Benedict Anderson's Idea of a Nation- Imagination Triggered, Expressed and Sustained by Language? PDF

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mySOCIETY University of Mysore Research Article http://mysociety.uni-mysore.ac.in Benedict Anderson’s idea of a Nation- Imagination Triggered, Expressed and Sustained by Language? - Shakira Jabeen B Abstract Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities(2006) is a volume that deals with the origin of th...

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mySOCIETY University of Mysore http://mysociety.uni-mysore.ac.in

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Benedict Anderson’s idea of a Nation- Imagination Triggered, Expressed and Sustained by Language? - Shakira Jabeen B

Abstract Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities(2006) is a volume that deals with the origin of the idea of national consciousness, nation and nationalism at length. This paper attempts to elaborate the role of language in the imagination of the idea of nation .The paper poses question as to why Anderson chose the point of beginning of the idea of nation. It also looks at the why Anderson tries to de Europeanize the origin of Nation. The hidden agenda behind these objectives are unraveled in the course of the paper. An attempt is made to see the changes brought about by Globalization in the Nation. The paper also touches upon the way Anderson’s idea has been addressed in its application to India. Theoretical premise of this paper reflects Anderson’s stand in Imagined Communities. Anderson wrote Imagined Communities to support Tom Nairn’s critique of Classical Marxists’ inability to comprehend Nationalism fully. Anderson does not stand with the liberals either. In fact Anderson seconds Nairn’s criticism which is aimed at critical thought in general. According to Nairn, let alone the Marxists, the other traditions in the Western thought too have failed to understand the idea of nation fully(Nairn1975: 3-29).Anderson concedes that his Imagined Communities – …could interest critical Marxists as well as critical liberals, by suggesting to both that a great deal of really new as well as critical research was needed. So, I was not at all down hearted when a generally favorable reviewer still rather irritably described the book as being too Marxist for a liberal and too liberal for a Marxist( Anderson 2006:209). Within this theoretical third space that every work based on language ought to dwell in, this paper critiques Imagined Communities.

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INTRODUCTION: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities is a seminal work on the origin of the idea – Nation and nationalism. He sets out to de Europeanize the origin of the idea of nation. It had been part of my original plan to stress the new world origins of nationalism( Anderson.2006:xiii). Having set out to trace the origin of the idea of ‘nation’, Anderson attempts a definition of the term- ‘nation’. He quotes – “Thus I am driven to the conclusion that no ‘scientific definition’ of the nation can be devised: yet the phenomenon has existed and exists.” (Seston 1977:5,Anderson 2006:3) Having conceded the difficulty of defining a legitimate and all pervading identity of modern man which is nation, Anderson tries to define it in an ‘anthropological spirit’. Nation: it is an imagined political community- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson 2006:6). Anderson presented the idea of a modern nation state as a construct aided by a collective psychology of imagination. He attempts to answer the questions on -geneses of the idea of a ‘nation’, the causes, conditions that propelled it, the reasons for its popularity and the means of sustaining it. Anderson tries to see the process that made imagining of a nation possible. He tries to fathom the vacuum that this imagination filled- what was it trying to replace? What are the reasons that made this replacement possible in most parts of the world? These are some of the questions that trigger answers in Imagined Communities. To explain these objectives Anderson chooses a point in time in history as the beginning of the idea. It is this choice that converts Anderson’s work into a discourse. Anderson weaves a connect between the multiple components that make the modern nation possible. The territory, heterogeneous population, languages and cultures have to be bound together within a nation. It is a foregone conclusion that this population or citizenry of the nation would not know each other. To construct a sense of connection among the citizens who are mutually unknown, binding factors have to be either unearthed or created. Anderson traces the beginning of this binding to the awareness among people that language- their day today spoken language bound them together. Anderson’s definition of a nation begins in the realm of psychology and is applied to the concrete geo - political space called nation state. This imagination of language based awareness created a community that shares the territory, administration and language. However, this imagining was a new narrative. Many socio- economic and scientific reasons also propelled the notion of a nation. But the basis of this imagination lies in the idea of shared language. The time frame of the beginning of nationalism was as Anderson puts it is around 1820-1930 (Anderson 2006:67). The emergence of America as a nation after the liberation

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movement coincided with emergence of nationalism in Europe. Industrialization, humanism and the growth of capitalism propelled the dissemination of the idea. But it was the end of three factors that triggered the birth of the imagination of nation much more than any other issue. These conceptions are related to – 1. script and language 2. monarchy 3. Temporality

