The Greatest Book on Nationalism Keeps Being Misread
“Imagined Communities” is far weirder than you remember.
By David Polansky, a political theorist and research fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.
FOREIGN POLICY, JANUARY 7, 2024, 7:00 AM
There’s a scene in Sam Raimi’s classic horror-comedy Evil Dead II in which the protagonist saws off his own zombified hand and traps it under a copy of A Farewell to Arms. This is an intentional joke, but a similar titular misreading has haunted another 1980s classic: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.
Due to a combination of the title’s pithiness and its well-established place on college syllabi, few works of social science have been so widely misunderstood. It is in that rarified genre of books more written about than read (officially known as the “Fukuyama Club”). For many readers appear to have taken the title literally, supposing that he treated nations as somehow fictional. His actual thesis, however, was more subtle. For Anderson, nationalism is imagined rather than imaginary — though too many readers only noted the first part.
He recognizes, in other words, that nations are historical creations rather than natural expressions of some authentic pre-political identity, but he does not assume this invalidates them. Thus (to take examples with particular contemporary relevance), Zionism is both a late 19th-century invention and a reality for Israeli citizens. Palestinian nationalism is both a derivation of a larger modern movement of Arab nationalism and the source of a recognizable collective identity. Nagorno-Karabakh acquired new (and mutually exclusive) significance for both Azerbaijanis and Armenians during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, without thereby being any less consequential. All of these and more are real and meaningful, even when their historical claims are convenient.
And yet, being widely misread is still a greater legacy than most scholars can boast. And, indeed, the work’s scholarly footprint is substantial; four decades out, it remains one of the most-cited works in all the social sciences, and more to the point it is “by far the most cited text in the study of nationalism.” This is probably less an indication of widespread commitment to Anderson’s specific theses regarding the role of print capitalism or the role of New World states in the development of nationalism and more a testament to the way his book, and its title, came to stand in for a larger intellectual shift in the study of nationalism.
In the wake of the nationalist furies unleashed by the end of the Cold War, we are perhaps more sharply aware now of the themes of Imagined Communities than its contemporary readers were. But why more than two centuries into the age of nationalism and decades after the first wave of decolonization, when the study of nationalism only saw an efflorescence in the late ’70s and early ’80s? Anderson himself notes in a much-cited remark that “unlike most other isms, nationalism [had] never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webers.”
The book’s shaped the study of nationalism—but it did so in a way that was sui generis. This quintessential work of modern social science is in fact quite nonrepresentative of the discipline. It proceeds unsystematically, veering into highly poetic digressions throughout, from literary references to autobiographical details. In fact, Anderson’s influential account of nationalism is ultimately poetic both in the sense that he emphasizes the role of language and literature in the formation of nations and in the sense that his own arguments themselves take poetic forms. That makes it, unlike many of its peers, remarkably readable—and has no doubt contributed to its shelf life.
Its distinctiveness surely owes something to its author. In a fascinating posthumous essay, Anderson noted how his imagination was spurred one day at Cornell from overhearing Allan Bloom in full pomp remark how the ancient Greeks had no concept of “power” as we understand it, which subsequently set him off on his own study of that theme in Javanese culture.
Several of Anderson’s qualities are on display here, all of which shape the book. One is his ability to make unexpected intellectual connections across domains and cultures. Another is his strong historical sense—what the great classicist Peter Brown calls a historicized imagination. The last is his strong orientation toward Southeast Asia, a region to which he remained devoted for much of his life. In a nice bit of biographical caesura, though Anderson was barred for decades from visiting Indonesia owing to a critical analysis of Gen. Suharto’s coup, he spent much of his retirement there, ultimately dying in Java in 2015.
This last might not be remarkable for a historian or professor of “area studies,” but it was for a time unique among scholars of nationalism, who tended to focus on its development in early modern Europe, more or less in parallel with the literature on the rise of the modern state. Anderson’s approach thus stood out even during a time of broader revisionism when it came to the study of nationalism.
Even beyond his wider geographical ambit, his practical experience with how waning colonial systems gave way to elite-shaping national consciousnesses in places like Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines accorded his work a real sense of how nationalism actually emerged. Unlike more analytical works, Anderson’s work seemed to ask—to paraphrase a famous philosophy paper—what is it like to be a nationalist?
