archetypenull
Archetype: Null
cultural marginalia
26 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
violet-mintea-blog
Sinister Shishio
reichiin033
reichiin033
souldustinverse
A Dreamer's Diary
nyx-b-log
nyx's b-log
Text
Agonistics ch5 - Agnostic Politics and Artistic Practices (Political-Affectual Art)
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Theorists of aesthetics have declared that art is no longer a viable form of cultural critique. Art's function has largely been the construction of new worlds, new perspectives, and thus new relationships, offering an outlet for the critique of society's constructions. As fordist modes of production bled their way into culture, it began to seem as though every critical artistic output became appropriated, neutered for use by the system of capitalist symbol production, for its benefit. Subversivenesses and counter-cultures became ads in magazines, trends, and then finally just forgotten pieces of yesteryear's gift guide.
As political and artistic acts have been twisted into aesthetic baubles, citizens have become impotent consumers, left as "passive functions of the capitalist system" (86). This operation is reflexive. As art is commodified and harnessed for consumerist symbol-production, its mode of operation becomes that: art is taken as consumerist symbol-production from the start, without any deference to other possibilities of operation. As this process becomes business-as-usual, the other possibilities of art wither away - art as capitalist becomes a given, and is seen as naturally-occurring, due to the years of sedimentation within a cultural loop. But is the process really so veiled, is there really no way to attack the appropriation of artistic criticism, or at least to appeal to the passive masses?
Because alternatives have become veiled within the capitalist mode of value production, art must point towards those very alternatives. To do so within a complex system of appropriation requires first appropriating the capitalist mode of value production, which largely lies within the creation of desire. Politically-charged art that brow-beats the viewer usually isn't very successful, because it offers no alternative. When the viewer is coaxed into a new subjectivity, by way of their own conscious attention to their current subjectivities (and the newly presented alternatives), then they become the critical agent. Though Mouffe's description of this process does not allude to it, it seems that the "new" critical art that she describes actually acts as proxy for criticism: it is an empty vessel which only has meaning in context, and can only have positive results when used by the viewer.
A perfect illustration is Alfredo Jaar, whose work, if engaged, "create[s] little cracks in the system" of symbolic structures that most viewers will take for granted, allowing them to disarticulate those systems for themselves (95). His pieces, which are typically composed of small questions, only confront the viewer if the viewer engages, but when they do, the questions are so subtly subversive that the viewer must reflect upon them. Tapping into the viewer's affectuality, power dynamics become unveiled (at whatever level), propelling the viewer, at the very least, to discontentment, and perhaps even to action. This serves as a beautiful illustration of Mouffe's reasoning for relying on affect within the political. Logically-derived, subjectively-obtrusive art will not compel action, usually the opposite, but affectual-elicitation through the empty vessel of art certainly does.
0 notes
Text
Agonistics ch4 - Radical Politics Today
Sunday, December 31, 2017
To begin to address the issue of global neoliberal hegemony, common contemporary arguments have to be deconstructed. Underlying the majority of leftist criticisms of neoliberalist hegemonies is exodus. This escapist strategy purports to allow for new forms of hegemony (or the supposed lack of) to rise in the void left once the current hegemony is abandoned by its constituents, left to wither and disappear. As common as the strategy may be, it allows for empty movements, through which public dissent is expressed but no alternative is given, and for right-wing alternatives to rise from the shadows.
The alternative, which is doubtless criticized as moderate and perhaps even neoliberal itself, is Mouffe's radical democracy, within which the institutions of the current hegemony are positively engaged for the new goals of the revolutionary governance. She proposes this as a continual process, rather than the means to an idealized end. For this reason, Mouffe rejects the resurrection of communism on the basis that, ideologically, it is a fixed ideal: once put in place, it is perfected, ignoring the political and affective. To incorporate these facets of societal construction, her model of continual reform works with the current system to reinforce citizens' desires.
On a conceptual basis, it would seem that Mouffe's reformist mentality is in fact revolutionary, but not in terms of a radical break with the current system. In keeping the basic structure, change is enacted in a way to secure its own resilience both as sufficient for the time in which it was developed, and as a groundwork to enable flexibility as circumstances change. That is, in and of itself, revolutionary in a time when capitalist-run bureaucracy petrifies the political landscape. Operating through capitalism, the social movements of the 60s and 70s were subsumed into the consumerist wave of identity construction through materialism. Once the movements were so easily nullified and channeled back into the system they sought to jam, they worked to benefit that system, becoming ghosts of their former selves. Reflecting counterhegemonic movements hegemonically onto consumers, thus discursively looping their actions like a hamster's wheel, became an extremely powerful tool for neoliberalism.
Thus, Mouffe's Gramscian "war of position" seems to necessitate plural engagement within the institutions that support the neoliberal system. Each position must be taken individually, as the institutions are individual, but the groundswell of the altered movements will work against the Thing as a whole. For, in the most realistic terms, there is no way to pragmatically attack neoliberalism; it must be dismantled piece by piece. In this way, the system is not only dismantled conceptually, but it is immediately rearticulated in a different direction, working for the new goals and against neoliberalism. Rather than a living beast dissected, but unaffected, the system must be molecularly reordered into another organism entirely, all the while maintaining its breath and heartbeat, for we are its cells.
I would also like to argue that the conceptions of communism and other absolutist formulations of government operate, by their very conceptualism, to reinforce neoliberalism as an unalterable monolith. If it seems as though the current system cannot be changed, perhaps that is in part because alternatives have been defined in such radical and utopian terms. Certainly, we must construct idealistic fantasies, but we need steps to work towards those ends, otherwise they will seem so distant and unattainable that they will impart an apathy that works to the advantage of the current system, as it will seem all the more everlasting.
0 notes
Text
Agonistics ch3 - An Agonistic Approach to the Future of Europe
Saturday, December 30, 2017
In this chapter, Mouffe discusses the greatest example of a sort of unified but statified governance, the EU. She uses the he criticisms and challenges faced by the EU to further describe her agonistic model of governance. Finally, Mouffe begins to discuss the importance of regionalism in her model, and why it must play a part in this "new EU."
First, some basics are outlined: the EU is in danger of falling apart, mainly due to challenges with the identities of its constituents; national identity is strengthened when the nation is perceived to be under threat; and the rationalistic conception of identity formation heretofore utilized to critique the EU lacks confrontation with the affectual aspects of identity formation. Mouffe is adamant here that communal identity development must be recognized as, at least in part, inherently affectual, and so any formulation of a unified governance based on the rationale of "greater unity," as a whole of the continent as one people, is impossible.* Not only does the hope for such a unified identity ignore the affectations of identity construction on a sociological scale, but also, perhaps more importantly, on a psychological scale.
Mouffe quickly mentions Freud's contribution to this aspect, but I would hope to suggest that a reading of individual identity construction, especially in the early 21st century, is more a game of self-eroticization than that of a basic libidinous drive. The individual is gratified by the design, reinforcement, and the fantasy of their own identity, however it may have come to be. Some identities are based in fear, as is obvious in many forms of aggressive masculinity, but some are more neoliberal in nature, stemming from material accoutrements which, in and of themselves, have little to no meaning.
Indeed, these are the two essential problems faced by the EU today: aggression and neoliberal forces. The first issue is usually dealt with rationally, but to little success. On the other hand, neoliberal forces are so deeply engrained in societal discourse, that few are able to imagine a world beyond their grasp. For both, however, Mouffe provides the solution of "A truly Gramscian 'intellectual and moral reform,'" "challenging the basic tenets of our current consumerist model" (63, 64). In this chapter, her deconstruction of this reform in respect to neoliberal forces is not fully developed. However, she does provide enough to mull over in respect to aggression.
Mouffe supports the generation of a federation, within which states are sovereign, but deal with common issues not antagonistically, as the EU is haunted by today, but agonistically. How she proposes this is more nuanced than her explained desire to "combine solidarity and competition" (53). She seems to support trans-national regionalism, but explicitly refers to the continuation of national identities. I wonder if this is a stepping stone within her world order: to get nations to take part in an agonistic federation, allow them to govern sovereignly, but as the conflicts progress, more factions would arise, as they already are (Scotland, Catalonia, etc.), eventually forming sovereign regionalism. How far their sovereignty would go is another question: do these regions have economic regulations, must they abide by a human bill of rights?
Readers at least get answers to the former as Mouffe begins to deconstruct the neoliberal hegemonic forces which rule all of Europe today. She is decidedly anti-free market, citing the usual downfalls of the system, and focusing on the necessity of domestically-focused economics, wherein the localized community benefits first, and fewer workers are taken advantage of on the grand scale allowed by neoliberal capitalist free markets. This, in turn, would help define regional identities, as well as aid in recognition of other regionalities and their respective value systems (via negotiations, both economically and politically). Within Mouffe's proposed "diversity of practices within a field of shared rules," the possibility of a shift away from EU consumership, towards EU citizenship is born.
Towards this end, Mouffe suggests that the EU must abandon neoliberal capitalism and begin to work towards a new democratic socialism, taking the successful aspects from the past and applying them in novel ways, "integrating economic questions with social, environmental, and political ones," essentially rewriting the European social democracy for contemporary problems (60). Regionally specific, social democracy is the historic expression of new Europeanism, and would doubtless lead to the European citizenship Mouffe desires, depending on its implementation.
