturated after 150 years, and focus shifted to vernacularsEven earlier, use of administrative vernaculars began spreading in EuropePrint gave language a new fixity, helped create standards and build an image of antiquity

Ch5: Old Languages, New Models Between 1820 & 1920 national print-languages were of central ideological and political importance in EuropeThe concept of nation, once invented, became widely available for pirating, and was imported to a diverse array of situations and ideologies

Europes sense of self and other16th c Europe discovered other civilizations, and that it was only one among many civilizations, and not necessarily the Chosen or the best18th c Comparative linguistics and investigation of proto-languages changes concepts of history, 19th c linguistic development of vernacularsLanguages belonged no longer to God, but to their speakers, and dictionaries and grammars treat all languages as equals

Bourgeoisie and Literacy expand19th c Europe major expansion of state bureaucracies and middle classesCohesion of bourgeoisie facilitated by literacyVernacular languages of state assumed greater power, first displacing Latin and then minority languages

Equality of compatriotsThe new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism had to invite the masses into history NairnIf Hungarians deserved a national state, then that meant Hungarians, all of them; it meant a state in which the ultimate locus of sovereignty had to be the collectivity of Hungarian-speakers and readers; and, in due course, the liquidation of serfdom, the promotion of popular education, the expansion of suffrage, and so on. Anderson

Ch8: Patriotism & RacismMany today find nationalism to be pathological, with affinities to racism, hatred of the Other, butNations inspire self-sacrificing love, shown in poetry, prose, music, arts.

The political love of nationalismThis love is expressed in terms of kinship or home, ties that are natural and unchosen, like skin-color and parentageBecause these ties are unchosen, they have about them a halo of disinterestedness and can require sacrifice

Love & deathThe fated link to a nation, because it is disinterested, has a purity that sanctions the idea of an ultimate sacrificeThe 20th c is unprecedented in the number of people who lay down their lives for their nationsDeath serves also to symbolize eternal continuity for a nation

Just for comparisonDying for something likeThe Democratic PartyThe American Medical AssociationAmnesty InternationalThese would not have the same cachet because they are bodies we can join or leave

More on deathWar monuments, holidays commemorating battles, holocausts, genocides, and even fraternal (civil) wars serve to bond a nation to a historyTombs for the Unknown Soldier are particularly powerful, for they also reinforce the image of equality

LanguageA language is a powerful means to root a nation to a past because a language looms up from the past without any birthdate of its own, and suggests a community between a contemporary society and its dead ancestorsPoetry and songs, as national anthems create a simultaneous community of selfless voices

Imagined objects of affectionthe objects ofthese attachments are imagined -- anonymous, faceless fellow-Tagalogs, exterminated tribes, Mother RussiaBut amor patriae does not differ in this respect from the other affections, in which there is always an element of fond imaginingWhat the eye is to the loverlanguageis to the patriot. Through that language, encountered at mothers knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures are dreamed.

Ch10: Census, Map, MuseumThese three institutions shaped the way in which states imagined their dominion: the nature of the human beings they ruled, the geography of their domain, and the legitimacy of their ancestry

A censusReifies identities into singular, mutually-exclusive categoriesSuggests a quantity of identical units

A mapFocuses on borders rather than on centersViews each as a country from above, filling the space of the planetThe shape of a country becomes a logo that penetrates national imagination as an emblem of the country

A museumSuggests a political inheritance of historical connections and restored monuments that serve as regalia for the modern state

The census, map, and museumServed as a totalizing classificatory grid, which could be appliedto anything under the states real or contemplated controlAssumed that the world was made up of replicable plurals, that everything had a serial number

Ch11: Memory and ForgettingThe naming of towns such as New York, Nueva Leon, Nouvelle Orleans, Nova Lisboa, Nieuw Amsterdam -- suggest that it was possible to imagine a vast parallelism of simultaneous states, inspiring revolutions and nationalism in the Americas

New nationalisms in EuropeImagine themselves as awakening from sleepThis awakening opened up an immense antiquity behind the epochal sleepAwakening also provided a crucial metaphorical link between the new European nationalisms and language

Awakening to languageSleep permitted those intelligentsias and bourgeoisies who were becoming conscious of themselves as Czechs, Hungarians or Finns to figure their study of Czech, Magyar, or Finnish languages, folklores, and musics as rediscovering something deep-down and always knownDespite the fact that the vanguard was often people unaccustomed to using the vernaculars, and that previously no one had thought of languages as belonging to territorially defined groups