Description
Book SynopsisThe author demonstrates sophisticated knowledge and understanding of Kurdish history and of postcolonial, poststructuralist, and related literary theories. This book gives rich contextual detail about Turkish, Iranian, and Iraqi nation states, in which Kurds live and where, the author argues, they are systematically oppressed. The central argument in the book is that the Kurds represent an Orient within, and one that has been neglected in literary studies till now. The book places postcolonial theory in dialogue with literary critical depictions of Kemalist, Persian, and Ba'athist nationalisms in modern Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. It is argued that the adaptive modernities' of these states, constituted by Western modernity in the Middle Eastern context, embody Western colonialism in miniature. It argues that the Kurds are rendered colonial subjects within the borders of these states as portrayed by the texts under study. This book interrogates the polarizing ideology of nationhood which
Table of Contents
Introduction – Representations of Occidentalist Constructions and Racializing the Other – Portraying Modernity’s Ambivalences, Nationalist Dualism, and Ethnic Rejection – Illegal Spaces and Lawless Bodies within Nation-States – Narrating Homelessness, Assimilations, and Unbelonging – Constructions of Femininity in the World of Orientalist and Nationalist Patriarchy – Conclusion – Works Cited.