Some background is probably in order here. Part of what drove this movement to study nationalism anew was the apprehension that nations and nationalism were, in fact, modern creations, and that nationalism was something stranger and more complex than merely the political expression of a supposedly authentic pre-political nation. This view, labeled “modernist,” was set against the so-called perennialists, at least some of whom were themselves galvanized to develop their own theories in response to the modernist challenge (the usual caveats that this brief description greatly oversimplifies the scholarly debates apply).
Yet Anderson’s relationship to this group was always somewhat ambiguous. Anderson accepts the modernist view, he does not therefore assign it a pejorative slant or deny its validity—he explicitly distinguishes himself from his near-contemporary Ernest Gellner, whose own treatment emphasized the inherent falseness of nationalism.
Anderson’s highly memorable title led to his being casually associated with the normative positions of those he otherwise opposed. Much of this, I suspect, was due to larger prevailing intellectual trends—particularly the way that critical approaches had given license to debunk any phenomena that were held to be socially constructed. Work on the socially constructed nature of gender, for instance, tends to go hand in hand with a critique of gender norms. Thus, it was (and largely still is) tacitly assumed that acknowledging the socially constructed nature of nations must issue a similar critique.
As he himself noted: “I must be the only one writing about nationalism who doesn’t think it ugly. If you think about researchers such as Gellner and [Eric] Hobsbawm, they have quite a hostile attitude to nationalism. I actually think that nationalism can be an attractive ideology. I like its Utopian elements.”
Perhaps, for this reason, Anderson is able to address upfront (as not all his peers do) the implicit question a reader has when confronted with such a work: Why should we care about nationalism? His correct answer is that it has induced people to kill and, more importantly, to die on a scale not before seen in history.
What, however, is the basis for Anderson’s basically positive outlook on nationalism? His is not that of, say, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who, in his famous Nobel lecture, endorses variety for its own sake. A multihued, patchwork world of different peoples and customs is to be devoutly preferred to the gray homogeneity of Marxism-Leninism (or democratic liberalism, for that matter).
His appreciation is, in fact, an interesting mix of traditional and modern. The traditionalist in him remarks:
In an age when it is so common for progressive, cosmopolitan intellectuals (particularly in Europe?) to insist on the near-pathological character of nationalism, its roots in fear and hatred of the Other, and its affinities with racism, it is useful to remind ourselves that nations inspire love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love.
Here he is probably closer to George Orwell, who sought to rescue the decent and even admirable elements of these particular patriotic loyalties. Anderson labored to rescue nationalism from associations with racism, arguing that nationalists are primarily concerned with history, whereas racists are primarily concerned with essences. Some readers may find that argument more plausible than others.
Anderson’s highly memorable title led to his being casually associated with the normative positions of those he otherwise opposed. Much of this, I suspect, was due to larger prevailing intellectual trends—particularly the way that critical approaches had given license to debunk any phenomena that were held to be socially constructed. Work on the socially constructed nature of gender, for instance, tends to go hand in hand with a critique of gender norms. Thus, it was (and largely still is) tacitly assumed that acknowledging the socially constructed nature of nations must issue a similar critique.
As he himself noted: “I must be the only one writing about nationalism who doesn’t think it ugly. If you think about researchers such as Gellner and [Eric] Hobsbawm, they have quite a hostile attitude to nationalism. I actually think that nationalism can be an attractive ideology. I like its Utopian elements.”
Perhaps, for this reason, Anderson is able to address upfront (as not all his peers do) the implicit question a reader has when confronted with such a work: Why should we care about nationalism? His correct answer is that it has induced people to kill and, more importantly, to die on a scale not before seen in history.
What, however, is the basis for Anderson’s basically positive outlook on nationalism? His is not that of, say, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who, in his famous Nobel lecture, endorses variety for its own sake. A multihued, patchwork world of different peoples and customs is to be devoutly preferred to the gray homogeneity of Marxism-Leninism (or democratic liberalism, for that matter).
