Spectacular Nationism in Colombia

Spectacular Nationism in Colombia: Making War Make Sense

Killing and dying for what?
What is the relationship between the nation and a soldiers willingness
to kill and die? Over thirty years ago, Benedict Andersons Imagined
Communities (1983) kicked off a resurgence of academic interest in the
nation by speaking directly to that question. Anderson defined the nation in a
particular and what turned out to be very popular and now famous way: as
an imagined political community. It has to be imagined because it
consists mostly of people who do not know each other, yet in the minds of
each lives the image of their communion (6). This communion is important
for Anderson; he goes on to argue that the nation, this communion or
community, is imagined always as a deep, horizontal comradeship (7).
Nonethelss, says Anderson, nations are also, always, imagined as limited,
with finite boundaries, beyond which lie other nations (7). This
limitedness also seems to be key for Anderson, for at the end his
introduction, he poses the problem that interests us not only in this
contribution, but in the entirety of the present volume, but in this curious
way: Ultimately it is this fraternity [this deep, horizontal comradeship] that
makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of
people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings
(7). In other words, it is the nation understood as anonymous but fraternal
community that makes it possible for people to kill and die for the nation
understood as a limited entity. More curious still is what immediately
follows: These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central
problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of
recent history generate such colossal sacrifices? (7). But has he not
already told us? Has he not already answered: fraternity, community,
comradeship?
In what follows I build on the insights and lacunae offered by
Anderson, in an attempt understand how the killing and dying of
professional soldiers is produced in Colombia. Pace Anderson, I suspect that
image of national communion most likely does not live in the minds of
each member of the population in question; that at best, at certain times, it
might spring to mind, but it is mostly absent. Here I will argue that this is
indeed the case for Colombia, where the image of national communion is for
the most part absent, made almost impossible by the particular history of the
country, and thus needs to be constructed in this case by a concerted
spectacular public relations campaign. I will look specifically at three
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
commercials
1
that are part of the Heroes really do exist in Colombia
campaign, which also includes billboards and print media, in an attempt to
create or conjure up the image of the nation out of (almost) nothing. More
specifically, I argue that the commercials are engaged in the spectacular
production of nationism. Not nationalism, since there is plenty of that
already in Colombia. Nationalism here
2
is understood as a superficial almost
reflexive affirmation of national identity and pride; nationism should be
understood as a deeper, a fundamental and perhaps doxic belief in the nation
as such, as a historical force and entity in its own right. Thus we might say
that nationism is to nationalism as deism is to religion.
With this distinction we can perhaps better appreciate whyAnderson is
perplexed by the question of killing and dying because though he speaks of
nations as imagined communities, his imagination or definition of the
nation is itself all too limited, all too shrunken. While, theoretically
speaking, nations might really be imagined, no one who actually thinks of
himself (or herself) as a national thinks that he is merely imagining it. He
simply recognizes a brute fact. Second, it is not inherent to or a natural part
of the definition of a nation that it be thought of as limited. Imperialism
would seem to be an all-too at-hand example. But even when borders are
respected, within them the nation does not really feel itself to be in any way
limited; its sovereignty a third characteristic of the nation adduced by
Anderson (7) is in fact the very affirmation of its limitlessness. But
Anderson makes much, as we have seen, of the limitedness, of the
shrunkenness of the nation and thus it is not surprising that he struggles to
answer the question, why would so many millions kill and die for such a
thing or idea? Why indeed? If the idea of the nation is really part of the
explanation of the soldiers sacrifice, then it must be very much less less
imagined as imagined and as limited and more more imagined as
sovereign, as fraternal and solidarous than Anderson thinks it is.
It is worth recalling, in this context, the Battle of Valmy of 1792,
which saw a numerous but somewhat disorderly force of French national
conscripts and professional soldiers send their formidable royalist Prussian
adversaries packing, with a conviction embodied in the battle cry, for the

1
One can find the commercials on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoFZtEb9s&feature=related, or on the web
site of Colombias Army, here:
http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=228741&pag=2.
2
Nationalism, like ideology, is one of those ubiquitous, almost useless concepts
whose referents are so vague or too multiple to be of consistent value. Here I give
nationalism a provisional, working definition, for the purposes of this chapter.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
first time in history, Vive la nation! (Doyle 2002). Of course those soldiers
were not invoking some community imagined in the shrunken terms
parsed by Anderson. But to what were they then referring? Those soldiers
may well have been inspired by, among other discourses in circulation, that
of the Abb de Sieyes who wrote this in 1789 in his text What is the Third
Estate:

