Libmonster ID: PH-1235

L.; N.Y.: Verso, 2005. 255 p.

Benedict Anderson's new book, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti - Colonial Imagination, is based on a series of articles published in the British magazine New Left Review between 2000 and 2004. In a certain sense, Anderson's work of the 2000s is not only a return to a more detailed consideration of issues that have long interested him, but also a kind of expanded response to critics who accused him of understanding anti-colonial and" eastern "nationalism2 as a kind of" derivative "or" secondary "phenomenon or discourse in relation to the"primary" one western and even in its "caricaturization" (P. Chatterjee).

According to Anderson, his work is an attempt to construct an unusual "political astronomy" describing the "force of attraction" between anti-colonial nationalisms on opposite sides of the planet-primarily between the last two major colonies of the Spanish Empire, the Philippines and Cuba - in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, which Anderson calls the era of "early globalization" (p. 3).

It was the material conditions created by this globalization - the telegraph, post office, steamship and rail transport-that made possible the emergence of" long-distance nationalism " and the transoceanic spread of anarchism.

Researchers often considered the combination of nationalism with traditional ideologies-conservatism, liberalism, and socialism - but usually ignored anarchism, which, after the collapse of the First International and the death of Marx, had a huge impact on radical politicians around the world, becoming, as Anderson claims, the very "gravitational force" that led to the formation of a powerful "gravitational force". fields" between the first anti-colonial nationalisms. Several factors contributed to this. Unlike Marxism, the ideology of anarchism did not neglect the peasantry, the largest social group in the colonies that nationalist intellectuals could mobilize. It was also open to representatives of the" petty - bourgeois " bohemians-writers, artists and artists. In addition, there was no prejudice in the ideology of anarchism against the nationalisms of "small" or "non-historical" peoples, which were considered "liberation" movements. Finally, the anti-clerical orientation of anarchism was able to make it particularly popular in the Philippine context, where, throughout the 19th century, anarchism was considered to be the most popular form of anarchism. Catholic monastic orders served as the main ideological tool of Spanish colonial rule.

However, the influence of anarchism on anti-colonial nationalisms cannot be understood if we start from the idea of it only as a certain doctrine, the key provisions of which should be reflected in the programs of specific movements. Filipino nationalism clearly did not meet this criterion: Jose Rizal, a prominent Filipino writer-


Artem A. Smirnov-Post-graduate student of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Socio-Political Sciences, P. G. Demidov Yaroslavl State University; e-mail: artem.smirnov@gmail.com

page 188


Although the nationalist who was later hailed as the "first Filipino," he never met anarchists and was not directly familiar with the work of anarchist theorists, although he made the main character of his second novel, The Filibusters (1891), a nihilist who defended completely anarchist ideas, and Isabelo de los Reyes, the first Filipino folklorist and anthropologist, became the main character of anarchism. anarcho-syndicalist only after leaving the Spanish fortress of Montjuic, where he was arrested immediately after the outbreak of the revolution, awaiting execution in the same cell with the Spanish anarchists. Rather, anarchism should be understood here not so much as a doctrine, but rather as a special political and ideological practice - "propaganda by action" - and a non-hierarchical form of organization-horizontal networks of communication and coordination between many circles of nationalist intellectuals in colonies and metropolises.

The extremely heterogeneous research material-statistics and private correspondence, pamphlets and scientific papers, newspaper articles and memoirs, official documents and novels-and the kaleidoscopic description of the events of the epoch, which are not connected by a single retrospective teleology, but have their own logic and lead to many unintended consequences, exclude the possibility of any consistent retelling of the content and force us to concentrate focus on the main methodological innovations.

Although it is not the first time that Anderson has used the comparative method in his research, the peculiarity of his new work is the continuous change in the scale of comparisons, the transition from the micro - to meso-and macro-level, from the biographies of individual individuals (Philippine radicals, Cuban revolutionaries, European anarchists, etc.) to institutional forms (scientific societies, political circles, newspapers, etc.). literature) and configurations of geopolitical forces (the arrival of new players in the Pacific - Germany and the United States - which made it possible to liberate the Philippines from Spanish domination). The comparative method allows the author to avoid the extremes of " methodological nationalism "and" methodological cosmopolitanism", which equally tend to build ideal-typical schemes, constantly revealing the pragmatic contamination of the universal and particular, unlimited and limited" series " (Anderson 2006).

