Sarah Smith Blog #1: Chance, Destiny, and Nation

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson demonstrates that there were several factors which led to the birth of nationalism. Of these factors, I was particularly fascinated by the connection between religious community and nationalism. Anderson suggests that both religious community and nationalism link together people and ideas that would not otherwise be connected. Anderson insists, "It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny" (Anderson 12), just as in the religious realm people are connected by Divine Providence rather than by reason. Biblical figures Isaac and Jesus share in the same story despite living in different times and places, because in the overarching history of Christianity, the sacrifice of Isaac foreshadows the death of Jesus. Chance existences become destiny when the two men's stories come together in the Bible. It is not reason which binds them together, because rationally the two men's lives were never connected. Anderson points out that nationalism, and the concept of a nation, is not too different: people who will never interact, never even cross paths, are connected to one another under a shared flag, a shared constitution, and a shared history. The chance occurrence that many people were born within the same expanse of land becomes destiny when they are united under a nation.

In his film Passing Through, Nathan Adolfson tracks his life as a Korean American, born in Korea and adopted at a young age by an American family. The film is a quest for identity, as Adolfson wrestles with his American upbringing and his Korean heritage. His experience suggests that much of what makes a nation is the identity it gives to its citizens. Though it is by chance Adolfson was born in Korea, and by chance that he was adopted by an American family, there is a sense that it is Adolfson's destiny to find a sense of nationalism, to connect with this country in which he was born. He is desperate to connect to the country to which he is linked by blood but not through any experience. His life is American, but the chance occurrence of his Korean birth inextricably ties him to Korea.

Defining a nation, or even the elements of a nation, is a complex undertaking. I believe that one important component of nationalism is sheer chance. In most cases, we do not choose our home nation--we are born into it. Adolfson, though born in Korea, grows up in America and it is there that he has strong connections. He acknowledges that he struggled to find personal connections to Korea, and only in finding his birth family did he express a sense of belonging. By sheer chance we grow up in one country, taught (or perhaps indoctrinated) to be loyal to that nation from an early age, connected to our countrymen not so much by shared experiences or interactions but by shared borders and shared governments. I am an American, but only by chance was I born here. When I visited Ground Zero last winter, it felt like destiny. I grew up in the Midwest, and for years I felt removed from the events of September 11, 2001. Standing at Ground Zero, I felt a strong sense of being a part of something bigger than me, of sharing in the pain we experienced as a nation twelve years ago. My ties to this country, into which I was born by chance, are very real and very personal. The sense of belonging to a nation, or nationalism, comes when that chance occurrence of being within a nation's border transforms into the sense that we are connected to those around us by nothing short of destiny.