GE1804

Imagined Communities
An Abridged Version

By Benedict Anderson

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the Second World War ended, there has been a significant rise of national revolutions all over
the world, particularly in countries in resistance to the idea of Marxism. As Eric Hobsbawm stated, Marxist
movements and states have pushed to become national, in both form and substance -- that is, to be a
nationalist -- that nothing suggests that this trend shall not continue. Nor is the tendency confined to the
socialists. Simply put, it is a nationalistic idea that has its intentions steeped in truth but has flaws that can
be exploited to lead them to ruin. Like what happened with 'old' nations, the idea of nationalism within its
territories became their undoing as, one by one, these territories become nations on their own, separate
from their 'old' nation. This leads to the boundaries on the definitions of what a nation, nationality, and
nationalism blurring with each other.

Three (3) paradoxes often challenge the theory of nationalism:

1. The objective modernity of nations to the historian's perspective versus (vs.) their subjective
antiquity in the nationalist's perspective;
2. The formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept (i.e., everyone can have a
nationality) vs. the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations (i.e., nationality is sui
generis or uniquely one's own, where others can't just become a part of it); and
3. The perceived 'political' power of nationalism vs. the philosophical poverty, even the incoherence
of it.

This makes the study of this concept difficult because one tends to unconsciously tell it concretely that
nationalism exists as an ideology, alongside 'fascism' and 'liberalism.' Thus, Anderson defines nationalism
as an 'imagined' political community, having its limitations and sovereignty. It is 'imagined' because the
constituents of a given locality may have the idea that they are all connected despite never hearing,
meeting, nor knowing each other well -- but it is not inherently made up. A nation is imagined as limited
because every nation, whatever the size, always has its borders limiting their scope; it is also imagined as
sovereign because this marks the end of dynastic rule, and the masses took upon themselves to destroy
this royal right via revolutions, as spearheaded by enlightenment. Finally, it is imagined as a community
because everyone has a deep sense of comradeship -- so deep that they are willing to die for the other
members, regardless of inequalities and exploitations that can prevail in each of them. This poses a
question about the idea of nationalism:

"What makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (of at least more than two
centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices?"

The answers may lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.

CULTURAL ROOTS

Humans lead a life of necessity and chance, aware of the inescapability and uncertainty it brings -- genetic
heritage, gender, physical capacities, and language, among other things. Religion, when not used for
domination and exploitation, has been merited with existential questions. Their imaginative responses can

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attest to the enduring existence of various religions to the overwhelming bulk of human suffering. Each
existentialist question is met with an attempt from the religious, sometimes with silence. At the same time,
religion also explains why fatalities are transformed into continuity to provide an obscure connection to
immortality. These seemingly unconnected ideas are brought because they provide a vague connotation
to nationalism -- which began when man started to question religion with secular thinking and rationality.
The quest to know why suffering exists provided two (2) points:
1. Nothing makes fatality more arbitrary; thus, the idea of paradise disintegrates.
2. Nothing makes another style of continuity more necessary; thus, the absurdity of salvation is
observed.

This pushed people to provide a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, of uncertainty into
meaning. As Anderson stated, "… few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of a nation.
If nation-states are widely conceded to be 'new' and 'historical,' the nations to which they give political
expression always loom out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future."

Therefore, the idea of nationalism does not actually bear from the erosion of religion, nor that this erosion
requires complex thought processes to give meaning. Even still, it also does not, historically speaking,
'supersedes' religion. It can be assumed that the idea of nationality can be best explained by somehow
aligning it, not with political ideologies, but with large cultural systems that preceded it. Thus, the two
relevant cultural systems present are religious communities and dynastic realms.

In religion, no matter what language used in conversing it to others, the idea of a sacred and language and
written script is vital for it to be understood. As an example, if a Maguindanaon Muslim met a Berber in
Mecca, oblivious to their spoken languages, they still understand each other through their use of their
ideographs, because the sacred texts of their religion exist in classical Arabic. With this, written Arabic
functions like Chinese logograms to create a community based on signs -- creating a link that is considered
cosmically central to these communities. However, the idea of having a sacred language alienates those
who do not understand it. Thus, to those outsiders who want to "join" in this new community, they have to
be indoctrinated to their language, at least to become less of an outsider and to become halfway
"acceptable." As stated by the 19th-century Colombian liberal Pedro Fermin de Vargas,

"To expand our agriculture, it would be necessary to hispanize our Indians. Their idleness,
stupidity, and indifference towards normal endeavors cause one to think that they come
from a degenerate race which deteriorates in proportion to the distance from its origin . . .
it would be very desirable that the Indians be extinguished, by miscegenation with the
whites, declaring them free of tribute and other charges, and giving them private property
in land."

As clear as it is spoken, indoctrinating outsiders into a new way of living "eradicates" the already-established
national identity of the colonized people, and they were better off being transgressed and manipulated by
the colonizers to "progress" their civilization than to outright kill them. After all, an indoctrinated outsider will
do anything to be a part of this new circle.

CREOLE PIONEERS

The term "creole" has two (2) working definitions: (1) it refers to a person with mixed European and black
descent -- by black, it means non-Europeans; and (2) it refers to the formation of a mother tongue based
from the combination of two languages from its early pidgin (i.e., crude) state. For a place to become truly
creole, there must be an inherent intermingling of European and native influences, such as in the case of
Cuba, Puerto Rico, the United States, Mexico, and the Philippines, to name a few. To these mentioned
countries, all of them have been influenced by Spain.

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Creole communities had experienced strife among their foreign settlers, partly because they fear of being
classified in the lower classes in their communities and strive to be in the middle class. This "inequality"
seen by the "indoctrinated" people drove them to fight for their rights to live on their land, particularly in
Spain-controlled colonies. This is in part of the two reasons that was happening on the main peninsula:
1. Madrid tightened its control to its colonies; and
2. Liberal ideas began to spread during the period of Enlightenment in Europe.

REFERENCES:
Anderson, B. (1991). Creole pioneers. In Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of
nationalism, 47-65. Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Anderson, B. (1991). Cultural roots. In Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of
nationalism, 9-36. Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Anderson, B. (1991). Introduction. In Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of
nationalism, 1-7. Anvil Publishing, Inc.

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