It is noteworthy that unlike anti - colonial nationalisms in the New World, which were analyzed in "Imaginary Communities" (Anderson 2001a: 71-88), Filipino nationalism was not Creole: for example, de los Reyes was Ilok, Rizal was Mestizo. Educated representatives of various ethnic groups became Filipino nationalists3 in Spain: when arriving in the mother country, all Filipinos, regardless of their status and differences between them, were considered (and began to consider themselves) "Filipinos" (pp. 62-64).

Such "pilgrimages" to Europe led to the appearance of the demon of comparisons (el demonio de las comparaciones). With this phrase, the hero of Rizal's novel Don't Touch Me (1887)4 described his experience of returning from Berlin to Manila, associated with the emergence of" a new, restless double consciousness that made it impossible to perceive Berlin without simultaneously thinking about Manila or Manila without thinking about Berlin. This is the source of the nationalism that lives on comparisons" (Anderson 1998: 229). Anderson previously suggested an incorrect translation of this phrase ("the ghost of comparisons"),5 but in his new book he corrects the error, showing what prospects the "demon of comparisons" opens up for the researcher, who, with his intertextual reference to the "Demon of Analogy" (1885), places Rizal's novel in the context of world literature (p. 32).

Comparisons-a key method of de los Reyes 'work" Philippine Folklore "(1887), the first major ethnographic study of the Ilocs, which was highly appreciated by European scholars and immediately translated into German-allowed us to establish that many beliefs, customs, proverbs and sayings go back to the pre-colonial past, that "racial differences" between the Ilocs Both Tagalogs were exaggerated and that in fact they shared common ethnic roots (p. 25), and subsequently used such discoveries in the nationalist struggle.

page 189


Implicitly polemicizing with representatives of postcolonial theory, who, claiming a monopoly position in the study of anti-colonial nationalisms, claim that they were originally cultural and non-political in nature (the so-called spiritual sovereignty), Anderson shows the inextricable link between culture and politics in Philippine nationalism. Formally related to the "spiritual" field, Rizal's novels and de los Reyes ' works on folklore studies, having aesthetic and scientific significance, pursued political and mobilization goals and had a serious political influence. In addition, anti-colonial Filipino nationalism was not homogeneous and consisted of various forces that were constantly fighting for hegemony: Anderson describes in detail the friction between Rizal's "anarchist" nationalism and del Pilar's liberal nationalism (pp. 94-104).

From the very beginning, having suggested reading his book not as a traditional academic study, but as a kind of "feuilleton novel" (p.5), Anderson, following the laws of the genre, leaves the ending open. In a Postscript, he recalls how in January 2004, on the University of the Philippines campus, he accidentally came across a leaflet with the website address of the Manila branch of the global network of autonomous groups, covering the struggle of Filipinos with the state and corporations for their rights: This is the intersection of anarchism and globalization - now "late" - in the national context.

Notes

1 A symbolic milestone here is the publication in 1999 in the United States of a special issue of the journal "Diacritics" devoted to a critical analysis of Anderson's approach to the study of nationalism. Later, the works included in this issue of the journal, as well as an article by the British political theorist Ernesto Laclaw and a remark by Anderson himself, were published as a separate book (Cheah and Culler 2003).

2 In one of his later articles, Anderson examines the similarities and differences between" Western "and" Eastern " nationalisms and concludes that there is no insurmountable ontological and epistemological gap between them (Anderson 20016).

3 The Philippines was the only colony in all of Southeast Asia to have a university in the 19th century that could be used by the children of wealthy locals. As Anderson points out, "this is why the Philippines eventually became the site of the first nationalist revolution in Asia at the end of the century" (p.23).

4 In Imaginary Communities, Anderson cites this novel as a model illustration of the relationship between the idea of "homogeneous, empty time" and the work of the "national imagination" (Anderson 2001a: 49-51).

5 This is the name given to a collection of his articles from the 1970s to the 1990s (Anderson 1998).

Literature

Anderson 2001a - Anderson B. Imaginary communities. Moscow, 2001.

Anderson 20016-Anderson B. Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism: Is there a difference between them? // Russian magazine. December 19, 2001 (www.russ.ru)

Anderson 2006 - Anderson B. Nationalism, identity, and the logic of seriality // Logos, 2006, No. 2, pp. 58-72.

Anderson 1998 - Anderson B. The Spectre of Comparisons. L., 1998.

Cheah, Culler 2003 - Grounds for Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson / Eds. P. Cheah, J. Culler. L., 2003.


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