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.
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