And here we find the most difficult issue with Mouffe's proposal: how are the power dynamics within Europe to change? How can an entire continent shift from nationalism-born-out-of-colonialism-born-out-of-autocracy shift to a federation of states bound by a non-enforceable social democracy? And how are the gaps between the regional governments and the continental government to be handled? Simply granting regional sovereignty cannot be sufficient in gathering the European continent to a new social democratic table. Too many previous perceived wrongs need righted, and crises of late capitalism (proxy wars, waves of refugees, the need for global reparations) will not simply disappear. It is obvious that Mouffe's assertion that the ways of life of the global rich must change, but what can possibly initiate such a shift? The comfortably privileged will not willingly discard their luxuries.
*And undemocratic, in the sense that it ignores the necessity derived from affect that drives political movements, such as Black Lives Matter, or, more specifically, the Ferguson protests in response to cop killings.
0 notes
Text
Agonistics ch2 - Which Democracy for a Multipolar Agonistic World?
Friday, December 29, 2017
In her second chapter, Mouffe begins to describe how her concept of a multipolar governance system conflicts with other thinker's notions of world governance, and how democracy can still be found outside the model of Western development. Mouffe suggests that the violent outbreaks we have seen on our brave new globalized political stage are the result of "lack of political channels for challenging the [current global] hegemony" (19).
The first, and perhaps most daunting, hurdle is the current unipolar political system which underlies all international politics today. When the United States declared itself victor in the Cold War, its modern system of capitalist imperialism became the norm for the entire world. Here, Benedict Anderson's depiction of a world divided into nation states in his Imagined Communities serves to lay a conceptual foundation of international conflict, with deep roots in the economic-political supremacy of the West. Mouffe's assertion that radical negative is insurmountable is a product of this history, both born of it and constantly reinstated through it. Given this backdrop of conflictuality and Western imperialism, how can a multipolar, agonistic world come to light?
Mouffe's main argument is that the assumptions of Western/neoliberal need to be addressed and deconstructed, allowing the great multitude of "others" to flourish under their own capabilities, as regional poles. She constructs this argument in opposition to cosmopolitanism, portrayed as global governance under the rule of what amounts to one body. While this portrayal seems shallow, or at the very least unimaginative, Mouffe's argument is wholly realist and situated in the present, disallowing it an idealism. Perhaps more of this attitude is needed in academic writing of this sort, as daydreaming intellectuals too often write wandering tomes of utopianisms without providing any pragmatic means of attainment in the real and tractionable political landscape. It seems this is Mouffe's main driving point as she systematically draws others' cosmopolitan constructions against her own criticism. In doing so, she forces the reader (her other critical combatant in dialogue, her agonist) to discard any notion other than dealing with what we currently have (there can be nothing else, in this exact moment), situated in the history we rely on (however constructed), so that we may forge a path forward, in utterly realist terms.
In doing so, we must recognize the unipolarity of the global affairs, consider it and its antagonisms as the causes of fractionalism today, and, from there and only there (or, logically, if and only if) begin to construct something different. Mouffe begins by suggesting a multipolar system of governance, in the form of separate, sovereign regions, free from the overwatch of Western neoliberalism, including the widely accepted notions of democracy, secularism, and human rights. Indeed, even if these constructions are "lost," a multipolar world "is better than a unipolar order because it is less likely to foster the emergence of extreme forms of antagonisms," such as terror attacks, drone strikes, construction of settlements, gassings, or invasions (29). Indeed, one man's definition may be different from another's: democracy, too, can be redefined, and so can our approaches to human dignity.
For example, Mouffe brings the example of the "Far Eastern" concept of harmony, within which the human individual does not take precedence over its environment. The formulation of "human rights," as such, typically removes the individual from their context, so that they may be objectified, like a car in a production line: all components can be accounted for, and development can be tracked, as if on an assembly line. Mouffe's assertion is sound: this simply cannot be the only way humanity conceives of "human rights," or more specifically, the way in which human dignity is fulfilled.
Though she names Martha Nussbaum as being of the individualist camp of philosophical/moral liberalism, my reading of Nussbaum shows these two academics' theories to parallel on another, not contradict one another. Though Nussbaum is focused on the individual, her focus is contextualized; the "weakest link" in the family, community, or country must be brought up to the point of dignity so that all may flourish. Nussbaum's driving march is for capabilities, which seems less obtrusive than the neoliberalist moral imperialism imposed by Mouffe's ideological enemies. It seems contradictory that Mouffe supports a plurality of personhoods, rooted in the acknowledgement of other culture's emphasis on cooperation, but opposes idealist conceptions of global unity.
Overall, Mouffe wants regional cultures to be able to develop in their own way, devising their governance as they see fit. Given that she is so bound to an historical framework, I wonder how she imagines this will happen without internal strife. How will women be able to govern in misogynistic cultures? How can we assign value to these more subtle (to some) violences as compared to violent outbreaks of resistance? Mouffe's relativism is appreciable, but seems to lack any form of progressivity. A peace-maker is not necessarily a breaker of bonds. Though I fully support "vernacular forms of democracy," especially contextualized within their preceding cultures and religions, I can't support the continued oppression of any person under all others, be it a woman, a non-cis person, someone who isn't heteronormative, or someone of a religious or ethnic minority. I can't imagine that Mouffe has abandoned these considerations, but it is doubtless that there would not be regional poles of governance that were religiously opposed or ethnically biased.
Westernization, which is the enemy of cultural plurality, is in and of itself racist and sexist, and so it cannot be argued as the solution. But, in the given form, I cannot fully support Mouffe's fledgling multiverse, at least not as-is. The institutional framework of agonism, within the multiverse may hold the key, but, given the hurdles faced by the EU and the UN, a full conception of such a framework will be difficult. Regionalism will likely play a part, as Mouffe has already thankfully mentioned the sad and ugly history of national border-drawing. Unfortunately, this too seems to bring up a quandary: how are separate parties to occupy the same space? I'm afraid that the very history Mouffe seems to hold so dear has only told stories of violent conflict in these cases. We shall see.
0 notes
Text
IC ch11/Epilogue - Travel and Traffic: On the Geobiography of Imagined Communities
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
English as "global-hegemonic, post-clerical Latin" - enabling texts written in it to gain wider appreciation than if they were first published in a vernacular
Nice quote 208
Republicanism as bringing the monarch down to eye-level: "next-door neighbors," rather than a traditional title of regality. As representatives, they had to be one of the many.
This book criticized as being too liberal for marxists, too marxist for liberals.
Intent: "to de-Europeanize the theoretical study of nationalism" 209
Beginning with Spanish America, which allowed Anderson to frame the USA as another creole-led revolutionary state
Focus on smaller states, comparing them with larger states, rather than geographically-nearer ones (which has created fallacious generalizations about nations separate, but within the same locality.
No study of nationalism in the US in the 1980s.
"power is not having to listen"
Some thought it could help their own nation:
Japan - "it could help in the enduring paedagogical [sic] struggle against Japanese insularity and the conservative doxa that the country's history and culture made comparisons with other countries impossible or irrelevant." 211
Greece: as a rebuttal to the newly claimed Macedonia "meant to establish a dissenting voice and an alternative way of thinking about the way in which the nation was made." 219 (critics said it didn't give enough credence to the economic transformations that helped for the modern nation
Cyberspace note from Margel's Nachwort… nationalisms in cyberspace?...
Nationalisms in print dispersion: local national translations valued above all else, though English would be better than the next nation/rival's language.
Additionally, some nations printed their translation with a nationalistic cover, either ironically or naively.
The Open Society Institute's project to send money to post-soviet publishers for translations
Obvious intent to help shape the region (list of suggested books, here's some cash to do it); "in order to support a 'pluralist climate in these sciences'" 220, 221
Power of print and of "new" thinking
Books led directly to use in academic study (at unis)
Supports new/small/progressive publishers
Why not in places as well? Western thinking, true, but aside from the imperialistic bleed of eurocentrism, it would open forms of thinking within those other places.
$5,000,000 for 2,000 editions, covering 30-80% of total publishing costs
Covers "are plain and simple, without any concessions to commercial marketing or blatant nationalist imagery." 221
2005: Catalan version, published in collaboration with the Uni of Valencia
Egypt began a program to translate and disperse ~1,000 texts, at subsidized prices, though in limited runs of about 1,000
Nuances of vernaculars - how the piece gains new dynamism (not as "pure", no longer the author's sole property - truly "international") (Chinese censorship, Thai royalism)
---
Geographical Distribution:
No visible chronology from 1st to3rd world, nor from West to East
All based on English, not one translation to another to another.
Political activator: read by uni students, who are the motivating population in places other than the US or UK
Helped explain the "general morphology of nationalist consciousness" in nonacademic language, but in conceptual terms usually reserved for the university, again, opening new pathways for the nonintelligentsia. 227
It is a critical reading, and allows for new ways of comparison (Japan to Czarist Rusiia, rather than to it's geographical neighbors)
Stimuli:
Piracy: local initiative rather than external coercion or slavish imitation
OSI's intent to liberalize and pluralize
Greeks to outline domestic chauvinism
Catalan to spurn autonomy
Transformation:
Translation into languages the author does not understand
"translation is necessarily a useful treason" - the work is no longer Anderson's
French version helped him understand what he "really" meant through the languages nuances
Surrendered to Thai translation, as his own had left it lifeless, though more exact as a translation
0 notes
Text
IC ch10 - Memory and Forgetting
Sunday, December 24, 2017
notes:
"new"-wherever place names represented a parallelism with "old"-wherever, not an inheritance or dominance over. Sibling rivalry, alongside
Connection to that other place, through language, religion, custom, and tradition, despite never having any hope of ever seeing the other populations with which the above facets of life are shared.
