Anderson and Smith: nations, media, and culture

Both Anderson and Smith’s works have been extensively studied and compared. Much of the discussion has centered around whether nations are modern constructions or grounded in pre-modern ethnic communities (see Berdúm et al. Reference Berdún, Guibernau and Rex2010; Kaufmann and Zimmer Reference Kaufmann and Zimmer2004; Kowert Reference Kowert1998; Schnee Reference Schnee2001; Tamir Reference Tamir1995; Wimmer Reference Wimmer2006). In the analysis that follows, I wish to initiate the discussion by focusing on Anderson and Smith’s disparate views regarding the role of mass media and cultural traditions in the creation of modern nations.

A convenient starting point is Anderson’s discussion in the section entitled “Apprehension of Time” in Chapter II of Imagined Communities. Building extensively on Erich Auerbach’s classic work, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Anderson describes in this section medieval temporality as originating from and premised on medieval scribal culture. He points out that so long as communication was carried out by the “medium of sacred language and written script,” languages like Latin, Pali, Arabic, and Hebrew were regarded as “truth languages” and “emanations of reality,” embodying simultaneity-along-time truths (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 13–15). Thus, Anderson draws a direct connection between the closed and localized architecture of medieval scribal culture and the temporality underpinning medieval religious and dynastic communities.

Anderson continues and identifies the origins of the modern national imagination in the waning of medieval scribble culture and its displacement by an entirely new media system. He notes that, given the limited reach of medieval written script, it was impossible to conceive of events taking place in different locations simultaneously. Terms such as “meanwhile” and “in the meantime” had only limited and localized meanings in medieval times (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 25–26). However, thanks to advancements in communications (for example, the industrialization of print) since the end of the 17^th century, human beings gained the ability to conceive of events occurring in different locations across the globe at the same clocked time. To illustrate his point, Anderson refers to a seemingly mundane industrial print product – the daily newspaper. “The date at the top,” he notes on the front page of the New York Times, “is the single most important emblem on it, [and] provides the essential connection – the steady onward clocking of homogeneous, empty time” (Reference Anderson2006, 33). To further illustrate his point, Anderson describes modern national identities as evolving in the minds of 18^th- and 19^th-century “omniscient readers,” as he calls them, of mechanically produced daily novels and schoolbooks (Reference Anderson2006, 25). “Only they…”, he writes about these new type of readers, “like God … watch A telephoning C, B shopping, and D playing pool all at once” (emphasis in the original, Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 26). “That all these acts are performed at the same clocked, calendrical time …” he continues, “… but by actors who may be largely unaware of one another, shows the novelty of this imagined world …” (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 26).

Anderson, then, identifies print capitalism as a determining factor in the displacement of pre-modern temporalities that paved the way for a modern type of temporality he identifies as underpinning the modern national imagination (see especially Anderson’s discussion in 2006, 24–36). He particularly refers to mechanically produced newspapers and novels as “technical means” that made possible the new national consciousness (2006, 25). In this context, Anderson makes the controversial claim that nationalism first emerged in the Creole communities of the late 18^th century in the Americas, well before Europe, since they were the first to develop standardized language-of-the-state and local print cultures (2006, 64).

Anderson’s reasoning regarding the role of mass media in the construction of modern temporality evidently draws on Walter Benjamin’s notion of “homogeneous, empty time,” which he discusses in his Theses on the Philosophy of History (see Anderson’s references to the concept in 2006, 24, 37, 194, 204; see also Anderson Reference Anderson1993, 15; for secondary literature on “homogeneous, empty time,” see Bhabha Reference Bhabha and Bhabha2013; Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2001; Chowdhury Reference Chowdhury2008; Hamann Reference Hamann2016; Mitchell Reference Mitchell2000). Yet, there is a marked difference between Benjamin’s original concept and Anderson’s use of the term. Benjamin describes modern spatial temporality as “empty,” in the sense that it can be filled with any number of events (Benjamin Reference Benjamin and Arendt1985, 261–262). As such, he underscores how modern time, measured by mechanical clocks and calendars, is infused with contemporary content, most notably capitalist visions of progress and so forth. Anderson, by contrast, focuses his analysis not so much on the contents that fill modern temporality, but rather on the void they create. He posits that modern nations first emerged in the late 17^th century when “horizontal comradeship,” fostered by modern communication, generated “amnesias and estrangements exactly parallel to the forgetting of childhood brought on by puberty” (Anderson Reference Anderson1993, 15; see also Anderson’s later discussion in Anderson Reference Anderson1998, 29–46).

