INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016
Anderson himself offers something of a response to Chatterjee and Kelly , implicitly , with Under Three Flags . I believe this text provides something of a counterpoint to his decision to place the Angel of History at the end of Imagined Communities ( therefore it goes against both the interpretation I have mostly followed until now and to which critics such as Kelly responded to ). Anderson introduces the text as ‘ political astronomy ’ aiming to make connections between various anti-colonial nationalisms and European anarchism of the belle epoque . 131 This is a cosmological approach , demonstrating Anderson ’ s willingness to engage with the Benjamin of History . But further , this cosmology is presented as a prefiguring of our own time : in our contemporary era of globalisation , according to Anderson , anarchism is again dominant on the Left . 132 The title of the text makes clear that Anderson , while critical of some anti-nationalist cosmopolitans 133 is not uncosmopolitan ; one can be sympathetic to multiple flags ( anarchism , nationalism ). Against Kelly and Chatterjee , Anderson makes clear that he is not adverse to non - nationalist politics as they seem to think , but rather is suspicious of the State and governmentality 134 and is willing to make use of Benjaminian cosmological ‘ redemptive criticism ’ 135 in the process . The real line of cleavage that remains , then , is not about whether Anderson discards Benjamin ’ s Messianism or even about nationalism but on the nature and ( Left ) political usefulness of the State . 136
Conclusion
In formulating his theory of nationalism , Anderson remains remarkably true to the spirit of the two texts by Benjamin that I have focused on in this essay : Mechanical Reproduction and History . Anderson shares a materialist and modernist outlook with Benjamin in which capitalism destroys religious imaginaries ( or aura ) and allows for new cultural meaning . The “ optimistic ” Benjamin was hopeful that new cultural meaning would be of political significance ( for Communism ). Analytically , Anderson sides more with this Benjamin , albeit moving the analysis to pre - industrial print-capitalism . As a result of this shift in focus , Anderson sees nationalism ( rather than Communism ), as a cultural product of fatality ( death , language ), capitalism and technology , which comes to be of political significance . Meanwhile , the “ pessimistic ” Benjamin was aware that the processes allowing for his optimistic view of mechanical reproduction were undercutting the thrust of Communism through the cultural idea of progress . Kelly comments that ‘ the nation first commands Anderson ’ s attention as the killer of a utopian political aesthetic
131
Anderson , Under Three Flags : Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination ., 1-2 and 5 .
132
‘ It remains only to say that if readers find in this text a number of parallels and resonances with our own time , they will not be mistaken ’. Ibid ., 7-8 .
133
The Spectre of Comparisons : Nationalism , Southeast Asia , and the World ., 29 .
134
See Lunn n31 above regarding Benjamin ’ s own anarchistic tendencies .
135
I take this phrase from Habermas , " Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism : The Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin ."
136
Anderson seems to be aware of Benjamin ’ s own anarchistic outlook , perhaps more than the critics . 211 | P a g e