HOLY NAME

UNIVERSITY
College of Arts and Sciences
J.A Clarin St., Tagbilaran City

GEC RIZAL: The Life and Works of Rizal

Lesson 2: Nation asImagined Community
Outcomes: Trace and evaluate the foundations of Rizal’s national consciousness
with emphasis on his early beginnings.

Concept Notes:

I. Discussion

Nation, State, Nation-State

To better understand nationalism, one must learn first the concepts of nation
and nationhood as well as state and nation-state.

∙ Nation – a group of people that shares a common culture, history,

language, and other practices like religion, affinity to a place, etc. ∙ State
– a political entity that wieldssovereignty over a definedterritory. ∙
Nation-State – a state governing anation.

Social scientists have fleshed out the nuances of nation, state, and nation-state.
A Nation is a community of people that are believed to share a link with one
another based on cultural practices, language, religion or belief system, and
historical experience, to name a few. A state, on the other hand, is a political
entity that has sovereignty over a defined territory. States have laws, taxation,
government, and bureaucracy-basically, the means of regulating life within the
territory. This sovereignty needs diplomatic recognition to be legitimate and
acknowledged internationally. The state's boundaries and territory are not fixed
and change across time with war, sale, arbitration and negotiation, and even
assimilation or secession.

The nation-state, in a way, is a fusion of the elements of the nation

(people/community) and the state (territory). The development of nation-states
started in Europe during the periods coinciding with the Enlightenment. The
“classical” nation-states of Europe began with the Peace of Westphalia in the
seventeenth century. Many paths were taken towards the formation of the
nation-states. In the "classical” nation-states, many scholars posit that the process
was an evolution from being a state into a nation-state in which the members of
the bureaucracy (lawyers, politicians, diplomats, etc.) eventually moved to unify
the people within the state to build the nation-state. A second path was taken by
subsequent nation-states which were formed from nations. In this process, intellectuals
and scholars laid the foundations of a nation and worked towards the formation
of political and eventually diplomatic recognition to create a nation-state. A
third path taken by many Asian and African people involved breaking off from a
colonial relationship, especially after World War II when a series of decolonization
and nation-(re)building occurred. During this time, groups initially controlled by
imperial powers started to assert their identity to form a nation and build their
own state from the fragments of the broken colonial ties. A fourth path was by
way of
(sometimes violent) secessions by people already part of an existing state. Here, a
group of people who refused to or could not identify with the rest of the
population built a nation, asserted their own identity, and demanded
recognition. In the contemporary world, the existing nation-states continuously
strive with projects of nation-building especially since globalization and
transnational connections are progressing.

Nation and Nationalism

As mentioned, one major component of the nation-state is the nation. This

concept assumes that there is a bond that connects a group of people
together to form a community. The origin of the nation, and concomitantly
nationalism, has been a subject of debates among social scientists and scholars.
In this section, three theories about the roots of the nation will be presented.

The first theory traces the root of the nation and national identity to existing and
deep-rooted features of a group of people like race, language, religion, and
others. Often called primordialism, it argues that a national identity has always
existed and nations have “ethnic cores.” In this essentialist stance, one may be
led to conclude that divisions of “us” and “them" are naturally formed based on
the assumption that there exists an unchanging core in everyone.

The second theory states that nation, national identity, and nationalism
are products of the modern condition and are shaped by modernity. This line of
thinking suggests that nationalism and national identity are necessary products
of the social structure and culture brought about by the emergence of
capitalism, industrialization, secularization, urbanization, and bureaucratization.
This idea further posits that in pre modern societies, the rigid social hierarchies
could accommodate diversity in language and culture, in contrast with the
present times in which rapid change pushes statehood to guard the
homogeneity in society through nationalism. Thus, in the modernist explanation,
nationalism is a political project.

The third theory-a very influential explanation-- about nation and

nationalism maintains that these ideas are discursive. Often referred to as the
constructivist approach to understanding nationalism, this view maintains that
nationalism is socially constructed and imagined by people who identify with a
group. Benedict Anderson argues that nations are "imagined communities”
(2003). He traces the history of these imagined communities to the
Enlightenment when European society began challenging the supposed
divinely ordained dynastic regimes of the monarchies. This idea was starkly
exemplified by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The nation is
seen as imagined because the people who affiliate with that community have a
mental imprint of the affinity which maintains solidarity; they do not necessarily
need to see and know all the members of the group. With this imagined
community comes a "deep, horizontal comradeship” that maintains harmonious
co-existence and even fuels the willingness of the people to fight and die for
that nation. Anderson also puts forward the important role of mass media in the
construction of the nation
during that time. He underscores that the media (1) fostered unified fields of
communication which allowed the millions of people within a territory to “know”
each other through printed outputs and become aware that many others
identified with the same community; (2) standardized languages that enhanced
feelings of nationalism and community; and (3) maintained communication
through a few languages widely used in the printing press which endured
through time.

Nation and Bayan

In the Philippines, many argue that the project of nation building is a continuing
struggle up to the present. Considering the country's history, historians posit that
the nineteenth century brought a tremendous change in the lives of the Filipinos,
including the actual articulations of nation and nationhood that culminated in
 the first anti-colonial revolution in Asia led by Andres Bonifacio and the
Katipunan. Furthermore, scholars note the important work of the propagandists
like Rizal in the sustained efforts to build the nation and enact
change in the Spanish colony. Many Filipino scholars who endeavored to
understand indigenous/local knowledge have identified concepts that relate to
how Filipinos understand the notions of community and, to an extent, nation
and nation-building. The works of Virgilio Enriquez, Prospero Covar, and Zeus
Salazar, among others, attempted to identify and differentiate local categories
for communities and social relations. The indigenous intellectual movements like
Sikolohiyang Pilipino and Bagong Kasaysayan introduced the concepts of
kapwa and bayan that can enrich discussions about nationalism in the context
of the Philippines.

Kapwa is an important concept in the country's social relations. Filipino

interaction is mediated by understanding one's affinity with another as described
by the phrases “ibang tao” and “di ibang tao.” In the formation and
strengthening of social relations, the kapwa concept supports the notion of unity
and harmony in a community. From this central concept arise other notions such
as “pakikipagkapwa,” “pakikisama," and “pakikipag-ugnay,” as well as the
collective
orientation of Filipino culture and psyche. In the field of history, a major
movement in the indigenization campaign is led by Bagong Kasaysayan,
founded by Zeus Salazar, which advances the perspective known as Pantayong
Pananaw. Scholars in this movement are among the major researchers that
nuance the notion of bayan or banua. In understanding Filipino concepts of
community, the bayan is an important indigenous concept. Bayan/Banua,
which can be traced all the way to the Austronesian language family, is loosely
defined as the territory where the people live or the actual community they are
identifying with. Thus, bayan/banua encompasses both the spatial community as
well as the imagined community. The concept of bayan clashed with the
European notion of nación during the Spanish colonialism. The proponents of
Pantayong Pananaw maintain the existence of a great cultural divide that
separated the elite (nación) and the folk/masses (bayan) as a product of the
colonial experience. This issue brings the project of nation-building to a
contested terrain.

Throughout Philippine history, the challenge of building the Filipino nation

has persisted, impacted by colonialism, violent invasion during World War II, a
dictatorship, and the perennial struggle for development. The succeeding
chapters will look into the life and works of José Rizal and through them, try to
map how historical events shaped the national hero's understanding of the
nation and nationalism.