Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Benedict Anderson "Census, Map, Museum"

In addressing his task of tracing the genealogy of the notions of nationalism, Anderson adds to his original thesis--that states that official nationalism was molded off of the dynasitic states of nineteenth-century Europe. Anderson adds that through three areas that imagined the colonial state: the Census, the Map and the Museum. All three of these topics vary in historical significance (meaning how individuals have presented history through them) political and social uses for the then present colonial state.

The census is an interesting method of representation of the colonial state primarily in what Anderson says as not the "construction of ethnic-racial classifications, but rather in their systematic quantification." The colonial state's census is most interesting in its inability to allow for a sort of unclassifiability. Each individual was placed into a single identity, which coincided with previous classifications set by the state itself:

"Hence their intolerance of multiple, politically, 'transvestite,' blurred, or changing identifications. Hence the weird subcategory, under each racial group, of "others"--who, nonetheless, are absolutely not to be confused with other "Others." The fiction of the census is that everyone is in it, and that everyone has one--and only one--extremely clear place. No fractions."

Here, Anderson means to point to the both the Orientalist view of the colonial state as something that is constructed, but further, the role of the colonial state in the colonized lives. The forming nature that the colonial state was seen as something to produce order. Most specifically, political, cultural, social order.

Interestingly, this may still be viewed today and could be brought out in literary examples. What comes to mind is an exchange within The Shadow Lines between Ila and the main character. They are discussing politics and political movements in England and the Postcolonial state of India. Interestingly, what sticks out to me is the fact that in both circumstances considering the census representation of the colonial state and the postcolonial actual political state there are constructed categories that reflect upon the states' attempts at collecting and maintaining order. In a less affirmable tone (meaning I'm not quite sure about how this plays out) a protest is classifiable in a manner that allows politics to digest, consume and deal with. The census' attempts to maintain order, to allow for images of the colonial state to arise that coincided with the state's respective understanding of itself is still remnant in politics today, most especially within the postcolonial state.

Anderson goes on with this point:
"But the power of the grid is so great that such evidence is marginalized in Scott's imagination, and therefore it is hard for him to see that the "class structure" of the precolonial period is a 'census' imagaining created from the poops of Spanish galleons. Wherever they went, hidalgos and esclavos loomed up, who could only be aggregated as such, that is 'structurally,' by an incipient colonial state."

The relationship between the the colonial state and the colonizer is one of construction and formation, but also of mimesis.

Anderson's points concerning the map break demonstrate how the concretization of political boundaries, along with theoretical constructions of geographic space impact local areas socially, culturally. "The Mercatorian map, brought in by the European colonizers, was beginning, via print, to shape the imagination of Southeast Asians." What is most interesting to me is the conflation of sacred and profane space within the map. Anderson makes the point that the map is dependent upon efficacy of print-capitalism. The objectification of an area, in this case a sacred space of an other civilization or people, is interesting in that it siphons the sacred space into a sort of "spatial reality" as Anderson notes. Conceivably, sacred space is an area that is not constructed (granted, the nature of symbols is interwoven with a culture's power systems and the progression and election of a symbol is unarguably selective.) But rather, the previous maps in circulation were meant to uphold conceptual notions that guided a sort of inner geographical salvational context.

Further, with the colonial delegation of territories there came a sort of "filling in" of the map.

"The task of, as it were, "filling in" the boxes was to be accomplished by explorers, surveyors, and military forces. In Southeast Asia, the second half of the nineteenth century was the golden age of military surveyors,--colonial and, a little later, thai. They were on the march to put space under the same surveillance which the census-makers were trying to impose on persons. triangulation by triangulation, way by way, treaty by treaty, the alignment of map and power proceeded."

Finally, the impact of the museum upon the colonial state is most obvious in the objectification, propagation, and materialization of historical people and areas. This seems analogous to me of Nietszche's The Use and Abuse of History and N's theory on a sort of antiquarian history that upholds and praises a specific culture's history. Interestingly, this culture's history (in the post-colonial sense) is inherently constructed. We talked about the importance of this during class last semester where it seems that the objectification through photographs seems to exoticize and more importantly essentialize a culture's history. Anderson's points become interesting when he explicates "how colonial regimes began attaching themself to antiquity as much as conquest ... Monumental archaeology, increasingly linked to tourism, allowed the state to appear as the guardian of a generalized, but also local, Tradition."

Further, Anderson notes the capitalistic influence within the museumization of the colonial state

"But, as noted above, a characteristic feature of the instrumentalities of this profane state was infinite reproducibility, a reproducibility made technically possible by print and photography, but politico-culturally by the disbelief of the rulers themselves in the real sacredness of local sites."

Through these various methods the colonial state constructed and upheld certain notions concerning itself along with the colonizers. Questions, to me, arise then to the colonized reactions (both individually--as pursued by Bhabha in his hybridization theory, and collectively). These can be evident in literature, as Rushdie paints the sort of self-identification process in MC, as well as in Pterodactyl in the struggle to determine a certain identity (though avoiding any monolithic, progressive narrative), that may confidently be asserted in contrast to the historical presentations by the map, census, museum. This different history and identity and presentation of the postcolonial state suggests common roots with Anderson's thesis on Nationality, however, it questions the difference between colonized presentations of the colonial state and instead raises the question of colonized understanding of themselves in contrast to the colonizers.

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