Media and Social Collectivity

Annotations:

• but to what social significance? for societies, for nations?

1. approach through two concepts (perhaps opposed)
   1. Community
      1. Anderson's theory of imagined community

         Annotations:

         • Nation= an "imagined political community, imagined as both limited and sovereign" Role of media (Press, Novel) in representing community  Part of complex historical account of the factors (economic, cultural, political, media) that led to birth of modern nations. 
         1. Auerbach: Simultaneity (同时性）

            Annotations:

            • close to what Benjamin calls [Messianic Time] 弥赛亚时间，a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present. 一种过去和未来汇聚于瞬息即逝的现在的同时性 for this view, the world 'meanwhile' cannot be of real significance 而我们自己的同时性概念是在漫长的时间里逐渐形成，和世俗科学发展有关。...而同时性概念最后取代了中世纪于“时间并进的同时性“ simultaneity-along-time的概念。 本雅明觉的它是“同质的，空洞的时间“ homogeneous, empty time观念。这种观念中，同时性是横向的，与时间交错的，标示它的不是预兆prefiguring与成就fulfilment，而是由时钟和日历所测量的，时间上的一致（temporal coincidence) our own conception of simultaneity has been a long time in the making, and its emergence is certainly connected, in ways that have yet to be well studied, with the development of the secular sciences. ...What has come to take the place of the mediaeval conception of simultaneity-along-time is, to borrow again from Benjamin, an ida of homogeneous, empty time in which simultaneity, is as it were, transverse, cross-time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfilment, but by temporal coincidence and measured by clock and calendar.
            1. Novel and Newspaper: provide the technical means for "representing" the imagined community of the nation
               1. Novel
                  1. old fashioned novel

                     Annotations:

                     • a device for the presentation of simultaneity in 'homogeneous, empty time', or a complex floss upon the word 'meanwhile' 故事情节：p.61(A,B,C,D的情节故事）这些多半互不相识的行为者，在由时钟与日历所界定的同一个时间，做所有这些动作，而这一事实则显示l饿这个由作者在读者心中唤起的想象世界的新颖与史无前例。novelty of this imagined world conjured up by the author in his readers' mind.
                     1. analogue of the idea of nation

                        Annotations:

                        • the idea of sociological organism moving calendarically through gu homogeneous, empty time is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation- which also is conceived as solid community moving steadily down (or up) history.一个社会学的有机体遵循时历规定的节奏，穿越同质而空洞的想法，恰恰是民族这一理念的准确类比，因为民族也是被设想成一个在历史中稳定地向下或向上运动的坚实的共同体。 Nation= an "imagined political community, imagined as both limited and sovereign" Nationalism 
                  2. jose rizal - <noli me tangere> 社会之癌

                     Annotations:

                     • Rizal- 'Father of Filipino Nationalism' 故事内容 p.62 "dinner-party being discussed by hundreds of unnamed people,who do not know each other, in quite different parts of Manila, in a particular month of a particular decade, immediately conjures up the imagined community. 而且，“在我们会用现在还认得出来的方式来描述在安落格街的一栋房子” 这里暗示的认得出房子的人就是我们菲律宾人－读者。
                     1. author and reader - from the 'interior' time of the novel to the 'exterior' time

                        Annotations:

                        • The casual progression of this house from the 'interior' time of the novel to the 'exterior' time of the reader's everyday life gives a hypnotic confirmation of the solidity of a single community, embracing characters, author and readers, moving onward through calendrical time. 这栋房子从小说内部时间向读者日常生活的外部时间的因果推移，犹如催眠术一般的确认了一个单一的，涵盖书中角色，作者与读者，并在时历中前进的共同体的坚固存在。
                  3. francisco balagtas- Pinagdaanang Buhay ni Florante at ni laura sa Cahariang Albania ，《阿尔巴尼亚王国的弗罗兰地和洛拉的故事》

                     Annotations:

                     • 故事：p.64 注意巴拉格塔斯对时间的处理方式。如lumbera说；‘其情节之开展并不依照时间的顺序，故事是从事件中间开始，因而整个故事是通过一系列倒叙的谈话呈现在我们眼前的。 most striking of all is balagtas's handling of time. as lumbera notes, 'the unravelling of the plot does not follow a chronological order. the story begins in medias res, so that the complete story comes to us through a series of speeches that serve as flashback.399首诗中，有近半数是主角弗罗兰地在对话中向阿拉丁叙述他的故事。我们之所以会知道弗罗兰地和阿拉丁“同时的“过去，是因为这两个人的过去被他们的对话的声音联系起来，而不是因为这篇史诗的结构。 almost half of the 399 quatrains are accounts of Florantes's story. if we learn of florante's and aladin's 'simultaneous' pasts, they are connected by Their conversing voices, not by the structure of the epic. 事实上，巴拉格塔斯从未想过要把他的主人翁安置在社会中，或是和读者讨论他们。in effect, it never occurs to balagtas to 'situate' his protagonists in 'society', or to discuss them with his audience. 天龙八部，
                     1. flashback
                  4. 1816, lizardi - El Periquillo Sarniento 《发痒的鹦鹉》