Anderson, then, emphasizes the “profound sense of newness” characterizing the first national movements (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 193). He adds in this context: “It is difficult to recreate in the imagination a condition of life in which the nation was felt as utterly new” (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 193). In this regard, Anderson describes how the open, pervasive, and standardized, features of print-capitalist products “emptied” medieval cultural substances, giving the first national movements a sense of “blasting open the continuum of history,” a term Anderson borrows from Benjamin (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 193–195; see also Anderson Reference Anderson1998, 62). To illustrate this point, Anderson refers back to the Convention Nationale’s decision in October 1793 to abolish the Christian calendar and replace it with a new one, marking the abolition of the ancien régime as Year One (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 193). For Anderson, this decision exemplifies the “radical break with the past” that underpinned modern nationhood in its purest and embryonic form (2006, 193).Footnote ¹

While Anderson perceives nations as emerging from print capitalism’s ability to “empty” cultural traditions, Smith posits cultural traditions as the foundational elements of modern nations. According to Smith, nations may not be understood as just modern political entities, but are deeply rooted in historical and cultural traditions. He argues that nations emerge from pre-existing ethnic or cultural communities that share common myths, symbols, memories, and traditions. Thus, according to Smith, it would be absurd to assume that being German, Iranian, or French is solely based on some simultaneity-across-space that separated them from their past cultural traditions. In his view, the heritage of the German Volk, the Shite creed, or the Frankish and Gallic traditions are essential for fully understanding these modern national identities (Smith Reference Smith1988, 13–15).

To conceptualize the centrality of cultural traditions in the formation and endurance of modern nations, Smith calls forth the notion of ethnié (he adopts the French term) (see Smith Reference Smith1988, 13–14; Reference Smith2008, 19; Reference Smith2013, 191). His treatment of the term varies throughout his works. However, across all its formulations, ethnié encompasses “myths,” “symbols,” “values,” and “traditions” that Smith deems decisive in the establishment and shaping of modern nations (refer to Smith’s comprehensive survey of the term in Reference Smith2008, 191). One should note that Smith takes pains to distance himself from any form of primordial understanding of nations. He stresses that ethnié does not denote a physical reality of any sort, but rather the “social memory” embodied by customs, rituals, linguistic codes, and sacred places (Reference Smith2013, 191–192). For Smith, ethnié are cultural units rather than sourced in actual descent. In Smith’s ethno-symbolic view, as he terms it, what binds present-day Greeks or Armenians may be traced not to their ancestral connection to the pre-historic Greek and Armenian communities. It is rather a symbolic connection premised on sacred scripts, liturgies, and other cultural artefacts that were encoded and circulated over vast spans of time (Smith Reference Smith1995, 9–10).

