Image-Nation

While thinking of a reply to this week's readings, I got hung up on the word imagination as a mash up of image + nation, two concepts that seem to be at the heart of the Appadurai essay. So much of the social practice of imagining oneself as a part of a local or global community relies on imagery. The scapes presented in Appadurai's text are meant to complicate global flows as both fractal and overlapping. It seems, from Appadurai's focus, that this simultaneously disjunctive and convergent condition is due to the chaos of images that arise from the mediascapes and ideoscapes. This further underscores the profundity of imagery in effecting the global cultural economy. Of particular interest to me is the role that this chaos creates as images evaporate from mediascapes and ideoscapes enhancing the production and consumer fetishes that Appadurai uncovers. How impossible is the task of making "the invisible visible?" Can we counteract the condensation of images that saturates imaginations and influences the ability to consider the nation and the world in a manner cognizant of the complex global flows at work in shaping each?