bill,
     certainly, religion & art shuld top nation & race fer
scientific untenability and cultural cogency...and wide currency.
     do you really mean here to be professing a boojwa
social scientism?
bob
 
 
 
-- -----Original
 
 
 
 
Message-----
From: Bill Freind <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Imagined Communities
 
 
>Seems like most of the summaries of _Imagined Communities_ have avoided
>Anderson's main point: that nationalism and racial essentialism are
>simultaneously scientifically untenable and extraordinarily powerful. He
also
>makes another crucial point: most "nations" began to be imagined in the
19th
>century. Anderson's field of expertise is Southeast Asia (which is, as he
>notes, another imaginary construction, since there's nothing that
necessarily
>unites someone living in Brunei with a farmer in the highlands of Laos),
but
>his insight is just as applicable to Europe, where "Italy," "Germany," and
>other countries were formed a less than a century and a half ago.
>
>For my money, Anderson's claim is pretty unexceptional -- it's the work
that
>supports it that is much more detailed and interesting. I have a rule of
>thumb: the amount of awareness of a theoretical trope is directly
proportional
>to the chance that it is either being used reductively or doesn't have much
to
>say in the first place. For example: Lyotard's definitions of
postmodernity,
>Lacan's mirror stage, Benjamin's artwork essay, Foucault's panopticon,
Bloom's
>anxiety of influence, etc.
>
>Furthermore, I think his brother Perry is a damn sight shrewder.
>
>So to return to Kristen's original question: I don't think you need
Anderson
>to discuss Pound's imagined community. Pound is pretty ambivalent about
>nationalism: one of the thing's that striking about his support of
Mussolini
>is that he ignores the hypernationalism that was at the center of Italian
>fascism. EP's imagined community transcends not only nation but time.
>
>Bill Freind