Resistance in Mahmoud Darwish’s “I Come From There”: A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Postcolonial studies have dealt with the protest literature since they consider it as the voice of the oppressed people. In the same aspect, resistance literature begins in Palestine with Ghassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish after 1948. Protest literature aims not only at freeing the oppressed from dominating powers and overturning the authority but also at liberating the humans from oppression. “The term resistance "Moqawamah" was first applied in a description of Palestinian Literature in 1966 by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanfani in his study "Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine" (Harlow, 1987). Mahmoud Darwish has been involved in Palestine’s political affairs throughout his entire life. In “I Come from There”, Darwish tries to raise the voice of Palestinians; therefore, it can be heard all over the world. The theme of this poem assures his refusal to forget his country and unveils the struggle for a doomed homeland. By appropriating the descriptive and analytical method, along with the discourse analysis of Darwish’s terms and phrases in the poem “I Come from There”, this paper clarifies the symbolic meaning of the words to represent his sense of loss and sense of possession that he feels towards his land. Against this, the paper argues whether resistance protest literature succeeds in defending oppressed people and giving the subaltern their voices and whether literature helps the occupied people to get free and believe in non-violent resistance instead of violent resistance.