Imagined+Communities

Lauren and Taylor

In addition to //Imagined Communities//, Benedict Anderson explains the intricacies of belonging and nationalism in //[|Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics]//. Anderson says we live in a world now where integration and disintegration are happening simultaneously. He argues that this conundrum muddies the waters of nationalism with numerous definitions. He asks "How is this paradoxical double movement of integration and disintegration to be grasped? Are these forces in contradiction or merely obverse faces of a single historical process? Furthermore, is capitalism, with its habitual restlessness, producing new forms of nationalism?"

media type="custom" key="28383691" media type="custom" key="28383687" As argued by critical theory scholars like Walter Benjamin for decades, capitalism has led to the commodification of art forms and culture and uses these new commodities to distract the masses from their own oppression. Like Adorno and Horkheimer explained, characters on television depict the oppressed lives of the masses and yet the masses tune in, recognize these similarities, and still, in some way, enjoy it. The commodification of state boundaries and nationalism is another example of this irony. Benedict Anderson says in Imagined Communities, these borders that have been created, they are fictitious. However, the public accepts them and have gone so far to embrace them as part of their identities. The commodification of state boundaries is evidence to support this.

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