Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Chapters 1-3 in Imagined Communities. London: Verso, p1-
46.
Pg. 2: The UK and USSR are somewhere between the period of dynasties, for example, the states of Germany all united under one dynasty, and before the internationalism of unions, for examples, the European Union.
"nationalism has proved an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory and, precisely for that reason, has been largely elided, rather than confronted" p.3
"The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all 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" p. 7
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 deep, horizontal comradeship." p.7
"religious thought also responds to obscure intimations of immortality, generally by transforming fatality into continuity (karma, original sin, etc.) In this way, it concerns itself with the link between the dead and the yet unborn, the mystery of re-generation." p.11
As religion became less followed due to the century of Enlightenment, a new "secular transformation of fatality into continuity" was needed, and this came in the form of the nation. p.11
"if sacred silent languages were the media through which the great global communities of the past were imagined, the reality of such apparitions depended on an idea largely foreign to the contemporary Western mind: the non-arbitrariness of the sign." p14
"the fall of Latin exemplified a larger process in which the sacred communities integrated by old sacred languages were gradually fragmented, pluralised, and territorialised." p.19
The "juxtaposition of the cosmic-universal and the mundane-particular meant that however vast Christendom might be, and was sensed to be, it manifested itself variously to particular Swabian or Andalusian communities as replications of themselves." p.23
"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 down (or up) history." p.26
"the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop, or residential neighbours, is continually reassured that the imagined world is visibly rooted in everyday life" p.35-36
Nationalism arose when these cultural conceptions lost their grip on mens mind: 1. Exclusive script-languages offered access to truth. 2. The belief that society was 'naturally' organised around monarchies. 3. A conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable. p.36
Because these conceptions and therefore religion began to wane, nationalism became "a new way of linking fraternity, power and time" meaningfully. p.36 This is where print-capitalism came in - it allowed thousands of people to think in similar ways.
What made new communities imaginable was an "interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity." p.42-43
How did print-languages lay the bases for national consciousness? :
"created unified fields of exchange and communication... Speakers of a huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper" p.44
"gave a new fixity to language, which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation" p.44
"print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different from the older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitable were 'closer' to each print-language and dominated their final forms." p.45
Pg. 2: The UK and USSR are somewhere between the period of dynasties, for example, the states of Germany all united under one dynasty, and before the internationalism of unions, for examples, the European Union.
"nationalism has proved an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory and, precisely for that reason, has been largely elided, rather than confronted" p.3
"The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all 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" p. 7
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 deep, horizontal comradeship." p.7
"religious thought also responds to obscure intimations of immortality, generally by transforming fatality into continuity (karma, original sin, etc.) In this way, it concerns itself with the link between the dead and the yet unborn, the mystery of re-generation." p.11
As religion became less followed due to the century of Enlightenment, a new "secular transformation of fatality into continuity" was needed, and this came in the form of the nation. p.11
"if sacred silent languages were the media through which the great global communities of the past were imagined, the reality of such apparitions depended on an idea largely foreign to the contemporary Western mind: the non-arbitrariness of the sign." p14
"the fall of Latin exemplified a larger process in which the sacred communities integrated by old sacred languages were gradually fragmented, pluralised, and territorialised." p.19
The "juxtaposition of the cosmic-universal and the mundane-particular meant that however vast Christendom might be, and was sensed to be, it manifested itself variously to particular Swabian or Andalusian communities as replications of themselves." p.23
"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 down (or up) history." p.26
"the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop, or residential neighbours, is continually reassured that the imagined world is visibly rooted in everyday life" p.35-36
Nationalism arose when these cultural conceptions lost their grip on mens mind: 1. Exclusive script-languages offered access to truth. 2. The belief that society was 'naturally' organised around monarchies. 3. A conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable. p.36
Because these conceptions and therefore religion began to wane, nationalism became "a new way of linking fraternity, power and time" meaningfully. p.36 This is where print-capitalism came in - it allowed thousands of people to think in similar ways.
What made new communities imaginable was an "interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity." p.42-43
How did print-languages lay the bases for national consciousness? :
"created unified fields of exchange and communication... Speakers of a huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper" p.44
"gave a new fixity to language, which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation" p.44
"print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different from the older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitable were 'closer' to each print-language and dominated their final forms." p.45
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