Hybridity In Postcolonial Literature

According to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk “Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.” (Abinader). Nevertheless, many individuals around the world fail to understand the real meaning of a nation in the 21st century. According to the Oxford dictionary, a nation is a large body of people brought together by uniting factors which include descent, history, culture, or language. However, this definition has changed over time, especially due to onslaught of ethnic and minority conflicts in addition to economic sovereignty. As a result, more nations in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Latin America and Europe are undergoing significant changes thus leading to the emergence of new nations. This issue has been discussed in Michael Goldfarb’s article What Is a Nation in the 21st Century? Through a comprehensive analysis of his article the real meaning of a nation in the 21st century is revealed.

Countries are no exception, their course of history and culture created a unique identity for themselves. Their cultures involves; language, values, belief, religions, and norms that identify who we are. This has caused division and struggles between groups or people, which influence our daily lives. Nevertheless, at the same time makes every person or country a unique culture to learn and explore. As the article, “The Roots of Identity and denial” stated more than 200 years ago there were no borders on this planet. People were able to travel through the hemisphere with no problem or differences.

o. Now today, India is made up of multiple identities, but “if your allegiance is to India, then you are Indian”( Wood, 245).

An individual’s search for identity is fuelled by a need to find a place in the world where we belong, thus not belonging consequently leas to a feeling of alienation and isolation. This notion is explored through May’s journey seeking to connect with her racial heritage, her idea of understanding and acceptance. The old man Graham, May encounters at the mission expresses an Aboriginal perspective on the contemporary relationship between the two societies. “no one to talk about it. And they die, kill em selves, than those governments just put another numba, nother cross in they list. They still trying to do it, kill us of, tell us that its always been they plan.” They hybrid vernacular communicates the hatred through the ethnolect strongly marked by the non –standard features of the pronouns in “they list,” “they plan.” Graham’s diatribe reflects him as an individual demonstrating the marginalisation of the minority groups. Similarly, Armin Greder’s picture book The island demonstrates the notion concerning the duality of belonging with its inherit prejudices and xenophobic attitudes expresses the majority’s deliberate exclusion of ‘the other’ outside

How a country is designed and subsequently populated will have an indelible impression on the joint psychology of that country's population. The people's understanding of themselves as a country will also affect how that nation presents itself to the rest of the world. Much of this will have to do with the country's concepts of nation, nationalism, and community. A nation is a socially-constructed concept dealing with the country itself as well as the population in the lands of that country. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a political principle which deals with the joint consciousness of that nation, including their shared targets of antagonism and satisfaction (Gelner 2006). All countries are affected by their concepts of nation and nationalism, and also by their sense of constancy and community. The history of any given nation will have an indelible impact on the way that the nation constructs itself and develops in the present and also into the future. This is particularly true of a nation which has a history filled with negative perception and has tried to evolve from that primary function. Every nation will invariably develop a unique culture which will be born of the ethnicity and religion of the people who inhabit a given community. Australia has become linked to the concept of an imagined community. Social critic Benedict Anderson coined this phrase by defining an imagined community as one in which there is not innate sense of

Source: lecture slide "National Identity • Who are the people? • 3 populations: – “the people” – Indians, not part of America – “other persons” • Who is an American?" 2.

Identity is something that is found within that you have to find when you cross cultural differences domestically and internationally. In Eboo Patel's book Acts of Faith he uses a quote that shows how identity evolves over time. “The tradition you were born into was your home, Brother Wayne told me, but as Gandhi once wrote, it should be a home with the windows open so that the winds of other traditions can blow through and bring their unique oxygen. “It’s good to have wings,” he would say, “but you have to have roots, too”(Acts of Faith). This quote really shows that identity is something that is found at what you call your home and you keep your roots there. Your roots are your upbringing when you are young and your wings are when you leave the safety of home. This quote is also showing that the winds of other traditions bring unique oxygen which would be a new experience that help you sculpt your identity in the way you want it. Tradition is something that you will always remember but in order to truly find who you are you must cross domestic and international boundaries. When you cross these boundaries you learn about your identity because your wings have been used and your roots have been deepened. Another book read over the course really demonstrates this concept of identity being found within. This book is Citizen in this book it really shows cultures being crossed not necessarily internationally but domestically. I found a quote that states, “Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the

For this essay I have chosen to use the identity lens for the postcolonial theory review. There are three literary works I will be analyzing: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tempest, and The Heart of Darkness. Each of these literary works introduces us to characters dealing with struggles impacting identities. The identity lens will show the connection between the colonizers and colonized and better define the struggles of the colonizer.

