• 3 Year Programme of Workshops

• Workshop One
  June 2001

• Workshop Two
  November 2001

• Workshop Three
  June 2002
  

• Workshop Four
  June 2003

• Professor Sabry Hafez
  Publications List

• Professor Azzedine Haddour
  Publications List

• Sites and Events of Related Interest
  

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Narrating and Imaging the Nation

Project Leaders: Professor Sabry Hafez (SOAS) and Dr Azzedine Haddour (UCL)

Research Questions

What is the role of narrative genres, particularly the novel, in shaping the imagined community that is called the nation?

How can the study of narrative texts modify theories of narrative and nationalism at the same time?

How does the imagining of a nation in an anti-colonial setting differ from the same process in countries which did not suffer colonialism?

What goes into the process of articulating a sense of national identity?

What happens to nationalist texts as they are disseminated: how are they received, by whom, and for what purposes are they put to use?

Does the imagining of a particular nation alter depending on the mode or genre of narrative employed—for instance, historiography as opposed to the novel?

Does women's writing play a role in this imagining or is it a purely male narrative project?

Research Context

In the name of the Nation many wars have been fought over the centuries, and most of the devastating and bloody conflicts of the recent decades have been waged to preserve, safeguard or destroy certain imagined communities. The study of nationalism and the nation is therefore vital for understanding an increasingly complex world. This study has undergone radical changes in the last few decades with theories of nationalism, ideology and sociology converging and interacting to develop our understanding of the nation. A number of these modern theories emphasise the importance of the process of imaging and articulating the nation in the development of the very concept of nationalism. Some of these theories attribute a special role to culture and literary products in general, and the novel in particular. But the question of culture and the role of the novel in narrating and imagining the nation has rarely been subjected to in-depth academic scrutiny, particularly with respect to the cultures and literatures of Asia and Africa. This project aims to explore the problems of nations and nationalism in the literatures of Asia and Africa, both in a comparative manner, and in single case studies of the literature of one nation.

Research Methodology

The project needs to bring the different strands of nationalism into scrutiny: the politico-historical, the cultural, the ideological, and the literary. It is an interdisciplinary project, which aims to relate theoretical discourses about nationalism to both historical practices and political manifestations of nationalism on the one hand, and the literary narrating and imaging of the nation on the other. The comparative dimension of the project is vital for some of the project's main aims: formulating an interdisciplinary theory for literature and nationalism based both on the experience of colonised countries and those that have not been colonised. This may in turn enrich the post-colonial debate concerning the role of colonialism in shaping certain tendencies in nationalism and/or literature. In addition, by taking the study of both literature and nationalism outside the Euro-centric domain, the project will enable scholars and critics of Asia and Africa to participate in the formulation and modification of theories of literature and nationalism.

Research Objectives

By systematically exploring the process of imagining and narrating the nation in different Asian and African cultures at different stages of their development, the project aims to produce sophisticated cross-cultural mappings of the field. It will seek to pose further research questions about the literatures of Asia and Africa, suggest new methods of comparison between them, and modify the prevalent theoretical assumptions about them. This project will include specialists and research students in a concerted programme of research to explore these issues through the study of a wide range of literature from Asia and Africa. With the involvement of specialists from UCL, comparisons can be made between the experience and expression of nationalism in both Western and non-western contexts. This comparative perspective across regions, literary traditions, and nationalisms will help to interrogate the specificities of Asian and African experiences of nation-building, and contest the often unitary and Eurocentric assumptions which have determined theories of nationalism in these regions.

Click HERE to link to the 3 year programme of workshops