Interestingly, an inspection of Smith’s works reveals the extent to which his analysis builds on Anderson’s “vivid” and “sensitive” study, as he refers to it (Smith Reference Smith1988, 133; see also Smith’s analysis of Anderson’s thesis in Smith Reference Smith1991, 359). Echoing Anderson, Smith particularly highlights the crucial role played by new modes of communication in integrating the numerous, faceless masses into modern nations. He describes “the distant, anonymous, but realistic sources (that is, newspapers, telephones, radio, etc.)” as endowing modern nations with “power and majesty such as no ethnié possessed” (Smith Reference Smith1988, 171). Nonetheless, whereas Anderson describes print capitalism as “emptying” cultural traditions, Smith puts mass media to work in its service. Smith associates nations with “secularized intellectuals,” as he calls them, who “recombine” (Smith Reference Smith1988, 178), “reconstruct” (Smith Reference Smith1988, 5, 15, 72, 177), “recover” (Smith Reference Smith1988, 29, 53, 180, 190), and at times even “fabricate” cultural traditions (Smith Reference Smith1988, 180, 171–172; see also Smith Reference Smith1995, 6). He subsequently contends that modern national intellectuals did not simply nullify traditional priests; modern states did not merely invalidate churches, mosques, or synagogues; nor did national cultures abolish traditional religions. Instead, they utilized new modes of communication to bind elites and masses, imbuing past cultural traditions with a civic, rational, and territorial form (Smith Reference Smith1988, 160–161).

Both Anderson and Smith’s perspectives undoubtedly offered novel and sophisticated insights into the role of mass media communications and cultural heritages in shaping modern national consciousness. However, when contextualizing their ideas within contemporary discourse on media technologies and cultural production, it becomes apparent that their presuppositions may not fully capture the complexities inherent in the interaction between communication technologies and cultural production. In this regard, Bernard Stiegler’s notion of Epiphylogenesis emerges as an alternative theoretical framework, effectively bridging the gap in Anderson and Smith’s conceptions of mass media and cultural formations. As I attempt to illustrate below, epiphylogenesis proposes an original approach to understanding the interrelations between technical progress and cultural traditions, thereby laying the groundwork for a more nuanced theoretical exploration of how nations form and evolve.

Stiegler’s epiphylogenesis: unraveling the relationship between technics and culture

In the past three decades, a vast array of works has deepened our comprehension of how past and present media technologies shape cultural traditions (Bauman Reference Bauman2013; Dean Reference Dean2003; Giddens Reference Giddens2013; Hassan Reference Hassan, Hassan and Purser2007; Peters Reference Peters2015; Rosa and Scheuerman Reference Rosa, Rosa, Scheuerman, Rosa and Scheuerman2009; Turkle Reference Turkle2011; see also Virilio Reference Virilio1977). Among the most original and intriguing works in this context is Bernard Stiegler’s multivolume work Technics and Time (La technique et le temps). In his work, Stiegler engages in complicated dialogue with various philosophical traditions, ranging from Marx and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Husserl, and from Derrida to Leroi-Gourhan. Comprehensive coverage of Stiegler’s multifaceted ideas would not be possible within the constraints of the present discussion (for such accounts, see Abbinnett Reference Abbinnett2017; Colony Reference Colony2011; Howells and Moore Reference Howells and Moore2013; James Reference James2010; Turner Reference Turner2016, Reference Turner2023). The subsequent analysis will particularly explore possible ways in which Stiegler’s framework of epiphylogenesis may be utilized to reevaluate the relations between print capitalism and ethnié, as they were conceptualized by Anderson and Smith.

Central to Stiegler’s approach is the notion of human beings as “technical forms of life” (1998b, 2). Unlike other species, Stiegler notes, humans are uniquely defined by their capacity to graft their lived memory onto non-living matter, a process he terms “exteriorization” (1998b, 4). This act of exteriorizing human memory involves transferring information onto technical objects and systems. Through stone tablets, scribes, print products, and cell phones – which Stiegler describes as prosthetics or artificial extensions – humans “exteriorize” parts of themselves, enabling the transmission of knowledge, skills, and experiences over time (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 17). He writes in this context:

As we may infer from the above passage, Stiegler highlights the human ability to “exteriorize” living memories onto technical objects as the means for recording, transmitting, and producing cultural traditions (that is, heritages). He regards stone tools, bronze weapons, and hard drives as “technically inscribed memory systems” that enable social groups to generate cultural traditions. Whatever we know about ancient cultures, Stiegler observes, we deduce from the objects, tools, and relics unearthed by archaeologists (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 45). It is through technical prosthetics that past and present-day human societies have shaped their cultures (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 17).

