Archiwa Imagined Identities

no. 2 (2011)

Archival

Imagined Identities

Imagined communities, called thus by Benedict Anderson, revealed the principle of nation-building, namely inculcating an image of a translocal community to which people belong.

They also bring to light the creative character of imagination, which was able to connect the abstract categories of nation, state and homeland with some specific area. At the same time they put in motion an identity narrative, necessary to unite the nation, which, after all, is a kind of “narrated community”, to borrow a phrase from Maria Janion.

In today’s fluid times a human being is looking for a place and a place is looking for a human being; people want to feel at home in a space but spaces influence entire communities. This creates the need to imagine certain possible multilayered identities – for a place, for people, for a collective. For some new kind of individuality.