/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17428740]

Is he right?

[Anonymous No.17428785]

imagine believing you share something in common with people with the same genetics, culture, and values as you

[Anonymous No.17428806]

>>17428740
When some people hear the word social construct they lose it because "that's the icky no no tranny word!" or whatever but it just means this concept only exists within social relations. The fuck is the ethereal version of a community, detached from social relations? That doesn't mean these communities aren't useful organizational tools.

[Anonymous No.17428818]

>>17428785
fpbp

[Anonymous No.17428826]

>>17428806
But he's clearly stating nationalism is an imagined community. He's not referring to all communities as imagined

[Anonymous No.17428829]

>>17428785
Whether you do or you don't it's a useful method of organization. Better a useful fiction than a purposeless truth, as edgy as that sounds.

[Anonymous No.17428832]

>>17428806
I think that's a reaction to people who say, "such and such is a social construct" with heavy implication that this means the thing is oppressive in and of itself, and furthermore that because it is oppressive that it ought to be done away with.

[Anonymous No.17428847]

>>17428826
I apologize if I wasn't being clear but I don't think I was saying all communities are imagined either. there are certain communities that are, nationalities, subcultures, etc; but there are some that are based in material conditions that are more so attached to the individual member's actual interests.

[Anonymous No.17428860]

>>17428832
I mean yeah college kids use terminology in vapid ways, zoomer twitter tradlarpers do the same shit. One shouldn't expect particularly thorough analysis from children and young adults. Not saying you do, just a general statement.

[Anonymous No.17428864]

>>17428860
>ageism
nice deflection, boomer

[Anonymous No.17428873]

>>17428864
I'm literally a zoomer I just understand that I literally haven't had the time to properly develop my thoughts as I haven't lived that long. Doesn't help that my brain isn't fully formed.

[Anonymous No.17428900]

>>17428873
most people who have had time still haven't done so. rate of stupidity doesn't drop as quickly as you'd hope with age

[Anonymous No.17428913]

>>17428900
Oh no my point isn't that older people are particularly smart on average, it's just that since they've had more time to develop their thought they have a better chance at it. Younger people only have one advantage in that regard, more free time.

[Anonymous No.17428925]

>>17428913
Yes, I'm saying that your assumption is incorrect -- in spite of having more time, few people ever do much to develop their thinking about anything.

[Anonymous No.17428930]

>>17428860
The problem is these college kids are graduating without being dissuaded of their deranged ideas, and going into public policy making positions, or into human resources departments, or becoming school teachers themselves, sincerely and deeply convinced of ideas like "the family should be abolished," or "children should be treated as neither male or female." I think the knee-jerk reaction of working class people and business owners to these mentally ill white collar professionals is perfectly appropriate and correct, even if it lacks nuance and comes from a place of ignorance.

[Anonymous No.17428951]

>>17428930
I think to a certain extent the people you are talking about are extremely rare, and the basis of that knee-jerk reaction is more propaganda than serious analysis or anecdotal experience.
>>17428925
Then would you say age has nothing to do with it at all? Not in the sense that like, a toddler is as smart as an adult, since I imagine you aren't saying that, but that age doesn't help the issue in general?

[Anonymous No.17428971]

>>17428864
kill yourself faggot

[Anonymous No.17428975]

>>17428951
I would say exactly what I said >>17428900
>rate of stupidity doesn't drop as quickly as you'd hope with age
Any assumption that someone older is smarter is already flawed. Yes, it is more likely to be true than not true, but it's a weak enough correlation you're an idiot to actually apply it to anything.

[Anonymous No.17428980]

>>17428740
Aren’t all communities imagined

[Anonymous No.17428981]

>>17428951
>>17428930
>>17428925
>>17428913
>>17428900
>>17428873
>>17428864
>>17428860
>>17428847
>>17428832
>>17428829
>>17428826
>>17428818
>>17428806
>>17428785
Everyone here is an immature /pol/tard that hasn't read the book in question (or any book) as per usual.

[Anonymous No.17428991]

>>17428981
>be a leftypolfag
>get called a polfag
I think you were just going to do this regardless of what the replies were OP

[Anonymous No.17429000]

If he is wrong then Indonesia is an eternal entity beyond human definition. So is he wrong?

[Anonymous No.17429006]

>>17428981
Yeah this is a fantastic, common sense book that makes products of public education seethe because they thought they were one nation under god indivisible.

[Anonymous No.17429021]

>>17428740
>endorsed by The Economist

I can only imagine what wonders this book holds.

[Anonymous No.17429029]

>>17429006
Lefty shit. Into the trash it goes.

[Anonymous No.17429049]

>>17428981
I’ll read it but by the time I’m finished this thread will be gone. May take a day seeing it’s only 160 pages.

[Anonymous No.17429057]

>>17428740
Roughly speaking yes, but unfortunately retarded leftists don't understand that just because something is "imagined", mental or conceptual, does not mean that it is baseless, changeable, artificial or "fictional". With that correction in mind, it makes sense.

[Anonymous No.17429059]

>Your entire sense of a personal place in history and your self-identification with a particular culture and lifeway of a group of people that share your language and heritage is a complete fiction. Here is why you are evil and stupid for doing these things, you pathetic troglodyte.

[Anonymous No.17429060]

>>17429029
So you think nations are these eternal immutable things whose borders and bloodlines and languages and newspapers and railroads and telegraph lines and epics and myths and the like are essential realities independent of thought?

