Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

territorialization of faiths which foreshadows the language of many nationalists (‘our’ nation is ‘the best’ – in a competitive, comparative field).

reality of such apparitions depended on an idea largely foreign to the contemporary Western mind: the non-arbitrariness of the sign.

centuries.

‘journey’, between times, statuses and places, as a meaning-creating experience.

merit of traditional religious world-views

Consider first the structure of the old-fashioned novel, a structure typical not only of the masterpieces of Balzac but also of any contemporary dollar-dreadful. It is clearly a device for the presentation of simultaneity in ‘homogeneous, empty time,’ or a complex gloss upon the word ‘meanwhile’.

void as these tombs are of identifiable mortal remains or immortal souls, they are nonetheless saturated with ghostly national imaginings.2 (This is why so many different nations have such tombs without feeling any need to specify the nationality of their absent occupants. What else could they be but Germans, Americans, Argentinians . . .?) The cul

it invents nations where they do not exist.’

What then was required was a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning. As we shall see, few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of nation.