The awakening trope explained the anomaly of Europe’s late nationalism by claiming antiquity
Evidence
It seemed to explain why nationalist movements had bizarrely cropped up in the civilized Old World so obviously later than in the barbarous New. Read as late awakening, even if an awakening stimulated from afar, it opened up an immense antiquity behind the epochal sleep. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 727
Categorization
- XREF: The manipulation of chronology to claim an ancient essence is the same move Islamophobia work analyzes when nationalism orients itself against a supposedly atemporal Muslim Other. — connects to: European nationalisms imagined themselves as waking from sleep toward ancestral glory — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 726; European national identities were built on Germanic origin myths derived from Tacitus; Nationalism is modern in fact but ancient in claim, universal and particular — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 35 (+3 more)
Related
- European nationalisms imagined themselves as waking from sleep toward ancestral glory (similarity 0.89)
- Nationalism is modern in fact but ancient in claim, universal and particular (similarity 0.85)
- Nationalist antiquity arises necessarily from novelty (similarity 0.81)
- Nationalism’s invented antiquity structurally aligns with modern autobiography’s inner premises (similarity 0.79)
- Nationalism originated in the New World colonies, not in Europe’s ethnolinguistic movements (similarity 0.79)
- Nations claim antique dynasties to disguise their modern provenance. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Nationalism is modern in fact but ancient in claim, universal and particular
#expands(0.90) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 35 - Nationalist memory retroactively invents the very nations it claims to remember
#corroborates(0.90) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 118 - European national identities were built on Germanic origin myths derived from Tacitus
#exemplifies(0.85)