Imagined Communities and "Breaker Morant"

Near the close of Chapter Six Benedict Anderson draws a critical distinction between official nationalisms and the more spontaneous linguistic-nationalisms of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Let the following quotation from his summary on pages 109-111 provide a context for you to reflect on the very troubling portrait of nationalism and identity displayed in "Breaker Morant."

...[F]rom about hte middle of the nineteenth century there developed what Seton-Watson terms "official nationalisms" inside Europe. These nationalisms were historically "impossible" until after the appearance of popular linguistic-nationalisms, for, at bottom, they were responses by powerful groups--primarily, but not exclusively, dynastic and aristocratic--threatened with exclusion from, or marginalization in, popular imagined communities. A sort of tectonic upheaval was beginning, which, after 1918 and 1945, tipped these groups towards drainages in Estoril and Monte Carlo. Such official nationalisms were conservative, not to say reactionary, policies, adapted from the model of the largely spontaneous popular nationalisms that preceded them....In the name of imperialism, very similar policies were pursued by the same sorts of groups in the vast Asian and African territories subjected in the course of the nineteenth century. Finally, refracted into non-European cultures and histories, they were picked up and imitated by indigenous ruling groups in those few zones (among them Japan and Siam) which escaped direct subjection....In almost every case, official nationalism concealed a discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm....The reason for all this was not simply racism; it was also the fact that at the core of the empires [think Britain] nations [think Australia] too were emerging...And these nations were also instinctively resistant to "foreign" rule. Thus, imperialist ideology in the post-1850 era thus typically had the character of a conjuring trick.

Taking your lead from this quotation explain the diverse nationalist and dynastic tensions at work in the court martial of Morant, Handcock, and Witton, who it might seem to us now were the witting victims of this "conjuring trick."

Mazlish and Freud on Civilization

In this week's individual webbog post I am eager to learn of your interpretations and/or readings of "civilization" as this phenomenon is understood by Mazlish and Freud. There are key differences between these two figures as well as significant similarities, so make it your goal to offer meaningful reflection on what they have to say about the advantages and disadvantages offered by the historic invention of this key concept. Both men convey distinct concerns about civilization and its implications for the modern quest for individual liberty and self-flourishing. And, in the course of our reading of their critiques of civilization, we learn much about the complex, intertwined history of self and its other. Clearly, civilization is not innate, a product of human invention, and its naming (as Mazlish frequently points out) has a distinct, and curious historicity. I cannot help but wonder if Freud would subscribe to Mazlish's recommendation that we jettison the term civilization, in order to replace it with a Norbert Elias-inspired "civilizing process"? Perhaps Freud's own conjectural history of the origins of human civilization in the ominous, unchecked aggression of the"brudderbund" and the longer evolution of human repression offers a prototype of the "civilizing process"?

Civilization and The Last Wave

In this first installment of our webblog for 2010, I would like each of you to offer comment on "The Last Wave." You may try to sort it out for yourself as one way of writing about it, although I would like it best if you would comment on the film in light of the dialectic of civilization and savagery we have studied these last several months. Should you like to learn more about what Peter Weir was trying to get at by way of the film, have a look at the text of an interview conducted with him in 1979 (2 years after the completion of the film) at:

http://www.peterweircave.com/articles/articlei.html

You may also find some added inspiration for your commentary in the next section of Mazlish we will be reading this coming week. OK, you have until 5 pm Friday to get your comments up. I look forward to seeing them.


"You cannot have have both civilization and truth."

Iris Murdoch


"The savage in man is never quite eradicated."

Henry David Thoreau