| Title | : | The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1859841848 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781859841846 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 386 |
| Publication | : | First published September 1, 1998 |
Thus the late President Sukarno of Indonesia, an anti-colonial leader, in a public speech while accepting an honorary degree, and viewing Europe and its history through an inverted telescope, as Europeans often regard other parts of the globe. Strange shifts in perspective can take place when Berlin is viewed from Jakarta, or when complex histories of colonial domination strand what counts as the founding work of a national culture in a language its people no longer read. The “spectre of comparisons” arises as nations stir into self awareness, matching themselves against others, and becoming whole through the exercise of the imagination.
In this series of profound and eloquent essays, Benedict Anderson, best known for his classic book on nationalism, Imagined Communities , explores these effects as they work their way through politics and culture. Spanning broad accounts of the development of nationalism and identity, and detailed studies of Southeast Asia, the book includes pieces on East Timor, where every Indonesian attempt to suppress national feeling has had the opposite effect; on the Philippines, where it is said that some horses eat better than stable-hands; on Thailand, where so much money can be made in elected posts that candidates regularly kill to get them; on the Filipino nationalist and novelist José Rizal for whom “we mortals are like turtles—we have value and are classified according to our shells;” and a remarkable essay on Mario Vargas Llosa, detailing the fate of indigenous minorities at the hands of the modern state.
While The Spectre of Comparisons is an indispensable resource for those interested in Southeast Asia, Anderson also takes up the large issues of the universal grammars of nationalism and ethnicity, the peculiarity of nationalist imagery as replicas without originals, and the mutations of nationalism in an age of mass global migrations and instant electronic communications.
The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World Reviews
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Having scribbled on the last page 'Interestingly tough', I found this 4-part, 17-chapter book read as my No. 4 by Prof. Anderson complex and informative in terms of his formidable knowledge, analyses and viewpoints on comparative nationalism in Indonesia, Siam (Thailand currently) and the Philippines dating back since the nineteenth century. When I looked at the front cover photo, it vaguely reminded me of a historic episode I saw many years ago but I could not recall what and who it depicted to posterity till I found it out a few weeks ago on Jose Rizal in its wikipedia archive. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rizal) It is indeed a hopelessly tragic photo with eerie atmosphere since it has long been taken as a photographic record of his execution on December 30, 1896 due to his nationalist movements against Spanish colonial rule. Eventually, it was my delight to read Chapter 10 The First Filipino, knowing him more with awe and respect; thus, I think it is all right to recommend interested readers to read this chapter right away after seeing one of the nationalism-related photos on the front cover.
Reading his biography (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedic...) is an essential background to one's better understanding, I think, before reading his books. For instance, from the biography, it informs us why he has remarkably written on the three countries with different colonial rules and the most religious faiths in each country, that is, Indonesia under the Dutch (87.2% Islam), Siam uncolonized (94.50% Buddhism) and the Philippines under Spain (91.3 Christianity). [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thailand,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp...] So such big data as revealed in the three websites nearly unthinkably reflect The Spectre of Comparisons, the title of "this series of profound and eloquent essays." (back cover)
To continue . . . -
A really great book. Anderson has the fine distinction of being an amazing scholar as well as a very talented writer. He manages to successfully pull off a very self-aware comparative history of Southeast Asia through the three nations he became an expert in: the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. The book is not a monograph per say, but instead a collection of essays varying in scope and writing style. Some are constructed historical narratives, others are close literary and textual analyses of nationalist print. He manages very successfully to show that nationalism was conceived in an international setting in the early twentieth century, and that the individual nationalisms of these three nations are entirely related to nationalist thought and movements around the world. A very good sequel to read after his more famous Imagined Communities. It better elaborates his personal feelings towards nationalism. Nationalism can be very dangerous and is often scoffed at by the intellectual left of the post-modern West, but it was also very inspiring, optimistic, and internationalist for anti-colonial revolutionaries, writers, and state builders of Cold War era Southeast Asia. I think I will be incorporating this book as assigned reading for teaching future courses in Southeast Asian and/or global history.
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The great Benedict Anderson himself is the Spectre of Comparison. Writing in the way as he always does, Ben shuns the rigidity of comparative politics by effortless transporting the reader from one locale to another, from one language to another, and from one text to another in trying not only to put Southeast Asia in the world, but also the world in Southeast Asia. Some of the writings of this 1998 book may look dated but the key question of nation and nationalism still beguile us till this day. Admittedly, Ben's encyclopedic knowledge and eclectic interest make him hard to follow, as he moves from literary criticism to Marxist analyses, and from colonial history to a world-historical view of Southeast Asia up until the 97 financial crisis from chapter to chapter. Flippant and sometimes even vertiginous, it follows from the spirit of Imagined Communities. That it is the ability to imagine that constitutes nations. As scholarship turned dry and more disciplined than ever, Ben's spectre will enrich the imagination of Southeast Asianists for many years to come.
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The book has a good compact chapter on Philippine history called "Cacique Democracy." It covers the arrival of the Spaniards to the Aquino years. It argues that mestizos, especially of the Chinese/Tagalog variety, were the instigators of the Katipunan movement that launched the Philippine revolution of 1896. Furthermore, the mestizos effectively took control of the commonwealth under U.S. auspices until 1946.
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Many great articles on South-East Asian
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Don't agree with everything written here but it still sure is fascinating and insightful.
