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.

Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities: "Cultural Roots"

Anderson's chapter "Cultural Roots" attempts to set out the foundations for the beginning of sociological entities, or groups of people to conceive of themselves as a nation. He does this through an explanation of how previous ways of thinking ended: Anderson uses the examples of languages as connected to religious systems (Divine Truth in ways of thinking, views of the world, cosmologies in general), an ending of Dynasties (meaning Monarchies and societies connected to specific families) and finally, through a disconnection between a cosmology and a notion of time (History), this is evident in a sort of "end of times" notion of the present.

All of these claims sound reasonable, and Anderson does well in backing up his claims through examples in literature as well as through history. However, in this blog, I want to raise some questions concerning the first point, and then briefly explain the others, finally ending up with some questions concerning how Anderson's chapter related to White, Hutcheon, Spivak, Norris and so on. I'll say this in my email to you as well, but I would like to be able to begin our conversation on Shadow lines (including roughly the first 100 pages).

What is interesting to me is the connection between a religious cosmology and a specific language. Anderson's connection of Latin and the Christian church and Arabic and Islam bode well. There is definitely a certainty that both Latin and Arabic were (and still are: Arabic especially) languages that hold special persuasion over the Divine or a connection to the Divine. The Qur'an specifically notes that the book is given in Mohammed in Arabic, and as such is a Holy language. Further, the Qur'an notes that there are other holy books out there that are not given in Arabic, and that this sort of linguistic plurality hints at the multiplicity of groupings that the Divine is capable of communicating with. Moreover, in the Catholic church, services were held in Latin for centuries, claiming that is was a Holy language. This produced interesting and troubling sociological effects (stratification of knowledge, religious truth, and value systems in both of those categories). Anderson does well in pointing out these qualifications both within Europe and colonial locations.

What is interesting to me, and possibly something that might break down through further questioning, is the idea that there are sociological systems that exist under these language boundaries; language as connected to religious truth seems to be an extremely broad notion, and could, through an equally common occurrence and prevalent notion be syphoned down. My proposition/question deals with ethnicity. Anderson notes the connection of a language system to a specific geographic location, and that each of these 3 means of organization operate within a specific geographic location, alternating (meaning England: Latin as Iraq: Arabic) systems per location. However, I am curious to the grouping effect of ethnicity. Primarily, ethnicity encompasses geographic location, a common history, similar cosmologies (related to location and history).

-initially, however, there is a difficulty in the specificity of ethnicity. Primarily due to the fact that in Anderson's literary examples he notes a sort of connectedness without acquaintance. He notes that as a United States citizen I will not come into contact with the majority of the other citizens, yet I have this "knowlegde" of their doings, the very idea that the others are moving, operating, living within similiar sociological structures and interacting with similar things that I am. Ethnicity, it may seem is too specific of a category.

The other two grouping techniques: a connection through dynasties and then an ending of "Messianic Time," in Benjaminian terms. Understandably, these grouping terms serve for collection methods in that once these systems break down, the identifier for sociological entities needs to grasp onto something other. Finally, the transition in from Messianic time to a sort of time in the "now," which Anderson describes as empty time is well summed up in his descriptions through literary texts as well as his connection to the Newspaper. Though I am interested in how the internet changes things in this note. The death of the newspaper, which is rapidly occurring through our eyes in examples such as assimilation of newspaper companies, the death of the small town paper, along with the increase of ad space and decrease of news space on a page all speak to this example in new and interesting ways.

What I am interested in, is a connection between Anderson and the other previous author's we've come across. Thinking back to last week and White and Hutcheon who spoke to the study of history and the academic field of Postmodernism, Anderson's work seems especially interesting. Anderson is speaking to the fact that groups of people are grouped together through a sort of imaginary plane and commonalities, located within a geographic space. White and Hutcheon seem to be looking at the thought systems that come out of these groupings (Nietzsche, Spivak, Norris all speak to the thought systems that come out of this as well). It would be interesting to look at the manners in which sociological entities group themselves and its impact on the thought systems: Hutcheon's comments on the PM's focus on the ex-centric, Spivak's comments on the subaltern, even Bhabha's hybridity (noting especially the interactions between the "nations" through colonialism).