A necessary precondition to the simultaneity of cities was vast separating distance, the newer of which had to be well-established/permanent, as well as subordinate to the older. This made the gradual absorption of one unit into the other impossible, as they existed under entirely separate contexts (unlike Scotland into the UK).
The new settlement held dominance over their new place, and held a culture separate from (and hierarchically over) the organically-formulated native cultures.
No intention of overthrowing, simply survival and competition or co-survival (i.e., USA and UK). The conflicts didn't have accompanying fears of total extermination, as they were "among brothers" (white, christian, english- or spanish-speaking), reassuring a future relationship between the two parties.
US Revolution/Declaration of Independence was unprecedented, especially as a republican one, but once successfully executed, seemed entirely rational in example. Anderson suggests (192) that what was written in the Constitution was seen as "something of universal truth and value," and so was replicated and mimed. The French Revolution paralleled the American, and then soon the Haitian. (declaration had no mention of historical legitimacy of the new US, nor of an "American nation") These revolutions signaled a rupture history, as they began to form national identities rather than divisions within colonies (natives were now Peruvians).
The discipline of History was constituted from the growing global sense of sociopolitical simultaneity (the quote on 194 is worth rereading). As occurrances embedded themselves within history, they became objects - events - which could be handled: they could be picked apart, understood, contextualized, and replicated. As such, the events took their places on the genealogical branches growing skyward away from the nationalisms sitting at the trunk, supporting the historical lineage being created by nationalists for their own nationalisms. In further colonial fashion, largely-bourgeoisie intelligentsia were "awakening" to their own national heritages, opportunistically snatching regional vernaculars, historical events, and geographic gravitation as their own. Indeed, even the dead came back to speak on behalf of the nation as historians contorted history to suit their ends, including the people affected, regardless of the actual context. This rewriting spurned an indigenismo in South America, within which the "extinguished" indigenous populations spoke for the formation of national identities (they had been extinguished, after all).
-----
Anderson mentions that the "brutal mechanisms of slavery ensured not merely its political-cultural fragmentation, but also very rapidly removed the possibility of imagining black communities in Venezuela and West Africa moving in parallel trajectory." (189) I keep going back to the uniqueness of the African American experience among these narratives of nationality, independence, and self-determination. The utter decimation of African communities by the Europeans steered humanity's destiny towards a duality of East and West, with little else to contest the definition of the future otherwise. I can only dream of what a world defined, in part, by a great African continent would have looked like. Or, in addition, one in which the Native Americans could have had a voice. I can only imagine that it would have been decidedly more complex, and perhaps less domineering. A global round table would have been so different from the slaughterhouse which served as crucible for our contemporary society.
On p190, Anderson mentions the European Chinese pogroms, which lasted until the mid eighteenth century (passed on to indigenous peoples). I wonder what this is all about.
------
Fratricide
Perhaps the greatest manipulation of history has been embodied in how nations remember/forget events central to their formation. Once the affectual aftermath of an event is lost to a previous generation, it can be put on the shelf tacked to the sociological wall by this special kind of memory. One can mention such occurrences and call to mind specific images and events, but their memorialization is an act unconsciously prohibited by one's membership to the nation. The psychological (and sociological) conception of the nation survives through this non/remembrance mechanism, forever stainless in the lens aimed backward along the timeline. Of course these events are known and recognized by nationalists, but they are not incorporated into the identity of the nation, nor the identity of the nationalist. For to do so would force the nationalist to confront their own limited conception of the nation as such, eroding the nationalist sentiment quite essentially. Perhaps the above formulation is too liberally-minded: Anderson suggests that the events that are remembered/forgotten are framed within the nationally-domestic context, as conflicts between co-nationalists. For example, the American Civil War is framed as a war between brothers within one union, not as two sovereign nation-states fighting over the right to command the South, which may be a more historically-objective documentation of the conflict, but which is "obligatory to forget" if one is to construct themself as an American (201).
[[Indeed, this type of propaganda is used in the opposite way as well: the Vietnam war was anything but. Framed as a "war" (as defined in the particularly isolationist fear-mongering American way), US citizens can rest easy knowing that their military is fighting the good fight, not slaughtering innocents on the behalf of greed and dominance. ]]
One must ask if the conception of other Americans as such is as true-blue as suggested in this sociological analysis. If Americans truly considered one another Americans, would we have white cops shooting - no. the nationalist conception necessitates both historical and linguistic bases. Though many progressives do, indeed, consider people of all ethnic backgrounds American so long as they occupy American soil long enough to prove it, many, especially "nationalists" (in this late, colloqial, definition of the word), consider an American to be white and English-speaking, and some consider a Christian background to also be necessary. Despite the nation's history as divided white ethnicities, whites see themselves as united, Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and even Native Americans simply don't have history on their side (at least in the popular and state-educational sense). Additionally, top-down policy in relation to housing, finance, and nearly every other arm of life, has systematically oppressed nonwhites in America (and, in some periods, some white ethnicities), creating rifts that were either never openly discussed, or which have since been non-remembered (forgotten, as has the Native American genocide and as has the racism after the Emancipation Proclamation). The class divisions set upon the citizens by their economic overlords have become so common that they have passed from view, unidentifiable, and, unfortunately, ascribed to lower classes as inherent: the welfare queen is just an example of Black welfare leeches, the meth addict just an example of the pointlessness of paying attention to the poor and/or mentally ill. The media, alongside racist, classist policy, have constructed, within the American identity, hostilities within the ranks of relatives. Given a clean slate (total amnesia, perhaps), would a factory worker have any reason to be hostile towards a custodian or foodservice worker? Without generations brought up under biased policy and slanted political banter, the economic numbers would speak so much more clearly, wouldn't they? The rich would be ousted for the ticks they are, the lower classes banding together to do so.
---
I find Anderson's literary examples to be examples of exoticized eroticization: the Black American is sexualized in the eyes of the white American, because he can more openly do so now, rather than mask it under the societal power dynamics embedded in slavery. Similarly, the Huck Finn example has an adult Black American acting as dog-on-a-leash (or Wookie, for a more current example) for the young white boy. The situation is more complex, especially given Finn's poverty, but society's view of the pair would clearly benefit one and disadvantage the other in the vast majority of cases (except, of course, in the eyes of the rich aristocracy). Anderson does mention this facet of the relationship (203), but fails to read the fascination of being "able" to be "friends" with a Black man "now," as opposed to under the oppression of Southern Antebellum, which would have made the white slave-sympathizer as much a pariah as a pink in the 1950s.
---
Anderson begins to discuss historical documentation, and I must wonder if the rise of nationalism, and its unique factors/enablers would have been possible if history had been documentable earlier. If, for instance, history had been written and dispersed earlier then the 95 Theses, could it be manipulated in the same ways? I think this is a necessary precondition for nationalistic conception, making it possible only in this era. Indeed, we have new ways of manipulating documented history, via media and the Internet.
The advent of the photograph, alongside the accumulation of various "documentary evidence" "simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory," creates a personhood, an identity (204).
History and documentation are, in and of themselves, manipulations.
Because there is no "originator," the biography of the nation must be written backwards in time, rather than linearly from a "birth." Thus, the … I don't follow his last point…
0 notes
Text
IC ch9 - Census, Map, Museum
Thursday, December 21, 2017
As immediate progenitor to most national movements outside of Europe, the colonial state implemented three institutions of power that became important to the formation of the nations that followed, as such. These institutions of power structured the colonial power's view of its dominion and the people within it, directly influencing the succeeding nations' identities.
First, the census imagined people within clean, complete boxes of ethnicity (or race), later becoming closer to a nationalistic origin. The colonial power placed these views upon the people, drawing boxes around them and fitting them into the boxes: they took little account of actual sociological or cultural separations within the colony. Building upon an ideology of ethno-racial hierarchy, the colonial power aimed not only to categorize, but also to count, and they counted every one of their "possessions," not only as baubles to tout, but also as inferiors, and as surveillable economic pawns.
Second, the map began to restructure how everyone came to understand the world, more and more through a lens of "ours vs. theirs." The colonial powers saw the map as a testament of their power, and so they fought to fill in as much of the blank grid of lattitudes and longitudes as possible, moving their invisible lasso as they went, forming colored logoizations of their territories. Thus the creation of "the country" came to serve the colonial powers as they attempted to put space under the same surveillance to which they had subjected the ethnicized and racialized populations of their colonies. The map came to represent territories, and, in conjunction with the census, series of populations within the colony. When logoized, the image of the territory acted both as badge of accomplishment for the rulers, and national emblem for the nationalist-minded. The origins of the peoples didn't matter: only their placement on the map.
