#as a nonnative i love learning these terms that come out of the internet

[lady-a-stuff]

Goblin mode is the word of the year I absolutely love learning language

[archetypenull]

IC ch7 - Patriotism and Racism

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Patriotism is the extremist aspect of nationalism which indoctrinates the nation's people into willing to give up their lives for the imagined community, or at least some facet of it (141). Formed from the thousands of voices chanting national anthems, either voices of people next to you, or voices of people you, as a member of this nation, imagine are out there somewhere, doing the same thing (mainly because of some form of communications technology and the shared language of the chant), patriotism reifies, in an experiential, perspectival sense, the imagined community of the nation (145). This nation is not something chosen: one feels as though they are born into it, just as they born only into the landscape where their mother is giving birth (144). One could have just as well been born in the bush of Nigeria as in the suburban hospital of Ogdensburg, NY, but where one is born and socialized instills in that person a sense of home and a sense of kinship, two great driving forces for the development of love for their home place, their home nation (141). But, membership in the imagined community of the nation is not exclusive to birth right; the nation can be joined, via "naturalization" (145). Thus, the nation represents itself as both open and closed, requiring identitarian work to gain access, to not only join the place of the nation (for the nation is placeless, except for the social geography which originally bore it, and that geography's remnant cultural trappings), but to join the imagined community, as a culture with prerequisite political opinions, above all else. These are, of course, intricately tied to a specific language, as is the culture at large and the political context which bore the nation in the first place. In the world today, there are still those who irreverently and ignorantly proclaim that Germans speak German and Americans speak American [sic]. This, to me, seems to be a clinging aspect of an older world, for today there are instant translation technologies, new and faster forms of transportation, and the Internet itself, which has a complex part to play in the league of nations, as we have come to see in the last few elections and leaks of sensitive documents and information. Indeed, there is a marked rise in nationalism in this new information age of salient(?) technologies. As the globalized world seems to get smaller and smaller, many recede into fear-based nationalisms of opposition. Again, it seems as though the pattern is that of perceived oppression (usually by an Other source, perhaps seeking to gain from the oppression of those within the nation - at least, this is how it ismost often portrayed).

 Getting back to the issue of language, one can see the signs of racism bubbling up in the colonial relationships of oppressed and oppressor via European* language and control. The oppressed people would typically have to learn a language-of-power, which the Europeans controlled, alongside their own native vernacular. This inevitably led to languages-of-resistance, or at least the perception, among oppressors, that the vernacular was a secret space in which the oppressed could have discussions without the listening ear of an oppressor. On the other hand, the European oppressors no longer had their secret space - the oppressed people also had to learn their language-of-power. Stripped of this privilege, racist terms grew organically from a place of frustration against the oppressed, as the oppressors began to perceive loss of power in their own colony (148). This pattern is, however, simply another product of an older, more direct power dynamic between classes. Anderson points out that the aristocracy (who now rules the empire), had before lived a sense of divinity, above, and holding domination over, all other peoples (149). Though the veil of the nation forced the imperial powers to re-present themselves, their inherent culture, a culture of class distinction, had not changed. Thus, as Europeans colonized nations which seemed to them "lesser" (they did not recognize their languages, written histories, economies, societies, etc.), their own class superiority was reinforced and amplified as they took note of physiological and cultural differences between the colonized populations and themselves. Unfortunately, due to the inequality-perpetualizing forces that humanity has given its economic structure, as embodied by globalized late capitalism, nationalisms today can still be wrought by these same class distinctions. Derived from racist notions of development, morality, and even humanity, the nationalisms of today distinguish the Western European from the Eastern European in ways that, from an outside perspective, would seem senseless without the generation of racism in the imperial period, despite contemporary economic relationships. Anderson's point of a gauge of humanity emanating from the European center, dissipating as it went farther afield among the colonies, is well illustrated by his example of the differences between European armies, which were well-equipped and well-treated, and the colonial armies, which were essentially just cannon fodder (150-152). One can see how patterns similar to the above, alongside the "typical 'solidarity among whites'" inevitably led to mass slavery, and to the deeply-entrenched contemporary economic classes, which in many ways are simply veiled (and veiled again) aristocrats holding power and wealth over not only a peasantry, but over a work force producing their power and wealth.

 --

 Anderson brings up his theory that so-called "reverse racism" was rare in anticolonial movements, apart from Black people in the US, indicated by the number of racist terms for the other group (153). One possible cause of a difference is that Black slaves were not colonized, they were ripped from their homeland and forced to live among their oppressors, as the minority, rather than as a colonized population. When more legal and civil rights were granted to Black Americans, they became more like a colonized population, but still corralled within their oppressor's land. They had no homeland to reclaim, and thus could not "push out" the invaders. The Black Nationalist and Black Exodus (?) movements serve as proof of this, as Black Americans either wanted their own land, as separate from the US, or to return to their own places of origin. Additionally, the first Black Nationalist revolution was that of Haitians: nonnative people on an island (separate from their oppressors' homeland), claiming the land as their own.** Overall, I think his inclusion of Black Americans shows his lack of understanding of the situation, though one could perhaps appreciate the qualification of his theory in linguistic terms.

*I'm using "European" here to generalize for all imperial powers, which is a glaring issue.

**Check this qualification on Haiti