Community Analysis

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Recommended: Relationship between patriotism and nationalism

Imagination plays a crucial role in creating communities and its identity. Fiction, in this case will cover both absolute fabrications and biases in the discourse of history's narration. History can be malleable in the hands of narrators, which they use to unite their audience into a common interpretation of their history. Alicia Barber, The author of the essay, Local Places, National Spaces: Public Memory, Community Identity and Landscape at Scotts Bluff National Monument, talks about two community's disagreement on a tourist spot's proper use and maintenance. Barber analyzes the community's relations to the landmark and how it affects the discourse of history's narration, the malleability of public memory, and how it all connects with community identity. Michael Ignatieff wrote about a civil struggle between two groups who identify themselves very differently from each other. In his analysis, he mixed his personal account of the situation, explaining the role of narcissism in the discourse of history's narration. His essay, The Warrior's Honor: Ethic War and the Modern Conscience, describes a more radical conflict from fabricated major differences. These two authors describe two very different approach to their conflicts, but their discourse to the narration of their history are similar. Their fabrications and biased narrations stem from their egocentric imaginations that support their identity.

Imagination's role in a community's identity enables its members to associate their history with their identity. Patriotism, backed up by history, strengtheners a community's bond together as a group. Barber explains in the statement below how a community's involvement in history plays a role in their narration of their history. “Wh...

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...s about their 'imagined community' and 'imagined image' make up their identity. These differences would not exist without their narcissistic imaginations that inevitably form fictions from history. But, because of their refusal to recognize the other group's relational differences, major differences rise from their actions. Nationalism's depends on these imaginations; it uses the group's self-love to stake their claim in history, narrate it in their narcissistic discourse, and blind members from relational differences that would weaken their identity as a group.

Works Cited

Barber, Alicia. “Local Places, National Spaces: Public Memory, Community Identity, and Landscape at Scotts Bluff National Monument.” American Studies 45 (2004): 35-64.

Ignatieff, Michael. The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

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