Benedict Anderson: humane nationalist

Benedict Anderson: humane nationalist

There are some books, so dangerous in their citation by casual readers, that they ought to be chained to the library walls, or else kept under lock and key beneath the watchful eye of a librarian. One such is Edward Said’s Orientalism, a work of great literary power coupled with an angrily incoherent argument, which has proved catnip to a certain kind of middlebrow activist student. Yet in our current age of revivified nationalism, warring again…