The Nation exists before all things and is the origin of all. Its will is
always legal, it is the law itself ... Nations on earth must be conceived
as individuals outside the social bond, or as is said, in the state of
nature. The exercise of their will is free and independent of all civil
forms. Existing only in the natural order, their will, to have its full
effect, only needs to possess the natural characteristics of a will. In
whatever manner a nation wills, it suffices that it does will; all forms
are valid and its will is always the supreme law. (as cited in Smith,
2010: 47)

This description of the nation may not sound much to cynical ears, but
nonetheless, it is redolent with at least potential grandeur, and might did
inspire some to embrace homicide and self-sacrifice, believing that such a
marvel, such a monstrosity, actually existed, and that they were a constituent
and in some sense equal part of it, as the Abb argues in the rest of his
discourse (1989).
If the Abbs classic formulations of 1789 serve to exemplify the way
the nation was (and is still) uncritically articulated by some thinkers, just
over a hundred years later in 1882, the classic critical statement on the
modern nation was pronounced by Ernst Renan. The Abb asked What is
the Third Estate? and responded that it was the nation, the origin of all, a
will unto itself. Renan asks, What is a nation? and after having refuted the
idea that nations are linguistic, geographic or racial communities, offers that
the nation is a spiritual family (1989: 19), or, what seem to be synonyms,
a soul, a spiritual principle (19). Two things constitute this soul, this
principle, and thus this family. One is the possession in common of a rich
legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live
together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received
in an undivided form (19). In many respects Renan but echoes the Abb, a
soul standing in for an origen, a spiritual principle being part of a natural
order, a will being a will. Still, we need to return to antiquity to understand
how these formulations relate to a willingness to kill and die.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
In his Funeral Oration Pericles (Thucydides 1954) discourses
specifically on what is worth killing and dying for, expending less time
extolling the fallen than that for which they fell: Athens. He could point to a
real community that was worth dying for, in order to protect it and assure its
continued vitality. He could speak of what we have now Renans
heritage thus: a system of government that is a model to others,
wherein power is in the hands [] of the whole people; where everyone
is equal before the law; a system of rewards and opportunities in which
what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability
which the man possesses; and he observes that also, in public affairs we
keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect (145, para.
37). We can, thus, appreciate Athens as the the kind of city for which these
men, who could not bear the thought of losing her, nobly fought and nobly
died (148, para. 42).
Anderson was perplexed by why people would kill and die for the
nation. His puzzlement stems from his failure to properly understand the
nation as men and women live it: not as a meagre limited, shrunken entity
but as a shining, compelling light for oneself and others; not as a relative
nation among other equal nations but as an absolute nation, primus inter
pares. It may be well and good for a social scientist to understand the nation
as a sovereign, limited imagined community, how many people would kill
and die for such a thing. Sieyes, Renan, and Pericles put us on the right
track. Reflecting on their words, we begin to get a sense not of what the
nation is in any political-science sense, but of what it is in the minds of men,
of what women and men who arent necessarily given to systematic inquiry
think about when they think about the nation. It is something glorious,
something great, and therefore something compelling.
But what if it isnt?

Killing and dying for what in Colombia?
In Colombia it isnt.
3
Colombia of course is recognized as a nation
and Colombians are quick to invoke and proclaim their national pride, but
there is in fact little social solidarity in Colombia. A heroic past, great men,
glory , this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea
(19), argues Renan, yet these things are lacking in Colombia. Though
Spanish rule ended almost two centuries ago, independence has less
consisted in heroism, greatness and glory than in more or less endless civil

