Imagined Communities

"Benedict Anderson has persuaded me that nations --and all other collectivities except the most intimate-- are, indeed, "imagined" rather than known" (Gregory Clark, Rhetorical Landscapes in America, 15).

Every once in a while, I wonder what it must be like to be Benedict Anderson. The man introduced us all to the idea that nations are "imagined communities" and, for that singular insight, he is cited repeatedly, appearing in almost every publication in English that treats the idea of the nation (or even of community) even in the most cursory sense.

Like pretty much everyone else, I find Anderson's titular innovation useful. I've cited in a few times, myself. I think he's right about "imagined communities."

The problem is that while Anderson's concept "imagined communities" has captured scholarly imaginations in a fairly profound way, his argument in the book Imagined Communities, the argument about how nations as imagined communities first came into being (in the Americas during the end of the colonial period), has been roundly debunked. He cites print culture as the mechanism by which residents begin to imagine themselves as part of a nation, but in the Americas prior to the second half of the 19th century (or even, in some cases ...cough ... Ecuador... prior to the second quarter of the 20th century)there was little in the way of print circulation. In several, if not most, cases, nation-states emerged well before national feeling, the opposite order from what Anderson says occurred.

Which is all just to say that it must be a little strange to be Benedict Anderson. So completely and utterly right and yet also entirely wrong. So known for a simple but profound phrase, so cited for that singular phrase, so incredibly influential ... all grounded in a reading of history that simply didn't happen the way you said it did.

I think we are all better off for Anderson's formulation. I wonder, though, if the fame is a bit bittersweet.