Print capitalism’s sacral-vernacular split enabled nationalist imagination

Evidence

The works of Egyptian writers in my study also reflect many of the important themes about nationalist language that Benedict Anderson describes in his work Imagined Communities, a book that, like Said’s Orientalism, has become part of the canon for scholars of colonialism and nationalism. Anderson portrays the historical and economic processes that define nations in the minds of their citizens, and the rapidity with which nationalist ideas have taken hold. His point is to situate the self-conscious political ideologies of nationalism within “the large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which—as well as against which—it came into being.” The pivotal element in all of these cultural systems is language, and great changes were brought by the divorce, initiated by print capitalism, between sacral and vernacular languages in Europe that created both new means of publishing, new voices, and new audiences. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 90

Categorization

• XREF: Recaps Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, foundational to the reader’s wider colonial-nationalism reading. — connects to: Finance capitalism now shapes collective imagination the way print capitalism built nations — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 271; 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belonging deficit that capitalism creates — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2047; Nationalism emerged from printed shared narratives, not shared acquaintance — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 124