On creoles and technologies of nation-making: Nick Joaquin as a theorist of nationalism

ABSTRACT This article compares the historical work of Filipino fictionist Nick Joaquin with Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. It contends that Joaquin developed ideas comparable to Anderson’s roughly the same time. Joaquin, like Anderson, traces the origins of modern nationalism to creoles (Europeans born in the colonies) and views nationalism as a product of technological change. In comparing Joaquin’s work with one of the twentieth century’s most important historical works, this article makes a case for Joaquin as an important theorist of nationalism.