To conceptualize the interplay of biology, technology, and culture, Stiegler introduces the notion of Epiphylogenesis. Phylogenesis refers to the biological evolution of a species over generations, while epigenesis denotes the development of an organism from an undifferentiated state (such as a fertilized egg) to a mature, differentiated state. Epiphylogenesis combines these concepts to describe the unique human capacity not only to evolve biologically (phylogenesis) and develop as individuals (epigenesis) but also to evolve technologically. According to Stiegler, human evolution is unique, unmatched anywhere else in the animal kingdom, in that it is profoundly influenced by the use and creation of tools and technology (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 177).

Stiegler utilizes epiphylogenesis as a wide-ranging formula to account for the ways in which the interwoven nature of biological, cultural, and technological evolution bears on the shaping of human history. From this angle, historical tools are singled out as the primary “technical systems” that constitute, within each period, the manner in which human beings establish their relations with matter (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Barker1998b, 4). Prehistoric stone tools, medieval mechanical clocks, and electric grids have each served their purpose as a singular historical “technical system.” The way these systems store, process, and transmit information, Stiegler observes, generates a distinctive “temporal unity” that synchronizes human beings and societies, infusing them with cultural meaning (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 31). Each epoch in human history can be defined by its prevailing technical system, thanks to its role in generating a particular temporal unity, whether it occurs in the age of stone tools or our contemporary digital age (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 29–32).

As we may gather from the preceding discussion, Stiegler articulates his epiphylogenesis as a constant evolutionary process in which humans craft new technologies, which in turn mold existing cultural traditions. In each stage of this process, the technical systems in current use are likewise constantly evolving, so rendering obsolete the systems underpinning cultural production. The adjustments or symbiosis between these two evolutionary processes is rarely smooth; therefore, cultural traditions and technical evolution are periodically beset by “moments of resistance” in which technical change to a greater or lesser extent disrupts the familiar reference points upon which all culture is built (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Barker1998b, 4).

Nations, media, and culture: the epiphylogenic view

Now, how may Stiegler’s arguments relate to Anderson and Smith’s theories of nations? On the face of it, epiphylogenesis supports Anderson’s view of print capitalism as the infrastructure underpinning modern nations. From the perspective of epiphylogenesis, 18^th- and 19^th-century newspapers, curricula, and novels serve as “prosthetics” or “artificial extensions” of modern human beings. In this respect, Anderson treats print capitalism as an historical “technical system.” Stiegler, then, would concur with Anderson’s observation about the pivotal role standardized print capitalist products played in fostering the pervasive and steady temporality that enabled modern human beings to imagine themselves to be parts of modern nations.

Epiphylogenesis further seems to support the various works associated with the Modernist School of nationalism. Like Breuilly, Gellner, Hobsbawm, and others, it would place emphasis on the fact that the peasant masses in Poland, Indonesia, or Italy had still not perceived themselves as members of nations in the modern territorial and political sense as recently as the latter part of the 19^th century (see Breuilly Reference Breuilly1993; Connor Reference Connor2018; Gellner Reference Gellner1996; Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm2012; Weber Reference Weber1976). Stiegler would concur with the essential argument of these works: that it was only after the spread of mass communication systems that being Polish, Indonesian, or Italian became a source of collective identity in the modern political and territorial sense.

However, that said, the epiphylogenic precept takes exception with Anderson’s association of print capitalism with the “emptying” of cultural traditions. In epiphylogenic terms, the print capitalist products at the center of the Anderson analysis do not deserve their rating as “technical means for re-presenting homogeneous, empty time” (Reference Anderson2006, 25). This is because Stiegler assumes technics to be innately bound up with culture. Therefore, although an epiphylogenic analysis would indeed consider mechanically produced newspapers and novels as decisive factors in the development of modern national identities, it would stop short of accepting their power to divorce those who use them from their cultural traditions.