Third, the broad institution of the museum took its political place among the first two, cementing their importance in terms both historical and contemporary. The manipulation of the museum is obvious in the case of the colony: it possessed objects of significance, displayed to both the local and global populations, representing the power of the curatorial actors (including archaeologists and those who funded their activities), and the greatness of their possessions. This latter point is furthered when one notes that the museum serialized the artifact, just as the census had serialized the colonial body. The act of museumizing the colony was most exemplified in the archeological importance of ancient architectures, used to again reinforce the power of the colonial oppressor, as well as the impotence of the oppressed (they let the monument ruin, they could not construct something like this now). This also acted to further racialize relations between the colonials and the locals, as the hierarchy gained facets of ineptitude: historical grandeur had been lost or let go. The colonial power began to postulate that the locals were of a different race from the ancient builders, stratifying their cultural genealogy along lines defined by the colonials rom their own values. On the global stage, this allowed the colonial powers to pose themselves as guardians of this great ancient prestige, themselves becoming logos of the nation. The above mechanisms bled into education, and became somewhat unconscious mentalities among colonial peoples, and the monuments became representations of national pride, the colonial motivations lost to historical detail.
The colonial grid of classification was implements via the census, the map, and the museum, acting to place the colonial oppressor as organizer, ultimate delineator. This was reinforced by their own view that the world was patterned via serialization: many of one sort of person formed an ethnic group to be classified and categorized, reinforcing the need to classify and categorize, creating "a landscape of perfect visibility" (185). The colonials' imagining of history and power shaped the everyday reality of the people they oppressed, leading, eventually, to national movements based on the same colonial view of history, but with aims of independence rather, rather than foreign dominance.
0 notes
Text
IC ch8 - The Angel of History
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Revolution, and, by extension, nationalism, are ideas, theoretical objects, and so they can be replicated as such. However, the organic genesis of a revolution, as in the case of the French Revolution, is not possible if one is taking the French Revolution as a phenomena to replicate. In the most basic act identifying the phenomena, the event is cordoned off, made into an object, much like the country in Anderson's next chapter. In this process, the great organic nature of the occurrence is lost, and the revolution is forced, even if it takes all the better parts of every earlier revolution and leaves behind every lesser part. For, as should be obvious by now, the geopolitical context, people within the national affectation, and economic pressures (indeed, the whole system) is always different.
Though Anderson's "imagined community" can be applied to a wide variety of situations, his formulation of nationalism is more specific. He has presented several different types of nationalisms, originating in a few different macro-political contexts. One could, perhaps easily, argue that there are dozens of models of nationalism, especially after an additional 40 years from the original date of Imagined Communities' publication. But, the origins of genesis must be tracked and made understandable, so great patterns have been noted, as faint as they may appear below the complex political, economic, and social milieu faced by every population in their own nationalist formulation. Can any of Anderson's models be directly applied to Scottish independence, or to Catalan? He qualifies his masking technique by relating it to Marxism or capitalism: nationalism became a modular theoretical formulation to be applied. Those wishing to apply the concept have had to stretch and tack it to their own local context: sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn't. The seemingly constant eruptions of factions within the Middle East may be a good example of how nationalism as a modular theory is either poorly implemented ("planned"), or generated within a separate framework, perhaps relying more on religion than dead dynastic right.
In a more general context, the rebelling force is always the party who perceives themselves (or their people) as oppressed, but also perceive themselves as having the ability to claim their own rights. The Kurds are oppressed, but feel as though they can fight back, whereas the third world nationals working in Abu Dhabi are, by global standards, very oppressed, but they do not see themselves either as powerful in any way against their oppressors, nor do they see their oppressors as such, as their pay is relatively much better than it would be in many other places or situations. A middle class slave is still a slave. Again, there must be the perception of oppression on the part of the oppressed, as well as the perception of the ability to assert rights without total and utter repression. These seem to be the only necessary ingredients for the generation of a mentality which leads to revolution or nationalist formulation. To which conclusion the mentality races is entirely dependent upon the global-political context. In this early 21st century globalized society, very few people are unaware of the global stage they could command if need-be. Similarly, very few are unaware that the world works as warring economic states - not dynasties, not empires (at least not in name), so their formulation must currently rely on economic statism.
Revolutionary forces that take over from the oppressive government inherit the "mansion and wiring" of the old dynasty or colonial power, so their command of the nation in ways similar to the imperial forces is a matter of convenience both in terms of materials and in terms of rule. Nationalisms become official nationalisms easily once rule in inherited, for in every empire, governance, or revolution, there is a represented population who are not directly engaged in the revolution or rule. Here perhaps is an argument for anarchism: without great, organizational rule, would the common people much care for one political side or another? Without fear of external invasion or oppression, I would think not (as long as there were relative order). However, in the global form of capitalism we currently find ourselves, in which private ownership is the primary rule of the day, and in which resources are limited, and thus valuable, one has a hard time conceiving of a world without any kind of rule, or without any conflict. For, until economics enter an age of post-scarcity, conflict will be commonplace, perhaps even necessary to continued progressive human existence. Without conflict, the weak would have no voice, and the powerful would do as they wish until they burn the entire house down around them.
0 notes
Text
IC ch7 - Patriotism and Racism
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Patriotism is the extremist aspect of nationalism which indoctrinates the nation's people into willing to give up their lives for the imagined community, or at least some facet of it (141). Formed from the thousands of voices chanting national anthems, either voices of people next to you, or voices of people you, as a member of this nation, imagine are out there somewhere, doing the same thing (mainly because of some form of communications technology and the shared language of the chant), patriotism reifies, in an experiential, perspectival sense, the imagined community of the nation (145). This nation is not something chosen: one feels as though they are born into it, just as they born only into the landscape where their mother is giving birth (144). One could have just as well been born in the bush of Nigeria as in the suburban hospital of Ogdensburg, NY, but where one is born and socialized instills in that person a sense of home and a sense of kinship, two great driving forces for the development of love for their home place, their home nation (141). But, membership in the imagined community of the nation is not exclusive to birth right; the nation can be joined, via "naturalization" (145). Thus, the nation represents itself as both open and closed, requiring identitarian work to gain access, to not only join the place of the nation (for the nation is placeless, except for the social geography which originally bore it, and that geography's remnant cultural trappings), but to join the imagined community, as a culture with prerequisite political opinions, above all else. These are, of course, intricately tied to a specific language, as is the culture at large and the political context which bore the nation in the first place. In the world today, there are still those who irreverently and ignorantly proclaim that Germans speak German and Americans speak American [sic]. This, to me, seems to be a clinging aspect of an older world, for today there are instant translation technologies, new and faster forms of transportation, and the Internet itself, which has a complex part to play in the league of nations, as we have come to see in the last few elections and leaks of sensitive documents and information. Indeed, there is a marked rise in nationalism in this new information age of salient(?) technologies. As the globalized world seems to get smaller and smaller, many recede into fear-based nationalisms of opposition. Again, it seems as though the pattern is that of perceived oppression (usually by an Other source, perhaps seeking to gain from the oppression of those within the nation - at least, this is how it ismost often portrayed).
Getting back to the issue of language, one can see the signs of racism bubbling up in the colonial relationships of oppressed and oppressor via European* language and control. The oppressed people would typically have to learn a language-of-power, which the Europeans controlled, alongside their own native vernacular. This inevitably led to languages-of-resistance, or at least the perception, among oppressors, that the vernacular was a secret space in which the oppressed could have discussions without the listening ear of an oppressor. On the other hand, the European oppressors no longer had their secret space - the oppressed people also had to learn their language-of-power. Stripped of this privilege, racist terms grew organically from a place of frustration against the oppressed, as the oppressors began to perceive loss of power in their own colony (148). This pattern is, however, simply another product of an older, more direct power dynamic between classes. Anderson points out that the aristocracy (who now rules the empire), had before lived a sense of divinity, above, and holding domination over, all other peoples (149). Though the veil of the nation forced the imperial powers to re-present themselves, their inherent culture, a culture of class distinction, had not changed. Thus, as Europeans colonized nations which seemed to them "lesser" (they did not recognize their languages, written histories, economies, societies, etc.), their own class superiority was reinforced and amplified as they took note of physiological and cultural differences between the colonized populations and themselves. Unfortunately, due to the inequality-perpetualizing forces that humanity has given its economic structure, as embodied by globalized late capitalism, nationalisms today can still be wrought by these same class distinctions. Derived from racist notions of development, morality, and even humanity, the nationalisms of today distinguish the Western European from the Eastern European in ways that, from an outside perspective, would seem senseless without the generation of racism in the imperial period, despite contemporary economic relationships. Anderson's point of a gauge of humanity emanating from the European center, dissipating as it went farther afield among the colonies, is well illustrated by his example of the differences between European armies, which were well-equipped and well-treated, and the colonial armies, which were essentially just cannon fodder (150-152). One can see how patterns similar to the above, alongside the "typical 'solidarity among whites'" inevitably led to mass slavery, and to the deeply-entrenched contemporary economic classes, which in many ways are simply veiled (and veiled again) aristocrats holding power and wealth over not only a peasantry, but over a work force producing their power and wealth.
--
Anderson brings up his theory that so-called "reverse racism" was rare in anticolonial movements, apart from Black people in the US, indicated by the number of racist terms for the other group (153). One possible cause of a difference is that Black slaves were not colonized, they were ripped from their homeland and forced to live among their oppressors, as the minority, rather than as a colonized population. When more legal and civil rights were granted to Black Americans, they became more like a colonized population, but still corralled within their oppressor's land. They had no homeland to reclaim, and thus could not "push out" the invaders. The Black Nationalist and Black Exodus (?) movements serve as proof of this, as Black Americans either wanted their own land, as separate from the US, or to return to their own places of origin. Additionally, the first Black Nationalist revolution was that of Haitians: nonnative people on an island (separate from their oppressors' homeland), claiming the land as their own.** Overall, I think his inclusion of Black Americans shows his lack of understanding of the situation, though one could perhaps appreciate the qualification of his theory in linguistic terms.