[Anonymous No.17429066]

>>17429060
>essential realities independent of thought

you get to sit in the back of the gas chamber

[Anonymous No.17429070]

>>17429059
If you bothered to read the book you'd know it wasn't about anthropology but largely built around the socio-political response to Western colonialism in Asia being generalized as a narrative of nation-building.

[Anonymous No.17429071]

>>17428951
I hope you're right, and I did use rather extreme examples, but there are people holding public office in e.g. Seattle explicitly calling for their police department to be gutted and staffed with race commissars.

[Anonymous No.17429074]

Quarks and atoms are imaginary constructs just like nations

[Anonymous No.17429079]

sexual consent is a social construct

[Anonymous No.17429080]

>>17429066
The one inside your head right, since you presumably deny they existed?

[Anonymous No.17429089]

>>17429059
>Everything that makes it's point by having the Stars and Stripes printed on it will always speak the truth, can never be untrue and if you suspect that this is ever not the case you are dumb and bad.

[Anonymous No.17429091]

>>17429066
>thick-headed /pol/cel jokes about the Holocaust because he cannot understand entry-level postmodernist concepts

Typical. At least I can actually discuss this book on my favorite anthropology sub.

[Anonymous No.17429096]

>>17429079
I mean, yeah.

[Anonymous No.17429138]

>>17429059
Of course it is, at that level of social relations you can't create any sort of coherent national character without abstraction. that being said, that doesn't mean it isn't a useful fiction.

[Anonymous No.17429144]

Imagine how much worse a community and abstraction is Man

[Anonymous No.17429161]

>>17429059
oh look another proud non-reader rightist

[Anonymous No.17429177]

>>17429161
so do you seek out imaginary enemies to argue with because you're a loser or?

[Anonymous No.17429218]

Does anyone believe in nationalist myths? The reason we prefer nations is simply because the alternative - empires or whatever, or some cosmopolitan capitalism - are bothersome

[Anonymous No.17429262]

>>17429218
The reason 'we prefer' nations is because feudal monarchy was literally decapitated and we had to do something with the newly escheated property formerly belonging to the crown without a head. What if all these subject people were just one big family? (Ignore the fact that we just threw dad down a flight of stairs or that the cousins from the south are unintelligible to us, we can fix that using some of dad's old fiat decrees that used to be backed by god).

[Anonymous No.17429464]

>>17428785
yeah, you actually have to be taught that you do through use of national mass media

[Anonymous No.17429483]

>>17429029
if anything it's righty, since it's arguing that local regional community is real in a way that national identity is not

[Anonymous No.17429498]

>>17429218
most people prefer regionalism, nationalism only comes to the fore with the (cultivated) perception of external threats

[Anonymous No.17429528]

>>17428740
very interesting lets see what else is imagined
>imagined rights
oof gays
>imagined cultures
oof jews
>imagined social norms
oof this dick
>imagined sense of identity
oof a unified cohesive self with longterm interests
>imagined moral systems
oof Rawls

[Anonymous No.17429535]

>>17429528
>Rights, cultures, morality, and norms aren't constructed within social relations

[Anonymous No.17429554]

>>17429535
>social relations aren’t constructed within social relations
>claiming something is constructed within social relations in any way having any significance
>implying the least socially constructed thing is genetically informed ethnic clusters inhabiting close territories and united by marital ties extending back millennia

[Anonymous No.17429621]

>>17428740
Yes.

[Anonymous No.17429652]

>>17429554
>>social relations aren’t constructed within social relations
They are.
>>claiming something is constructed within social relations in any way having any significance
It's significant insomuch that it conveys the idea that there is no ethereal quality to these things, the social construction argument is at it's core a teleological argument.
>>implying the least socially constructed thing is genetically informed ethnic clusters inhabiting close territories and united by marital ties extending back millennia
I think you worded this poorly but what you're saying is that the origin of culture is race and it's therefore not fully a social construction. Am I right or am I mistaken in assuming that' what you mean here?

[Anonymous No.17429659]

>Only individualism actually matters but actually wait nah thats bad too

[Anonymous No.17429666]

>>17429659
That isn't what the book is saying, read it before you critique it. The book has flaws but you're only making it look more accurate by reacting in this overly emotional manner.

[Anonymous No.17429754]

>>17428740
Read Azar Gat's NATIONS for another take on this.

[Anonymous No.17430361]

>>17428785
His whole point is that you don't share those things with a significant portion of your countrymen and that you are conditioned into thinking that you do by (((the state)))

[Anonymous No.17430368]

>>17428980
Anderson would argue that one in which you actually know everyone (like a rural village) is real

[Anonymous No.17430374]

>>17429059
>evil and stupid
What? He explicitly states that "imagined" doesn't mean bad and that nations are ultimately useful ideological tools

[Anonymous No.17430386]

>>17429059
This but unironically

[Anonymous No.17430404]

>>17428740
He's right, but I'm not sure if it's as grandiose a claim as people in this thread are making it out to be. His theory is essentially an extension of Alfred Schutz's social phenomenology, which I highly recommend reading. Everyone acts according to an implicit understanding of their social world; even banal actions like checking the mail involve an intersubjective relation to contemporary "Others", most of whom you will never interact with, but nevertheless influence you anonymously. So in the case of nationalism, Anderson is correct to describe its phenomenology in terms of the anonymous social relation (readers of Heidegger will know this as "das Man"), but it is by no means exceptional.