Jiménez-Martínez, César 
ORCID: 0000-0002-2921-0832
(2023)
Imaged communities: the visual construction, contestation and commercialisation of the nation.
In: Lilleker, Darren and Veneti, Anastasia, (eds.)
Research Handbook on Visual Politics.
Elgar Handbooks in Political Science.
Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 95 - 108.
ISBN 9781800376922
Abstract
Episodes such as Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, as well as the reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, have shown that nations continue to be key articulators of social life. Yet nations are essentially abstract formations requiring performances and symbols to become concrete. Flags, national days, heroic narratives, and particularly images –such as the French 'Marianne' or the German 'Germania'– have been employed to make nations tangible and foster internal cohesiveness (Cerulo, 1989; Smith, 1991; Zubrzycki, 2017). Throughout history, states have claimed a monopoly over the visual depiction of the nation. National laws regulating the use of flags and other symbols, as well as practices such as propaganda, nation branding and public diplomacy, evidence how political elites have attempted to control the images that make the nation concrete, in order to impose particular definitions of the national community, legitimise those in power and achieve international recognition (Taylor, 2003; Aronczyk, 2013). However, as this chapter shows, states have never achieved complete control over the depiction of the nation. Official symbols and images have historically been embraced, rejected, contested, appropriated or transformed by the peoples that authorities intend to govern (Eakin, 2017, Saunders, 2015). That is particularly the case during episodes of protest, when people challenge the definitions of the nation imposed by those in power (Jiménez-Martínez, 2020). Drawing on examples of recent protests in Latin America and the United States, this chapter shows how, in the last few decades, political, economic and technological transformations have weakened the relative monopoly enjoyed by political elites to visually depict the nation as a homogeneous whole. Actors inside and outside of national boundaries have produced alternative images that challenge those by the state, thus destabilising official façades of national unity. Hence, although the idea of the nation continues to be one of the main articulators of social life, the visual content of such idea is under a continuous struggle about what the nation is, who belongs to it, and what are the conditions of such belonging.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/research-handbook... |
| Additional Information: | © 2023 The Editors |
| Divisions: | Media and Communications |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JC Political theory |
| Date Deposited: | 31 Aug 2023 10:30 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2024 08:07 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/120096 |
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