The Process of Differance in the Illumination of the Imagined Community as Nation

In an attempt to review and illuminate aspects of Benedict Andersons seminal thesis, Imagined Communities: The Origins and Spread of National Consciousness this essay utilizes Derridas notion of differance in its treatment of the concept of an imagined community as nation. Differance subverts prominent philosophical notions regarding essence as the centre of existence and instead offers that it is also a product of differance. Hence identity, while having an intrinsic value onto itself can only acquire said identity through a direct construct of non identity or Otherness. The idea of nation as an imagined community does not escape such a notion, given that it cannot be imagined in terms of a creative collaboration of traits which exist in isolation from context, moreover a second element is required, the positing of The Other. Differance in this essay is viewed as an oppositional process (Spicer 1971). Three recognisable stages can be observed within differance namely: construction, maintenance and imagination. Differance is highly constructive given that it forms the mould from which the notion of identity or nation is fashioned; the impetus from which it materializes. It maintains and reproduces differance through the upholding of distinct boundaries of thought which form the limit of the imagined community. Finally, this resolution of differance is acted upon or performed by the imagined community. Each stage can be seen as represented through the metaphor of exile in this essay, the construction, maintenance and conception of which seek to illuminate the nation as imagined. In the anthropological spirit then, I propose the following definition of nation: it is an imagined community, and imagined asinherently limited (Anderson, 1993, pp. 5-6) In order to fully comprehend the process of differance in the illumination of the imagined community as nation it is necessary here to place emphasis on Andersons coinage of the word limited. In his use of the word limited, Anderson contends that separation and differance does partake in the ideal of the imagined community For while nations constitute a degree of cohesiveness of language, history, culture and territory, the word also hints at those elements of which it is not, of what it differs

from. Indeed an etymological hunt for the roots of the word nation takes us back to Ancient Rome and the Latin word natio meaning something born. In common discourse this word referred to a group bounded together by similarity of birth, but paradoxically was used not in reference to the Romans themselves but to classify a community of foreigners. Hence this natio of peoples was used to justify Roman existence given that it represented everything Not-Rome (Zernatto, 2000). If we are to take this as truth then the idea of nations as limited is integral to their meaning, given that if we all encompassed the one nation we would be partaking of an entirely separate phenomenon. Indeed the idea of limitation and differance is instrumental in limiting nations. Secondly let us tackle the often misconstrued usage of the term imagined within Andersons thesis. The assertion that the nation is imagined does not allude to fallacy or distinguish it as untrue. Moreover it could be replaced with the word perceived to illustrate that members of collective groupings recognise on some level their participation within a nation without the need for an empirical or physical manifestation of said nation. On this level, a perception or imagining of separateness is necessary in order for any notion of differance from others to be recognised. Differance can easily be detected on a human to human level, however in order to imbue whole populations with preconceived ideas about one another, it takes a degree of belief or imagining. Thus differance requires imagining in order to heighten it to a level greater then face value. Hence, if nations are indeed limited as we have proved and limitation can only be marked by differance and a degree of imagining is needed to create differance then consequently, nations are imagined. Where Andersons thesis needs to be supplemented, however, is in its most basic structure. (Here I stress the word supplement, and not changed, given that what I am suggesting only operates on top of the existing formula of nations as imagined communities.) The imagined community cannot merely be restricted to the actors perception of it; it must be actively performed through the negative process of differentiation. If the imagined community remains as uncontested it remains forever destined to occupy a changeless inertia which disallows for movement and flux.

According to Don Mitchell as well as imagining communities there must thus be attention to the practices and exercises of power through which these bonds are produced and reproduced. The question is not what common imagination exists but what common imagination is forged (Mitchell, 2000, pp.269) Hence what is important is not that the nation is imagined but the process employed to imagine it and continue to imagine it. Thus the process of differance achieves this in adding a third level to the strata of nation and imagination and elevating it to a level of illumination and performance. Nationalism in Exile Where otherwise it would be highly tedious and near impossible to pin point the origins of an imagining of differance on an inter-national level, Andersons thesis on Long Distance Nationalism resolves this issue, given that it addresses the notion of exile and its subsequent construction, maintenance and conception of nationalism as imagined community. Exile provides us with a capsule locus in the process of Differance as it removes from study all those indexical conditions in the makeup of imagined communities and removes the notion of casual nationalism (a nationalistic tendency and adaptation to a nation based only on chance of birth) from the equation. Within this essay Andersons field of thought is largely based upon Lord Actons notion of exile as the nursery of nationalism (Anderson, 1998, pp.59) and while varnished with Andersons own capitalist and linguistic theories, succeeds in maintaining this differential idea throughout. For exile, while in its most constricted of meanings signifies political eviction and in its most flexible can relate to spiritual ostracism, is nonetheless one of the most clarified examples of differance process. It represents the positioning of an erratic community onto a foreign or different landscape and charters the stimulus from which they create and maintain a reactive identity. Nationalism in Exile; Construction According to Hollander, Exile is a specific kind of migration, without yearning and shorn of hope and aspiration. Refugees are journeying from, not toward something, and what they leave behind nags at the psyche, wedding it to the past.(Hollander, 2006 p.202) Indeed, exile can be seen as ones orientation towards a distant Zion,

