Very few works on national thought in the past decade have not been influenced by Anderson’s "
Imagined Communities." This extremely important work has permeated across disciplines in the academic community from history, anthropology, performance studies, English literature and comparative studies. Anderson describes cultures and their sense of community and
nation as an imagined space: created out of past fictions and constructions of
culture. Thus nationalism and national identity are not inevitable or concrete truths, but rather
collective imaginings. Anderson draws his argument from the development of print culture during the Enlightenment. The development of the printing press began to influence the populace on a mass scale previously unknown in the Western world. Through the production of books and a literate
public, the printing press began to sell national culture along with the novel. Anderson argues that Nationalism is developed and understood, not through political
systems of power, but rather
cultural systems of production. Culture creates the Nation. (19) The inchoate nation develops through "cultural signification." The nation, as Bhabha states its ‘in between-ness’ is a liminal space continuing to develop and take form through the trappings of culture, in this way the nation is always being defined and never defined. Anderson illustrates that it was inevitable for nations to be imagined, the shear size and diverse systems involved in any given nation, opened the way for the public to know one another only through an imagined space. For each citizen to know the others and identify themselves in regards to other citizens could only appear through a sort of mass collective identity formed and strengthened through the imagination. The spread of print culture, began with the Gutenberg bible, helped form these collective communities by drawing together a diverse populace with collective culture. Through the cultural systems, the public collectively imagine their community and create a sense of self through these imaginings. Anderson’s work is essential for any study of history, literature or community.
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