*I'm using "European" here to generalize for all imperial powers, which is a glaring issue.
**Check this qualification on Haiti
0 notes
Text
IC ch6 - The Last Wave
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Outside of Europe, peoples who would later comprise nationalist movements lacked essential components for their own nationalist genesis until the nation-states of Europe spread their own ways of thinking during the colonial era. This form of early globalization acted in several distinct ways: occupation, education, instruction by example, and control or manipulation of language.
Notes:
WWI brought era of dynasticism to an end (113)
League of Nations was first international body to hold nationality above all else, making the nation-state "the legitimate international norm" (113). "surviving imperial powers came dressed in national costume rather than imperial uniform"
Here we begin to see the truly two-sided nature of nationalism: "both a genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative regulations, and so forth" (114). European languages-of-state in non-European states were used as Russifying forces, culturally impressing the colonized populations along the way. Mainly due to the complex educational relationship between the colonized population and the empire, the nationalisms of non-European states tended to have the "ardent populism" found within European states, rooted in the language-of-state, despite these languages' origin outside the local region* (113,133). The colonized populations were educated within the colonial European system, taking from it the example of European states' own fights for independence (118, 119). If the people were united through French, though they were "Indonesian," their nationalist desire was expressed via an indentitarianism stemming largely from the oppression of the colonial power, as well as through the colonial power's lens (i.e., as "Indonesians") (121). Though educated perhaps to the same degree as colonials, the colonized were never allowed to practice their knowledge at the same level, and were always fenced-in in their home locale: empowered, but professionally neutered, the colonized inevitably developed an opposition to their occupiers. Perceived inequality, then, is perhaps the main motivator for independence.
[[Imagined community of educated youth, imagined community of those oppressed by the colonial power (led by youth), imagined community of colonial power as opposed to other colonial powers (aristocracy)
Who "belongs" where, by name (122) indigene, etc.
Aristocracy is overthrown by youth who become bourgeoisie, controlling the factors of education, media, capital, etc. (though it wasn't intended this way)
Top piece is not about racism, per se, yet, but rather a cultural superiority, as discussed earlier. For, as Anderson explains, the Dutch respected the to-be Japanese Meiji enough to legally proclaim them "honorary Europeans" from 1899 on (123). Each exclusion from who "belonged" operated to create a smaller and smaller group of who did belong, forming a more tangible nationality (in effect).]]
The above educational mechanism benefitted the colonial power by creating officials tied to their colonial bureaucracy, which became, as the 19th century bled into the 20th and eventually beyond the first World War, more and more capitalist in nature (115). The education of their controlled masses was like an indoctrinated slavery, and was perhaps a crucial stage in the globalization of capitalism regimes the world wide, leading to an impotent working class and politically armless middle class, however educated and insightful they might be (126). The intellectual middle class' last hurrah was their local nationalism (116). For after the great consumption of nearly every culture by capitalist forces, cultural influence, or the identitarianism of the people as a nation or ethnic region became politically powerless, relegated to the small boxing rings of in-fighting, conflicts left over by Berlin Conference cake-cutting (125, 132).
[["here, as in schoolroom maps, we see fiction seeping into reality" (122)
Propaganda: (education, media) -> culture]]
Language is not the definitive operant in nationalist revolution. Quoc ngu is the perfect example, as it was constructed and placed to cut the native population off from their neighbors and from their past, but eventually acted as a unifying force for the newly-created region(126). These people first used French (due to its place in the colonial power structure - vernaculars were not usable in professional work [127, 134]), but were eventually shown the respectable quality of quoc ngu via print and colonial schools (paradoxically), fueling Vietnamese independence (128, 131). Due, in part, to the colonial era preceding an independent Vietnam, in which the Vietnamese were separated moralistically(?) from the other ethnicities in Indonesia by the colonial powers, Khmer-speaking peoples later broke off to form Cambodia (their spoken vernacular had remained throughout, perhaps due, in part, to the colonial distinction of the ethnicities) (129, 130).
*"It is always a mistake to treat languages in the way that certain nationalist ideologues treat them - as emblems of nation-ness, like flags, costumes, folk-dances, and the rest. Much the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities" (133). The imagined community is first opened to who else falls within the understanding or use of the language, and then to smaller groups within. For instance, every ethnic group within a colony was forced to use and understand the language-of-state (as did the colonial oppressors), but the nationalisms that resulted were eventually much more diverse than a single unit, singularlly oppressed by the colonial empire. Indeed, power dynamics are rarely so simple. Again, this is where we later see an independent nation state with recurring ethnic civil wars, as can be witnessed all across Africa. However, it must be noted that the range of the imagined (oppressed) community is limited to those who speak the same language (134). It is not until the rise of truly globalized languages (or great swaths of translated writing), such as English, than other forms of identity politics begin to rise, at east among the newly literate lower classes: the intelligentsia had formed notions of oppressed and oppressing classes, in print, long before imperial English, Marx being the main example (135, 140). Unity can be found within oppressive imperialisms, by administration or by language, perhaps allowing hope for a global imagined community, and eventually something like the mythic socialist revolution, again; by the oppressors' own hand, they will be wounded ("The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole face of the globe," Marx [139]).
[[Does the turn in global politics to unity rely on a global language? The global illiterate can participate politically if they are allowed information… (135: radio, TV; 140 "reading different languages")
-global Internet-
Flat information bandwidth (impediments: VPN, takes longer to get info from another country, due to fiberoptic cable lengths)]]
0 notes
Text
IC ch5 - Official Nationalism and Imperialism
Friday, December 15, 2017
As power from those who had accumulated it through wealth and control began to wane with their modes of power-assertion and ascertainment, derived mainly from the "loss of faith" of their populations as well as their education, new modes had to be devised if power were to be kept in the old hands it always had been. As the people came to appreciate their vernacular as "theirs," so too came the conviction that they deserved other powers, and so came the yearn for autonomy based in linguistic identity (84). Thus, strategically, the powers that be declared certain regional languages, whether they had anything to do with them (the ruling class) or not (84). Other strategies which motivated a nationalist spirit, such as mandatory state-run education, were also employed to strengthen their power in the eyes of the newly identitarian masses. No longer would lineage or divine right rule the people, but only a leader among them, a "True American," for instance. These "cultural conquistadors" had to employ a certain "inventive legerdemain […] to permit the empire to appear attractive in national drag" (86,87). A flag can be flown in front of any building, whether allied or not, however, and nationalism gained this two-sided quality as official nationalism became the order of the day, no matter the ruler's name, background, or ethnicity. One can view this shift in progressive terms: more than simply ruling by the mechanism in vogue, perhaps "dishonestly" or conspiratorially, it also made the ruler responsible. If, for example, "Kaiser Wilhelm II cast himself as 'No. 1 German,' he implicitly conceded that he was one of many of the same kind as himself that he had a representative function," and thus also be cast out as a traitor under terms heretofore foreign to the European rulers as dynasts (85). Within this framework, there is good support Seton-Watson's assertion that the Revolution of 1905 was "as much a revolution of non-Russians against Russification as it was a revolution of workers, peasants, and radical intellectuals against autocracy" (88). One could go as far as to say that the two views of the Revolution of 1905 are essentially classist, as the ruling Czar implemented Russification only to maintain power above a newly conscious citizenry. The conflict, again, is between the oppressed and the oppressor, as visible even in the contorted view of radical Japanese nationalist Kita Ikki: "The socialists of the West contradict themselves when they admit the right of class struggle to the proletariat at home and at the same time condemn war, waged by a proletariat among nations" (98). Here it is made quite evident that, though the oppressed are the initiators of nationalist aggression (in military action or in socio-cultural activation), this oppression is dependent entirely upon perspective and can have several tiers. Whereas the nation-state may be aggressive in the view of a world run by imperial powers, the people of Japan (in this case) go along mainly because they have been in isolation so long and see the Western outsiders as invaders (the now-state government had acted to gain a "centralized monopoly of the means of violence," subjugating the people civically rather than feudally [95]) (96). The people could, as in the case of Hungary's intelligentsia-driven nationalist revolution against their aristocracy's official nationalism,* see through the "act" of dynasts rallying the people within their empire under a new nationality, and react against the nationalism of their state for their own empowerment, even if the nationalist attitude benefits their ethnicity, or attempts to make their culture the prominent one (102, 103). And, of course, the extent to which the nation acts to execute their "national will" is wholly based on circumstance and political context (Japan moves from isolation to invasion to [domestically-uncontested, unlike the European dynasties] empire among nationalist empires; Austria moves from empire to national empire, without much change aside from subtle strategic moves to keep things as they were, playing the same old political game, only with new rules - Japan goes through entire revolution [106, 108])(96,97).
*This eventually resulted in a second revolution by Czarists over the populist nationalists, and thus back to the official nationalist practices that had preceded the populist revolution. They eventually unify in some ways, but are taken over under Austrian nationalism anyway (102, 103, 107, 108).
