Laura Menzel, Blog #8: Community Reflections

In my first blog, I focused on how the purpose of a nation was to unify its citizens in a shared, imagined narrative.  Anderson calls a nation an "imagined political community" (6).  Looking back on our class experience thus far, I agree with my original analysis of a nation/community.  After talking with one of my friends who took this class last year, we agreed that each batch of Sexy Racy is different.  Different concepts and groups are emphasized, and the people in the class, leading discussion and guiding the direction of the class, is different.  Even though Francis has a similar general syllabus for each semester, because half of the class is a student led conversation, the content of class discussion is up to us.  We have created our own community with it's own hegemony.  There are a few regular and frequent participant in class discussion and very many more who participate rarely.  (I use the term 'hegemony' loosely - I do not mean to imply that the participation is imbalance is a bad thing.  I respect that each person has a choice to participate however much he or she would like).  What is interesting is that we created a structure within ourselves, as we rely less on Francis to direct discussion.  The first few weeks of class, even though we were arranged in a circle, we still directed our attention to the professor and waited for him to direct us.  Francis still occasionally jumps in to guide our conversation, but I think we look more to ourselves for a prompt now.

While we may be an imagined community, we do not fit Anderson's concept of a nation.  A "nation inspires love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love" (Anderson, 141).  Perhaps we've made some strong friendships in this classroom, but I don't think any of us feels inclined to be self-sacrificing for this class.  Part of the reason for this is that we all chose to be in this class, and we choose how much we put in to it.  Anderson writes that "nation-ness is assimilated to something unchosen" (143).  He notes that this is how racism is born.  Our community is much more open and accepting because we all chose to be a part of it.

As we finish the semester, I wonder, where will we take our community?  What topics have we left to explore?  Our class if full of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.  We are all on different parts of our journey and we all have different perspectives to offer.   We've learned a lot from each other already, and I am excited to see what we will explore in the future.