His appreciation is, in fact, an interesting mix of traditional and modern. The traditionalist in him remarks:
In an age when it is so common for progressive, cosmopolitan intellectuals (particularly in Europe?) to insist on the near-pathological character of nationalism, its roots in fear and hatred of the Other, and its affinities with racism, it is useful to remind ourselves that nations inspire love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love.
Here he is probably closer to George Orwell, who sought to rescue the decent and even admirable elements of these particular patriotic loyalties. Anderson labored to rescue nationalism from associations with racism, arguing that nationalists are primarily concerned with history, whereas racists are primarily concerned with essences. Some readers may find that argument more plausible than others.
But the modernist in him also celebrates nationalism for its instrumental role in the process of decolonization. Here, his particular engagement with Southeast Asia dovetailed with his left-wing political sympathies. This may in fact be the most striking thing for a reader encountering it today—even in the later revised editions: how much of Anderson’s considerations play out within the context of Marxism.
His thought was steeped in Marxism, though his treatment was never dogmatic. To begin with, honesty compelled him to take seriously the national conflicts that he saw erupting between Marxist nations.
In this he resembles his brother, the historian and social critic Perry Anderson, whose trenchant commentary still graces issues of the London Review of Books. It is difficult for us at the other end of history to recall (assuming we were there in the first place) the overwhelming presence of Marxist ideas at the time, but much of the show Anderson puts on makes more sense when viewed in light of his intended audience (though Marxist ideas are hardly absent from academia today, they no longer enjoy the hegemony they once held over entire areas of study). It may seem bizarre to us now, but Anderson was at the time fighting a bit of an uphill battle to demonstrate that national identities, however recent, were not less real or consequential than the movements of capital or material production that were and are the chief preoccupations of Marxists.
Anderson himself takes a largely benign view of such movements without sharing the internal perspective of those working from within them (that they are participating in the formal establishment of an authentic pre-existing social identity). How, then, does he expect us to judge their successes or failures? The implicit answer, I think—particularly given Anderson’s Marxist leanings—is to look to the material well-being of the real people that a given nation purports to represent. There, the record has been mixed, from the bloody methods of decolonization in places like Algeria and Vietnam to the fratricidal viciousness by which former neighbors decoupled themselves during the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. At the same time, the extraordinary economic achievement of pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and elsewhere cannot be decoupled from the social cohesion that nationalism provides. Anderson himself thus characterizes nationalism’s legacy as “Janus-headed.”
As I write this, the enduring conflict between two opposed nationalisms in the Levant has erupted again into terrible violence. Imagining a beneficent nationalism seems harder than ever. Perhaps for this reason, many outsiders have increasingly embraced a binational solution to the conflict—a kind of nationalism without nationalism—regardless of the actual preferences of the protagonists. And when confronted with such visible evidence of nationalism’s hard edge—the atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7, or the Israel Defense Force’s ongoing shelling of Gaza—it is understandable that many would blanch at what it really entails.
And it is similarly understandable that one may ask in the face of this and so many other conflicts—from Armenia and Azerbaijan to India and Pakistan to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and beyond—just what people get from nationalism. Why do they imagine this and not some other form of community? One answer is that at the level of practical reality, the nation provides the form for the ordinary liberal goods we enjoy. In another classic of modern social science, Seeing Like a State, James Scott described the state as “the ground of both our freedoms and our unfreedoms.” Something like this is true of nationalism as well: that for all its capacity for violence, it also makes possible the bounded community within which we gain protections of individual rights and welfare benefits and security.
Anderson goes beyond this, however; his view of nations is not just instrumental. And perhaps for this reason the language we use to describe these conflicts today is very much his language. Hence the use of mythologized histories to legitimize territorial claims. And hence also the attempts to force the Israel-Palestine conflict into the framework of decolonization, in which a righteous emerging nationalism confronts a system of oppressive domination.
But what happens when two authentic nationalisms compete for the same territory? And while we may speak of the self-sacrificing love the nation inspires, what makes these sacrifices worthwhile in the end? The poetic resonances of Anderson’s treatment of nationalism have been widely recognized—but even poetry has its limits.
David Polansky is a political theorist who writes on geopolitics and the history of political thought. He is currently a research fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.
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