---
Scottish nationalism was so late to the party because the "typical" factors of nationalization for the 19th and 20th centuries relied heavily on linguistic identity, of which the Scots lack entitlement (89). Further, as Anderson points out, the Scots had highways to education and to their own branches of imperial and colonial power, unlike the Indians educated in England, who, like the Creoles of the Americas, could never aspire to attain positions of prominence in the British Empire (90). In short, the Scots were not as oppressed within the system, and perhaps just within their comfort so that they did not aspire to notions of nationalization. However, one could posit that Anderson's analysis of nationalism is only the first wave of nationalism, the second seems to have arrived after some event that occurred in the 1990s or 2000s (perhaps the rise of terrorism as the new business of governmental power accumulation and assertion).
---
Hand-me-downs from pilgrimage/religious colonialism to nationalization (91) systematic plans
"nationalist policies" (reactionary)
Though within the new "national" architecture, some actions taken by new nations were not progressively "international," but were, rather, to the detriment of the future of relationships among nations (of people). Anderson brings the reader's attention to the case of Wachirawut, of Thailand, who brought in gastarbeiter to undertake public works projects, "creat[ing] an impotent working class 'outside' Thai society, [leaving' that society largely undisturbed" (100). Taught in the West, and using their models for the development of his new nation, he also brought along Western arrogance and racism.
Much like AI can bring along our discriminatory biases unless made conscious of them.
"the monopolistic interests of certain groups which were alien to the original conception of national aims" (110)
"co-opted"
Pg 111 - long mourn the empire, but the act is stagey - all ruling classes continue to rule, but they miss openly ruling. The more democratic the system, the more the ruling class has to veil their power.
0 notes
Text
IC ch4 - Old Languages, New Models
Friday, December 15, 2017
"…the era of successful national liberation movements in the Americas coincided rather closely with the onset of the age of nationalism in Europe." (67)
The American model, when combined with the French Revolution, made for an ideological construction which others could aspire to achieve within their own context (67). This model was, however, impossible to understand to the medieval European mind, especially within the unique context of European dynastic politics. The rise of print capitalism and fall of the Latin Universality of Europe were necessary precursors (67). Otherwise, the feudal European mind would not, indeed, could not, understand the example made by those in the Western Hemisphere.
As previously discussed, the conception of history was changing, and so, too, was the conception of the present within history beginning to reflexively change. One began to imagine that the conditions under which the Bible and other sacred texts were written were wholly different from those found in the present day, a "comparative history," if you will, in which ~"modernity" is juxtaposed against antiquity (68). From this, the active mind could consciously construct other possibilities within Anderson's "homogenous, empty time," made apparent by the new utopian literature being written at the time (69). These spawned from the "discoveries" of places then only rumored, and thus relegated to the realm of fantasy: developing entirely separately from Western civilization, these places "suggested an irremediable human pluralism," which lay outside the history of Europe, beyond the reach of Christaindom and antiquity (69). These societies, when approached by Europeans as "outside" Europe, and without their knowledge of their histories, were deemed inferior, as "models of antiquity," thus behind in the linear development model mapped upon them by Europeans who likened India to Ancient Greece (69). This obviously led to imperialism, as those places were rich with resources but populated by masses either unaware of the value or misusing it, and then to racism, beyond the tribalism that defined European feudal power structures before the imperial period.
The ^utopian literature also served to criticize "modern" European institutions in novel ways, as there now existed a world in which one could not only conceive of idealized societies, but, through their creation, also compare European society, as "only one among many civilizations, and not necessarily the Chosen or the best" (69, 70). This is perhaps a key piece in the development of the European intelligentsia at large: nothing motivates change more than the conception of a better situation to work towards.
---
Preceding this, the change of understanding language as a tool of societies and cultures, rather than a mechanism of the divine within an entire world given to humankind by god. (70)
"Here was 'the first science which regarded evolution as its very core.'" (70)
And thus all languages became equalized (stripped of divinity, imbued with complexity, history, and value), and were paired with a group claiming ownership (its speakers). (71)
To aid the fall of entrenched Christiandom, "dozens of books were recreating a glittering, and firmly pagan, ancient Hellenic civilization," giving to some a history and, be extension or interpretation, a pedigree to reclaim in the modern era (72). Indeed, Ignotus reminds us that "A nation is born when a few people decide that it should be" (73). As folklore resurfaced in print, as well as full grammars and dictionaries, even the most common of readers - or their illiterate families and friends - was filled with a sort of nationalism sprouting forth from cultural pride mixed with the unity imparted by shared language in print (74). However, the same pattern became visible in the ruling classes, as they became identified through shared roles in commerce or rule. Their connection via print is what defined them from the aristocracy before them. Without the imagined community suggested in print, the ruling class could still rule within their own corner, but they could not form a class of their own, beyond borders and within a unified economic system, in the same way that the bourgeoisie came to rule, primarily economically and over the proletariat (77).
---
Because of the old dynastic structure of Europe, empires were "basically polyvernacular," encompassing many people and cultures within the bounds of one dynasty (this was not the case in the Americas - the Spanish Empire spoke Spanish and had its borders, nothing beyond); as Anderson summarizes it, "power and print language mapped different realms" (77). Identity came to be associated with language, and with a community beyond the immediate faces one saw every day, because of the reach of print capitalism. In a very basic way, print vernaculars came to be a source of pride for their long-time speakers: here were their words in a book printed by someone else, and read by even more like them! Without literacy, however, the imagined community was but a myth spoken by the literate, and so, as Nairn puts it, "the new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism had to invite the masses into history; and the invitation-card had to be written in a language they understood," not a language of oligarchy or of bureaucracy (80).
---
In the same way that history became visible via print, events became history once they were set into print (80). Anderson points out that, events became "as soon as they were printed about, 'concepts,' 'models,' and indeed 'blueprints,'" not only because of their printing, but only because their existence in print was consumed en mass, a point Anderson surprisingly neglects. The modal nature of national movements and all their pieces, transmitted via print capitalism, is very much like the modal nature of instructional YouTube videos transmitted via the Internet - independent, successful, plural. This access to modal political or ideological constructions allowed replication, both from below and above.
0 notes
Text
IC ch3 - Creole Pioneers
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Notes:
Language in the New American states was not a national differentiator. "All, including the USA, were creole states, formed and led by people who shared a common language and common descent with those against whom they fought." (47)
In reading this book thus far, it seems clear that, as Nairn hypothesizes, "the arrival of nationalism in a distinctively modern sense was tied to the political baptism of the lower classes…" (47). However, this was not always the case, as nations such as Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru were spurred towards independence because of their fear of the political mobilization of their respective lower classes (48). Perhaps the error lies in the taxonomy of the hypothesis: rather than "the lower classes," perhaps the operant group is instead simply those who perceive themselves as being oppressed, whether they of lower, middle, or upper class status. When posited in this way, Anderson's "Creole" chapter provides proof of theory.
All of the states born immediately after the period of colonialism in the Western hemisphere first presented themselves as republics, rather than dynasties (except Brazil, where the previous dynastic ruler came to live for a period) (51). They were all formed, it seems, to be different from the previous model of dynastic rule.
The colonial system was one of satellite regions, ruled by the home country via a leashed emissary. However, due to the vastness of the South American continent, and its varied geographies, as well as the difficulties of communication and the ruling empire's tendency to keep the states economically separate, the empires soon found their territories compartmentalized and self-conscious (52).
The ruling empire would typically only employ an emissary born in the homeland, and shunned colony-born elites of European blood, entirely on the basis of their having been born in the colony. Indeed, "the accident of birth in the Americas consigned him to subordination;" the mother country could not recognize this person as their own, not as native-born, though they were in every other way exactly the same (58). This created the opposing feeling that the native-born emissary or anyone of their birthright, simply could not be a true American (58). "The hatred and sense of inferiority felt by many Creoles for the mother country was in them developing into revolutionary impulses" (57). The Creoles had power, wealth, and education, but they were relegated to the same class as the indigenous people, which inevitably heightened their predilection for change, as they saw themselves as unfairly oppressed (never mind the indigenous peoples). Despite their necessity to the power and wealth of the empire, they were unable to achieve what they felt they deserved in return (59).
In addition, this ethnocentric class-consciousness led to racism in the modern sense, as well as huge increases in the number of people enslaved by Europeans (59,60).
Print was not common in the Americas until the newspaper became popular (61). These early papers were essentially "appendages of the market," including ship arrival and departure times, prices of goods, and also marriages and political appointments, creating an imagined community of a readership to whom those goods and events belonged, and those to whom they did not (61).
0 notes
Text
IC ch2 - The Origins of National Consciousness
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
In "The Origins of National Consciousness", Anderson discusses the many converging factors leading to the decline of religio-sociologically-centralized Europe, and the rise of mentalities vulnerable to nationalism. Latin became more esoteric as its use declined during the periods of Reformation and Enlightenment. This allowed local vernaculars to flourish in common vocal usage, and then to be neutered as they were appropriated in print by administrative powers, stripping them of their essential regional vestigialities (40, 41). Anderson calls this a fatalism of diverse language, though this terminology may put a more negative tone on the era than is useful. For, as print technology became widespread, print itself became a connective tool, shaving off the impediments to communication bred by colloquial language differences, unifying, in their imaginations, hundreds of thousands of people, while at the same time cementing the notion that there were "others" outside of this community (44). These administrative languages also competed with Latin, "contributing to the decline of the imagined community of Christendom" (42). The mentality of the common populace began to change in deep and unselfconscious ways, as Anderson hints when he opens the chapter by mentioning Benjamin's theory of a revolution into an Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in which the aura, and thus essential cult power, of art is lost, and replaced with symbols and ideas dispersed en mass, perhaps aiding in the Enlightenment (how are these linked?) (37).
