Sunday, August 4, 2019
History, Literature, Anthropology: Contextualizing Human Meaning :: Essays Papers
History, Literature, Anthropology: Contextualizing Human Meaning As culture is ââ¬Å"the product of human thoughtâ⬠(217), Cohn advocates ââ¬Å"seeing how meanings are contextualizedâ⬠to better interpret history and produce good scholarship (221). In keeping with this awareness of human thought, Anderson contextualizes ââ¬Å"the cultural roots of nationalismâ⬠through the evolution of early American literature and print-language (7), relying heavily on the historical development of European literacy in developing a ââ¬Ënational imagination.ââ¬â¢ In doing so, Andersonââ¬â¢s analysis of nationalism reflects Cohnââ¬â¢s maxim, that ââ¬Å"anthropology can became [sic] more anthropological in becoming more historicalâ⬠(216). Through Andersonââ¬â¢s contextualizing of nationalism through historical literary trends, his anthropological scholarship is, by Cohnââ¬â¢s estimation, more true unto itself. Unearthing origins of national consciousness, Anderson examines the development of national memory through literacy and vernacularisms. Believing nationalism to be a cultural construct of political revolutions, merging social ideologies and a new emphasis on ââ¬Å"national print-languagesâ⬠(Anderson 46), Anderson declares that men challenged the sacredness of existing societies with new conceptions of land and nation through the circulation and spread of shared languages (Anderson 36). Driving a ââ¬Å"wedge between cosmology and historyâ⬠through Enlightenment discoveries, divinely ordained realities lost clout and ââ¬Å"cultural artefacts of the eighteenth centuryâ⬠like individual human rights and personal sovereignty, translated from old world to new (Anderson 36). With new ââ¬Å"languages-of-powerâ⬠in fixating systems of speech, nations built self-identity, and men began to see themselves in ââ¬Å"profoundly new waysâ⬠(Anderson 36). Cohn reasserts history and anthropology as dovetailing disciplines, whose scholarship exists outside of this time and yet rooted in common reality. Floating in imaginary lands of epistemology and printed research, good scholarship relies on a historian with ââ¬Å"fewer sources and stouter bootsâ⬠(Tawney, qted in Cohn, 221). Historians intrinsically
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