3
I am sure one could say the same about many other so-called nations; I argue
specifically about Colombia because I have studied it for more than ten years.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
wars, territorial loss, and oligarchic domination, right up to the present day
(Hylton 2006; Lobo 2009; Safford & Palacios 2002).
Evidence of the precariousness of the nation is offered by nothing less
than the Museo Nacional. This institution dedicated to narrating the nation
through various cultural artefacts can only make it to the year 1948, the year
in which the leader of a national-populist movement, was assassinated. What
followed was a wave of impotent destructive violence, political repression,
and the emergence of the modern guerrilla movement. Along the way, a
drug economy and paramilitary organizations funded by large landlords
provided further impediments to any sort of national cohesion (Hylton
2006). Unable to narrate the nation after 1948, the museum opted to close
out its permanent exhibition with some modern art works by Colombian
artists, aesthetic modernism appearing as a sort of stand in for national
material, social modernity (see also Vallejo Pedraza 2010).
Another indication of this national precariousness is the very title of
the most popular English-language history of Colombia, The Making of
Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Bushnell 1993). Though
sympathetic to Colombia and the people who live there, the authors
narrative suggests at best a nation in name only. There is nothing of the
greatness that supposedly inspired the warriors of Athens that might inspire
Colombian warriors today. There are little of the great men and the heroics
pointed up by Renan. But reflecting on what gives rise to the spiritual
family that is the nation elsewhere in his text, Renan reminds us indeed of
the fact that suffering in common unifies more than joy does (19). If this
were simply true then no doubt Colombians would constitute a grand nation
for as Bushnells book makes quite clear, Colombians have suffered. The
problem is that this suffering has not really been in common in the sense
used by Renan: they have not suffered together against an unifying outsider;
rather, Colombians have suffered each other, have waged war against
themselves, producing a history of violence, recrimination and revenge,
centrifugal social forces, unmitigated by interest in or opportunity for the
construction of a social, cultural and political order that would cohere the
various competing interests at large in the country.
I ask then, on what basis scan the ongoing war against the guerrillas in
Colombia be waged? The fighting members of the armed forces tend, as in
other countries, to be drawn from the least favored among the population,
which raises the question of their motivation. Killing and dying is certainly
part of the job description, and the job pays, but there must also be a moral
and ideological motivation, a sense of the value of what one is doing.
Meanwhile, much of the population at large would seem to have become
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
inured to the conflict. Colombia is a large country and the killing and dying
tends to take place elsewhere that is, away from the cities where most
people now live thanks to the violence in the hinterlands: in the countryside,
the plains, the jungles, the mountains. Both the soldiers and civilians need to
be convinced that the killing and dying is for something. In a country in
which a glib profession of national pride coexists with a stunning lack of
concern for ones supposed co-nationals, where the legally required year of
national service (for males) can be and is so easily avoided by the better off,
it is the nation in its transcendent, fraternal, compelling sense that needs
to be made real in order to able to keep waging war against the guerrilla, and
annhilating the social basis of any counter-systemic discourse in Colombia.
How to create a nation worth killing and dying for on the basis of
so little? Renan posits that the nation is moral conscience, the outcome of
the profound complications of history (18). As I have said, while Colombia
has been the site of profound complications, the outcome has not been this
moral conscience. It is to a great degree a nation in name only.
4
Absent the
historical forces that would produce or cohere the moral conscience which
we call a nation (Renan 20), the Colombian establishment, in order to
continue to press its war against flawed yes but nonetheless most
recalcitrant and trenchant oppositional sector of the Colombian population,
must thus conjure up the nation using the forces and technologies at its
disposal. These include the most spectacular media technologies that have
changed the character of the societies in which they are present since the
1960s, producing a social consciousness quite unmoored by historical and
material realities, and social truths sustained as such by the indomitable
force and omnipresence of the spectacle (Debord 1994). It is on the basis of
this understanding that I now turn to the analysis of a series of commercials
commissioned by the Colombian army, ergo, by the Colombian
establishment, which engage in this conjuring of the nation of which I speak.

Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
The first commercial opens showing us a thick of foliage, at night,
with the sounds typical of a sultry, wild setting: insects chirping loudly and
so on, but also we hear the first stirrings of a rousing, orchestrated musical
accompaniment. We then distinguish, as the camera pans right, the face of a
male soldier, helmeted, in the midst of the thicket. He sees us, so to speak,
and addresses us, as the image takes him as its center: Whats up? Its good

