Imagined Communities

While I was reading Charles K. Armstrong's The North Korean Revolution, 1945-50, I thought it was interesting how he described social reforms and nationalism in North Korea in terms of "imagined communities" (Armstrong 8).  In the beginning, he writes:

"A process of ideological construction created not only individual subjects, but also collective subjects, categories such as worker, poor peasant, woman, and youth, as well as the nation itself.  These new 'imagined communities' were imagined not only by intellectuals and political leaders, but also by the people whose lives were most affected by this change, especially those who were identified as objects of liberation" (Armstrong 8).

Armstrong refers to imagined communities again when he writes, "the state, in short, attempted to create in the worker an 'imagined community of class,' which in turn represented the whole Korean people" (Armstrong 91).  I found this distinction of imagined communities (and the internalization of the imagined community) versus actual communities interesting, because it reminded me of Bruce Cuming's The Korean War, when he mentioned that "the U.S. ambassador to the UN called the 38th parallel 'an imaginary line'" and asked the question, "Why is it aggression when Koreans cross the 38th parallel, but imaginary when Americans do the same thing?" (Cumings 23).  If the social reforms created, as Armstrong said, an "imagined community", what would be considered an actual community?

In 1983, Benedict Anderson wrote a book called "Imagined Communities," theorizing that a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".  According to Anderson's definition, all nations are imagined communities, and this imagined sense of belonging to a larger group of people is what makes people cheer for their country at the Olympics, even when they don't personally know the athletes.  This sense of imagined community is also what makes people willing to die for their country.  When I read Armstrong's quotes, I thought his designation of the "imaginary" denied that the communities were so real to people– but after reading Anderson's definition, I think that the universal internalization of imagined communities demonstrates that imagined communities are actually stabilizing forces.  I think that the concept of imagined communities provides an interesting inquiry into the idea of nationalism and the creation of social and political boundaries, especially in the context of the Korean War.

Claire Davidson