The ‘whence’ of the nation: suspension of homogenous time in nationalist thought

This article argues that Anderson’s idea of the national ‘meanwhile’ also requires a ‘whence’ in a temporal meaning to make nations imaginable in the capitalist temporal regime. Nationalism’s power lies in its ability to blur the boundaries between past and present by presenting national artefacts as quasi-eternal or immune to change. This point is illustrated via two case studies on ongoing linguistic controversies (Balto-Slavic and Croato-Serbian), in which linguists employ various narrative strategies to suspend time between the past and the present. The conclusions imply that critical scholarship on nationalism should explore temporalities that challenge homogenous time.