LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

yasir suleimaninvariably invokes the symbols and motifs of pre-modernity insofar as theseanswer to the criterion of resonance mentioned above. Early pronouncementson nationalism in Western Europe in the late eighteenth century and earlynineteenth century established the connection between nation and literature asa cornerstone of nation building. The German Romantics gave currency to thisconcept, although their ideas on the formation of national identities have astrong essentialist flavour. Giving literatures national names and treating themas discrete units were an expression of this mode of thinking in which theuniqueness of the nation and the ‘exceptionalism’ of its literature had to beproclaimed, affirmed and constantly cultivated. This trend gathered momentumin the twentieth century, wherein literatures came to be identified and studiedin national units in a way that overrides the linguistic medium through whichthese literatures are expressed. This explains why, as literary categories, English,Scottish and Irish literatures, for example, are thought to have identities of theirown, in spite of the fact that they are – albeit not universally in Scottish andIrish literature – expressed through varieties of the same language. The sameapplies to American and to Canadian literature in English in spite of theirdifferent histories and political trajectories (Corse 1995, 1997). It is thereforenot surprising that the notion of ‘literary devolution’ (see Crawford 1992) hadbeen utilised as the counterpoint of political devolution in the British Isles atleast half a decade before the latter became a legal reality in Scotland in 1999.A minority of scholars deplore this effect of nationalism. Elie Kedouri condemnsnationalism for disrupting ‘whatever equilibrium had been reached between thedifferent groups [in a community], [by] reopen[ing] settled questions and …renewing strife’ (1966: 115). Kedouri further condemns nationalism for beingthe invention of ‘literary men who had never exercised power, and appreciatedlittle the necessities and obligations incidental to intercourse between states’(ibid.: 70–1). This one-sided view of nationalism remains the exception not therule. Commenting on the role of poetry in nation building, Aberbach writes(2003: 271):Nationalism, though exposed in its potential for destruction, remains a majorpolitical force in civilisation. National poetry is not marginal but expresses much ofwhat ordinary people feel. It tends to be vindicated by history, if not in its call forviolent upheaval or revenge, then in its hope for national renewal, both political andspiritual. Poetry continues as a midwife to nationalism, though rarely with theundiluted violence and idealism of the past.— 4 —Rather than being on the wane under the onslaught of globalisation andpost-modernity, the nation is entrenching itself as a fact of our social andpolitical worlds. This is particularly true of the Middle East, wherein nationalliteratures act as markers of the nation regionally and in the international arena.Although the concept of the nation-state is culturally, politically and sociowww.taq.ir