Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 07:52:14 -0600 (MDT)
From: leslie anne lopez <llopez-AT-unm.edu>
Subject: Re: National Imaginary



On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Chae-Pyong Song wrote:

> 
> Dear Listmembers,
> 
> Could anybody explain the notion of the "national imaginary"? Who said
> this for the first time in a conceptual manner? I assume that Lacanian
> "Imaginary" is translated in the national level, the collectively held
> images that enable the integration of heterogeneous individuals into
> homogeneously imagined national subjects. Your critical enunciation would
> be appreciated.
> 
I don't know about who was first with the phrase, but anthropologists
trace these ideas back to Durkheim and Toonies in the late 19th century.
Those guys were really into contrasting "simple" peoples with state-level
societies, and dealt in functionalist (organic) metaphors showing how
people were integrated into different kinds of human groups. Benedict
Anderson's big contribution to understandings of nationalism (_Imagined
Communities_, 1983) was that nationalism has to be understood at a
cultural level.  This is in contrast to, for instance, Ernest Gellner
(_Thought and Change_, 1964): "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations
to self-consciousness: it *invents* nations where they do not exist"
(169).  Anderson says: "Gellner is so ansxious to show that
nationalism masquerades under false pretences that he assimilated
"invention" to "fabrication" and "falsity," rather than to "imagining" and
"creation."  In this way he implies that "true" communities exist which
can be advantageously juxtaposed to nations.  In fact, all communities
larger than primordial villages and face-to-face contactt (and perhaps
even these) are imagined" (p6).

I'm sure world/poco lit has its own trajectory on this, but this is the
lineage I'm aware of.

Leslie 



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