To illustrate this point, we may juxtapose Stiegler’s treatment of technical artefacts against Anderson’s portrayal of the New York Times: Stiegler would not likely buy into Anderson’s contention that the newspaper’s front page should be exclusively defined by the date at the top. An epiphylogenetic analysis would rather point to the article’s deliberate use of the New Roman typeface taken from the sturdy design found in 18^th-century print materials (see Dreyfus Reference Dreyfus1973 for context). Furthermore, he would have noted that multiple sections of dailies like the New York Times provide not just current news, but are also valuable resources for conveying and producing cultural content. The same could be said about the print capitalist products Anderson describes as conjuring the modern national imagination. In the epiphylogenic view, mechanically reproduced stamps, maps, and postcards are all “technically inscribed memory systems” that perpetuate cultural traditions.

In this context, Stiegler’s perspective seems to equally align with Smith’s treatment of print capitalism and mass media as “inter-generational repositories” of cultural traditions (Smith Reference Smith2013, 187). Much like Smith, Stiegler also emphasizes the capacity of mass media to enhance the human ability to record, reconstruct, and transmit cultural traditions. He would also concede that mass media acts as prosthetics, specifically for a new class of modern intellectuals who reconstruct and reappropriate ethno-histories from myths, symbols, and traditions (Smith Reference Smith1988, 132).

Yet, while concurring with Smith’s principal understanding of mass media as conveyers of cultural traditions, Siegler would challenge him on another fundamental issue: do nations revolve around “ethnic cores?” As just mentioned, since epiphylogenesis takes humans as “technical forms of life,” it considers cultural heritages as innately bound up with the “exteriorization” process in which humans graft their lived knowledge and experience onto technical objects. Thus, in the epiphylogenic view, cultural content is bound up with technics. As such it is precluded from assuming ephemeral and perennial form like Smith’s ethnié. Thus, while epiphylogenesis does count myths, symbols, and traditions as important in the building of modern nations, it would question whether they constitute a “socio-cultural model for social organization and communication from the early third millennium BC up until the present,” as Smith conceptualizes them (Smith Reference Smith2008, 31–32).

Perhaps more importantly, Stiegler calls into question the direct connection Smith draws between modern nations and pre-modern ethnic cultures. In Stiegler’s framework, artefacts, scribes, printed texts, and hypertexts—each emerge from and reflect a particular technical phase. Thus, epiphylogenesis brings into question the continuity that Smith supposes between pre-modern scribes, artefacts, and liturgies, and mechanically produced newspapers, telegraph systems, and radio networks. Epiphylogenesis conceptualizes these media techniques as bound up with distinctive technical systems found within particular “technical milieus” (Stiegler Reference Stiegler and Collins1998a, 61). It thus locates the ability of modern Egyptian intellectuals to “recombine” and “reconstruct” ancient Egyptian heritage with later Islamic culture in a distinctive historical stage and a particular technological environment. Hence, whereas Stiegler acknowledges the importance of cultural traditions as determining factors in modern nations, he abjures direct links between modern nations and pre-modern ethnic communities.

As evident from the preceding discussion, epiphylogenesis presents a more malleable framework for conceptualizing the relations between print capitalism and cultural traditions when theorizing about modern nations. Epiphylogenic thinking does not view print capitalism and mass media as simply eliminating religious and dynastic pre-modern cultures. Concurrently, myths, symbols, and traditions do not posit immutable and universal forms. Stiegler puts forward an alternative formula whereby, when conceptualizing modern nations, we look at the epiphylogenic co-constitutive process in which mass media systems exteriorize cultural traditions, while these cultural forms gain a particular material form.

