REVIEWS 227

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism, (London: New Left Books, 1983).

Anderson defines the modern nation as an imagined community inherently limited and
sovereign. These communities are imagined because their members never get to know
each other (due to their size) while having an image of a bond. Thus, all communities
too large to allow face-to-face contact between all members are necessarily imagined.
Nations are imagined as limited because they have bounderies, and as sovereign because
they are politically articulated in the modern sovereign state. Last, they are imagined as
communities because they are always perceived in terms of a strong horizontal com-
radeship.
Anderson locates the roots of these new communities in these two cultural systems
constituting the boundaries of pre-capitalist social space: the religious community and
the dynastic realm. The great religious communities, such as Christianity or Islam,
were imagined through the sacred but silent languages of their God-sanctioned writ-
ten tests. The sacred language was a truth-language. Its privileged position depended
on the non-arbitrariness of its signs — a fact which distinguishes it from modern,
'national' languages which are all equally distant from God, and thus capable of transla-
tion. The sacred language of the religious community reflected not equi-distance but a
hierarchical and centripetal structure. The Readers of Latin mediated between heaven
and earth. The "unselfconscious coherence" of these religious communities was
undermined by the gradual erosion of Latin's hegemony during the 16th century, as
well as the discovery and exploration of the non-European world. The awareness of a
multiplicity of religions marked the foundation of a territorialization of faith.
The structure of the dynastic realm was organized around a high centre, occupied
by the figure of the King. Legitimacy within this arrangement derived from God, not
from the population. While under modern systems state sovereignty is distributed
evenly over the entire territory, the state of the dynastic realm was defined by and from
the center. As a result, its borders were blurred and sovereignties faded imperceptibly
into one another. For well-known reasons (the rise of a merchant bourgeoisie and the
need for a new organization of political power, etc.) the monarchy began to wane dur-
ing the 17 th century.
As Anderson points out, it is not simply the case that, once these older forms of com-
munity lost their cohesive power, nations developed in some organic manner. Rather,
fundamental changes were necessary in the ways the world was perceived in order to
create the very possibility to think the nation. One important change that occurred was
in the different conceptions of time: whereas pre-modern notions of time were based
on the idea of simultaneity of the past and future in an instantaneous present, modern
time became, in Walter Benjamin's words, homogeneous, empty time. Simultaneity is
"transverse, cross-time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfillment, but by temporal
coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar" (p. 30). According to Anderson,
this new time is expressed in two forms during the 18di century: the novel and the
newspaper, both of which provided, for the first time, the technical means to "re-
present" the nation. The novel does so by "plotting" characters within a shared time-
space: "The idea of a sociological organism moving calendrically dirough homogeneous,
empty time is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a
solid community moving steadily down (or up) history. An American will never meet,
or even know the names of more than a handful of his 240,000,000-odd fellow
Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. But he has complete
228 SUZANNE STEWART SWEET

confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity" (p. 31). Again, with the
newspaper the connection of the various items on its pages are not provided by some
inner necessity or logical connection but by their calendrical coincidence and by the
fact that they are consumed in the form of a mass ceremony, i.e., read in private by a
mass population within a well-specified time.
If print-as-commodity (books are thefirstmass-produced commodities) thus made
horizontal-secular, transverse-time communities possible, the question remains: why
was this change expressed through nation-ness? The answer Anderson finds in the
interaction of three factors: 1) a system of production based on capitalist relations; 2) a
technology of communications, dominated by the press; 3) the fatality of human
linguistic diversity, i.e., the fact that man's general linguistic unification is impossible.
It was thus the newly invented print-languages (vernaculars that for the first time
appeared in writing on a mass scale) that laid the basis for national consciousness in three
ways:first,they created a unified field of exchange and communication "below Latin"
and "above the spoken vernaculars" whereby "fellow-readers" formed the embryo of
the nationally-imagined communities; second, print-capitalism gave language a new
fixity, thus lending an image of antiquity to cultures, so central to the idea of a nation;
third, print-languages created languages-of-power that differed from the older ad-
ministrative vernaculars in that they created a hierarchy of dialects.
It is with this theoretical model of'nation-ness' that Anderson sets out to look at
three different nations spread out over four distinct historical phases, where the last
phase since WW II seems to be a combination of the three types.
Remembering that nation-ness depended on print-capitalism, it is surprising to
find that thefirstwave of nation-formation, which Anderson locates not in Europe but
in the Americas, did not have language as an issue. It developed, rather, within
administrative units in the colonies peopled by a Creole class (whites born in the
colonies) with litde chance of social advancement save within the local bureaucracy.
This class sought independence from the modier-country in nation-ness. How, Ander-
son asks, did these units take on a national meaning? The answer lies not in the creation
of a specifically Creole print-language but in the "journey" as the meaning-creating
experience that lead to the imagination of a new type of community. The model of
journey relevant in this instance is that of the pilgrimage: "the most important [of mod-
ern pilgrimages] were the differing passages created by the rise of absolutizing mon-
archies; and, eventually, Europe-centered world-imperial states. The inner thrust of
absolutism was to create a unified apparatus of power, controlled directly by, and loyal
to, the ruler over against a decentralized, particularistic feudal nobility. Unification
meant internal interchangeability of men and documents. Human interchangeability
was fostered by the recruitment. . . of homines novi, who, just for that reason, had no
independent power of their own, and thus could serve as emanations of their masters'
wills. Absolutist functionaries thus undertook journeys which were basically different
from those of feudal nobles" (p. 56). Thus, while the nobleman had his landed estate as
his base — the trip to the monarchical center always being one with a round-trip ticket,
so to speak — the functionary travelled in a looped spiral to (hopefully) the top
echelons of the absolutist bureaucracy. For creole functionaries in the colonies this
modeljourneydid notapply: the pilgrimage ofthese functionaries was barred towards
the top ranks of the empirial bureaucracy and laterally to the other administrative units
within the Empire. What gave these limited pilgrimages their meaning were fellow-
travellers who, together, could recognize the fatality of their birth as Creoles. Along
with the arrival of print-capitalism, these territorial stretches delineated by the pil-
grimage came to be imagined as nations.
 REVIEWS 229

The situation is different in Europe: here language played a major formative role
during early 19th century nationalist movements. The multiplicity of national lan-
guages and their expression in print is, for Anderson, a major component in the crea-
tion of national consciousness between 1820 and 1920. Crucial in this context is the
idea of a "private-property" conception of language (Herder's notion that every peo-
ple has its own language). Based in the discovery of a multiplicity of languages and
cultures, and the concomitant rise of comparative history and linguistics. But if all
languages had the same status, then who should study them? The native speaker and
reader, says Anderson, and the native lexicographers, philologists, grammarians and
folklorists, all of which saw their disciplines formed during the 18th century, and all of
which were intimately linked to the print-market and consuming publics: the families
of the local reading classes. Why were these developments so important for nation-
formation? The answer lies in the fact that it was this common readership that became
a crucial factor of cohesion. Whereas pre-bourgeois families had found their principle
of cohesion in kinship, clientelism and personal loyalties, the bourgeoisie, a class
which came into existence only in replication (one factory-owner existed just like the
other, but they did not therefore know each other), only had an image of itself and its
members through print-language. It is for this reason that jin illiterate bourgeoisie is
hardly imaginable. The bourgeoisie is thus the first class to achieve solidarity on an
imagined basis, where the limit of this imagined community is the language's legi-
bility.
The late 19th century and early 20th century saw a third variation of national move-
ment: an official nationalism "from above" (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, etc.)
in reaction to 19th century popular national movements in Europe. They are similar to
Bismarck's social reforms: i.e., a way to stem the tide of growing social demands
from below.
The last version of nationalism comprises all three other types. Thus, of the new
states established since WW II, some had European languages of state (the American
model), some attained independence on the basis of an ardent populism (the model of
European linguistic nationalism), and some were based on a "Russifying" policy (offi-
cial nationalism). All of the new states, however, arose as a response to a colonial
capitalism requiring a vasdy expanded state apparatus, and hence the education and
induction of natives into these growing structures. Hence, the interlock between these
new educational and administrative pilgrimages provided the territorial base for the
newly imagined communities where the local, newly-formed intelligentsia could see
itself in national terms.
Anderson concludes with an analysis of the relation between nationalism (and pa-
triotism) and racism. He claims that racism is basically antithetical to nationalism
because the nation was from the start conceived through language, not blood. And
because anyone can learn any language, there is always the possibility of being invited
into the imagined community (e.g. through "naturalization"). Racism and anti-sem-
itism have their roots in class, not in the nation; they function in terms ofcontamination
rather dian historical destiny; and racism develops within national boundaries, not
across them, and is therefore a tool of internal repression.
Anderson wants a materialist definition of the modern nation in contraposition to
idealist conceptions that have dominated liberal literature (e.g., Hans Kohn's na-
tionalism as a state ofmind), but one that does not succumb to economic reductionism
(e.g., the reduction of national existence to the capitalist need for a unified internal
market). Yet, Anderson ends up seeing the nation as a mode ofexistence, a state of mind (a
230 SUZANNE STEWART SWEET

