Neoliberalism or Biopolitics paper

Voss-Hoynes 1

Kurt Voss-Hoynes

English 106

Dr. Kurt Voss-Hoynes

18 November 2016

What’s the State of a Nation?

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of

Nationalism articulates that nationalism, or feeling as if one shares a space or set of beliefs with

another, began during the Industrial Revolution. More specifically, because of the decline in the

usage of “privileged” languages like Latin, the advent of the printing press, and the growing

desire to abolish rule by divine right— delegitimizing monarchies—citizens felt a more direct

connection with their “nation” and fellow citizens. For Anderson, a “nation” is an imagined

social construct “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their

fellow members, meet them, or even hear them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their

communion” (6). In other words, because a nation is a structure that is vast and finds its power

and ability to connect people in ideals, border, or languages, all intangible, imagined elements,

its existence is imaginary. Furthermore, Anderson argues that nationalism, or an individual’s

and/or community’s sense of attachment or belonging to the nation, is a positive force; indeed,

by articulating that nationalism “thinks in terms of historical destinies,” Anderson attaches great

importance to the utopian elements of nationalism (149). As a result, Anderson argues that the

nation and nationalism are not linked to racism which facilitates the development of inclusive

nation-states. Such inclusivity, then, demonstrates that the nation itself should be a force for

good by creating the possibility for multiple modes of personal and communal attachment and

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belonging. Individuals, then, are able to “feel” connected to other nations in such a manner that

traditional borders and boundaries are, in some respects, rendered obsolete.

While Anderson’s utopian vision of the nation and nationalism is one that promotes

unity, the idea fails to take into account national development as a result of resistance. In other

words, Anderson’s account of the rise of the nation and nationalism disavows those nations that

grew out of anti-colonial struggles. In the case of a colonized nation, there are already two

separate understandings of the nation and nationalism that exist simultaneously. More

specifically, there is the material or formal nation and there is the spiritual nation, which consists

of a national culture and which is the main site of colonial resistance before the political battles

with the colonizing force begins. This space, which Partha Chatterjee discusses in his The Nation

and its Fragments, facilitates the development of language, modern cultural forms, and

institutions outside of the domain of the colonial State. Anderson’s Utopian conception of

nationalism and the nation, then, fails to account for how resistance, which is oftentimes violent,

helps form nations and how this re-defines nationalism. This nationalism, an ideological product

of violence, both understands the importance of resistance and creates a space for this form of

resistance.

Originally written in 1983, Anderson’s Imagined Communities did not have the capability

to trace the role of technology and social media in the development of the nation and

nationalism. In the wake of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, I will trace the role of

technology and platforms like Facebook and Twitter in unifying individuals and developing new

models of a nation. For these movements, the nation become a space that is fleeting which, in

turn, redefines the role of “physical” borders in the 21st century. As a result, new, borderless

conceptions of the nation and nationalism speak to the idea of a globalized world.

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Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of

Nationalism, Verso, 2006.

Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories,

Princeton UP, 1993.