This final paragraph sums Anderson's points up well, but also raises questions (for me especially between the supposed clear-cut line between secularism and a religious sort of way of thinking).

The slow, uneven decline of these interlinked certainties, first in Western Europe, later elsewhere, under the impact of economic change, 'discoveries' (social and scientific, and the development of increasingly rapid communications, drove a harsh wedge between cosmology and history. No surprise then that the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor made it more fruitful, than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing number s of people to think about themselves, and to related themselves to others, in profoundly new ways. (36).

I do question Anderson's supposed disconnect between cosmology and history. I am curious to what exactly he means. Does he assert that cosmology and history do not interact, interpret each other? If so, I disagree, and would aver that though institutionally, cosmology (as in the Catholic Church, or Christendom within monarchies has died out, but christianity, and especially Islam continue to and maintain a prevalent influence upon time (not messianic but "empty" time) and history (as in the events that occur within this time.)

Linda Hutcheon: Dencentering the PostModern: The Ex-centric

In a helpful and interesting essay Hutcheon guides us to what seems to be the focus of modern day Postmodernism: the ex-centric.

Primarily, there are some points that stick out to me that are interesting and pertinent to her essay: 1. The fact that the ex-centric (and Postmodernism (PM) within itself) is dependent in nature upon the very things that is purports to deconstruct or deny and so on. For example, the ex-centric by nature is dependent on the fact that it is marginal and not center. If there lacked a center, the ex-centric would cease to function as it does. And this is important as well for Hutcheon (H), the center, according to Derrida, is a function, never a empirical, real thing, but rather a function, a notion that gives people a state of mind, a completementary element. However, this does not deny the reality of the center. Sexism, partriarchy, racism, and so on all operate through the notion of the center and the marginal. What is important to note is that the center is never a monolithic, single thing. But a social, political, religious, cultural function.

2. H. notes how PM places emphasis upon the ex-centric, but she does not uphold the fact that PM in a theoretical field of the marginal, and if it is, she denies it as an appropriate one. I think this is primarily due to the nature of organizational groupings within themselves. To politically organize and create movement toward a cause due to specific grievances is to assert yourself as the center.And the marginal are distinctly marginal, in relation to the center. However, H does not the emphasis and attention that PM has given the ex-centric, and upholds this as a good and wrothy thing. But, comes back to the point, that PM constantly pivots on the notion of relational difference: the ex-centric to the center.

3. Finally, an interesting point to me lies in the nature of an ex-centric theory, and this helps clarify the relational difference that upholds so much of PM's understanding of the marginal, the ex-centric. Within the political realm, PM's focus upon the ex-centric may be viewed as reactionary, and therefore not a movement that upholds real, true goals, but instead the grievances, and the goals of the movement exist purely in relation to specific social, cultural circumstances that exist today. Though not a complete erasure of the legitimacy of the movement, what this claim does is that it removes some of the organic strength of the claims. The argument may be made that the ex-centric do not need to be placed in an equitable and just situation, but rather that the center's relationship to the marginal should be augmented.


Through various expositions with literary texts, H. elucidates how the marginal movement is exhibitied through literature. Examples such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Salman Rushdie, Gayl Jones and Joy Kogawa bring to light the varying states of the ex-centric. This is an interesting and pertinent point to bring up: the multiplicity of the ex-centric. PM is not attempting to replace the center with the ex-centric:

Postmodernism does not move the marginal to the cetner. It does not invert the valuing of centers into that of peripheries and border, as much as use that paradoxical doubled positioning to critique the inside from both the outisde and the inside.

And that, to me, is a major point of H.'s essay, that the ex-centric, based on a relational difference schema to the center and other ex-centrics is exemplified through PM literature, art, architecture and so on.

Hayden White: Interpretation in History

Wow.

What White seems to have just done is to lay a foundation for a science of the academic study of history. He brought in specific terminology, used specific examples, clarified his categories, created a schema in which historians have and will work out of, and further, declared the basic "language" (meaning the method of communication between historians as well as the historian and her subject: the event, time period, collection of events and so on.) and even upholds a method of dissecting the direction or purpose of the historian and her history.