community imagined within a new time matrix) determined by a particular mode of pro-
duction (the prerequisites of print-capitalism or the economic aspirations of the Creole
class). Anderson's description of homogeneous, empty time and its concomitant
expression in the modern novel and the newspaper, along with the creation of a sense
of anonymous simultaneity, is useful in defining the modern nation. But Anderson's
analysis ultimately focuses on the drives of either a particular branch of capitalism, the
print industry (when language is considered to be important) or of an economic class
(the Creole class). Print-capitalism creates the boundaries of print-language; in fact, the
two are virtually co-extensive. The Creoles become a nation because they see them-
selves as such and because they are in fact united by their class situation. But this begs
the question. What was at stake in South and North America was the entry of the Creole
classes into the royal state bureaucracy, not linguistic identity. So why do these classes
imagine themselves as nation? Why do they not, once conscious of the similarity of their
position, simply imagine themselves as a class or even a state? How is this an unprec-
edented community and not simply the reproduction of an absolutist state on the
smaller scale?
Although Anderson believes that the nation as imagined community can be estab-
lished by a dominant class against "the people" (as he clearly points out in the South
Amercian case), "the people" must also be a crucial ingredient providing the modern
nation's historical specificity. For instance, after the Mutiny of 1857 in the Indian Sub-
continent, the Muslim fraction of the local upper classes came to establish itself as a
separate (non-Hindu) class with specific demands for power-sharing. The Muslims
thus came to view themselves in the very ways described by Anderson as travelling on a
pilgrimage of limitations due to birth (religion) that could only be changed if their
separate identity was recognized and accepted. What is important here, however, is
that die Muslims did not see themselves as a nation. The question of Pakistan did not
arise until years later. Neither Pakistan existed as a meaningful entity , nor did the
Pakistani people. And, yet, widiin the space of a very short time they were created
seemingly out of nowhere.
The problem hinges on two related questions. First, the question of inclusion and
exclusion, i.e., not only the establishment of boundaries against the outside but also the
creation of an homogeneous and continuous inside. Second, the question of die distinc-
tion between state and nation, i.e., between the spheres of influence and operation of
both. What links these two problems together is power. This is the most important
question not discussed by Anderson: how is the nation constituted by power-relations
and how does it constitute, reproduce and maintain diem? It is here that the question
of the "people" as national citizens (as opposed to the "subjects" of absolutism) comes
into play.
If the nation is intimately tied to the exercise of power in a specifically modern way,
then one must also ask where this power is exercised and by whom? The liberal tradi-
tion answers that nation-ness is a "state of mind" that collectively expresses the ideals
of liberty, equality and fraternity as a present, a past and hopefully a future. In diis sense,
power exists in nation-ness only in its transgression, i.e., when it goes "top far" and
when it denies diose very ideals it normally supports. Thus, ideally nation-ness is
located in individual national citizens — a situation of equilibrium that must be
guaranteed by the state but that can potentially be disrupted and corrupted by that
very state. Opposed to this consensus model of the nation there is the Marxist one diat
locates national power squarely with the bourgeoisie and, by extension, with the
capitalist state: the nation creates a unified market, loyal citizens (steeped in false con-
 REVIEWS 2J1

