Imaginary Selves, Imagined Communities, and the Reality of Imagination
The artificial distinction between imagined communities and the supposedly real individuals is a dangerous proposition. Let’s look at who or what an individual is? Individual traces its roots to the word indivisible: one implication of this is the fact that when someone says “I am a doctor”, the doctor is not a separate entity from the subject that makes this claim . Everyone says “I” but is this “I” anymore real than the imagined “we”? Also, how do we understand this indivisibility? Is the individual supreme vis-à-vis the collective? In this context, indivisibility refers to the substantive lack of difference between the individual and the reality that she inhabits. The “I” is not opposed to everything that is “not I” but is indivisibly linked to the reality that is erroneously called the “not I”.
Take for example the changing desires and conceptions of identity of an individual over her lifetime. Her conception of I is radically fluid and is ever-changing depending on the context, the social acceptability of her desires, and the social signals about what to desire. This is not usually a pleasant experience and thus leads many to peg themselves to that or this identity (let’s call such identities, mass-indentities): although functional and sometimes indispensable, even these are very much imaginary conceptions because any and every identification is a reaction against the unrelenting anxiety of actually being no-body (I mean this in a technical and not in any derogatory sense).
Anderson in his book, Imagined Communities, claims that most people in a modern nation do not know each other. How about in a family? Do the members in a family know each other? Is there anything other than a genetic proximity between a parent and a child? How about between the spouses? Family is also no more than a willing/unwilling submission to the imagination of a certain conception of family. And higher-order ideologies govern the range of deviations allowed in these smaller ideological entities.
All of this is to say that Ideology is not only ubiquitous in human societies but also indispensable to the functioning of these structures. Given this background, some tend to conclude that since everything is ideological, we must all work towards realising our “true” selves so as to be free from the crutches of Ideology. But, what exactly is this true self? If undefined, the so-called self lacks any existence in the social context; if defined, the self is a slave to the hegemonic ideology; also, who exactly is doing the defining? Herein lies the crux of the problem.
Indeed, there is no unique self that each person aspires to become but is actually confronted with a radical subjectivity that perpetually eludes definition. So, understanding the role of Ideology, its importance, and its ubiquity is far more important than the pedantic opposition of the imaginary to the real. The moment there is more than one subject, Ideology (articulate or inarticulate; conscious or unconscious) invariably enters to regulate and manipulate the evolution of the desiring-machines (humans).
Nations may very well be imagined communities but there are no real communities or individuals either. Call them narratives, civilisational memories, dynamic autobiographies etc.: they are all imagined. The only relevant question is this: are all imagined conceptions of nations (or political ideologies) equally effective in realising the common collective desires of these imagined entities, without suffocating the radical subjectivity of individuals? The answer is a definitive no. And this doesn’t depend on how strongly the respective members of these communities believe in their imaginations; ideologies may not be real in themselves but are nonetheless tools that humans use to tend towards the undefinable Real and/or help in providing a stable social milieu that offers individuals the freedom to realise the inherent contradictions of their own existence. So, while some ideologies devastate, others keep the game going.
