Topic and Intro

Topic for Lens Essay:

In his essay “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” Benedict Anderson suggests that nationalism is born from a people’s sense of connection to an imagined community. Photographer Dang Ngo’s images of Chin Burmese refugees add another perspective to Anderson’s arguments by exploring how such grievous displacement makes these people unable to imagine belonging to any community at all. If nationalism is thus defined by the capacity to be psychologically created, it could be an impossible attainment for the Chin, who have become forced citizens of a “no man’s land” and who have lost either their ability or their will to imagine being a member of a worldly community.

http://www.dangngo.com/burma/

*Note- the selected image is the 11th one on the scroll (with the woman and child kneeling in the forest)

Introduction:

Refugees can be characterized as a nation’s lost generation; their coerced displacement strands them in precarious situations that frequently deny them their national identity. They become the orphans of the world, having lost their mother when they lose their country. The Chin Burmese find themselves under similarly low ceilings, for they are continually being evicted from Burma and forced into refugee lifestyles in Malaysia, India, and along the Thai border. In his essay “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” Benedict Anderson argues that nationalism is the psychological product of an individual’s imagined connection to a community. The Chin, however, exist in a constant state of limbo and are thereby unable to discern what country, if any, they belong to. As photographer Dang Ngo’s image suggests, these refugees are imprisoned in their own purgatory, destined neither to return to their former life nor to claim their place on higher ground. In short, this hopeless disorientation makes the Chin incapable of forging the imagined connection that Anderson describes, which may render them without a sense of nationalism entirely.