If we say that the world, vast and all-encompassing, is imaginary, then we seem to limit ourselves from anything outside of our conceptual capabilities. In other words, we lose sight of what we cannot possibly imagine, there is no longer room for wonder. The world becomes known.
Appadurai’s collective homogenization of ‘our’ imagination—instead of mine, yours, or someone else’s (31)—only furthers that quantification of the known world. If we are collectively responsible for creating this world, rather than you or I individually, we could hardly be surprised at the outcome.
Perhaps this is how he comes to the conclusion that production has become a kind of fetish (42). That idea assumes that there is no longer any meaning in the result of production, which is certainly true if we’ve already got all the answers.
But I suspect that Appadurai isn’t talking about actual imaginary worlds. Anderson wrote that nations are imagined communities (and there is a difference between imagined and imaginary)(Tamir, 423). Appadurai writes: “many persons on the globe live in such imagined worlds (and not just imagined communities) and thus are able to contest and sometimes even subvert the imagined worlds of the official mind and of the entrepreneurial mentality that surrounds them” (33). But I would argue that the focus of power/agency that allows individuals to subvert hegemonic systems has to exist outside of the imagined community, from an active or objective position, as a person doing the imagining. This is why using ‘world’ in place of community is dangerous: it engulfs an individual, and conceals a personal sense of power.
Tamir, Yael. “Review: The Enigma of Nationalism.” World Politics Vol. 47, No. 3 (Apr., 1995): pp. 418-440. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 3 May 2011.
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