RIZAL AND THE THEORY OF

NATIONALISM
IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: REFLECTIONS
ON THE ORIGINS AND SPREAD OF
NATIONALISM
BY Benedict Anderson
Jose Rizal’s literary works led to the awakening
of the Filipinos’ sense of nationalism thus, the
Philippines’ achievement of its independence
was greatly attributed to him, and therefore,
he was acclaimed as the Father of Nationalism.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Understand the idea of nationalism, familiarize, internalize
how nationalism came into being in the Philippines
2. Explain the concept of imagined communities
3. Learn Chinese mestizos role in Philippine society
4. Comprehend the vital role of Awit in revolution(s)
5. Know and comprehend the extent of Rizal’s contribution
6. Develop critical thinking
 An imagined community is a concept coined
by Benedict Anderson to analyze
“nationalism”. Anderson depicts a nation as a
socially constructed community, imagined by
the people who perceive themselves as part
of that group.
Anderson discusses the origins of national consciousness
in the intersections between capitalism (as a system of
production and productive relations), print (as a
technology of communication), and what he calls the
“fatality of human linguistic diversity” (wherein the myriad
of spoken vernaculars was assembled into far fewer print
vernaculars beyond the previous Latin hegemony) .
Facilitated in 3 ways:
1. Created a unified mode of communication
below Latin and above spoken vernaculars
2. Print capitalism gave a new fixity to language
previously unattainable in the era of copied
manuscript
3. Created languages-of-power in administrative
vernaculars
 Anderson returns to the primacy of
language in facilitating national feeling,
and also seeks to disprove that racism
arises out of nationalism.
Anderson cited, as an example, the opening
passage of the novel Noli Me Tangere (José Rizal,
1887, written in Spanish (the colonial language), in
which anonymous people around the capital Manila
(an imagined community) share gossip and the
narrator directly addresses future Filipinos.
The book gives testimonial to Rizal’s role in
manifesting aspects of a nation identity. It
acknowledges that Rizal, through his literary works,
became an instrument in facilitating a person’s internal
allegiance to the nation, in awakening awareness of
citizenship, the creation of a sense of national kinship
and conceptualization of Filipino as a “people” or “the
people” – an element of the ‘imagined community’ that
constitutes nationalism.