Imagined community

From MarxWiki

Benedict Anderson explores what imagined communities are in his work by the same name. He defines the nation as `an imagined political community- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.` It is imagined because all the members of the community do not necessarily meet but there is a commonality based on religion, language, culture. Anderson distinguishes this `imagining` from `inventing` which carries a more negative connotation. He notes that the word `inventing` implies that there are true nations, when really all communities that are too large for every member to know each other are imagined. All nations are imagined as limited because every nation has `boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.` And every nation is imagined as a community because there are deep ties between the citizens of the nation, `the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.` This comradeship is what has enabled people of different nations to kill and die for their nation.

On a more positive note, Anderson's concept of imagined communities has been expanded upon by feminist theorist Chandra Mohanty. A third-world feminist imagined community relies upon political rather than biological or cultural bases for alliance. Mohanty sees the possibility of alliances and collaborations across divisive boundaries through the political links we choose to make between struggles against forms of domination that are pervasive and systematic. (Feminism Without Borders, 2003)

One good example of Mohanty's/Anderson's ideas of imagined communities put to work for progressive political purposes were the pamphlets circulated by Japanese female labor organizers in the 1920's in support of an ongoing strike at the Toyo Muslin Factory:

“In order to . . . stem the raging tide of rationalizations which threatens our one million sisters throughout the country, the 3,000 sisters at Toyo Muslin have been united in strike action for 26 days.” Stated another pamphlet: “The victory of the factory women of Toyo Muslin, will, in the end be a victory for all proletarian women.”

The emphasis on a specifically Japanese community of working women, while also invoking the idea of a transnational community of proletarian women exemplifies the ability of female labor organizers to invoke imagined communities in order to embody the liberation of an entire class of women, both nationally and transnationally, in the demands of a small group of striking women. Suddenly local feminist struggles become global.