Alongside this loss of faith in the truth of the Word and the development of administrative languages, "print-capitalism created languages-of-power," with which rulers could impose authority via (mis)information or impediments to daily life without the use of the language-of-power, a power-accumulation tactic easily packaged and replicated by rulers elsewhere (45). Beyond the intentional use of language to accumulate power, language was a major factor in the profitability of print. As Latin became more arcane, its market became more quickly saturated, and thus printers focused more on local vernaculars. Typically, this took the form of small volumes, cheaply bought, leading to the self-perpetuating mass-consumption of books, cementing their commodification, making the slight suggestions contained within their pages all the more powerful as they were consumed universally and continually. Luther may have been the leading author behind print's mass-consumption, as his works were the first "best sellers." However, this led to the "battle for men's minds" through religious propaganda (40). Print was tied to capitalism in Western Europe, and was controlled by "wealthy capitalists," which created shifts in the class framework, and which helped begin the monetization of power and influence (38).
Another result of print's widespread consumption was that it "gave a new fixity to language," allowing for the reading of history in a way impossible in the preceding centuries, when language evolved rapidly enough to make documents (and thus history) inaccessible (44,45). Anderson began this conversation when he touched on the conception of simultaneity in the last chapter, and this point will doubtless be useful in his discussion of the paradox between nationalists and historians in the appraisal of the age of their nation. If the general population has a source from which to draw an idea of historical incidence, then the expansion of a concept beyond given documentation wouldn't be difficult to a mind with any inkling of imagination. If history is writable, it is rewritable.
0 notes
Text
IC ch1 - Cultural Roots
Friday, December 8, 2017
The way this is written is probably shit. Tired and hurried.
The first chapter of Imagined Communities follows directly from the Introduction, with a dive into the symbolic historical factors leading to a cultural mind ready to fabricate nationalism. The overarching theory is that humans need something to rely on to cope with life, as life is full of difficulties, mainly those of limited lifetime, death, and class or oppression. Anderson suggests that science and politico-philosophical schools of thought fail the human mind in this essential way; there is no greater story told within Marxism or modern science about who humans are and where they are going, lacking explanations or consolations for the struggles of life (10, 11). Nationalism, like the religions and monarchies that came before, provide a continuity for the human mind to fabricate meaning and consolation for itself in an otherwise objective and cold world.
Anderson succumbs to the pitfall of sociological psychologists of the 20th century: like Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom, his delve into the historical factors leading up to the psychosocial emptiness that was filled by nationalism is long and detailed, which interrupts his theoretical momentum overall, but also in each point. Though much can be gleaned form these passages, a more glossed finger-pointing may have sufficed, with appendices for the minutiae.
---
Histories of istories of Text
To help explain the decay of universal religion and the eventual rise of nationalism, Anderson explains three factors:
Sacred texts were tied to the symbols which expounded their truth, be it Arabic, Latin, or Chinese. The symbols functioned as truth, apart from spoken language, dead in usage, and thus divine, as could be related to the "language" in Arrival (2016) (13-15). Faith is eventually territorialized and the religions' universality begins to wane, along with the hold the dead languages had over the population of Europe, as exemplified by the "fall of Latin," and triumph of vernacular languages via press-proliferation (17, 18). This decentralization could be seen as a democratization, a sort of regionalism in terms of culture finding its voice more locally. The issue of tribalism, and indeed, conflict, may arise from this same decentralization, though perhaps only under a different flag.
Dynasties, which had held power for at least hundreds of years began to lose traction in this same fractionalization. Their legitimacy waned with the religions they had used to place themselves in power, and thus nationalism came to prop them right back up (22). If the decentralization of religion can be viewed as a dogmatic regionalism, the fall of dynastic rule may be seen as a relocation of power (or the perception of power) from the ruler to the people, at least eventually, as parliaments are gathered and constitutions drawn up.
The understanding of time and view of the world began to change from a localized interpretation of religious word, which was absolute in the eyes of every person at the time, to a modernistic, global world-view, in which all things were happening simultaneously in their own place. Anderson explains this through the context of religious ideology, using examples of the preordained fatalism that ran through the believer's mind when the book connected one event to another (22, 24). Though tailored to each individual area to suit the placement of the holy word within the world of the masses of the time, via clothing or placement of specific individuals, events were believed to have occurred in the time set out by the book, rather than on a timeline, as we might now believe events to occur linearly (23, 24). Anderson links the change from this understanding of the world to the modern linear understanding not as effect of, but rather as identified by the change of narrative to the literary invention of the novel (25).
---
The Novel
Anderson's deconstruction of the novel's implication of nationalism is illustrated by several examples, which place the reader as an addressed audience: the reader knows the world that the author is writing about, or so it is assumed by the author (25,28-29). In this simple way, the author couches the narrative within a nationalist context - without the preconstructed idea of Javanese street life or village life in Manila, the characters and moments just float as scenes without place or context (unless it is additionally given, but it would not be given in a national context) (27, 30). Aside from the assumption of the cultural context, there is political context alluded to by the signifiers "our" and "their" or even "the," as an accusational differentiator, as the oppressor and the oppressed, which has greater allusions to those reading and included in "we" and "our," and those excluded, deemed "the" or "their" (32). This is inherently conflictual, and, though not as subtle as other forms of resistance language, signal conflictual angst within one population against another, and thus a group identity. When this is combined with a history, cultural identity, and political motivations, nationalism is born.
Anderson suggests that the newspaper is perhaps the greatest signifier of the reader's (i.e., modern person's) world-view that there are many simultaneous events, all happening at once, and those places will continue to exist day after day, continuing in time (33). The reading of the paper is deemed by Anderson an "extraordinary mass ceremony," as it reproduces in the mind of every person the same world, at nearly the same time, day after day, as if it were that same word of god, as Hegel alludes to as well (35). If one were to relate the newspaper in this chapter to the source of most people's information today, Facebook would surely come to mind (in the era leading up to the Internet, radio and television certainly served this role). How can this be rectified? Indeed, every day, all day, most people scan Facebook as if it were speaking to them from on high, informing them of the greater (fictionalized) world. Society is very much story-oriented, so this procession should not be novel, but the way in which the world is constructed is perhaps worth analyzing. If the holy book gave way to the novel and newspaper, they have now given way to the feed. In this reading of the contemporary world-view insertion via smartphone and social media, the recent "alternative facts" and "fake news" pandemics must be taken very, very seriously. If controlled efficiently, one could certainly steer world events. That world, created by the feed, is the world to readers, insofar as they take it as "the Word." But dissenters are perhaps the outliers. With the addition of advertisements, photo galleries, memes, and picture-sharing apps, the feed becomes more complete in its consumption of the human lens through which the world is viewed. Control of this lens is surrendered more with each and every "like." Fictionalization, indeed. But if the majority live in fantasy land, what is the minority to do?
This trail leads to nationalist extremism quite quickly and easily, and then to what? Is it all fear-based?
More to be written on this with the last page of the article in consideration:
Recentralization, a la 1984? New religion of the tech/vr? Consumerism…
0 notes
Text
Imagined Comunities, Benedict Anderson - Introduction
Friday, December 8, 2017
First, Anderson gives a broad fly-over of the historical fodder for his theory and the book. Mainly, these consist of the late 20th century conflicts of Marxist states (and accompanying theoretical implications) and of the intellectual assumption that "nationalism" was in decline during this period. Anderson states that "the 'end of nationalism,' so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time" (3). One could take this to mean that any group of people must declare themselves a nation to have their voice heard in the global political community. Thus, Anderson quotes Nairn, "The theory of nationalism represents Marxism's great historical failure" (3). He then goes on to define nationalism in several terms.
Throughout the introduction, Anderson hints at greater points, as separate from those more obviously defined as being topics of the work, which the reader must assume will be further explained later on. First, "Marxist movements and states have tended to become national not only in form, but in substance, i.e., nationalist," in contrast with other federations of regional proto-states, such as the UK, whose name explicitly avoid stating nationality* (2). Second, the matter of nation-specific bourgeoisie, i.e., "American bourgeoisie" or "French bourgeoisie," rather than simple class struggle across state borders (he brings this forth in the form of a question about its theoretical significance, quoting Marx's Capital as reference for its significance) (4).
---
Paradoxes
Anderson outlines three paradoxes that confront theorists of nationalism. The first is that between the "objective modernity of nations to the historian's eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists," which may be easily explained (5). The nation is an identity born from the desire for both a community of some sort, as well as recognition as such in the greater arena of nations, as this is the only way to be recognized in the first place. The nationalists' cries that they have always been, for instance, Scottish, is a desire for identity through the murk of historic tribalism and ambiguity of identity. Anderson's explanation with doubtless be more thorough. That the nation is always imagined is perhaps the product of these two forces (6). Take, for example, the desire for a Black nation within the United States, most prominent in the era between the late 19th century and the late 20th century. After every other form of community identity was ripped from African slaves in the preceding centuries, another developed from the following traumatic and torturous decades of oppression. Without the expressed desire for a voice, via Black Nationalism and the coalition of accompanying fronts (i.e., Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, etc.), the second (or third) wave of Black Civil Rights would not have made any gains. Indeed, it could be that much of the conflict in the Middle East is of the same desire. Without a national identity, there is no place on the floor of most International Committees.** Thus, Anderson's second paradox, "the formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept […] vs. the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations," can be seen simply as the veneer given to each person on this earth so that they feel they have a voice while they are yet oppressed by that very label and the institutions that require such nationality, which is perhaps what he is referring to with paradox 3, "the 'political' power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence," and as furthered by Nairn's quote, "'Nationalism' is the pathology of modern developmental history, […] rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world […] and largely incurable" (5).