As previously stated in this paper, forming cultural identity may be more complicated today than ever. However, it is a critical part of a total structure of collective and individual identity. Based on the text, models of ethnic and cultural identity have increased dramatically over the last few decades. Today, most ethnic groups are accepting the fact that the United States is the most ethically diverse place to live and to raise a

Anderson recognizes the difficulty that arises from attempting to define nation, nationality and nationalism. Despite its influence on modern life Anderson’s aim in this essay is to prove that nationalism is a created by “cultural artefacts”. He proposes that a nation is an “imagined political community”. This imagined community does not require face to face interactions between its members. Anderson then goes on to discuss what he terms the “cultural roots” of which these ideologies stemmed from. He says the dwindling down of religious beliefs was responsible for the creation of nationalism and the concept of a nation. My interpretation of this is that because the unifier that previously existed (religion) was “ebbing” a new unifier needed to be put into place, thus the concept of nationalism was created. He points out

He especially focuses on the juxtaposition of diaspora against concepts of the “nation-state” and on the flip side, against ideas of “indigenous” people. He feels that “the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts of displacement". His examination of the use of diasporic language in the context of “tribal” and indigenous people is especially interesting, since as he is clear to point out, “tribal cultures are not diasporas; their sense of rootedness in the land is precisely what diasporic peoples have lost”, however when the discussion is about indigenous peoples who have been displaced, which is often the case, much of this language and framework used to discuss diasporas is readily

The postcolonial era presents various issues for the decolonized nations, like the reconstruction of a government and the maintenance of an economy. In addition to that, the individual identity of the colonized people is a complex issue that they must cope with as well, and it is an issue that is still present today. Compared to the other issues of postcolonialism, the construction of one’s identity might appear trivial; however, there are many problems of postcolonial identity, including the obligation of one to perceive themselves as people do from the outside through stereotypes, and the difficulty of unifying two conflicting identities: one that is created by outside sources, and one that is created through personal experiences.

A nation is a group of people who share common history, culture, language and ethnic origin often possessing or seeking its own government. National identity refers to the distinguish features of group and to the individual’ sense of belonging to it. In some case even a little difference in pronunciation is enough to categorize a person as a member of different nation but in some cases two people may be separated by language, culture, geographical location etc categorized in

According to Rourke (2008) the most important way people have identified themselves politically for five centuries is through nationalism (p. 102). Nations are formed when people who “share demographic and cultural similarities [who identify themselves] as a group distinct from other groups and want to control themselves politically” (p. 103) band together in a national political identity which has “a soul, a spiritual quality” (Rourke, 2008, p. 103). Feelings of nationalism can be very intense and difficult to put aside because of this. For the concept of globalization to continue to spread and grow nationalistic feelings must be tempered with cosmopolitan ideals.

Human beings naturally are social creatures. In order to survive, humans have since been working together. People rely to each other in order to remain alive, whether it be with finding food, building houses, or with finding jobs. There is one famous quote by John Donne that says “No man is an island”. Humans have this need to belong in a group. This need for co-existing is what lead people into forming nations. Nations are groups of people who have a very strong bond of identity; may it be with having the same ethnicity or with having the same interests. One known description of a nation is Benedict Anderson’s (1983) conception of nations as imagined communities. They are imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 1983, p. 15). By belonging in a certain nation or growing up in a certain environment, one develops their own national identity. There are a lot of factors as to how you can identify to a certain nation. Certain factors would be your language, ethnicity, culture, relationship to your land, your religion, spirituality, views with politics, or your land’s geography. As social beings, having a group you identify with has a very great effect on you. However, there also are