It is difficult to address such a large (in thought, terminology) without getting into a constant range of clarifying what my words mean and how my discourse is to clarify White's essay: for example, if I am to speak of a Historian's relationship to history, I am inherently speaking of the her language (tropology as White puts it), her ideology, her method of explanation (romance, satire, tragedy and so on) and finally her method of emplotment (organicist, mechanistic, idiographic, contextualist).

White's progressive explanation of each of these categories is thorough and complete. Simply, I'll try and go through each one of his his above mentioned categories.

Primarily, and most importantly (though he doesn't reach this until the final pages of the essay) a Historian is influenced by her language, its meaning (by this I mean a sort of semiotics hinting at sign and signified), its use of metaphor, metonym, synecdoche and irony. All four of these terms, White states, operate through a signification through difference and similarity. Primarily stemming from the understanding that

Following a suggestion of Kenneth Burke, we may say that the four "master tropes" deal in relationships that are experienced as inhering within or among phenomena, but which are in reality relationships existing between consciousness and a world of experience calling for a provision of its meaning. metaphor, whatever else it does, explicitly asserts a similarity in a difference and, at least implicitly, a difference in a similarity.

Further, this use of language and tropology upholds a certain direction or purpose, which is connected to the historian's ideology. This ideology asserts certain politic, motivations, directions, and so on for the historian. White notes that there are four varieties of ideologies that historians may fall into: Anarchist, Conservative, Radical, and Liberal. What is interesting to me is that White seems to be asserting that language is more powerful than ideology, but further, that seperating one's self from ideology is near impossible. It seems to me that there is a difference here between a sort of political ideology (the purpose, unconscious or conscious) that the Historian maintains and the Althusserian ideology that gives the historian her role, responsibilities, ethos, and relation to her surrounding environment.

To be sure, I agree with White in his thought that Language (semiotics) as a massively influential subject, however, I want to stress a sort of relativism that may arise in this sort of thinking, the farther back you push a concept the more it is influenced by another. And this is probably his reasoning for asserting an unlikelihood of pinning down a primary influencer for the Historian: per individual the reasoning may change, but further, it is indescribably difficult to gauge amount of influence upon a historian concerning these categories.

Continuing, White explicates various methods, or stories that these histories may take the form of. What is particularly interesting here is the differentiation between a plot, and a story (myth). White notes how stories are influenced or given by a historian's ideology and further expressed through a tropology that gives deeper meaning to the myth and the characters within it. I feel that White is correct in his understanding of how various stories are told, and the relationship with historical bias through various methods of telling the story (romantic, tragic, satrical, comedic, and so on). A certain expanatory lens gives different meaning to the story. As White noted, a historian make understand a war to be decided through a certain political move, but this political move will be understood through the story in relation to other events both before and after the event itself. And so, the flavor, or position that this event upholds is formed through certain molds or forms given by the story (myth.)

Putting all of this together and completing the process of historical interpretation is the role that emplotment takes within this process. Emplotment refers to the method in which the historian embraces certain information and neglects other, it refers to how the historian presents certain historical time periods, tangible dates or time periods, it refers to the historian's understanding of how these events, dates, important notions, concepts, people all related to one another: in sort emplotment is concerned with how historical information is presented and why it is presented. Interestingly, White noted how various methods of emplotment: Idiographic, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contexualist. the Idiographic method refers to a more spotted , and selevtive re-telling of history; Organicist understands historical events to be in a much more narrative sense, where the parts are all related to a certain whole and everything fits well together; Mechanistic is best represented through Marx, and his notion that history is best understood as as sort of part to part relationship through a cause and effect scheme. This cause and effect scheme requires that each part be looked at in relation to another and the corresponding relationship be understood as either causual in one manner or effective in another. Finally, the contextualist understand historical events to be in relation to a broader context:

When an event is set within its "context" by the method that Walsh has called "colligation," the historian's explanatory task is said, on this analysis, to be complete. The movement towards intergration of the phenomena is supposed to stop at the point at which a given context can be characterized in modestly general terms.

Wrapping up, White's text understands interpretation by a historian to include these four areas: Mode of Emplotment, Mode of Explanation, Mode of Ideological implication and finally the mode of language. The final mode seems to be the strongest, in that it governs how metaphor, metonymy, synedoche, and irony are understood through emplotment, explanation, and ideological influence.

