A major theme in Ben Anderson’s
‘Imagined Communities’ is the role that standardization of language played in
the rise of nationalism, and the part that print capitalism played in this
standardization of language. Stephenson in his book ‘Snow Crash’ conceives of a
post-national world brought about by totalizing globalism. His analogue of
nationalism takes the form of a cult-like following of L Bob Rife’s ‘church’.
This following also uses a standardized language inherent in humans to control
his populous, in effect reconfiguring the puzzle-pieces of a shattered world.
Though the viral aspects of the imagined glossolalia plant this story delineate
this story firmly as science fiction, there are still many parallels between
Stephenson’s imagining and Anderson’s analysis of the rise of nationalism.
Though Snow Crash’s unifying language is mainly spoken rather than
written, this is necessary to create a
new echelon of intelligentsia in a world already which has already developed
nationalism through written language and moved past the unified nation. The
spoken word as a total unifying factor acts as an inverse to Anderson’s view of
a spreading literacy which unite people under a flag but divides them along
arbitrary national borders.
Anderson
speaks of a “Machiavellian instilling of nationalist ideology through mass
media, the educational system, administrative regulations and so forth” but to
reach this end he concedes that “the colonial states, and somewhat later
corporate capital needed armies of clerks , who to be useful had to be
bilingual, capable of mediating linguistically between the metropolitan nation
and the colonized peoples” (Anderson, 114, 115). L Bob Rife’s use of ideology is obviously
executed by religious indoctrination which reawakens the dormant glossolalia
through which he can tap directly into his follower’s more basic cognitive
function. Though there isn’t any mention of a unified educational system, or
administrative regulation because all government has splintered into small
nation-states, Rife uses media, in the form of both the metaverse and for the
less digitally inclined recreational drugs. His army of clerks takes the form
of his antenna-grafted gargoyles who act as nodes to unsure his messages can be
spread.
If literacy of some form is already
widespread, but mainly in disuse because of newer media such as television and
the street, then who is the new ‘literate intelligentsia’. This echelon is reserved for the hackers: the
strata now able to both to understand the cryptic code of computers and create
in this language. For this reason Rife targets them with his coup de grace –
the digital bomb he sends Raven to detonate. Thus he targeted those who were in
a position to act out against his me,
attempting to enslave them into an administrative mass.
The other side to this is the
religious converts (colonized peoples) who generally lived in a disheveled
state where kept dormant through a combination of factors, chiefly the me acted as a harness, but the way
glossolalia infectiously spreads acts as a kind of security blanket (like
Anderson’s newspaper) it assured the devotees that they were part of a
community, even if people couldn’t actually understand the bable they spouted,
and shared no other common language it was clear that they shared something –
albeit misguided devotion- in common. Snow Crash depicts an imagined
nationalism that exists in a hyper-stimulated culture, with many of Anderson’s
principles intensified and condensed to match. The Glossolalia, much like the
regional newspaper, exists in a special and temporal dimension, however rather
than a day it is purified into a momentary explosion and instead of a nation it
is confined to the earshot of the devotees. However through a global
communications network these messages can be distributed wholesale, across
nation-states/corporate territories. The
spatial limits in communication which Anderson saw as catalyst national-pride
the saturation of information was the inverse mechanism which allowed Rife’s
cult to transcend racial, spatial and linguistic boundaries.
No comments:
Post a Comment