23.《想象的共同体》

The book I want to talk about today is called Imagined Communities. Its core idea is that nations are actually a community of our imagination, and that it has nothing to do with where you were born or who your parents are.
This is an idea that may not sound very new to you. This is because it is so powerfully explanatory that even if you have not read the book, you have probably heard others use it to analyse certain issues elsewhere.
The influence of Grimm's Fairy Tales is an integral part of the German national identity.
We know that the Grimm's Fairy Tales are a collection of German folklore. There is a common protagonist in the stories, Hans, who is hard-working, brave, simple and even a bit clumsy, but the Germans are particularly fond of him. Why?
In the early 19th century, when Germany had just been defeated by Napoleon of France, the French were the enemy in the eyes of the Germans.
At that time, there was a famous French folk tale called "The Story of the Lena Fox". The protagonist of the story, Lena Fox, was particularly cunning, the opposite of Hans, who was pure and brave. The German culture put these two stories together and came to the conclusion that the French, you see, were promoting a cunning man like Lena Fox. This is in fact a type of person who has fallen away completely and has no future. Whereas we in Germany, we as a German nation, promote the upright and reliable Hans. If mankind is to have a future, it needs people like Hans.
And so a "Germanic nation" that never existed, through this story and many others like it, became an imaginary community.
You see, the concept of an imaginary community is such a good one. If you look back at the 20th century today, you will see that all kinds of cultural phenomena, including music, literature, painting and so on, were in fact a way of building an imaginary community.
The imagined community shaped the modern nation-state, which was a major trend of the 20th century. So is the community of the imagination still at work today? Yes, it is in fact what we call consensus.
译文：
今天我要聊的这本书叫《想象的共同体》。它的核心观点是，民族其实是我们想象出来的一个共同体，跟你在哪儿出生、爸妈是谁都没关系。
这个观点，你听着可能不太新鲜。这是因为这个观点的解释力太强了，就算你没看过这本书，你很可能也在其他地方，听别人用这个观点分析过某些问题。
德国人的民族认同，离不开《格林童话》的影响。
我们知道， 《格林童话》是德国的民间传说集。故事里有个常见的主角，叫汉斯，这个汉斯勤劳、勇敢、纯朴，甚至还有点笨拙，但是德国人特别喜欢他。为什么呢？
我们得回到当时的历史背景来看。19世纪初，德国刚被法国的拿破仑打败，在德国人心目中，法国人就是敌人。
当时法国有一个很有名的民间故事，叫《列那狐的故事》。故事的主角列那狐特别狡猾，跟纯朴、勇敢的汉斯正好相反。德国的文化人就把这两个故事放在一块对比了一下，然后得出了一个结论：你看，法国人他们推崇的是列那狐这样狡猾的人。这实际上是一种已经彻底堕落掉的人，没有任何前途。而我们德国，我们德意志民族，推崇的是正直可靠的汉斯。人类要想有未来的话，需要的是汉斯这样的人。
于是，一个从来没有存在过的“日耳曼民族”，通过这个故事，以及很多类似的故事，就变成了一个想象的共同体。
你看，想象的共同体就是一个这么好用的概念。今天再回去看20世纪，你就会发现，各种文化现象，包括音乐、文学、绘画等等，其实都是构建想象的共同体的一种方式。
想象的共同体塑造了现代民族国家，这是20世纪的一个大趋势。那么今天，想象的共同体还在起作用吗？是的，它其实就是我们说的共识。