Nationalism arises from print capitalism’s imagined communities, not from class or material grievance alone

Evidence

Benedict Anderson (1991) may not immediately strike us as the most relevant thinker when it comes to understanding the productive function of imagination in our speculative moment. His Imagined Communities was written in 1983, a decade after the major oil crisis of 1973, in a climate characterized by the rise of political and economic conservatism (and the “final defeat” of postwar Keynesianism) and fast-pace financialization taking hold worldwide. Against the current of contemporaneous analyses, Imagined Communities offered a powerful theory of nationalism, showing how the imaginary forms it takes are intrinsically connected to capitalism’s brick-and-mortar reality. First, Anderson developed his thinking to analyze the historical birth of nationalist movements in the colonized Americas, which, as he argued compellingly, emerged out of the development of a nascent, print-based capitalist economy. Class, ideology, and material grievances of course mattered in the anticolonial struggle. But, for Anderson, the germinating nation-state was first and foremost imagined through shared national narratives circulated in print media, novels, and newspapers. In his famous words, the nation was thus imagined as a community by people who never knew, met, or heard of each other. Imagination is here not to be confused with “fancy” or “fantasy.” Imagining is instead seen as a generative force that brings forth new social forms, relations, and ways of thinking, all of which would have otherwise been unthinkable. In short, imagining, for Anderson, is the process of both producing and relating to the world around us. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 83

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Anderson’s core concept of ‘imagined communities’ and distinguishes imagination from fantasy/fancy — foundational for the chapter’s argument.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ‘On Sacrifice’ article framing of community formation rituals, and to broader themes of how material infrastructure (print) conjures collective identity. — connects to: Compensatory fantasy of Family Nation and Heroism drives capitulation to capitalism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 377; Nationalism answers an existential belonging deficit that capitalism creates — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2047; Nationalism emerged from printed shared narratives, not shared acquaintance — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 124 (+2 more)