“Imagined Communities”: An Imaginary Critique of Nationalism

From The Nationalism Project:

* Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition ed.
London and New York: Verso, 1991. Summary: Perhaps the most read book about nationalism. Anderson adheres to the modernization argument explaining the origin of nations. In other words, nations developed as a necessary component of industrial society, though neither “economic interest, Liberalism, nor Enlightenment could, or did, create in themselves the kind, or shape, or imagined community” (65). Breaking from Gellner (the Nations and Nationalism appeared in the same year (1983) as the first edition of Imagined Communities), Anderson places greater emphasis on the constructed nature of culture and on the role of print capitalism to the development of nations. On the cultural front, Anderson argues that pre-national culture was religious culture. Nations replaced this religious culture with their own uniquely constructed national cultures. Anderson places print capitalism at the very heart of his theory, claiming that it was print capitalism which allowed for the development of these new national cultures and created the specific formations which the new nations would eventually take. [E. Zuelow]

It’s too bad a detachment of Jews weren’t present on the beaches of Normandy to prevent the Germans and English from killing each other: “It’s alright! You’re all from imagined communities! It’s all just a big bad dream!”

Two false distinctions: “Nationalism” as a psychological phenomenon would be the successor to tribalism, which was universal across history. Pretending that “nationalism” starts like a flash with the rise of the Nation-state is just ingenuine.

Secondly, an “imagined” community. Everyone has to know everyone else face-to-face or it’s not a real community. From whence derives the necessity for that distinction? According to Anderson, none of us has ever experienced life in a “non-imagined community”. Even people who live in small European villages where all their friends are also “cousins”, these people too live in imagined communities, because they don’t know every single person in their entire village.

pre-national culture was religious culture

It’s not fair to critique a review, having not read the book, but I thought it worthwhile to say here that religious culture was, in former times, also synonymous with tribal culture. How did this man compress so much dishonesty into just one book?

Posted by Potential Frolic on Monday, July 23, 2007 at 08:58 AM in
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Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on July 23, 2007, 09:40 AM | #

How did this man compress so much dishonesty into just one book?

Through having no knowledge of Darwinism in particular and nationalism in general.

Posted by second class citizen on July 23, 2007, 10:25 AM | #

Nice post.

O/T, but not to MR:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3396094

This is being displayed prominently in google news, with headings like “Brain no object to French Civil Servant” “Brain no barrier” etc.

About halfway down or not at all the articles mention he has an IQ of 75. “Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.” 75 isn’t just below average. It’s in the bottom 2% of Euro society. It wouldn’t pass the bar for the US military.

The bar must be pretty low for the French Civil Service then! Either that, or it’s just very difficult to fire someone. In most nations with his average IQ, the technology is usually not much more advanced than the spear. In at least one article, his IQ of 75 isn’t even mentioned.
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=27900

I suppose we are being prepped that even though we can now use the MRI to accurately measure brain size, and that brain size is well correlated with IQ, even though Gould’s arguments about brain size measuring with skulls and sand have been demolished, that was in fact irrelevant all along. Because here we have an example of someone with an IQ of 75 “leading a normal life doing a government job”. Let’s just ignore those ghettos forming in our neighborhood. Combine with a good dose of the classics and the right environment - they’ll make perfect Europeans!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 26, 2007, 01:49 PM | #

Friedrich Braun asks a very good, simple question of those who counsel intermarriage between Finns and non-Finnish immigrants: What’s in it for the Finns?

Posted by calvin on July 26, 2007, 09:30 PM | #

The build up of fluid in the brain is more likely to result in compression of the brain than an actual decrease in the volume of the brain. I believe that studies of people whose brains are damaged in accidents indicate that skills and aptitudes normally associated with certain areas of the brain can, to an extent, be relocated to different areas. If the fluid sac increase gradually throughout the formative years of this individual it seems possible that the brain simply learned to adapt the capacity it had to the skills it required.

The citation of low IQ and the seemingly paradoxical relationship this had with the subject’s status as a civil servant, a status which in turn seems to bestow the mantel of intellectual competence, is simply indicative of the general publics ignorance of the scope of the civil service and the low intellectual aptitudes that are required for the fulfilment of many of its offices.

It is a maxim of the legal profession that hard cases make bad laws; this is simply a way of saying that exceptions tend to prove the rule rather more than they tend to disprove the rule and this, by any standards, is an exceptional case.

I would wager half of my assets on the assumption that the percentage of doctors, lawyers and scientists with an IQ bellow that of 110 is virtually zero and that most of the people who fulfil these capacities to any degree of competence have IQs that are more in the region of 130.

Posted by giles of ham on July 28, 2007, 03:16 AM | #

“Nationalism as a psychological phenomenon would be the successor to tribalism, which was universal across history”

That actually agrees with the premise of the above referenced book. It comes down to this- people IMAGINE most of what they think they know. I live in Spain, where the descendants of Sancho Panza imagine they are part of the Spain that was Don Quijote.

(SP- 5’4” wide as he is tall, a classic type o f med-alpine herder/peasant” vs DQ- tall lean Nordic noble type, intellectual and soldierly)

Don Quijote and his kind diminished greatly over the last 500 years and the Sanchos grew and grew. But Sancho today will tell me all about how “we had an empire”. And that is the work of print capitalism- people have been habituated into the idea of an inheritance they dont have.

They are still tribalisitic, it just hass been directed onto something very abstract and synthetic. The real authentic nationalism is for the local footbal team.

Posted by PF on July 28, 2007, 04:36 AM | #

Interesting comments, giles!

I don’t have an answer for you, as I’m still thinking through the relationship between analytical history and politically motivated history and don’t know where this book fits. Is it a purely analytical approach? Or is it a typical Jewish exposition of history?

I hope we’ll be able to discuss the question of inheritance, legitimate and illegitimate, as well as your thoughts on the Sancho/Quixote dichotomy, in future posts on this blog.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 01, 2007, 12:34 PM | #

The strict answer to Giles is this:-

Do Sancho and Don exhibit more genetic similarity with eachother than with anyone else on the planet?

However, since we cannot all order ourselves according to genetic assays, we must make do with secondary markers ... visible phenotypic, historical, cultural.

It is NOT a matter of imagining anything. It is a matter of knowing and trusting. Ask a Jew.