Narratives of community

Although the idea of a national essence has long been recognized as a fiction, national literatures continue to be set apart in university curriculums, and the nation, a concept blithely dismissed by many literary scholars, remains an international political reality. Indeed, Benedict Anderson has termed nation the “most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.” The connection between the story of a nation and the stories written by its citizens may be highly problematic, but connection there undeniably is. History provides frightening examples of what happens when nationalism reduces people to a totalitarian mass, but it behooves the literary critic to remember also that it is not nationalism but rather the power of transnational corporations that today threatens to homogenize global mass culture. It is not hard to see why some version of the idea of a national literature lies intransigently, albeit often silently, at the heart of many of the hotly debated theoretical issues of the day. Any effort to pin down the concept, however, is destined to be an exercise in futility, and this will not be my aim here.