1. Script and Language : This has to do with the change in the synchronized relationship that script and sacred languages shared. Language and script were inseparable- inseparable in their divinity in the classical times. Latin, Hebrew and Arabic enjoyed this position of being sacred languages expressed in a script. The divinity attached to language automatically involved the script too. Language offered privileged access to ontological truth, precisely because it was an inseparable part of the truth ( Anderson 2006: 36). Language with its script was a part of the revealed truth. When language and scripts got dissociated, script was no more a part of divinity. Explaining how this disconnect between language and script came through, Anderson holds philology responsible for this disconnect. Philology, with its studies in comparative grammar, classification of languages into families and reconstructions by scientific reasoning of proto-languages out of oblivion (Anderson 2006:70). The fall out of this discovery robbed the Semitic languages of their antiquity. Work done on Sanskrit pushed its antiquity far beyond the Semitic languages. Sanskrit was more ancient than Latin or Hebrew. The role of translation from one language to another also stripped divinity to a great extent. The effect of this development was twofold- ‘demotion’ of divine languages like Latin, Hebrew etc., on similar footing like the vernacular languages, and it brought people of a vernacular language together. Further it helped the people to identify with each other linguistically within a dynasty. The change in commerce and industry during the Nineteenth Century had an impact on the vernacular languages due to printing. The philologists and lexicographers produced dictionaries. The bilingual dictionaries allowed two languages to exist side by side. The bible had to be translated to other languages. Shakespeare, Chaucer and others needed this paired versions- old English had to be ‘translated’ to modern English. This democratization of languages threw up fresh challenges as all languages could be used in administrarion.This was a new level playing field that posed many questions. Who should study and use these languages for administration? Anderson holds the vernacular speakers responsible. There were other issues involved. Not all vernacular languages could reach the same position as some of them could not become the “languages of business, of the sciences, of the

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press, or of literature, especially in a world in which these languages continuously interpenetrated one another”(Anderson 2006: 78). Anderson unravels the role played by vernacular languages in the imagining of the nation. what is imagined, needs a language to be expressed. The expression of imagination of people as one language community was in their spoken language.

2. Monarchy : Until reformation the kingdom on earth was a mirror image of the kingdom of God. Reformation and the resultant death of the idea of monarch’s divine right to rule was an important factor that shook the traditional mindset. This loss of divinity is the loss of power of the papacy over the monarchy. But power centers per se did not vanish. The power of the monarch was independent of the papal hold. Anderson feels this change is also responsible for the change in the way communities perceived themselves. The binding factor –the connect between the Pope and the monarch changed. Monarchy without its divinity was no more capable of binding people in the way it did. This change left a void that propelled the imagining of a community as belonging to a language. Language became a cementing factor. But then, the beginning of the idea that triggered national consciousness gets pushed to reformation and the breakaway of the monarch from the church. This should give a protestant origin to the idea of Nation. 3. Temporality : This idea is related to the change in perception of the relationship between ‘cosmology’ and ‘history’. In the traditional, pre nation societies, there was no difference between cosmology and history. The origin of the world and of men essentially identical ( Anderson 2006:36). For example, the biblical idea of genesis is the history of the origin of man and of the world a well. This relationship too changed with the breakaway of the temporal from the divine. Darwin’s Origin of Species took forward the break in the idea of simultaneous origin of the world and man. It is Darwin’s discovery that was applied to the study of languages which resulted in language families and the idea of the existence of proto languages. Anderson bequeaths chronology to the imagining of a nation to this point. Anderson, while tracing the beginning of the idea of a nation, touches upon the influence of Darwin and of the Creole communities of America that grew in to 18 states. The mere disconnect in the three factors would not have lead to the idea of nation without the help of ‘print capitalism’. It was printing technology which made people of a particular language to imagine themselves as one unit. Print opened a flood of information and brought together people of a particular language like nothing before. What began with the vernacular versions of Bible also began the huddling and recognition of language people as a group or community which was a new way of looking at groups

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by themselves as well as by others. The print languages were responsible for the emergence of ‘national consciousness’ in many ways. These languages were translating existing books- and the Bible to vernacular languages. Some of the ways in which the print languages paved for national consciousness were*

They created unified fields of exchange and communication…

*

Speakers of the huge verities of Frenches, Englishes or Spanishes …became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper…

*

Print capitalism gave a fixity to language …helped to build that image of antiquity…

* Print capitalism created languages of power different from other administrative vernaculars… * Some dialects were closer to print language and dominated their final forms… ( Based on Anderson 2006: 45).

Issues Anderson could not Explain: Anderson could not explain why some languages rendered themselves to print, while others did not. The choice of a dialect or a language for print was not due to any hierarchy. This chosen dialect of a particular language emerged as the written representative form of that language. He is emphatic that language hierarchy was not a planned program. The fixing of print languages and the differentiation of status between them were largely unselfconscious process resulting from the explosive interaction between capitalism, technology and human linguistic diversity (Anderson 2006:46). Once the hierarchy emerged, it was available for manipulation. This recourse to fatality does not explain the choice of language/dialect for print or the manner in which these factors gave rise to language hierarchy. Anderson could not convincingly analyze the reason why language is evoked to bind people in a collective identity. To him language was the only available binding factor- a factor that bound the past with the present. In this up gradation of vernacular languages into print languages there is one commonality. They all claim antiquity. Anderson could not explain the conditions that made the emotional attachment people developed for their language in modern times. Why people are ready to die for their invention? (Anderson 2006: 141).The reason for this attachment is not easy to answer. Anderson fathoms the nature of nation itself more to decipher why people are emotionally charged about nation. Dying for one’s country …assumes a moral grandeur which dying for labour party, the American Medical Association, or perhaps even Amnesty International cannot rival...(Anderson 2006:144).

