Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community

As most Esperanto speakers used to be concentrated in Europe and North America, countries in these regions hosted all the Universal Congresses prior to 1965. Since then, the 2017 congress was the thirteenth held outside the Europe-North America axis. Hosting an Esperanto event of this magnitude allows local Esperantists to use the language in an international setting without leaving their home—aside from helping spread the word about Esperanto in the hosting country, given that these congresses invariably gain visibility in the local and national media. However, hosting the Universal Congress also entails liaising with the city council to decorate the city with Esperanto banners and flags, as well as training a number of Esperantists to volunteer in the organisation.

During the opening ceremony and in the days that follow, the congress participants meet old friends from previous international gatherings and start conversations with Esperantists they do not know, thus seamlessly including themselves in this community. As speaking Esperanto is the starting point of Esperantists' participation in these events, the language patently emerges as the essential element that Esperantists share— which includes not only the basic grammar and vocabulary outlined by Zamenhof, but also communicative resources such as idiomatic expres- sions, proverbs, customary jokes and wordplays. However, other than the language, what other elements hold Esperantujo together? What do Esperantists share, do not share and speak about when a conversation in the language becomes more than small talk and lasts longer than a speed meeting in the corridors of the congress venue?

One feature that helps identify Esperantists and the settings of Esper- antujo consists of common grammar and visual language. With elements almost as old as the language itself, these include a colour—green—that stands for the hope of mutual understanding. Green is also the colour of the two core symbols that represent the language and its community: the five-pointed star, standing for the five continents, and the Esperanto Jubilee symbol, formed by E beside d, expressing the rapprochement of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets as a proxy for the West and the East. Esperanto also counts a flag (a green background with a white square in the upper-left corner containing the green star), an anthem (named La Espero or The Hope) and the image of the founding father, Zamenhof. As the congress' opening ceremony showed, these symbols are exten- sively mobilised in the rooms and corridors of the congress venue, at speeches of UEA's presidents and at the outfits of some participants who wear Esperanto-themed shirts and pins. Unsurprisingly, the Universal Congress is often held in the week around the 26th of July, Esperanto Day—when, in 1887, the Russian censors authorised the publication of the book that marked the birth of the language. Likewise, Zamenhof's date of birth is traditionally celebrated at further Esperanto gatherings on the 15th of December.

This raises a seeming paradox, as elements—such as flags, identifying symbols, anthems and a founding father—that have been historically used to justify the existence of nations, nationalities and nation-states are mobilised here to ground an international community.

Just as in the case of nationalism, the building of this commu- nity also comprises a shared knowledge of the history of Esperanto. As historians such as Ernest Renan (1990) note, aside from counting elements such as common interests and geographical territory, nation- building is primarily grounded on a common history. This serves as a base for a collective identity and for people's interest in coming together and remaining as parts of the same unity. Drawing on Renan's arguments, Eric Hobsbawm (2000, 2012) asserts that such shared knowl- edge about the past is often anchored in retrospective mythologies (2012: 255), which Esperantujo does not lack. For instance, the burning of Zamenhof's first written version of the language by his father is narrated by some of Zamenhof's biographers (such as Privat 2001: 31) and conveyed as an index of Zamenhof's resilience. However, this is not present in the work of several other biographers (among which Korzhenkov 2010), leading this event to be often regarded as a myth aimed to present Zamenhof as a hero (Kolker 2005: 193—195).

Drawing on such elements, Benedict Anderson (2006) defines nations as imagined political communities. These are imagined and formed by people who perceive themselves as part of a group even though, for practical reasons, they will never be able to interact in person with all the community's members and thus prove, in a comprehensive manner, the community's concrete existence. Accordingly, a nation—like any other imagined community, in which we can include Esperantujo— is founded upon the ideas that people hold about its existence and on a sense of belonging to it. As I argued elsewhere (Fians 2012), Esperanto's internationalism is largely grounded in arguments, visual language, grammars and recollections of the past akin to those used by nationalisms. However, even though these elements matter to express people's allegiance to Esperanto, they are far from sufficient to justify why more than 1,000 people from 61 countries save their money and cross the world nearly every year to spend a week socialising with fellow Esperantists.