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