4
I am not suggesting, again, that Colombia is unique in this respect. I am merely
arguing about the place I know best.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
to talk to you on nights like this. Smiles like yours make one feel really
good. I heard that they approved your loan for the corner store though
they nearly didnt.
5
All the while his eyes dart from the viewer to
somewhere off-screen, suggesting an attentive concern for potential
intruders, enemies. He is alert, but also chatty. He continues, now filling up
the left side of the screen, But itll be a success in the neighborhood. He
pauses, attentive, alert, thoughtful. Listen, he says, you want me to tell
you something? Its a rhetorical question. He is going to tell us something
anyway. He continues, his eyes now unmovingly fixed on the camera, the
viewer, Even though I dont know you, Im ready to give my life for you.
The music here swells, and he gives a signal. There is a cut to a long view,
which gives us a better sense of the general terrain, and from it we observe
five more soldiers rise, then a cut to the right shows several more. A whole
platoon seems to be out there, strangers to us, yet ready to die for me, the
viewer. The music now dominates the soundtrack and the affirmation
appears on the screen: Heroes really do exist in Colombia. Before the fade
to black the insignia of the Colombian Army appears front and center on the
screen.
The second commercial opens with bright sunlight streaming through
the spaces between the leaves and branches again of a jungle setting,
reflecting off the water of a clear looking stream, highlighting the activity of
a solitary ant. After three cuts which present these images to us we finally
see the soldier protagonist, his weapon ready, pointing in our direction but
off to our right; not directly at us, but past us, perhaps at someone who might
be looking to catch us unawares, from behind. The sound track includes the
same music and a similar track of animal and insect sounds. We see him
before he sees us. Its almost as if we are creeping up on him, but when he
quickly turns and sees us he is not surprised. We get the sense that he can
clearly distinguish between people like us his constituency in a certain
sense and his targets. He sees us, then, almost as if expecting us, and asks,
How is everything? The view cuts away from him, to another soldier
whom we see from behind, negotiating his way through the jungle, while the
first soldier, the one were becoming acquainted with, continues to speak.
Hows your family? How are you doing?
Theyve told me youre doing well, he says to us, as we see his
comrades searching the terrain, weapons aimed, looking for the enemy.
Were doing well, we understand, while theyre out there looking for bad
guys to kill. His face is more expressive than the soldier from the previous

5
The translations are mine.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
commercial, and perhaps a little more begrudging. His mouth draws itself
into a straight line and he nods, as if to himself, as if to confirm that of
course were all fine, while he and his are out there in the shit. He doesnt
smile, but simply describes how things are. He doesnt seem particularly
happy with the situation, with his situation. He simply describes it. And with
little mirth, manifesting little enthusiasm but quite a bit of determination, he
looks straight at us as declares, Im taking care of you guys, somewhat
like a harried parent might tell an ungrateful and even wantonly wayward
child. Then, changing the emphasis, he assures me, the individual viewer, I
am carrying you, right here and we see him positioning his right hand over
his heart, giving himself a couple of soft strikes there. Suddenly were right
up in his face and he goes on: You know what? he asks. Me? I dont
know you. He is shaking his head here, his lips pull into a smile, but with
the eyes turned down. Theres a sadness, a sort of unrequitedness to it. Then,
nodding, But Im ready to give my life for you, he finishes. He looks back
over his shoulder to see who is with him. Are we with him?, seems to be the
question. Whatever the answer, we in fact see that there are other soldiers
with him at least. Again, amidst the swell of the music, the words appear on
the screen affirming that heroes really do exist in Colombia, and the Armys
insignia closes things out.
The third commercial opens on the profile of a soldier looking down
and to the right, out the doors of a helicopter in flight whose thud-thud is
dominating the soundtrack. He turns and looks at us and, smilingly, as if
genuinely happy, speaks loudly above the sound of the blades, Theyve told
me that your little plot of land is finally producing something. The shot
switches to a perspective which puts us behind another soldier, Afro-
Colombian, also looking out the helicopters doors. The speaker continues as
we cut to a view of the control board of the helicopter, That it was pretty
hard work getting it into shape. And then, Your family has to be happy,
right? he surmises, as we see the tail of the helicopter and then another,
behind it. They also told me that your wife is feeling better, he says,
looking concerned, perhaps thinking about his own wife. I remember her
[your wife], he says, and we now see the land from the perspective of
flight, I remember her because whenever we were passing through here, she
would always offer us lemonade. She was always so nice. Pausing, the
helicopter in flight, we then return to his face. You know? Even though I
dont know you, I would give my life for you. Then once more we observe
the helicopter which, as it banks up to the left, reveals the words, again:
Heroes really do exist in Colombia, followed by the insignia close out.
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
I focus on these three commercials as examples of the spectacular
attempt to conjure up the moral conscience that nation about which
Renan speaks. My argument is that these commercials, a form of spectacular
nationism, are an attempt to make the war in Colombia make sense, by
producing a nation, something beyond me, that is worth all of me, and more
than me. The messages attempt to aid in the creation of that linking of
people to people, of that shared belonging, of that belonging to each other,
of that solidarity that is perhaps described as national. They attempt to
transpose or transform the empirical community, one that is riven by
suspicion and indifference, into a cosmic or spiritual one, the nation as
rendered in the Abb de Sieyes and Renans discourse, the great community
as orated by Pericles. They are necessary because the history and the
folklore that would otherwise constitute the structure of feeling of the nation,
or the context of the moral conscience that is the nation, are, in Colombia,
quite absent. The sort of community of which Pericles gives and account, the
historical centripetal experiences alluded to by Renan find no referent in
Colombia. The nation as compelling, solidarous, horizontal community does
not exist and therefore it must be called into existence, for if not the nation,
then what? Under what other pretext can a huge military force be recruited,
financed and put into action other than the pretext of the nation?
How, then, do the commercials help produce the nation and thus make
the war make sense? We might first observe that the clear, unambiguous
message of each of them is that heroes do in fact, really, exist in Colombia.
Now, the very need to articulate and insist upon this existence suggests that,
indeed, the general perception is that heroes do not exist in Colombia. I have
referenced Colombias lack of heroic men, its unglorious past. Regarding the
military the perhaps natural home of heroes, one would think Kline
reports that traditionally Colombias elite has sought to keep too much
power out of the militarys hands, for fear of being usurped (1999: 11) by a
potentially populist authoritarian regime. It has always kept the military at
bay, in other words, seeing it not as the fount of national heroes but of
potentially jealous and well-armed expropriators. The present need to
insist on the existence of heroes stems from, again, the absence of the sort of
history understood as a national history that would actually have
produced them. Here, however, the very rhetoric of the commercials
produces not only heroes, but by logical necessity the (great) nation of which
they would be heroes: if there are really heroes, there must really be a
nation. And not only that. Pericles, as is often not, preferred to expound at
length on the community for which the fallen fell, rather than on the fallen
themselves. But after doing so the reader familiar with his oration will recall
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
that he then observes: I have sung the praises of our city; but it was the
courage and gallantry of these men, and of people like them, which made her
splendid (148, para. 42). The logic here is exactly the logic of the
commercials under analysis. Though he has declined to wax lyrical on the
heroic acts of the fallen, though he has preferred to expound the qualities
and the quality of Athens as the reason why soldiers have given their lives,
Pericles concludes with a brilliant rhetorical move which leads us to
understand that what really makes a place, a community, a city and by
extension a patria, a country, a nation splendid is not its character at all,
but the courage and gallantry of those who would kill and die for it: if people
are killing and dying, then, ipso facto, there must be something worth killing
and dying for, and what they are killing and dying for must be great
Athens, or, in more general terms, the community to which they belong,
nowadays known as a nation. But it must be more than simply a nation, for
according to a glib nationalism, anyone can invoke nationness. It must be a
great nation. And if its attributes are not enough to count it as great, then the
