From the Editors: Historians’ Reflections on the Prospects of a Linguistic and Anthropological Turn in the Study of Empire and Nationalism

17 Ab Imperio, 1/2006 From the EDITORS In 2006, the Ab Imperio editorial team decided to continue and further develop the thematic focus on languages of description and self-description launched as the annual theme in 2005. The annual program of four thematic issues in 2006 will be framed around “Anthropological Reflections on Languages of Self-Description of Empire and Nation.” The reason for this “anthropological turn” was manifold. First, the journal’s publications in 2005 revealed the novelty of the focus on languages of self-description. The ideological construction and semantics of imperial experience have remained under-researched and under-discussed in the current burgeoning literature on empire and nationalism studies. Thus the research on languages of self-description was conceived as a timely supplement to existing studies of imperial rule (government), social structures (especially, the imperial elite), and geography. Needless to say, studies of languages of self-description depart from the ossified notion of imperial ideology that betrays the largely misleading rationalistic and pragmatic assumption. This assumption leads to the conception of imperial agency that directs imperial power and acts in a rational way upon the empire. Contrary to HISTORIANS’ REFLECTIONS ON THE PROSPECTS OF A LINGUISTIC AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL TURN IN THE STUDY OF EMPIRE AND NATIONALISM 18 From the Editors, Historians’Reflections... that assumption, the present program focuses on historically constituted meanings, shifts the attention to the multiplicity of imperial agents and modes of legitimation, and brings to the fore the function of language in making sense of experience. The second reason for the editorial decision to continue the exploration of languages of self-description was the development of a controversial trend (in terms of its implications) in the field of empire studies. This trend may be characterized as a sort of revisionism that seeks to refocus the attention of the social sciences on empire as a way of avoiding the much criticized master narrative of the nation state and the pervasive discourse of modern nationalism.1 True, the studies of empire written in this revisionist mode and following the logic and enstrangement have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the logic of the social sciences and the modern world. However, one of the dangers of this revisionism remains an uncritical construction of empire as an ideological alternative to the sovereign state, democratic government, and international law. Another danger is the obliteration of the rich legacy of the theory of nationalism and nationalism studies, including the departure from the essentialism of the social sciences and opened new opportunities for understanding modern nationalism as a cognitive frame of human experience. Paradoxically, cutting edge research in the field of empire studies often tends to limit the definition of empire to a structure of power relations or to a social and cultural constellation (a multiethnic polity or system of estates).2 The suggested research agenda of languages of selfdescription helps to overcome this popular essentialist view of empire and allows us to ask the question of how empire was conceived as a space of experience, discovery, and encounter. In other words, it places a premium on the historically constituted and changeable meaning of imperial experience in the study of empire. The focus on historical dynamics is revealed in the fluctuation of key terms of the suggested research agenda: languages of description and self1 See, for example, the works by Niall Ferguson (Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. New York: Basic Books, 2002), that reflect this trend in its right ideological explication, and the works byAntonio Negri and Michael Hardt (Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) that display this trend, though in its left ideological implication. 2 See reviews of the “imperial studies” panels of the VII Berlin congress of the International Council of Central and East-European Studies (ICCEES) that were published in Ab Imperio (no. 3, 2005). 19 Ab Imperio, 1/2006 description. Languages of self-description stand for original, sometimes archaic, words and concepts (motherland, Vatan, subjecthood, etc.), the multiplicity of imperial actors, and those cognitive frames (modes of cognition) that lacked the secular and rationalized nature of modern social knowledge. Languages of description stand...