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Anderson could not explain the emotional attachment citizens have to their nation. One persistent feature of this style of nationalism was, is, that it is official- i.e. something emanating from the state, and serving the interests of the state first and foremost (Anderson 2006: 159). This explanation is a feeble commentary on the single most, universal, collective emotional attachment to a complex entity called nation. It is at this juncture that there is a need to dissect the narratives nationalism coins to connect people emotionally with the nation. Anderson’s explanation about the official status enjoyed by Nation which in turn evokes nationalism fizzles out in a Globalized world. The core feature of Globalization is opening up of borders for trade and allowing other influences to creep in through trade. This Economic Globalization dwarfs the political nation states. The change that Globalization brings about in the political functioning of nations is due to the foregrounding of market and profit. This foregrounding pushes social responsibilities of a nation state to the background. Massive consumerism that feeds on the Market alters the politico- cultural profile of a nation. Power is now held and effectively enforced, by transnational capitalist ventures, international organizations, media empires and invisible, hardly visible ( and otherwise free from the democratic control) consortia of decision makers meeting each year in the Swiss ski-resort Davos and other places ( Blommaert 2010:153). Globalization and the political space of a nation state are in tandem with each other. The ideology of Globalization that pits the market above everything, dictates political decisions which may go contrary to the traditional functions of a nation state. It is the market that makes political decisions in the nation that is in the global loop. One of the adverse impacts of the Globalization is the erosion of autonomy and sovereignty of the nation state which is the highest human association capable of ushering in social transformation (Panikkar & Nair 2012: x). The nation concedes space to the corporate sector which represents the Market. It is not the nation that reaps the benefits of governing but the corporate. The new leaders of Globalised nations in democratic countries have a tough task of balancing welfare and pandering to capitalists’ greed. There is a need to find out if the understanding of the core framework of Nation would help in understanding ‘nation’ in a globalised era. The role of language in the modern Globalised nation also undergoes change. It is the reverse of what, according to Anderson triggered the idea of a nation. The process of vernacularization that triggered the imagination of national consciousness and paved the way for nations gets unsettled again. Global languages nudge aside the local languages.

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Anderson could not explain the presence of antiquity in modern nation or language. There is no way to tell the antiquity of a language .Whatever claims are made have to be accepted. Yet, it is strange that Anderson did not trace the idea of Nation to its real origin. In fact his inability to address these issues convincingly is due to the historical point of origin he chose to take.

The Point of Origin of Nation Anderson Avoided: Why Anderson does not trace the origin of the idea further down- is a question worth asking in the light of the importance Anderson gave to sacredness attached to languages and their scripts and the loss of it. The answer to these disturbing questions has to be gleaned elsewhere as Anderson raised the question, tried to find an answer but chose a point in history that cannot give a convincing answer. Reformation that triggered translation of Bible is Anderson’s point of beginning of imagination of nation. Thomas R. Trautmann (2006), explaining this same question, holds the Bible and Darwin responsible for the beginning of the idea of a nation in Europe. In reality Darwin deconstructed the Gospel truths-explained the origin of species in a non Biblical way. Anderson does the same tries to trace the origin of nation in vernacular languages that got upgraded into print languages propelled by capitalism. Charles Darwin’s classification of species aimed at finding the human genealogy and the genealogy of languages through one another. It may be worthwhile to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world (Darwin1859:22-23, Trautmann2006:171).Darwin’s method of classification was a construct propelled by science. The quest was to find the genealogy of men and languages. To Darwin they were one and the same. Each would lead to the other. Somewhere it has been ingrained that the language and human beings share a similar genealogy. It’s worth asking if Darwin was deconstructing the Biblical belief or reinforcing it. The Biblical belief in genesis refers to the ‘word’ that was there before the man – the proto word, proto language. Anderson’s effort to de Europeanize the origin of nation seems like an effort to take it farther from the Bible. But he doesn’t succeed. The module of a nation conceived in Europe got transplanted in various parts of the world. It is here that Anderson’s ideas are put to test. It is interesting to see what happened when this module of nation was transplanted elsewhere with the help of imperialism. Trautmann(2006) calls imperialism a ‘language and nations project’. Anderson’s effort to place the idea of nation in the spoken languages

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of the people meets its grave in the colonies. There was effort to change the subjects to the language of the ruler and the culture of the rulers had to be transmitted. For example, to rule the Indians effectively, Indians had to be taught English. But this learning of English does not give Indians a chance to rule the Englishmen. So, the discrepancies in the model had to be understood at two different levels- when it’s a model in Europe and when it is a module in the colonies. The model of nation in Europe was built on the up gradation of vernacular languages and when ‘nation’ was transported as a module it abandons the very basis of its conception- the vernacular languages of the colony. The paradox is that the module pitches for the language of the ruler which in reality is alien to the subjects. The narratives coined to implant the imperial language by coaxing the native subjec...