Conclusion
The conclusion to Serial Forms looks ahead to the serial European revolutions of 1848. Benedict Anderson argues that ‘nationalism lives by making comparisons,’ and 1848 was the definitive moment for the international comparison of nationalisms. As Karl Marx noticed at the time, these were revolutions that understood themselves in terms of international communications and evinced a seriality of form that suggested an equivalence of scale and a category identity across Europe and beyond. But without the new international consciousness of interconnectedness already brought about by a serial permeability of texts, ideas, and politics, the multiple revolutions of 1848 would never have happened. Seriality would enable the political struggle of the 1840s and would ultimately create a new theoretical understanding of that struggle too. The irony is that after 1848, this same international revolutionary energy would be recycled into national liberal state apparatuses and major technological state infrastructures.