International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 207

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
capable of, it found in death and languages two tenacious adversaries’. 103 What
Anderson means is that firstly, capitalism has not destroyed our desire, traditionally
religious, to moralise death, and secondly, capitalism has yet to eliminate global
linguistic diversity, which continues to provide a grounding for territorially limited
imaginings. In this way, nationalism is a cultural product of capitalism (but not only
capitalism!), which in some ways has replaced religion (as a secular moralising of
death tied to linguistic diversity). Nevertheless, Benjamin correctly pointed to the
impact of mechanical reproduction on cultural objects and, in turn, the impact in
such a context of culture on politics.
Anderson’s theory about the worldwide spread of nationalism also relies on
Mechanical Reproduction. Since the idea of the nation circulates globally, there is
no “authentic” nationalism. This idea that nationalism is modular or a series of
replicas without an original, mirrors, to some extent, Benjamin’s hope that readers
or viewers of mass produced art would increasingly become “writers” (of nations
for Anderson, of Communism for Benjamin). 104 Anderson’s view of the State (per his
distinction between bound and unbound seriality) and its potential to co-opt
nationalism seems also to mirror the concern of Benjamin that mass -produced and
circulated art could lead to Communism (meaning genuine participation of the
workers) or Fascism (a State-sponsored spectacle of participation).
Homogenous, empty time
The concept of homogenous, empty time that Anderson uses to distinguish
cosmological and modern imaginaries comes from Benjamin’s History:
History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but
time filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit].105
History offers a more pessimistic outlook on modernity than Mechanical
Reproduction and we gain more of an understanding of both Benjamin and
Anderson from considering it. 106 In History, Benjamin suggests that homogenous,
empty time is the time of capitalism where one moment is equal to and regularly
follows the next (basically, clock time). 107 Our cultural common sense under
capitalism is attuned to experience the world through this sense of time. It can be
contrasted with a cosmological sense of time in which time is experienced as
passing between important events. For Benjamin, a real sense of history does not
103

Anderson, Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism., 43.
Just as Benjamin had, with the benefit of hindsight, sought to critique the “liberal progressive” elements of
Marxian thought, Anderson, looking back at Benjamin, could see Benjamin was overly optimistic (even taking
into account his ambivalence elsewhere) about the link between international Communism and mass art.
105
Benjamin, Illuminations., 261.
106
Eugene Lunn argues that while Mechanical Reproduction was overly optimistic, most of Benjamin’s other
works were decidedly pessimistic about the future. Overall, he was ambivalent but critical of vulgar Marxist
views. See Lunn, Marxism and Modernism., 223. Habermas (and others) consider his views as unsynthesisable,
see generally Jurgen Habermas, "Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism: The Contemporaneity of
Walter Benjamin," New German Critique 17 (1979).
107
Benjamin, Illuminations., 258-261.
104

207 | P a g e