Imagined Communities

"Imagined Communities"

Oxford Reference - “The nation is an imagined political community that is inherently limited in scope and sovereign in nature. It is imagined because the actuality of even the smallest nation exceeds what it is possible for a single person to know—one cannot know every person in a nation, just as one cannot know every aspect of its economy, geography, history, and so forth”

Mohanty - “The idea of an imagined community is useful because it leads us away from essential notions of Third World feminist struggles, suggesting political rather than biological or cultural basis for alliance. It is not color or sex that constructs the ground for these struggles. Rather, it is the way we think about race, class and gender-the political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty, 2003, p.46).

Imagined community is a concept that was developed by Benedict Anderson a political scientist and historian as a tool to understand and analyze nationalism within an imaginative state. I chose to post two definitions of imagined communities because the Oxford Reference definition provides the initial understanding of Anderson’s term but Mohanty’s understanding of imagined community is the most vital to intersectional, decolonial transnational praxis because it creates a space for individuals to imagine community in a non-structured way. Mohanty expands on the idea Anderson created and applied it to transnational and decolonial praxis. Imagined communities is a powerful notion and this term has the potential to be utilized positively by every single individual which is why it is important.

I chose to include this term because it has been one that has stuck with me throughout this semester. This term has created a space for me to understand that nation and nationalism does not create unity between groups but creates greater divisions between them and that people need to understand how important using the concept of imagined communities is for creating a more equitable world for everyone.

URL/Link:

Oxford Reference: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095958187

Academic Source: Mohanty - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/342914.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ad5bec374833cd1e3cfb712ec438d5a4d

Keywords: imagined, community, nationalism, feminist, alliance

Pseudonym(s): H Dimes