Biography
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson was born on August 26, 1936 in Kunming,China to James O'Gorman and Veronica Beatrice Mary Anderson. James 
wasan officer in the Imperial Maritime Customs in China and according to hisson, a Sinophile; he was also of mixed Irish and Anglo-Irish descent, andhis family had been active in Irish nationalistic movements. Veronica wasEnglish, and came from a family of conventional businessmen, judges andpolicemen.
In 1941 the Anderson family moved to California, where Benedict receivedhis initial education.
In 1957, he received a BA in Classics from Cambridge University, England.There, he developed an immense interest in Asian politics, and later enrolledin Cornell Universitys Indonesian studies program (see A). Working part-timeas a teaching assistant in the department of politics, Anderson workedon his Ph. D. under the guidance of experts in the field, George Kahinand Claire Holt. As part of his doctoral research, Anderson went to Jakarta,Indonesia, in 1961. After the 1965 Communist Coup and massacres (see B),Anderson published three studies, one of which was an outline of the Coup.This study, in which Anderson argues that "discontented army officers,rather than Communists, were responsible for [the] coup" and questionsthe military government's claims to legitimacy (Language 8) became knownas the "Cornell Paper" in 1966, and it caused Anderson to be barred fromIndonesia indeterminately.
After his exile, Anderson spent a few years in Thailand, and since thenhas been teaching at Cornell University. He is currently the director ofthe Modern Indonesia Program and the Aaron L. Binenkorb professor of InternationalStudies at Cornell (2-14). Andersons infamous analysis of nationalismis presented in his book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originand Spread of Nationalism. The first few chapters attempt to contextualizenationalism in the course of history.
Imagined Communities
In developing his theories, Anderson observes that the notion of "nation-ness"is, in the recent years, becoming a principal force in many aspects ofmodern thought. Both the rapid expansion of the United Nations, and thepolitical unrest caused by conflict between and within "sub-nations" aroundthe world (Imagined 3), are evidence that nationalism is, indeed, recognizedas modern political moral hegemony.
Yet despite the influence that nationalism has had on modern society,Anderson finds the origins of the concept inadequately explained and recorded.His purpose in writing Imagined Communities is to provide a historicalbackground for the emergence of nationalism its development, evolution,and reception.
Nationalism
Anderson defines the nation as an "imagined political community thatis imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (Imagined 7).
The Nation is . . .
Imagined because "members . . . will never know most of theirfellow members . . . yet in the minds of each lives the image of theircommunion" (6). That is, the possession of citizenship in a nation allowsand prompts the individual to imagine the boundaries of a nation, eventhough such boundaries may not physically exist.
Limited because "even the largest of them . . . has finite, ifelastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations" (7). The fact thatnationalists are able to imagine boundaries suggests that they recognizethe existence of partition by culture, ethnicity, and social structureamong mankind. They do not imagine the union of all under one massive,all-encompassing "nationalism."
Sovereign because "the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenmentand Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained,hierarchical dynastic realm . . . nations dream of being free, and, ifunder God, directly so" (7). The sovereign state, therefore, is symbolicof the freedom from traditional religious structure. It provides the senseof organization needed for an orderly society, without relying on the thenweakening religious hierarchy.
a Community because the nation is "always conceived as a deep,horizontal comradeship" (7). Regardless of the dissent and inequalitieswithin the nation, the imagined alliance among people of the same imaginednation is so strong as to drive men to heroic deaths in nationalistic sacrifice.
Cultural Roots
Anderson offers that the following bases, historically, made possiblethe imagining of the nation:
a. Decline of belief that there is a sacred text that irrevocably embodiestruth. Changes in the religious community gave rise to the belief thatnationalism was a secular solution to the question of continuity that hasbeen answered previously, by religious faith. The decline of religiousdominance also led to the demotion of the sacred languages. The growthof secular languages by the sixteenth century lowered the status of Latinas the only sacred script language. As a result, the older communitieslost confidence in the sacredness of a particular language in its abilityto grant them elite admission to certain spiritual truths.
b. Decline of the belief that "society was naturally organized aroundand under high centers-monarchs who
ruled under some form of cosmological(divine) dispensation" (36). In the 17th century, the legitimacy of sacralmonarchy met its gradual debility in Western Europe (21). People beganto doubt the belief that society was naturally organized around these centers.
c. Development of the idea of "homogeneous, empty time," in which "asociological organism moving calendrically through [it] is a precise analogueof the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid communitymoving steadily through history" (26). Two events happening simultaneously,though in separate places, can link the people involved in those eventsby this precise "simultaneity;" that is, they share a consciousness ofa shared temporal dimension in which they co-exist (see C) (25).
Origins of National Consciousness
Along with the above historical happenings that laid the path to theconsciousness of nationalism, the practice of print-capitalism facilitatedthe imagining of the nation. The expansion of the book market contributedto the vernacularization of languages. Print languages created unifiedfields of communication, which enabled speakers of a diverse variety oflanguages to become aware of one another via print and paper. These people,consequently, became aware of the existence of the millions who share theirnation and language. Print-capitalism also gave fixity to language, whichstabilized it and gave print language a sense of antiquity that enhancedthe feeling of nationalism. Finally, the notion of print capitalism gavedominance to a few selected languages for their printability: dialectsthat were closer to print languages than others were the ones that werecommonly used and persistent through history (44-46).
