The "Motherland": An Archetypal and Postcolonial Reading of Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad

Working at the intersection of postcolonial and archetypal criticism, this article investigates the role of women in resistance literature by looking at a piece of postcolonial Arabic fiction, Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad (1969). Rooted in Arab politics concerning land rights and anti-Zionist struggle, the text offers a related archetypal approach to the depiction of women in politicized literature. Umm Saad allegorizes the struggles of Palestinians to reclaim their land. A poor peasant woman, the titular heroine embodies the intimate connection between Palestinians and their land, acting as a helper to combative men and a primal symbol for attachment to the enduring land. Umm Saad is a personal mother and a trope for a feminized colonized territory, metaphorically representing the Palestinian nation and assuming mythological features enabling her to identify with the Earth Mother to send a message against dispossession. Since she embodies positive mother archetype symbolism (the personal mother and the Earth Mother), she acts as a source of fertility and protection. Expressing a political statement via the mother archetype, Kanafani appeals to a basic human need, i.e. the need to settle down in one’s land, which makes woman an indispensible part of the collective unconscious of any nation. Keywords: Archetypal Criticism; Kanafani; Mother(land); Postcolonial Arabic Fiction; Umm Saad.

Problematising Tribality: A Critical Engagement with Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories

Tribality simply means the characteristic features of various tribal communities and the qualities of being tribal. In the 1940s leading anthropologists like Verrier Elwin and G.S.Ghurye tried to theorize and categorize tribal identities. However, they were often accused of representing either a ‘protective’ or ‘romantic’ notions of tribality. One cannot determine the tribality of a person based on their features, dialects, food habits or geographical location. Tribality is said to bind the pan-Indian Tribal literature which is again problematic considering language which is considered as the useful indicator of any identity. Tribal Literature is a distinct form of writing to represent people, things and ideas in their cultural authenticities. The tribals essentially have an oral culture and thus when a tribal writer like Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, a Government Doctor by profession, writes in the canonical English language, we will be tempted to probe if he seeks to ‘write in’ or ‘write back’ to the mainstream literary culture; or if his works can fit into the mould of minor literature, thereby making the seemingly personal an intensely political statement. This paper also aims to interrogate issues of tribal identity and their representation through a critical engagement with Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories (2017).

A case analysis of political discourse ambivalence: Between the truth and falsity

Many false statements in connection with COVID-19 have fueled a number of rumors and conspiracy theories in the world. Politicians tend to use complicated technical systems and information technologies in order to influence people’s consciousness, feelings and social behavior. Under the guise of taking care of people’s wellbeing they pursue their own objectives. The political leaders have challenged the world with their claims and political statements which hypocritically announced their striving to serve for the sake of the nations, but in fact demonstrating their strong will to benefit from the situation. However, their actions are not treated by people as aggression and don’t lead to open confrontation and aggravation of military and political relations. They paradoxically manage to balance between the truth and falsity, demonstrating ambivalence of what they state in their speeches and appeals to the nations. The basic methods of political discourse ambivalence analysis, used in the article, are: (a) fact-checking method, (b) scientific analysis of the evidence, (c) peer-reviewed studies and the others. There has been also used a method of logical comparison of three options of political discourse: Political Statement → Fact → Consequence. The analysis of mass media articles, devoted to Covid-19, has helped the author to systematize the elements of political discourse processing (the politicians’ statements for the good of the people) and political cognition (the actual meaning of those actions, which can potentially lead to confrontation between nations). The author is trying to find out the actual reasons of the growing gap between the governments and ordinary people, between nations in the world.

A Critique of Abu Bakrah's Hadith on Women Political Leadership

Discourse on Muslim women political leadership is based on the Prophetic hadith which states that “a people ruled by a woman will never prosper.” This generates a serious controversy in socio-cultural milieus which civilizational edifices are built on Islamic foundations. This research critiques this hadith through the historical lens of the past and extra-textual reality of the present. The hadith is the linchpin of all arguments against women leadership, which apparently prophesied failure of a nation under leadership of a woman. It employs the method of documentary analysis and adopts Immanent Critique advanced by Ahmad as its theoretical framework. It argues, within that framework, that women with leadership prerequisite could be successful leaders. It finds that, women, just like men, could lead nation(s) to prosperity. It thus concludes that the prophetic political statement which prophesies the downfall of a nation under woman leadership is contextual; and cannot be generalized.

Sociopolitical intellectual humility as a predictor of political attitudes and behavioral intentions

Recent research has highlighted the relevance of intellectual humility to politics. Among a U.S. sample (N = 852), we examined self-reported sociopolitical intellectual humility (SIH), a nonthreatening awareness of the fallibility of one’s views about topics central to society and politics. SIH was associated with being less likely to dislike/avoid political discussion, and with more political tolerance, less social dominance orientation, and more values and behavioral intentions focused on social equality, even when controlling political orientation and other relevant factors. SIH was also associated with more positive and less negative views of an individual expressing a political viewpoint. Further, SIH moderated the extent to which initial agreement with a political statement resulted in opinion change on the basis of hearing another person's arguments on the topic. These findings may point to ways SIH is relevant to people's attitudes toward others in society.

Meganarrative as an instrument of structuring media information

The article introduces the scientific concept of meganarrative, substantiates the necessity of this term in the metalanguage of media linguistics and discusses the potential of using it as an instrument for structuring mass data in media space. The author aims to determine the linguistic resources used to create a meganarrative as a polydiscursive unit that brings together thematically related narratives expressing authors’ perception and evaluation of an event described. The possibility of using the proposed concept of meganarrative is analyzed on the example of an institutional-type political statement published by the U.S. Department of Defense. The tasks of the research consist in revealing the features of a meganarrative in media communication, establishing the causes of conflicting interests and finding linguistic means of resolving conflict situations. The study makes use of the methods of narrative and discourse analysis, contextual method, componential analysis of meanings of key lexical units and methods of linguacultural interpretation of linguistic peculiarities of a meganarrative. The research makes it possible to draw a number of conclusions: a meganarrative is understood as a polydiscursive formation which serves as a transtextual means of structuring media streams and ensuring a platform for intertextual dialogue between narrative participants of media communication; narrative techniques are shown to make an impact on the character of describing events and evaluating them in mass media; a meganarrative is shown to play an important role in uniting those who belong to the ‘US’ side, enhancing confrontation with the ‘THEM’ block and continuing rivalry with the ‘OTHER’ opponents.

Translating Muslim Women's Bodies

In the chapter, the author briefly analyzes the turbulent semantic and semiotic confrontation that accompanies the process of decoding the significances of the hijāb. The current mythologization of the hijāb unveils diverse mechanisms of constructing and regulating Muslim women's bodies and their right to autonomy. In the first part of this chapter, eight meanings attributed to the hijāb by Muslim interpreters are discussed: a local social convention, a symbol for and a protection from the fitnah of women's bodies, a manifestation of religiosity, a feminist practice, a political statement, a cultural tradition, a subversive strategy of regaining autonomy, an artistic expression. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to some peculiar translations of hijāb that are usually validated by non-Muslim interpreters: hijāb as a religious symbolic object, a symbol of alterity, a sexist cultural manifestation, a reminder of terrorism. The chapter ends with a succinct analysis of the transformation of hijāb into a condensation symbol that manifests a mobilizing emotional power.