In this sense, José Rizal’s novel, Noli Me Tangere, the Mercantorian Maps, and printed copies of the American Declaration of Independence that loom large in Anderson’s works indeed serve as the infrastructures that enabled the Southeast Asian, European, and American national imaginations. Their pervasive and standardized nature allowed individuals in far-flung places to imagine themselves as being part of limited, sovereign communities with fellow members who they will never know, meet, or hear from, as Anderson describes them (2006, 6), However, despite the “newness” Anderson ascribed to these print capitalist products, they did not posit a “radical break with the past” (2006, 193). These print materials all carried mechanically produced images and symbolic representations that resonated with existing cultures (Protestant culture in the American context, and Buddhist cosmology in the case of South-Eastern national identities). As such they were part of a long line of technics through which first, religious and dynastic, and later on national communities, have exteriorized their cultural heritages. Nevertheless, the way these cultures have been processed and transmitted by mechanically print products posits a new stage in the ongoing technical evolution, and thus ought to be conceptualized as cut off from pre-modern ethnic cultures.

Comparing the epiphylogenic logic to Anderson and Smith’s theories suggests that their contrasting views on nations are largely based on their emphasis on differing aspects of mass media technologies, without fully considering their multifaceted nature. Epiphylogenesis’s nuanced treatment of technics opens the door to conceptualizing the composite techno-cultural epiphylogenic process when theorizing about the nature and evolution of modern nations.

Taking the epiphylogenesis analysis a step further yields an understanding of modern nations as ethno-imagined communities. They emerged as such from originating and evolving within the epiphylogenic process in which cultural production and technical development dynamically coalesce. Birthed and bred amid the broadly based relations between human beings and artefacts, modern nations posit a distinctive stage of development in which the recording and reconstruction of cultural traditions settle on a point of equilibrium concertized by the open, standardized, and pervasive structure of print capitalism and other mass media systems. Naturally, the precise manner in which technical and cultural elements converge depends both on cultural wealth and the state of technical advancement in each case. Where print capitalist and mass media systems are well-established and widespread, one would anticipate more civic-oriented national identities to emerge. This would result from the prevalence of these technologies as contributors to the formation of national identities centered around the “horizontal comradeship,” using Anderson’s terminology, generated by print capitalism and mass media (Reference Anderson2006, 32). Conversely, in circumstances where cultural traditions are rich and technological infrastructures are underdeveloped, national identities are more likely to be culturally oriented. This implies that mass media technical systems are less influential in shaping the identity of such nations because they lean more heavily on their historical heritage and cultural practices to define their national identities.

Furthermore, an epiphylogenic analysis does not exclude the possibility that cultural traditions (that is, ethniés) that make up modern nations may have appeared in pre-modern periods. By and by, it would recognize that the architecture of the mass media systems had afforded other types of sub-national and supra-national identities. Nonetheless, Stiegler would identify the co-constitutive dynamic between ethnié and print capitalism as the dominant factor in the makeup of the kind of techno-cultural community that represents the modern nation.

Further application of epiphylogenesis to the theorizing of nations draws attention to the intersection between the “horizontal comradeship” generated by the mass media technical systems emphasized by Anderson and the cultural depth stressed by Smith in the creation of national collective sentiments. In this sense, epiphylogenesis highlights the concept of “temporal unity,” using Stiegler’s terminology, as the cohesive force that binds members of modern nations together. From the epiphylogenic perspective, newspapers, radio, and other mass media outlets synthesize cultural heritages into a shared modern mediated reality. Thus, through the epiphylogenic lens, nations are seen as embodying a convergence between individuals’ chronological and technical sensibilities (see Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson2007 for context). They represent the outcome of the merging of technical-horizontal and cultural-genealogical lines (Mumford Reference Mumford2010, 20–21). According to this perspective, national identities are shaped by the alignment of grand historical narratives with the distinctive architecture of mass media, while also being grounded in individuals’ ability to contextualize their modern national coexistence within the broader continuum of history.

Nonetheless, while epiphylogenesis renders a view of modern nations as exhibiting a certain “temporal unity,” it also emphasizes its transitory nature. This logic allows that although modern nations represent a specific stage in this progression, they are also constantly evolving. To elucidate further, since the ongoing technical evolution is anticipated to make print capitalism and mass media technical systems obsolete, it will likely also alter the whole process of exteriorization, thereby either shifting or transforming the essence of modern nations. This appears to be happening in our own digital time and age. Additional insights on this matter will be provided in the concluding section of the article.