---
Religion
Anderson gives the reader a taste of the next divulgence by exposing nationalism as a sociopsychological legatee (to use one of his favorite words) of the major religious identities (7). It serves as a belief system through which one can channel a conception of immortality. This is manifest as a sort of patriotism, though imagined and fantastical all the same, which he explains further in the next chapter.
---
Class as "Nation"
As Anderson discusses the French aristocracy (6, 7), of which I have basically no understanding, a thought came to my mind. Perhaps what Anderson is suggesting is class as "nation," i.e., the 1% as supernational, the 99% as oppressed to/and thus imagine themselves as of a national identity. If the super rich can live beyond the bounds of nation and nationalism, and, indeed, use these as tools for their benefit, are they perhaps the next stage of human political progress, at least in part? Or have they constructed a stateless nation of wealth? When a person is so rich as to be able to leap over all oppressing hands pushing us into the abyss of nationalist psychosocial entrapment, are they not post-national, or supernational?
---
*Perhaps Anderson would change his point in a current revision, considering Brexit and accompanying rhetoric.
** I won't go into it here, but this is where I see post-national/post-statist regionalism benefitting oppressed peoples. The Rohingya would have a voice in a regionalist world confederacy (name??), where they have none as they are torn between two states in the early 21st century, oppressed by each side, and helped by few outsiders.
0 notes
Text
What Is Agonistic Politics? - Agonistics 1
This first chapter, given the understanding of Mouffe's theory of the political, politics, agonism, antagonism, and radical negativity, establishes the same theoretical basis for her arguments, utilizing comparison to situate her theory among her contemporaries. Mouffe's assertion, as always, is that there can be no totalization of society. Radical Negativity will block the dissolution of division and power, forever keeping society from unifying. This is predicated upon the perspective that humankind and society are and always will be based in affect or emotion, as this is what has kept us alive, formed our groups and communities, and allowed us to build civilizations. Though I don't think this is the destination of human society, we should ride with the notion as far as Mouffe's theory. Personally, I see her formulation of radical democracy rooted in agonism as a governmental structure as a link between the economically-bound nationalist governments of today and the more unified, rationally-based proto-governmental bodies of the not-so-far future.
Within a theory of radical negativity, there is no possible common ground that can be met by everyone.* Mouffe points out that governance relies on a moment of decision, and this decision excludes all other possibilities for the chosen one, forming an ideological border which acts to separate the dominant ideology from other alternatives. This chosen possibility is a contingent one: it has been chosen for however many reasons, and its selection will have causes otherwise, and will support later choices and exclusions. This means that the choice is both contextual and, because of this, nonobjective. Mouffe argues that this indicates that the choice is often, if not always, the result of "sedimented hegemonic practices." This is similar to the argument that Nussbaum uses to support her argument against relativism in the light that choices are made within a restricted window of the universe, as certain possibilities are excluded from view as a consequence of socialization within a group whose ideological borders have already been formed. I think this is the basic nature of choice in a tree-model: one choice enables and disables others.** This is the creation of and adherence to a collective identity, formed around political ideologies or choices.
Here Mouffe breaks from liberalism, criticizing it for its reliance on rationality and individualism. While I agree that people are not entirely rational, I would argue that liberalism has supplied an ideal to which we may aspire, based on the guarantee of basic capabilities, which, at their very simplest, I think most people could reason their way to agreeing with. I see her point, however, that affect is deeply intertwined in global and small-state relations at the moment, as evidenced by the perhaps counterintuitive cultural divisions and modes of reification in the US (often via various media). Mouffe's argument against individualism is much more compelling, as she argues that people form collective identities politically, creating us/them dichotomies (it must be constructed from difference, "every identity is relational"). The dichotomy does not have to become antagonistic (friend/enemy), but it will be if those within the identity ("us") feel as though their identity is put into question or that their existence is threatened by the others ("them"). Simple difference is not dangerous, but when morals come to take the place of the political, the difference becomes one of good and evil. A trend of moralization of politics has become the norm in many nations and many interactions globally.
This is a problem in how conflict is framed. We should not see our opponents "as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend those ideas is not to be questioned." Conflict forces each party to look within themselves, and to explain their side - perhaps this is where conflict has been denied its proper place, as so many governing bodies are unwilling to understand their own actions within the context of humanity, relying only on data, numbers, dollars and cents, and the ultimate "success of the mission," whatever that may mean. Were we able to pit ourselves against one another with mutual respect intact, we would attain what Mouffe calls a "vibrant democracy," in which issues are contested and debated, shifting the entire political spectrum in different directions: pro-big business or pro-working class, for instance. Mouffe suggests that "too much emphasis on consensus," which I would say we have in the US, "together with aversion towards confrontations, leads to apathy and to a dissatisfaction with political participation." Her suggestion is that passions need a democratic outlet, and, if they are not allowed such an outlet, the participants' identity moves from a democratically-oriented one to one "articulated around essentialist identities of a nationalist, religious, or ethnic type," leading to "the multiplication of confrontations over non-negotiable moral values, with all the manifestations of violence that such confrontations entail." These passions cannot and should not be eliminated, but instead "sublimated" by "mobilizing them toward democratic designs." Indeed, this is a part of US politics, as pro-lifers pit themselves against pro-choice advocates. The problem, however, is in the moralization of the issues and the casting of actors in star black and white: good or evil.
Part of the problem is how truth is treated. Mouffe describes that truth can be seen as objective or as operating within a fidelity framework. Given recent events in politics, I think I ought to use the example of the "Bowling Green Massacre" to describe the fidelity treatment of truth. Actors can rally behind one person or one view of the truth, seeing it as correct, but when it comes to facts that constitute the basis of the truth, it may be outed as skewed or even fantastical. Those who recognize this and restructure their position belong to what I'm calling the objective camp, though they may be seen as "flip-flopping," as politicians are often seen in the US. Those of the other camp would be those who supported Conway and continued to believe in the truth of the matter, despite the utter falsity of the event. This is an extreme example, and the pattern must be recognized as most often far subtler, permeating almost every corner of the political spectrum, especially in our social media world. "Truth" is saturated with belief: contextual, contingent, and conditional, truth is held by those who have believed one thing over another, siding with their past beliefs, which now support their telling of the event under question. This is done on all sides - how something happened, or even whether something actually happened doesn't much matter, because truth is a belief. Religion has relied on this, and politics are very similar to religion, and people identify themselves with the truths in which they believe.
People will settle into collective identities, which is instrumental to a vibrant democracy so long as the identities are democratically motivated. As soon as the issues become moral, either by an attack on one identity by another, or by identities formed around dogmatic moralistic principles, democracy breaks down. I would argue that this is a form of rationality, which Mouffe seems quick to criticize in liberalism, as it necessitates that citizens treat issues as items of debate, rather than personal crusades. I agree, but it seems as though there is a narrow catwalk between utter rationality in the political and affective defensiveness in political debate. This is where, it seems, Mouffe wants the unstable citizen to dance.
*This must necessitate a certain scale. Though there is always room for mutiny, I think we can agree that any form of governance or community relationship must be predicated on some degree of social contract - some things are given up to be a part of the group, for the benefit of all, even if there is some minor loss. As the group becomes larger, this issue becomes greater as culture and regionalism change opinions very deeply. Thus a small state may have near unanimous agreement, but a nation as large as the US is bound to face impediments to unanimity.
**Though she has not explicitly commented on it within this chapter, I think Mouffe means to suggest that her regional poles of varying forms of democratic order based in cultural tradition would eventually compete. As within, so without: the dominant form of democracy would rule the loose-state until it is outmoded by the best neighboring one. It's hard for me to conceptualize this without an architecture of nation-ism. I think there's a deeper thought here, beyond competing states, but the world has been structured this way for so long (and Mouffe's own inclusion of radical negativity makes it so) that it's hard for me to think beyond the adversarial quality of global relations. I do think, however, that her conception of global diversity would enable mass experimentation with governmental practices. For instance, Texas outlaws abortion of any kind, but New Mexico allows it, and California subsidizes practitioners. In this scenario, data could be gathered on population changes, economic shifts, poverty, crime, drug use, etc., hopefully allowing further policy choices to be made on the three different cases and their outcomes, possibly pushing conservative areas into progressivism as they lose their citizenry to those states who allow or subsidize the practice. Though this may seem like the government is experimenting on its citizens, it falls in line with voting choice and prevailing culture. As the world globalizes, whether we have a plurality of democratic regions or separate nations, certain ideologies will shift towards the fringe and perish, and others will become more central and more integrated ("common sense"). I would argue that increasing global urbanization and technological progression will push culture away from traditionalist notions towards a rational and compassionate, perhaps leftist, perhaps liberal, perhaps progressive basis for society.
0 notes