Abstract
Poststructuralists, such as Foucault, conceived discourse as "a form of power that circulates in the social field and can attach to strategies of domination as well as those of resistance" (Diamond & Quinby, 1988, p. 185). Discourse denotes a system of thought through which knowledge is produced, truth is constructed and maintained, and power relations are redefined. The current article examines the nationalist discourse disseminated and adopted in selected poems by the Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, African American writer Maya Angelou and British writer Rudyard Kipling. Nationalist discourse, the article argues, usually revives the sense of resistance, self-esteem and pride in the subaltern groups of the colonized and the oppressed but breeds a quest for expansion and domination in the colonizer. It holds overt and covert chauvinistic implications that necessarily deepen interracial conflicts. The chauvinistic aspects associated with the poems include an emphasis on the hierarchy of races, race-based division of the world's continents, and homogeneity of races and cultures. The comparisons the article makes proceed from the essential representation of self and other and the subsequent feelings of disrespect, distrust and fear that characterize the attitudes and perspectives of people identifying with different cultures and homelands. The article questions the dominant narratives underlying national identity in colonial and anti-colonial contexts. It further questions the monolithic concept of home, which nationalists advance to fuel colonial expansion or anti-colonial resistance. The article finds that racial and cultural chauvinism lies at the core of the nationalist discourse the selected poems reproduce.
Highlights
The article critically examines the discourse of nationalism that underlies identityconstruction in colonial and anti-colonial cultural contexts
The article finds that racial and cultural chauvinism lies at the core of the nationalist discourse the selected poems reproduce
While Angelou emphasizes the capability of African Americans to overcome racism and social inequalities, and to assert their double consciousness, the speaker reproduces the separatist ethos of Black nationalism through a chauvinistic emphasis on the blackness and self-sufficiency of Africa
Summary
The article critically examines the discourse of nationalism that underlies identity (re)construction in colonial and anti-colonial cultural contexts. On the basis of Said's anti-nationalist sentiments, the article contends that nationalism cultivates chauvinistic conceptions of cultural and racial superiority, and misconstrues identity as monolithic and homogeneous. The sense of identity pride and prejudice nationalism fosters and instills in colonial and anti-colonial subjects is a common chauvinistic aspect the article investigates in Angelou's "Africa", Darwish's "I Come from There", and Kipling's "The White Man's Burden". The Arab American theorist and critic Ihab Hassan (1955) proposed parallelism to gloss over the questions of direct and indirect influence, and alternatively focus on the similarities between the literatures of different peoples with similar social and ideological backgrounds. The views of Social Darwinists, Black nationalists and anti-colonialists are of great significance for the critical analysis and reading of the poems. Pertinent to the research problem and objectives are the questions of: To what extent are the speakers chauvinistic? How do they view the relation of the self and the other? How do they view their relationship to homeland, indigenous cultures and languages? What kind of identity do they develop and promote?
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