Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Commu
nities
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
-Benedict
Anderson
Contents
I. Introduction
II. Cultural Roots
III. The Origins of National
Consciousness
IV. Creole Pioneers
Contents
V. Old Languages, New Models
VI. Official Nationalism and
Imperialism
VII. The Last Wave
Contents
VIII. Patriotism and Racism
IX. The Angel of History
X. Census, Map, Museum
XI. Memory and Forgetting
Introduction
Aim:
To offer some tentative suggestions for a
more satisfactory interpretation of the
'anomaly' of nationalism.
Topic:
Nationality, nation-ness, and nationalism
Cultural Roots
Changes in the following created the
conditions under which nationalism may have
emerged:
THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
THE DYNASTIC REALM
APPREHENSIONS OF TIME
Cultural Roots
Apprehensions Of Time
The idea of a sociological organism moving
calendrically through homogenous, empty
time is a precise analogue of the idea of
the nation, which also is conceived as a
solid community moving steadily through
history.
Cultural Roots
Cultural Roots
The Origins of
National
Consciousness
Cultural 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
Capitalism
The expansion of the book market aided by:
change in the character of Latin
the impact of the Reformation, which led to
the mass production of religious texts
the spread of particular vernaculars as
instruments of administrative centralization
Print
Print languages laid the foundation for national
consciousness 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 administrative
vernaculars
The Origins of National Consciousness
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 but
born anywhere outside Europe.
Creole Pioneers
Factors
the improvement of trans-Atlantic
communication
the willingness of the ''comfortable classes''
to make sacrifices in the name of freedom
creole functionaries pilgrimage
provincial creole printmen and the rise of the
newspaper
Creole Pioneers
Old Languages,
New Models
Onset of the age of nationalism in Europe.
Two striking features:
National print-languages were of central
ideological and political importance.
the nation became something capable of
being consciously aspired to from early on
due to the ''models'' set forth by the
Creole pioneers.
Official Nationalism
and Imperialism
Patriotism and
Racism
Nation came to be:
imagined
modeled
adapted
transformed
The Angel of
History
Census, Map,
Museum
These three institutions of power profoundly
shaped the way in which the colonial state
imagined its dominion:
CENSUS
MAP
MUSEUM
CENSUS
Created ''identities'' imagined by the
classifying mind of the colonial state
The fiction of the census is that everyone is
in it, and that everyone has one, and only
one, extremely clear place.
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
MUSEUM
Allowed the state to appear as the
guardian of tradition, and this power was
enhanced by the infinite reproducibility of
the symbols of tradition
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 nationalism
represented a new form of consciousness.
Selective 'historical' memory and forgetting
is an integral part of nation creation.
Memory and Forgetting
Discussion Questions: