How printing press and national consciousness shaped modern culture

Anderson and Postman

On Benedict Anderson and Neil Postman

Benedict Anderson believed that the printed language laid the foundation for national consciousness by creating unity and the exchange of ideas in spoken vernaculars, by giving a new fixity to language, thus helping to build a national image, and by creating languages of power (Anderson). Neil Postman believed that printing gave importance to the authors, thus posterity became a living idea and a matter worth fighting for (Postman). Moreover, it was capable of changing the habits of a people and of changing the habits of their minds (Postman). Thus, the printing press opened a door in which an entire culture entered and emerged enlightened, for they were no longer subject to ignorance, but now were capable of exploring their own culture and those of others (Postman). Both authors agree that the printing press provided the catalyst for humanity to move from darkness into the light by giving them the printed word in their own language.

Philip Curtain notes that the democratic revolution that began with the American and French revolutions continued through the Spanish-American wars for independence (Curtain). The emancipation of the plantation complex stretched from 1770 to 1890 and through the period of World War I, while wage-labor plantations continued the racial domination of European masters over non-European workers lasted even longer, because the plantation complex was far too elaborate to be dismantled suddenly because in most places it depended on a continuous flow of fresh slaves to replace births and deaths (Curtain).