Blog post

Imagined Communities: Benedict Anderson on (British) Nationalism

Sarah Shin 1 March 2016

Tariq Ali introduces a documentary about the late Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and the concept of nationalism, particularly as it was expressed through the 'British' national imagination. Made in 1991, the film features Anderson and other thinkers responding to the book and its examination of the role of print culture in the origins of nationalism.

Anderson, the world renowned scholar of Southeast Asia, passed away in December, 2015. An instant classic, Imagined Communities was first published by Verso in 1983.

His memoir, A Life Beyond Boundaries, will be published in May 2016. Anderson recounts a life spent open to the world in this intellectual memoir and discusses the ideas and inspirations behind his best-known work, Imagined Communities, whose complexities changed the study of nationalism.

The show aired on Telesur.