Pre-modern genealogical narrative lacks historical personality in a way the nation’s biography cannot.
Evidence
No dates are given for any of Jesus’s forebears, let alone sociological, cultural, physiological or political information about them. This narrative style (which also reflects the rupture-in-Bethlehem become memory) was entirely reasonable to the sainted genealogist because he did not conceive of Christ as an historical ‘personality,’ but only as the true Son of God. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 746
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Nations fabricate biographies backward in time because they lack natural origins. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 747; The novel’s rejection of origin-genealogies marks its secular, empty-time form — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 148; Genealogy requires the removal of totalizing discourse’s tyranny — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 27
Related
- The novel’s rejection of origin-genealogies marks its secular, empty-time form (similarity 0.86)
- Nations fabricate biographies backward in time because they lack natural origins. (similarity 0.84)
- Genealogy works backward from present certainties to their contingencies (similarity 0.78)
- Nations claim antique dynasties to disguise their modern provenance. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- The novel’s rejection of origin-genealogies marks its secular, empty-time form
#expands(0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 148 - Genealogy requires the removal of totalizing discourse’s tyranny
#complicates(0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 27