                     Annotations:

                     • 故事，p.65 对西班牙统治墨西哥的严厉指控；无知，迷信和腐化是其最明显的特征。 “a ferocious indictment of spanish administration in mexico: ignorance, superstition and corruption are seen to be its most notable characteristics'  从孤独的主角在一个融合了小说内外世界的，固定的“社会学的情景”的移动中，我们又一次看到了‘民主的想象’在发生作用 we see the 'national imagination' at work in the movement of a solitary hero through a sociological landscape of a fixity that fuses the world inside the novel with the world outside.
                     1. plurals - social Space

                        Annotations:

                        • 复数名词在我们心中唤起了一个社会空间；那里充满了彼此相似的监狱，其中没有任何一个具有独特的重要性，然而他们全体代表了这个殖民地的压迫性 plurals conjure up a social Space full of comparable prisons, none in itself of any unique importance, but all representative of the oppressiveness of this colony.
                  5. kartodikromo- <semarang hutam>《黑色的三宝垅》

                     Annotations:

                     • not european kartodikromo - indonesian communist-nationalist. 故事 p.67  
                     1. ‘our young man' collective body

                        Annotations:

                        • 作者的‘我们的年轻人’用法，因其新颖，却意指一个属于印尼的读者群体的青年，而这又隐含着他是一个初生的印尼的‘想象共同体’的一员之意。 marco's 'our young man' not least in its novelty, means a young man who belongs to the collective body of readers of indonesian, and thus, implicityly, an embryonic indonesian 'imagined community'.
               2. Newspaper
                  1. Fictiveness 虚拟想象性质- inclusion and juxtaposition

                     Annotations:

                     • 例如《纽约时报的头版》，各国x各种新闻的交织。 而大多数事件是独立发生的事件，而事件中的行动者并不知道彼此的存在，也不知道别人在干么。这些事件被任意的挑选和并列在一起显示他们彼此之间关联是被想象出来的。 most of them happen independently, without the actors being aware of each other or of what the others are up to. the arbitrariness of their inclusion and juxtaposition shows that the linkage between them is imagined.
                     1. the imagined linkage derives from two obliquely related sources
                        1. calendrical coincidence 时历上的一致

                           Annotations:

                           • the date at the top of the newspaper, the single most important emblem on it, proides the essential connection- the steady onward clocking of homogeneous, empty time.  报纸上的日期，提供了一种最根本的联结－即同质的，空洞的时间随着时钟稳定前进
                        2. the relationship between the newspaper, as a form of book, and the market

                           Annotations:

                           • 书籍是最早的现代式的大量生产的工业商品 报纸是书籍的一种“极端的形式“，一种大规模出售，但只有短暂流行的书。 尽管报纸在其印行的次日即宣告作废－但这最早大量生产的商品之一却如此地预见了现代耐用品容易作废的本质。也是这个特性，创造了一个群众仪式：对于作为小说的报纸几乎分秒不差地同时消费（想象）。－报纸的读者们在看到和他自己那份一模一样的报纸也同样在地铁，理发厅，或者邻居处被消费时，更是持续的相信那个想象的世界就植根于日常生活中。 就和《社会之癌》一样，虚构静静而持续的渗透到现实之中，创造出人们对一个匿名的共同体不寻常的信心，这就是现代民族的正字商标。（hallmark of modern nations) 仪式性引起关联性 不管报纸内容是什么，
         2. example of argument:
            1. Ernest & Gellner

               Annotations:

               • it is the media themselves, the pervasiveness and importance of abstract, centralised one to many communication, which itself automatically engenders the core idea of nationalism.  自动产生民主的核心观点
            2. Arnheim

               Annotations:

               • as it addresses itself to Everyone with its uniform programme and so presupposes an organic community of people, radio will at once make community felt where no such thing exists before .                     
            3. Gripsrud

               Annotations:

               • diasporic communities are "imagined communities" par excellence
            4. Billig

               Annotations:

               • billing on 'banal nationalism' (eg in newspaper) and the 'flagging up' of national reference frame 国家参照基准
         3. critique, problems
            1. creation of new nations

               Annotations:

               • -creation of new nations (including 'nations' within nations) leading to the breakup of older nation (Yugoslavia, Rwanda 1990s) 入侵敌和支持者
            2. overridden 压倒

               Annotations:

               • -what if national connection overridden by other larger connections? See Appadurai's (1990) model of 'imagined world' shaped by multiple flow of 'scape'- 5 level of flow: ethnoscapes; technoscapes; finanscapes; mediascapes; ideoscapes;  conflicts between state interest and national/ other forms of belongs.  5个形式的的流动会影响对imagined community的形成
         4. Media Event

            Annotations:

            • Meida events as special case of anderson’s model of imagined community  definition (Dayan and Katz) -live but remote -an interruption in media schedules, but preplanned -reconciliation, not conflictgathers large audiences special collective viewing situation Media event as non-banal way of affirming/enacting national community through organised collective media practice. But has the media event itself become banal (Dayan) ？Or has the media event continued as a media product but lost its clear link to ‘social centre’ of nation (Hepp and Couldry). 
   2. Network