The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World

Abstract

This collection of essays spans a range of subjects, including: Aquino's Philippines, where the horses on the haciendas ate better than the stable hands; and political assassinations in contemporary Thailand, where government posts have become so lucrative that to gain them candidates will kill their rivals. Politics, national imaginings, bureaucracy, modernization and its agents (particularly print culture) is covered. spectre of comparisons was a phrase used by the celebrated Filipino nationalist and novelist Jose Rizal (1861-96), whose work and fate in the national imagination are discussed in the book. In his observations on South-East Asian societies, Anderson raises deep questions concerning this spectre, about how, for example, Manila is changed when it can no longer be seen through a comparison with European capitals, and how, more broadly, nationalism is produced by the process of increasing global connection. The book should be a resource for those interested in South-East Asia. But it also contains theoretical and historical considerations about nationalism, national literature and memory, modernization and the prospects for the Left in what Anderson dubs New World Disorder. Benedict Anderson is the author of Java In a Time of Revolution, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia and Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.