fact that some are disposed to kill and die for it must make it so.
But what else is going on in this spectacular discourse? In each
message a soldier takes a few moments out from pursuing the (our) enemy,
looks directly at an individualized spectator and declares to him (it is in each
a case a him): Even though I dont know you, I will give my life for you.
It is cast almost as a tragic declaration of love, and, if ones cynicism knows
at least some bounds, it is very powerful. Especially so, because for years
Colombians have been prone to thinking of soldiers as dupes or at any rate
cannon fodder rather than heroes, dying, in the end for little or no reason at
all. The commercials insist that there is purpose noble purpose in their
death (and their killing): they are doing it for me, even though we are
strangers. The soldier does not say that he is ready to give his life for
Colombia, or the nation, but for the viewer, a person whom, he makes
explicit, he does not know. But for what kind of stranger does someone die?
Not just any stranger. Only a stranger who is also, so the logic goes, a
brother, or perhaps a sister, a fellow national: fraternity. Thus there must be
a nation. Thus the killing and the dying is not only justified, not only
rational, but best of all, honorable, a point of legitimate pride.
Indeed, this is the most important thing the commercials do: create
that anonymous but solidarous bond that is the quintessential national bond.
Soldiers in full battle gear appear to be pursuing the enemy in the jungle or
from the air. Any Colombian will recognize these soldiers being deployed
not on foreign terrain but in Colombias own formidable landscape. And this
same Colombian will understand that the unseen enemy, the unseen danger,
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
are not foreign troops not Brazilians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians,
Panamanians or Venezuelans (all populations bordering on Colombia); and
certainly not Chinese or Americans but other Colombians: guerrillas, left
wing, whose expressed intention is to over-throw the state. Stating that I,
who do not know you, am willing to die for you, the soldier is stating
(affirming, producing in effect) the nation. This is because the commercials
are monologues staged as dialogues, as conversations, between a soldier and
his interlocutor, which is the viewer. Conversation, as Berger and Luckmann
(1996) point out, is crucial, fundamental even, for generating, modifying and
maintaining a particular sense of reality (152 ff), insofar as it takes place
against a background of a world that is silently taken for granted (152). The
conversations of the commercials assume the nation as a backdrop, for in no
other context would such an asseveration I do not know you, but I will die
for you make any sense whatsoever. They produce the very context in
which they would make sense, a context which history itself did not. The
viewer is interpellated as the sort of subject who recognizes and values the
soldier, who understands the soldier to be a potential martyr and therefore a
hero, for doing what is most noble dying for me, for an anonymous
fraternity, for a nation.
And therein lies the key to understanding what we might think of as
the ruse of these commercials. The soldier tells me he will give his life for
me. He does not say he will do it for Colombia. In fact, other aspects of this
campaign invoke a Faith in the cause and other such empty but grand
sounding concepts. But never do we understand what is so great about
Colombia. There may be heroes in Colombia, but why? What are their
heroics for? Just me, the individualized but now nationally related viewer.
Never do we understand or learn why it is good and right to die for
Colombia. Colombia is not great because the qualities that would make it
great are missing. It is only great because it has heroes.
And so, for a moment however fleeting a nation exists. And that is
enough. It is enough because the real challenge in Colombia is not, in the
end, that of constructing a nation. The challenge is to impede the
construction of a coherent opposition that could produce a more egalitarian
and just social formation. It that sense, while there have been and will
always be efforts to rally passionate support, active and wholehearted
consent to the status quo, it would seem that the most important ideological
interventions aim at simply defusing the obverse: the accumulation and
articulation of an enthusiastic opposition to things as they are pretty
miserable for most, mostly dandy for a few. The goal is to create a sense of
reasonable doubt regarding the charges made against the Colombian
Spectacular Nationism in Colombia
oligarchy, regarding the accumulation of evidence that would suggest that
Colombia is something other than a nation, a venal system where privilege
protects itself and equality before the law is something of a contradiction in
terms. This series of commercials attempts, precisely, to create that
reasonable doubt, to leave the impression that Colombia is a nation, that it is
thus great and worthy of the expenditure and loss entailed by war, that the
war makes sense. But if that were so then the commercials themselves would
hardly need to exist. In this sense, we can thus conclude that they negate
themselves, that these attempts at ideological manipulation mark the very
limits of the same at least in a place like Colombia, where the spectacular
cannot, finally, obliterate the contrary lived experience of much of the
population.

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Berger, Peter & Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A
Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City: Anchor Books.
Bushnell, David. 1993. The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Debord, Guy. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle Donald Nicholson-Smith (Trans.).
New York: Zone Books.
Doyle, William. 2002. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hylton, Forrest. 2006. Evil Hour in Colombia. London: Verso.
Kline, Harvey. 1999. State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986-1994.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Lobo, Gregory. 2009. Colombia: algo diferente de una nacin. Bogot: CESO-Ediciones
Uniandes.
Renan, Ernst. 1990. What is a Nation? Nation and Narration. Homi K. Bhabha (Ed.).
London: Routledge, pp. 8-22.
Safford, Frank & Palacios, Marco. 2002. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph. 1989. Qu es el Tercer Estado? Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Smith, Anthony. 2010. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. 2
nd
Edition.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Thucydides. 1954. Pericles Funeral Oration. History of the Pelopponnesian War.
Trans. Rex Warner. London: Penguin Books.
Vallejo Pedraza, Diana Catalina. 2010. El modernismo como la modernidad: cierre
ideolgico en la sala 17 del Museo Nacional. Unpublished masters thesis,
Universidad de los Andes, Bogot, Colombia.




Spectacular Nationism in Colombia