Reimagined Communities

Despite being a Beatles fan, I will freely admit that John Lennon was wrong on some things: at no point during Beatlemania did the Fab Four become bigger than Jesus, and to “imagine there’s no countries” is actually fairly hard to do– particularly after reading excerpts from Anderson’s theory on the creation of nations through cultural imagination. Imagining countries is easy to do, especially having read Anderson. Drawing upon Western historical roots that include the religious community, dynastic realms, and constructions of time and citing the importance of new information technologies, Anderson describes the “cultural artefacts that have aroused such deep attachments” of nationality and nation-ness that stemmed from “spontaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces,” a functional definition that can help frame our own thoughts on contemporary nationality.

Anderson’s basic argument, while thought-provoking, seems to contradict itself when discussing the origins of nationality. Here is the balance of Anderson’s thesis:

“I will be trying to argue that the creation of these artefacts towards the end of the eighteenth century was the spotaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces; but that, once created, they became ‘modular,’ capable of being transplated, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations” (Anderson 4).

Phew. At first, I was not going to criticize Anderson’s style– and while I will withhold judgment on the length of this sentence, Anderson’s style here does obfuscate his intent. Quite simply: where are the subjects? Nationality and nationness come from a “spontaneous distillation of historical forces,” but who is distilling these forces? The masses? The elites? The media? The same lack of subject afflicts Anderson’s clauses regarding the transplantation of a modular concept of nationality and the merger of nationality with “political and ideological constellations.” While this is, quite literally, a close reading of Anderson’s argument, it is important to consider just who is doing the work in creating nationality, as the producer has just as much effect on the product as the product (in this case, imagined nations) does on future producers.

While Anderson refuses to express it explicitly, he implies, through his focus on pbulishing, that the media played a central role in distilling nationness from historical forces. Perhaps of particular use for our class is Anderson’s examination of the role of the newspaper in promoting common cultural memory. The “newspaper as a one-day bestselling book,” to borrow Anderson’s metaphor, managed to weave a narrative of the outside world, one that readers of the same publication were likely to adopt as a “fictitious reality”– an “imagination grounded in everyday life (34-36). As newspapers and their successors, the news networks, dwindle in subscribers and viewers (at least in the United States), the common imagination of the outside world that these forces create loses its hegemony. Blogs, international news, instant communication technology such as messaging and email: all of these sources fracture the formation of an imagined community on a national scale, leaving in its wake a decentralized confederation of imagined sub-communities.

T.J. Jackson Lears has little to worry about; his essay on cultural hegemony does not turn Antonio Gramsci into the “Marxist you can take home to mother” (unless your mother is a cultural theorist). That distinction still belongs to Lennon, whose radical desire for a Nationless, Godless, Humanist Utopia finds its way into the popular culture of seemingly providential America everywhere from the soft rock music piped into dentists’ offices to the ceremonies of the Olympic Games. However, Lears’ discussion of Gramsci’s notion of “divided consciousness” resonates even more so today, particularly given the de-unification of media in the United States. With working-class Americans failing to form routine national consensus since the end of WWII, one of the outgrowths of a worsening divide in class consciousness may be an decreased ability or desire to imagine a national community. Perhaps post-nationalism will be (or has already begun to be) the 21st century’s own “spontaneous distillation” or existing historical forces.

Anderson’s Imagined Communities presents a very interesting way of seeing the formation of communities, and primarily of nations. However, considering the variety of different types of communities to which a person can belong, some of his points may take on a different dimension when discussing a community other than the nation. Additionally, I think that the topic would more appropriately be termed Expanded Communities since humans, as social animals, have always identified themselves with a community. The topics that Anderson discusses have exponentially expanded the communities to which people feel an attachment, but did not create the feelings of attachment.
For instance, religious faith has built communities ranging from tiny sects to monasteries to entire nations. Anderson claims that these religious communities were “distinct from the imagined communities of modern nations” (13) While some religions place a good deal of emphasis on using a particular language, such as Latin for Roman Catholics or Arabic for Muslims, some nations, notably France, place a heavy emphasis on the maintenance of the purity of its language as well. Also, religions and nations both are sources of loyalty, and exclusionary or inclusionary tactics. Wars have been fought over religion and nationalism. The languages that impart feelings of “unique[ness]” to fortify the community can be sacred or national(13).
Anderson’s section on “The Dynastic Realm” posed two significant problems for me. First, the idea that dynasties’ “legitimacy derives from divinity, not from populations” suggests that populations have no control over who receives legitimacy. After all, legitimacy, like power and right-of-way, must be given, not taken. The kings may have claimed that their gods put them on the throne, but without the people’s consent, the ascension never would have happened. Many different societies have seen divinely appointed rulers torn down by their subjects when they lose their legitimacy due to famine or disease. Though the next ruler often claimed that his predecessor’s divine right had been transferred to him, the transfer of power and legitimacy would not have occurred without a public uprising. Second, the topic of dynastic marriages does not prove that combining people under one ruler makes them feel like a community. Rulers just tacked a few more nations onto his title instead of creating a new national title. After the empire dissolved, the nations would roughly regain their previous standings and borders. Therefore, the individual nations had not combined into a larger community to the extent of foregoing national loyalties.
In Lears’ Cultural Hegemony, he seems to illustrate that line to which I inferred earlier between the imposition of culture (or legitimacy as before) by the ruling class and the acceptance of that culture by the lower class. This concept is seen frequently in American society. The names that wealthy people are giving to their children now will be used by poor people in twenty years. No one is forcing people to adopt certain names or spellings, but the desire to move up in social ranks urges people to emulate upper class culture. Often, as with the illiterate miner, people may not understand why they hold certain values or opinions, even when those values or opinions are contradictory to their lifestyles.
The aspects of their culture that allows them to identify with their community are often retained. For instance, people often keep the same church and find the same foods comforting after having moved to a higher social strata. However, one of the first aspects to change is language. Material goods can be bought, but language is learned at such a young age that it is ingrained in the mind. It is not as reflective of to which class a person belongs as it is reflective of from which class a person came.