Imagined Communities - Essay Example

Give a critical close reading of Benedict Andersons Introduction to his Imagined Communities. I. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1993)suggests that as imagined communities, nations are not real. In addition, the loyalty to the nation and the willingness to die for the nation are possibly more widespread than any other human allegiance. According to Anderson, the nation is: …imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deed, horizontal comradeship.

Ultimately, it is the fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. (7) An important assertion here is that the word “imagined” is not the same as fake, as Anderson took pains in emphasizing that his use of the word is anthropological. (6) II. Anderson presented his concept of imagined nationhood by differentiating between imagined communities and real or true communities through his assertion that the only true communities are those that are based on the face-to-face interactions of all members.

Therefore, any claim to the existence of a community among a large and dispersed group of human beings must rest upon imagining it as a certain type of Gemeinschaft. (Anderson 143) In his notion of imagined communities, Anderson combines Hegelian and Parsonian images in explaining the rise of nationalism as the consequence of large historical forces. Particularly, the rise of nationalism to ideological dominance from this perspective is a consequence of a Hegelian process which is understood only in retrospect, the imagining of a community as a nation is not originally self-conscious.

Anderson derives the historical origins of nationalism from the rise, decline, and fall of the dynastic empires, namely, Spain, England, Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Empire; and from the opposition of subject peoples, subordinate linguistic groups, and surviving non-European sovereignties. III. Many observers hail Anderson’s position on nationalism. For instance, Jonathan Culler believed that it “has the rightness and efficiency of a classic.” (p. 20) Indeed, Anderson addresses the question in regard to the affinity that we feel towards people we have never met or with different backgrounds as we have.

The concept of “imagined communities” provides an invaluable insight in understanding nationalism particularly in its relationship with modernity and technology as well as its significance in global phenomenon such as revolutions and globalization. The problem that I see with Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, however, is that it fails to problematize the community because he makes a somewhat false distinction between the “real” community inhabited by people and the “imagined” community inhabited by their nationalist devotions.

By assuming that nationalism flattens hierarchies, Anderson ignored the ways in which communal tensions actually find expression in discourses that characterize national identity. This problem is seen particularly when he emphasized that nationalism is separate from the politics of ethnicity. (Chatterjee, p. 128) I am siding with the argument of Marc Redfield here, who stated that “the nation, like one’s own death, cannot be imagined and can only be imagined; inevitably, if often cheesily, it partakes of the discourse of the sublime.” (p. 62) The idea is that nationalism or nationhood is not to be separated from the concept of the nation-state because as Redfield posits, it represents the latter.

It is imagined, yes. But such imagination must be represented or symbolized in order to be alive. Work Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1993. Culler, Jonathan, Anderson and the Novel, diacritics, 29;4, 1999, p20-39. Chatterjee, Patha, Andersons Utopia, diacritics, 29;4, 1999, p128-134. Marc Redfield, Imagi-Nation: The Imagined Community and the Aesthetics of Mourning, diacritics, 29;4, 1999, p58-83.