Christopher Norris "Postmodernising History: Right Wing Revisionism and the Uses of Theory"

In an essay that comes timely after conversations concerning Spivak's can the subaltern speak, and the question of what an issue means when it is "purely" or "just" textual, Norris addresses the issue of the use of theory, and the dangers of getting caught up within textuality and deconstructive thinking.

Beginning, Norris speaks specifically to Stanely Fish, Paul de Man and the use of theory in the fields of Law, Social sciences and history. He notes de Man's notion that theory itself tends to turn in upon itself at points if pushed far enough. Importantly, he traces the connection between literary theory and philosophy. Admitting the usefulness of multi-disciplinary studies, Norris brings to light the lack of boundaries that this creates for literary theory. This conflation of recognizable limits of fields can lead to the oversight that certain methods of thoughts have solid history processes of thought, and have, in their own sort of development, gone through specific thought processes:

So, Derrida is far from endorsing Richard Rorty's proposal that we should drop the idea of "philosophy" as a discipline with its own particular interests, modes of argument, conceptual prehistory and so on, and henceforth treat it as just one "kind of writing" among others, on a level with poetry, literary criticism and the human sciences at large. In fact his recent essay have laid increasing stress on this need to conserve what is specific to philosophy, namely its engagement with ethical, political and epistemological issues that cannot be reduced tout court to the level of an undifferentiated textual "freeplay"

Further, Norris speaks to Fish's claim that the extension of Literary theory in other fields in essence ends only extending its sort of hegemonic claim over modern day thought. Fish claims against the sort of way of thinking that upholds a sort of consensus concerning a specific way to approach fields such as Law, Philosophy, social sciences, and even history. Interestingly, Fish upholds that all ways of thinking are intimately involved with "interpretative communities". Additionally, Fish notes that, should theorists claim that their way of thinking is anti-hegemonic, there must be a sort of delusion occurring. Purportedly, these theorists who claim this anti-hegemony way of thinking must extend their ways of thinking in order to provide for this sort of consensus.

I want to jump to the most interesting part of the article to me; keeping in mind the time Norris spends on outline Britain political history and its relationship to the Critical Legal Theorists.

Claiming this sort of conflation and oversight of literary theory boundaries and individual theoretical development respectively, Norris then turns to an actual application of theory in Britain law. What remains important and pertinent to our conversation is his example of this conflation and oversight by Clark in a Right-wing revisionism. This use of literary theory to re-present history in an advantageous manner is an exaggeration of what Norris speaks to in the beginning of his essay. Clark presents British history through a right-wing lens. Understanding specific political events such as the Industrial Revolution, a political change in 1869 that lessened the power of the monarchy to, in actually, be falsified through liberal metafiction he upholds that these events drastically differently.

First, he sees the Industrial revolution, not as a period in time at all, and secondly he sees the word revolution as problematic: pointing to notions of turning away from specific failing political systems and embracing new, sometimes drastically different ones. This is false, Clark claims, seeing the the industrial revolution as merely a notion in liberal re-writing of history, and denies that the Industrial revolution was a valid developmental period in time at all. Further the political change in 1869 did not serve to lessen the power of the monarchy at all; rather it merely altered the role of the monarchy in the government, but not lessening the power of the monarchy in any way.

These drastic representations, Norris, asserts cannot be addressed through a mutually falsified liberal notion of literary theory that conflates both boundaries, and worth of manners of thinking such as Law. He asserts that Law, as a way of thinking, has developed primarily through rigorous arguments and is not founded upon purely cover metaphorical language.

In the end, Norris upholds that the only way to battle Clark's way of thinking is to maintain a certain notion of historical theory, or theory in general that upholds and claims certain kantian truths, such as Kantain truth in communication. He asserts, rightfully:

My point is that "critical theory" in the current poststructuralist mode cannot engage with such issues because it has effectively renounced any claim of distinguishing between reason and rhetoric, knowledge and power, judgments arrived at through a process of uncoerced, rational debate, and judgments resting on prejudice, dogmas or the exercise of unchecked authority. What is needed is an openness to other kinds of theory that have held out against this relativising drift on account of its conservative implications.

Balancing nicely, the issue of theory and practice Norris outline a possibility for a supposed "real world" application of theory that may be applied in Law, social sciences with confidence of acknowledging certain truths that have gone through reasonable progressions and theoretical processes.