Abstract
This paper revisits the distinctions that Anderson draws between the medieval and modern way of perceiving time to understand how the former still resonates into the modern national imagination. The modern world, he says, breaks from the medieval way of perceiving time as prefiguration and fulfillment and creates national communities by conceiving time as homogeneous and empty where people imagine their compatriots as going towards the same destiny as them. The paper, however, argues that the national imagination needs the figural way of looking at time to extend this new simultaneity of temporal coincidence into the distant past and eternal future. When Anderson claims nationalism as secular force that helps to give meaning to the discontinuities caused by fatalities of human mortality and new births, it must, for this reason, turn them towards the common action(s) that the people were, are, and will, progressively, be accomplishing to realize its greater fulfillment. We substantiate this claim by looking into Aurobindo, the nationalist politician turned yogi, who claims that spirituality has steered the journey of India from the days of her ancient glory, through the moments of her decline, to the glimpses of her present renaissance, and into the ages yet to come. The paper brings Erich Auerbach’s idea of figura back into the national imagination to question the tendency of thinking nation as being produced only through modern means.
Presenters
Muthukumar ManickamAssistant Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences , Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India Vinod Balakrishnan
Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Civic, Political, and Community Studies
KEYWORDS
Figura, National imagination, Sameness, Progress, Spirituality