sciousness) and/or it expresses, through its boundaries, the uneven development of

the capitalist mode of production.
Anderson seems to combine these two approaches: the nation exists both as a state
of mind (an "imagined community" where power obtains only in transgressions) and
as an expression of bourgeois power (the functional needs of capitalist industry to
create and control new markets). The result of this combination is that, although
Anderson attempts to break away from simplistic culturalist and/or economistic
assumptions about the modern nation, he ends by doing precisely that because of his
failure to articulate the relation between power and nation.

Suzanne Stewart Sweet

Agnes Heller, ed., Lukdcs Revalued (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983)

Anthologies are often inherently problematical entities. They commonly suffer

from two debilitating deficiencies: unevenness in the quality of the contributions and
the lack of a common theoretical framework. As far as the latter difficulty is concerned,
rarely will perspectival diversity sufficiently compenstate for the concomitant dearth
of any conceptual harmony. The result is often — sadly — a discrete congeries of
individual essays, some meaningful, others less so, without a unifying raison d'etre. All
of which usually justifies the habitual practice of skipping about, randomly choosing
this or that more or less interesting piece, ignoring the bulk. In an era in which "infor-
mation" mindlessly proliferates, in which the rate of publications soars in a seemingly
unconscious attempt to compensate for failings of quality through quantitative excess
(thus, the academic ethos of "publish or perish" turns into its opposite, compelling the
mediocrity it purportedly desires to weed out), it is not surprising that the genre of
anthology has enjoyed such 'success.'
It is heartening to report that the anthology under review is free of the foregoing det-
riments. Instead, Lukdcs Revalued represents (along with Arato and Breines's The Young
Lukdcs and the Origins of Western Marxism)2 what is undoubtedly the single most vaulable
volume to have appeared on Lukacs to date. Each of the eight essays which comprise
the work contains original perspectives and insights on a particular phase of Lukics's
theoretical development. All measure up to exceedingly high standards of intellectual
depth and rigor. But perhaps the most significant advantage of the volume is that de-
spite representing the views of six different authors, a remarkable degree of thematic
coherence pervades the study; the latter is not merely attributable to the subject matter
they share, but rather owes more to a theoretical framework held in common. Of course,
this shared perspective — which it will be the task of this review to spell out — is by no

1. For an interesting perspective on this phenomenon, see Russell Jacoby, "A Falling Rate of
Intelligence," Telos 27 (Spring 1976), pp. 141-146.
2. Two other commendable studies of the Young Lukacs which have appeared recently merit
acknowledgement: Michael Lowy's Georg Lukdcs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (London,
1981), which, despite a penetrating typology of "romantic anti-capitalist" intellectuals culminat-
ing in a provocative discussion of Thomas Mann's revolutionary ascetic monk Naptha (in Magic
Mountain) as a prototypical embodiment of this character type, is vitiated by a justification of
Lukacs' "oppositional Leninism" (for a review of this work and that of Arato and Breines, by
Ferenc Feher, see New German Critique 23, pp. 131 -140); and Andrew Feenberg, Lukdcs, Marx, and
the Sources of Critical Theory (Totowa, N.J., 1981).