PPT Imagined Communities

7/30/2019 PPT Imagined Communities

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Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism-Benedict Anderson


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Contents

I. Introduction

II. Cultural Roots

III. The Origins of National Consciousness

IV. Creole Pioneers


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Contents

V. Old Languages, New Models

VI. Official Nationalism and Imperialism

VII. The Last Wave


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Contents

VIII. Patriotism and Racism

IX. The Angel of History

X. Census, Map, Museum

XI. Memory and Forgetting


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Introduction

Aim:

To offer some tentative suggestions for a

more satisfactory interpretation of the'anomaly' of nationalism.

Topic:Nationality, nation-ness, and nationalism


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Concepts and Definition

Nation: It is an imagined political

community that is imagined as both

inherently limited and sovereign. It is imaginedbecause members will never

know most of their fellow-members, yet in

the minds of each lives the image of theircommunion.

Introduction


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Concepts and Definition

It is limitedbecause it has finite, though elastic

boundaries beyond which lies other nations.

It is sovereign because it came to maturity at astage of human history when freedom was a

rare and precious ideal.

It is imagined as a communitybecause it isconceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.

Introduction


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Cultural Roots

Changes in the following created the

conditions under which nationalism may have

emerged: THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY

THE DYNASTIC REALM

APPREHENSIONS OF TIME


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The Religious Community

Decline of belief that there is a sacred text

that irrevocably embodies truth.

Changes in the religious community gaverise to the belief that nationalism was a

secular solution to the question of

continuity that has been answeredpreviously, by religious faith.

Cultural Roots


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The Religious Community

Cause of the fall:

Effect of the explorations of the non-

European world

Gradual demotion of the sacred language.

Old sacred languages were fragmented,

vernaculars gained popularity.

Cultural Roots


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The Dynastic Realm

The principle of Legitimacy of sacral

monarchy began its slow decline.

Decline of the belief that society wasnaturally organized around and under high

centers-monarchs who ruled under some

form of cosmological dispensation or divineprovidence.

Cultural Roots


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Apprehensions Of Time The idea of a sociological organism moving

calendrically through homogenous, empty

time is a precise analogue of the idea ofthe nation, which also is conceived as a

solid community moving steadily through

history.

Cultural Roots


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Two forms of imagining in Europe, 18th

century: The Novel

The Newspaper

Provided technical means for representing

the nation, an imagined community.

Cultural Roots


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The Origins of National

ConsciousnessCultural consciousness took the form of

nationalism due to the interaction between: a system of production and productive relations

(capitalism)

a technology of communications (print)

the fatality of human linguistic diversity


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Capitalism

The expansion of the book market aided by:

change in the character of Latin

the impact of the Reformation, which led tothe mass production of religious texts

the spread of particular vernaculars as

instruments of administrative centralization

The Origins of National Consciousness


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Print

Print languages laid the foundation for nationalconsciousness by:

creating unified fields of exchange and

communication giving a new fixity to language

they created languages-of-power of a kind

different from the older administrativevernaculars

The Origins of National Consciousness


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Creole Pioneers Creole States: communities that were formed

and led by people who shared a common

language and common descent with those

against whom they fought.

Creole (Criollo)- person of (at least

theoretically) pure European descent butborn anywhere outside Europe.


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Factors Of Latin American Nationalism

the tightening of control on creolecommunities

Liberalism and the Enlightenment

Creole Pioneers

The first nations to conceive nation-ness were not in Western Europe

but in Latin America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.


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Factors

the improvement of trans-Atlanticcommunication

the willingness of the ''comfortable classes'' tomake sacrifices in the name of freedom

creole functionaries pilgrimage

provincial creole printmen and the rise of thenewspaper

Creole Pioneers


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Old Languages, New Models Onset of the age of nationalism in Europe.

Two striking features:

National print-languages were of centralideological and political importance.

the nation became something capable of

being consciously aspired to from early ondue to the ''models'' set forth by the

Creole pioneers.


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Vernacular print capitalism is important to

class formation, particularly the rise of thebourgeoisie.

The nobility then were potential consumers

of the philological revolution.

As soon as the events of the Americas

reached the European nobility through

print, the imagined realities of nation-states

became models for Europe.

Old Languages, New Models


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Official Nationalism and

Imperialism From about the middle of the 19th C there

developed ''official nationalism'' in Europe. The oligarchys prime models were the self

naturalizing dynasties of Europe.

Official nationalism concealed a discrepancy

between nation and dynastic realm.

Official Nationalism and Imperialism


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The Last Wave The last wave of nationalism was the

transformation of the colonial-state to the

national state facilitated by:

increase in physical mobility

increasing bureaucratization

the spread of modern-style education

The Last Wave


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Official nationalism brought the idea of

''national histories'' into the consciousnessof the colonized.

The Last Wave arose in a period of world

history in which the nation was becoming

an international norm and in which it

became possible to ''model'' nationness in

a more complex way than before.

The Last Wave


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Patriotism and Racism

imagined modeled adapted transformed

Patriotism and Racism

Nation came to be:

Peoples attachment for the invention of their

imagination, why they are ready to die fortheir inventions?


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Nation-ness is ''natural'' in the sense that it

contains something that is not chosen(much like gender, skin color, and

parentage).

Nationalism thinks in terms of historicaldestinies, while racism dreams of eternal

contaminations whose origins lie outside of

history.

Nation was conceived by language, not in

blood.Patriotism and Racism


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The Angel of History Nationalism has undergone a process of

modulation and adaptation, according to

different eras, political regimes, economies,

and social structures.

To limit or prevent wars, nationalism is the

pathology of modern developmental history,

do our slow best to learn the real, and

imagine experience of the past.

The Angel of History


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Census, Map, Museum These three institutions of power profoundly

shaped the way in which the colonial state

imagined its dominion:

CENSUS

MAP

MUSEUM

Census, Map, Museum


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CENSUS

Created ''identities'' imagined by the

classifying mind of the colonial state

The fiction of the census is that everyone isin it, and that everyone has one, and only

one, extremely clear place.

Census, Map, Museum


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MAP

Basis of a totalizing classification.

Designed to demonstrate the antiquity of

specific, tightly bounded territorial units. Served as a logo, instantly recognizable

and visible everywhere, that formed a

powerful emblem for the anticolonial

nationalism being born.

Census, Map, Museum


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MUSEUM

Allowed the state to appear as the guardian

of tradition, and this power was enhanced

by the infinite reproducibility of the symbolsof tradition

Census, Map, Museum


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Memory and Forgetting The 19th century imagining of fraternity,

emerging naturally in a society fractured by

the most violent racial, class and regional

antagonism, show that nationalismrepresented a new form of consciousness.

Selective 'historical' memory and forgettingis an integral part of nation creation.

Memory and Forgetting


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1. How do you understand nation as defined

by Benedict Anderson?

2. What do you think is the significance in the

decline of religious and dynastic influences

in the rise of nationalism?

3. What do you think was the most powerful

factor that led to imaginings that produced a

community, called nation?

4. What is the role of racism in erasing nation-

ness and nationalism?

Discussion Questions:

Documents

PPT Imagined Communities