"The Imagined Community" is a part of the "Homo Ludens" collection, which portrays humans as players in a world that is itself a space for play. While playfulness is often seen as incompatible with seriousness, the act of playing can lead to the development of strategies and game systems.
This particular work depicts society and human civilization playing their roles in a playroom. As creatures with roles in games, humans frequently use symbols, images, and other visuals to convey abstract, non-material concepts. These messages create fictional stories that are believed to be real because of social conventions. These conventions can serve as a unifying force for different human groups, but they can also limit the game for groups within it by imposing normative and binding regulations.
This imaginary message serves to unite several groups of people from different backgrounds, creating a paradox between free and bound humans who are shaped by immaterial beliefs that unconsciously shape culture and form a community, which we term the "Imagined Community."