while feeling disorientation towards ones present environment. Scholars of exile, most notably Said, have described exile as a sadness that can never be surmounted. Indeed, in its most fundamental and reduced form exile must be recognised and mourned in order for the process of differance to take effect. If we were to leave Andersons notion of imagined communities in its unanimated state, without the addition of Differance, the feeling of exile would not and could not manifest itself given that, irrespective of geography, we could continue to perceive ourselves as part of said community. While nations are indeed limited as previously argued, limitation is not enough to warrant exile because it, unlike Differance, is not forceful in its creation of exile. Differance forces the exiled to lament that to which they were once adjoined because it not only represents another place, either physically or theoretically, but another operation of imagined community into which the exiled must now fit. While this may indeed be the case, we are here reminded of that often over used maxim of the human condition as resolute in the face of adversary, and the notion of repression and exile as prompting new forms of originality and construction. As Suleiman posits, Is thisa falling away from some original wholeness and source of creativity or is it, on the contrary, a spur to creativity?(Suleiman, 1998, p 2) Let me here reiterate the importance of the word reactive in the illumination of the imagined community through Differance, for exile creates a performance in the exiled, that of a reaction. The reactive aspect of exile can be seen to arise from a threat to national identity; the eventual amalgamation of the exiled into a foreign landscape to merge with the status quo. Hence whatever residues of identity remain within the exiled are cosseted, protected from the outside forces of Differance through the imagining process. This can be likened to Mary Rowlandsons nationalising moment within Andersons essay, whereby, despite the fact that she had never been to England, she constructed herself as an Englishwoman in so much as English represented the residues of her communitas under threat. Indeed, her performance of imagined community only endured for as long as it was confronted with a situation of differance. Hence it was a reactive measure stimulated by the oppositional process. Nationalism in Exile: Maintenance

According to Harrison, the most important advance in the understanding ofnational identity has surely been the realization of its deeply relational nature (Harrison, 2003, p.343) If the oppositional process in exile is as such reactive in its construction then it implies a degree of reciprocity in order to uphold and sustain this structure. In order for one imagined community to exist there must be another to maintain the continuous process of Differance so as to fortify the boundaries between them and uphold the structure of identity within. This reciprocity and indeed the process of opposition itself, calls into question the traditional concept of nationalism as instrumentalist and modern. This approach, as supported by Anderson in his essay on The Origins of National Consciousness, defines nationalism as a modern occurrence which is thought to have taken hold with the three fold effect of print capitalism, the fall of the dynastic realm and the rise of the vernacular languages. If indeed the oppositional process defines nations as imagined through counteractive perceptions of differance, then surely this can be defined as a premodern as well as modern development given that Differance is active on an individual as well as a social level. Recognition and upholding of reciprocital differance is equally not limited to Europe as Andersons Eurocentric theory would suggest, given that it is a universal phenomenon inherent in the individual psyche. Transactionalism is thus the term denoted to this form of nationalism, given that it requires human interaction at its most basic level. (Conversi,1995, p 77) Hence the fusion of Transactionalism with Differance creates the boundaries which limit the extent of the imagined community. Exile emerges thus as a process of exchange whereby there is recognition both inherently and externally of the existing condition of separation. According to Harrison, the process of differance is not, however, always an egalitarian one. He suggests that Differance as boundary maintenance through Transactionalism presents the Other within three broadly distinguishable relations; Differance as inferiority, Differance as superiority and finally Differance as equality. (Harrison, 2003, p 346)Hence there exist diverse forms of reciprocity which seek to create differing definitions of the Other in relation to the Self. Nationalism in Exile; Conception and Imagining

For the exiled, who, to all extensive purposes remains spatially congruent with a nation they do not consider to be their own, a degree of imagining or perception is required in order to strengthen this reciprocity of Differance. For while Differance creates reactive identities and through transactionalism maintains them, it is the process of imagining which enhances the pre-existing differences in order to thoroughly distance the exiled imagined community from those that surround it. While so far our notion of Differance carries the sense given it by Derrida, it is necessary here to mention Freuds The Narcissism of Minor Differences. This theory suggests that nations who share similarities are compounded on some level to conceal them, thus enhancing the existing differences between them. This relates to a situation out of exile, however, whereby two nations occupying a similar territory and moulded economically and perhaps to an extent culturally by the same geographic region deny those similarities between them. The importance of uniqueness of nation as propelled by Anderson in his coinage of the word limited is inherent to this theory given that a unique or legitimate nation justifies it further into a general worldview. This also applies to the exiled, however, for in order to prevent assimilation into a pre existing imagined community, the exiled must conceive themselves as overly different. They must capture the residues of their former imagined community and enhance them to a degree that ventures on unrealistic. Thus the oppositional process which works in the medium of exile can be seen to augment the pre-existing imagined community. Indeed the nation that one departs from is very different from that nation which one idolises in exile. In fact, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Andersons essay was his mentioning of this reconditioning of imagined community, We can easily be amused by the determinately Irish Bostonian who knows no Irish literature, plays no Irish sports, pays no Irish taxes...and has only holiday conceptions of the Old Sow as she is today. According to Said, Because an exiles life is nomadic, decentred and lived on the periphery of an established order, he must create his own structures of meaning (Anderson, 1998, p 72). Hence what we observe when we study nationalism in exile is not simply a reconstruction as based directly on patria, but a heightened, illuminated and performed version of this as perceived through the lens of Differance.

Conclusion As Lord Actons aphorism suggests, exile and its imposing process of differance are highly creative. As nursery, exile nurtures nationalism through a continuous oppositional process upheld by an inherent imagining. The Differance experienced in exile differs somewhat from that experienced out of exile, however it provides a condensed example of the basic principles of the oppositional process in action. Thus from its inception as an erratic community stranded in an unknown landscape, differance has not only created the stimulus from which the imagined community springs, but has maintained the limits of that imagined community as well as processing it into a new, reconditioned nation.

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