Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism Paperback – September 13, 2016

Imagined Communities is the progenitor for a whole literature on the genealogy of nationalism. It deserves to be controversial, as its unremitting assault on a natural basis for nationalism is done with some hand waving. But, in its essentials, I found myself agreeing with a writer from the Marxist-Critical school; showing its surprisingly fecundity even to those, like me, who oppose it.Essentially, its argument is that before the Enlightenment and Romantic eras there was no sense of belonging to a nation. Dialects made conversation near impossible between members of the same kingdom and men were more likely to identify with their fellow believers than their respective nationality.With the ebbing of religious authority, states arose with an interest in promoting a national ethos. Printing tended to standardize language, newspapers established a mode of seeing simultaneity between events across one’s linguistic tribe and museums and cultural sites began to embody the pride of the nation. These effects were transferred to the colonized in the twentieth century although there were precursors of European nationalism in many early states of what is now called the developing world.I have just a couple of difficulties with Anderson. First, it seems like his intent is to cooperate in destroying pillar by pillar the foundations of the modern West. While some Marxists criticize the traditional family, others choose to criticize the economic structure and Anderson tries to undermine an emotional connection to the nation. As someone who sees the flaws in our culture and heritage but would like to see them preserved, I can’t but disagree.Secondly, anyone with knowledge of ancients texts knows how strong a similar sense of nationalism was present. How could Pericles’ speech to the Athenians have been been possible if there wasn’t a sense of pride in the Delian League?And how can Anderson not mention the Jewish people? Is there a part of the Hebrew Bible that doesn’t show a brotherhood of Jews and a love for the land of Zion? A love which is, sad to say, again being persecuted today.But I did find myself in agreement with the book’s central idea: modern nationalism is a sui generis idea spread throughout the world primarily in the nineteenth century. It does beget something of an imagined community in which we are supposed to regard all 330M Americans as part of our community even though we have never met or heard of the vast majority. Thus, I do recommend it to all who are intellectually open minded.

Anderson highlights the ''imaginary'' part of nationalism. The nation is just a mental construct, and a recent one at that. This can require a shift in mental gears to one who feels devotion to his 'nation' is what makes life significant. And anyone that feels his group is connected to some eternal past/future will be stunned. Anderson covers abundant historical and emotional evidence to support his theme.For example, what unites millions of diverse individuals? What shared customs confirms their connectedness? Not daily prayers to God, but morning/evening mental unity with all fellow news readers/listeners. -''The significance of this mass ceremony –Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers –is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull.''How can this isolated, individual action produce unity?'''Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?'' (33)Each reader/listener knows exactly the thoughts of all! What connection. What unity!1 Introduction2 Cultural Roots3 The Origins of National Consciousness4 Creole Pioneers5 Old Languages, New Models6 Official Nationalism and Imperialism7 The Last Wave8 Patriotism and Racism9 The Angel of History10 Census, Map, Museum11 Memory and Forgetting Travel and Traffic: On the Geo-biography of Imagined CommunitiesBibliographyIndexAnderson is not sympathetic to nationalism. From the introduction -''It is characteristic that even so sympathetic a student of nationalism as Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: ‘ “Nationalism” is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as “neurosis” in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable.’'Wow!The connection/contrast of nationalism with religion surfaces consistently.''The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of the human race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet.''This distinction is crucial for modern nationalism.''It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.''Key idea. Nationalism is a recent invention due to the demise of Christendom.Many other insights. Writing is not always smooth or clear. Sometimes feels like reader is thrown into the middle of a conversation without background. Some subjects seem to continue beyond what is needed. Examples so detailed that idea submerged.Nevertheless, interesting and eye opening.(This note added 6/2/18. Recently found the work of Professor Hans Kohn. Spent lifetime of scholarship on Nationalism, history, meaning, impact, etc., etc.. Great!)