International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 209

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016 has been alluded to already, Benjamin turned to Messianism as a hope of redeeming the past in the face of homogenous, empty time, while the Angel can be understood as a loss of that hope: it is the idea of progress as piles of ‘wreckage upon wreckage’. 117 In choosing to conclude with the Angel, Anderson suggests he is more pessimistic than Benjamin, or, at least, does not endorse Messianism in the same way. From the ‘wreckage’, he salvages nationalism. In the following sections I further consider, in light of criticisms of Anderson, the way in which the use of the Angel reveals that Anderson’s stance towards Benjamin, and to nationalism, is more subtle than some critics would have it, and perhaps what this initial explanation can suggest. Criticisms of Anderson I now consider two criticisms of Anderson that relate to his reading of Benjamin. The first criticism is that Anderson sometimes stretches the application of Benjamin’s views on aura (namely, that when cultural objects are mass produced and circulated, they lose aura, or, authenticity) too far in explaining both the spread of nationalism and the maintenance of contemporary nationalism through bound and unbound serialities. 118 For Redfield, Anderson’s use of this idea too strongly juxtaposes a lack of aura in late official nationalisms with a “genuine” popular imaginary. 119 He believes that overstating the aura-less nature of official nationalist cultural objects does not do justice to the ambivalent relations between nation, State and modernity. Redfield does not appear to have read Language and Power in which Anderson propounds his view on the nation and State as discrete but intertwined, suggesting that Anderson would also accept a level of “ambivalence”. 120 Nevertheless, Redfield may also be right that Anderson at times pushes the explanatory power of aura to its limits, perhaps like Benjamin himself. 121 keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.’, Benjamin, Illuminations., 257-8. 117 John Kelly, "Time and the Global: Against the Homogenous, Empty Communities in Contemporary Social Theory," Development and Change 29 (1998)., 847. 118 I agree with Harootunian that while Anderson has used other metaphors to explain the manner in which nationalism spread (telescope, spectre of comparison) they amount to much the same thing as the circulation of copies reducing the aura of the original. H.D. Harootunian, "Ghostly Comparisons: Anderson's Telescope," Diacritics 29, no. 4 (1999)., 140. 119 Marc Redfield, "Imagi-Nation: The Imagined Community and the Aesthetics of Mourning," ibid., 72. 120 The fact that not many commentators on Imagined Communities read this volume is also noted in Pheng Cheah, "Grounds of Comparison," ibid., 4 n1. Anderson, Language and Power : Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia., 95-7. 121 Anderson is most probably aware, and takes account, of criticisms of Benjamin’s Mechanical Reproduction essay such as those found in Aesthetics and Politics. However, he may not have addressed all of them. Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics., 106-8. Lunn argues that both Adorno and Benjamin had a tendency to see aesthetic theory as easily generalisable; perhaps this applies to Anderson also. Lunn, Marxism and Modernism., 140. 209 | P a g e