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works to see in what sense a postmodern condition is indeed what should
be inferred from the operations o f Uterature. It seems to me quite possible
that a return to ground the literary in literature might have a critical edge,
since one o f the things we know about literary works is that they have the
ability to resist or to outplay what they are supposed to be saying. David
Simpsons book claims quite explicitly that what’s left o f theory is the liter
ary. If so, this is all the more reason to return to literary works for the cri
tique o f the literary that has historically been one o f the tasks o f literature.
The Novel and the Nation
I
I f theory is work that migrates out o f the field in which it originates
and is used in other fields as a framework for rethinking broad questions,
Benedict Anderson’s writing about nationalism is a prime example and a
splendid case for thinking about the literary in theory, for notions of the
novel and narrative technique play a key role in Anderson’s account o f
the conditions o f possibility o f the nation. A political scientist specializ
ing in Southeast Asia, Anderson wrote Imagined Communities: Reflections
on the Origins and Spread o f Nationalism, which, since its publication in
1983, has become a classic o f the humanities and social sciences. Any theo
retically savvy discussion o f nations or o f societies o f any sort must cite it
for its fundamental insight that nations and, as Anderson points out, “all
communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and
perhaps even these) are imagined.” ' In retrospect, it seems obvious that
nationality, “nation-ness,” and nationalism “are cultural artifacts o f a par
ticular kind” {IC, 4), but this had previously been obscured by intellectu
als’ sense that nationalism was above all an atavistic passion, an often nox
ious prejudice o f the unenlightened. Imagined Communities both argued
that we had better seek to understand it, since “nation-ness is the most
I.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and
Spread o f Nationalism [1983], rev. ed. (London; Verso, 1991), 6. All references are to
the 1991 edition; hereafter abbreviated IC and cited parenthetically in the text.
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T H E O R Y
universally legitimate value in the political life of our time” {IC, 3), and
gave us a constructivist way o f thinking about the phenomenon o f nation
alism, which becomes more interesting and intellectually more acceptable
when we ask how it is created, what discursive, imaginative activities bring
particular nationalisms into being and give them their distinctive form. If
nationalism is seen as a vulgar passion provoked by empirically occurring
nations, it is vulnerable to the objection implicitly or explicitly mounted
against it: why should I feel more affinity with people who happen to in
habit the country I live in than with others, more like-minded, who hap
pen to have been born in other nations? Anderson neatly turned the tables
on intellectuals by taking this as a serious question. Why indeed do we
feel such affinities? How to explain the fact that people are more willing to
make great sacrifices for others o f the same nation whom they have never
met (and whom they might dislike if they did) than for worthy and unfor
tunate people elsewhere?
Read today, the introduction to Imagined Communities has the right
ness and efficiency of a classic (“why hadn’t anyone realized this before?”)
as it guides us into the paradoxes o f the modern world o f nationalism: na
tions are objectively recent but subjectively antique, even eternal; nations
may be messianic, but no nation’s citizens imagine that everyone should
eventually join their nation. Already here Anderson displays what I take to
be the key to his appeal to the nonspecialist: his ability concretely to show
us the strangeness of the familiar by judicious comparisons. Try to imag
ine a “Tomb o f the Unknown Marxist or a Cenotaph for fallen Liberals,”
he suggests. But a Tomb o f the Unknown Soldier does not seem risible.
Why? “Many different nations have such tombs without feeling any need
to specify the nationality o f their absent occupants. What else could they
be but Germans, Americans, Armenians?” (/C, 10). In a sentence or two,
wit and comparison bring readers to appreciate the necessity o f accounting
for a social and cultural phenomenon.
The second edition o f Imagined Communities demonstrates, in a com
pelling if serendipitous way, just how much we need Anderson to provide
such insights, as it takes up what he and his readers had failed to notice
in the first edition. There he had quoted Ernest Renan remarking “in his
suavely backhanded way,” “Or I’essence d’une nation est que tous les indi
vidus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oubliés
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