Creole States and Nationalism
Anderson defines Creole states (new world colonies) as communitiesthat were formed and led by people who shared a common language and commondescent with those against whom they fought (47). He affirms that "Creolestates" were among the earliest to develop conceptions of nation-ness,way before the notion of nationalism blossomed in Europe (50). Drawingon the examples of North American colonies and South American republics,Anderson provides several possible explanations: stricter Spanish controland the increase of power in the administrative units in the new SouthAmerican republics created much conflict. The republics resented the tighterregulations and boundaries that were imposed by Spain: for example, Madridimposed new taxes, enforced metropolitan commercial monopolies, and obligedtrade ships between the two hemispheres of the new world to first go throughthe ports of Spain (50). Another reason for the early development of nationalconsciousness in the New World is the rising popularity of the newspaper,as mentioned before. Reporting both provincial and world news, these NewWorld newspapers further encouraged and fortify the imagination of nation-ness.By reading about events both local and around the world, these New Worlderswere able to develop a consciousness about the existence of other nations,a sense of "us," versus "them" (62-63).
Critical Reception of Imagined Communities
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalismwas first published in 1983. It is widely studied and discussed in theintellectual community of our time, and is as much critiqued as it is praised.The following criticisms were brought up in several reviews of Andersonswork.
1. In a book review written by Fadia Rafeedie, a graduate and UniversityMedalist at UC Berkeley, she voices the concern over the lack of representationof the Arab world in Anderson's book. She asserts importance of examiningArab nationalism, and raises the following points:
- Arabic is one of the worlds only languages to have survived throughouthistory in its own classical form (as opposed to the other vernacular languages,which mostly stemmed from Lain roots), and the treatment of language asthe key to evoking nationalist sentiments has been in existence "long beforewhat a nation could be or was" (par. 2).
- Religion, whose demise in sovereignty was one of Andersons reasonsfor the rise of nationalism, conversely "defined and still defines theway of life of the inhabits of Arab countries
and is reflected not justin government policies but in language and rituals" (par. 2).
- Whereas the nation-nesses of other countries have "modern" origins,Arab-ness has enjoyed mature linguistic, ethnic and geographic solidarityfor a much longer time (pars. 2-4)
Rafeedie'sarticle is available here.
In a paper titled "Welfare-nationalism: Comparative aspects of the relationbetween sport and nationalism in Scandinavia in the inter-war years," NielsKayser Nielsen, of Odense University in Denmark, makes the following comment:
- In Nielsens view, Andersons definition of nationalism fails torecognize nationalism as a "lived idea, an experience" (7). To Nielson,national identity is something that is acquired through an "articulationprocess, a creation" and is created, again and again, through the cognitionof ones actions and physical behavior (7).
Neilsen's articleis available here.
Other Works by Anderson
Java in a Time of Revolution (1972)
Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era (1986)
Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia(1990)
Spectres of Comparison (1998)
Selected Bibliography
Anderson, Benedict. Interview. "When the Virtual Becomes the Real."Online. Internet. 14 Nov 1997. Available:http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199711/msg00019.html
Anderson, Benedict. Interview. "The Current Crisis in Indonesia." Online.Internet. Dec 96. Available:http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec96seaman.htm
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in WesternLiterature. Trans. Willard Trask. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957.
Benedict Anderson. Photograph by Chen Cheng-Chang. The Taipei TimesOnline: 04/27/2000.
Bhabha, Homi K. "Introduction: Narrating the Nation." Nation and Narration.London: Routledge, 1990. 1-7.
Saxton, Gregory. "Nation, Nation-Building, and Nationalism in the Catalan-SpeakingCyberspace" (1998). 24 pp. Online. Internet. Available:http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/cbsm/vol2/saxton/apsa98.htm
Sukarno. Photograph. The Learning Company, Inc. 1997.
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict.Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originand Spread of Nationalism. New York, NY: Verso, 1983.
Anderson, Benedict.Introduction. Language and Power: ExploringPolitical Cultures in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1990.
Errington, Shelley. "Andersons Imagined Communities: Reflections onthe Origin and Spread of Nationalism" (1997). 3 pp. Online. Internet. Available:http://www.uniblab.com/collie/Library/communities.html
Head, Mike. "US orchestrated Suharto's 1965-66 slaughter in Indonesia."9-10 par. Online. Internet. 19 July 1999. Available:http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/indo1-j19_prn.shtml
Nielsen, Niels Kayser. "Welfare-nationalism? Comparative Aspects OfThe Relation Between Sport And Nationalism In Scandinavia In The Inter-WarYears." 12 pp. Online. Internet. Available:http://www.umist.ac.uk/sport/6_art6.htm
Rafeedie, Fadia. Rev. of Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson.3 par. Online. Internet. Available: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~mescha/bookrev/Anderson,Benedict.html
Related Sites
"The 'Nation' as an Ambivalent Construction: Some Definitions of 'ANation'": a selection from "Introduction: narrating the nation" by HomiK. Bhabha.http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/poldiscourse/nationconstr.html
On Slavoj Zizek and Renata Salecl: a site on Nationalism by RuxandraMandoiu.
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Zizek.html
A description ofCosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond theNation edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins. In Cosmopolitics, agroup of scholars and theorists, including Benedict Anderson, examine cosmopolitanismand its relationship to nationalism.
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/C/cheah_cosmopolitics.html
Author: Elaine Lo, Fall 2000
