AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

Making Subject(s): Literature and the Emergence of National Identity.(Review)

Comparative Drama

| September 22, 2000 | CAMINO, GONZALO MARTINEZ | COPYRIGHT 2000 www.wmich.edu/compdr. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

ALLEN CAREY-WEBB. Making Subject(s): Literature and the Emergence of National Identity. Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Volume 4. New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1998. Pp. xiv + 242. $55.00.

Carey-Webb's book is a piece of cultural research which studies how literary texts construct authority and subjectivity. The book is organized in two parts plus a theoretical introduction. In the first part Carey-Webb writes about seventeenth-century European theater, comparing Lope de Vega's El nuevo mundo descubierto pot Cristobal Colon and Shakespeare's The Tempest. The second part addresses the twentieth-century third world novel, with one chapter about Les bouts de bois de Dieu by the Senegalese Ousmane Sembene, and the other about Midnight's Children by the Indian Salman Rushdie. Working with a very heterogeneous group of texts, he uses different theoretical approaches in order to understand the links between them. The final result is both enlightening and risk-taking, even, sometimes, breath-taking. We have only to notice that Carey-Webb not only compares different national literatures, but also different cultural perspectives (First World versus Third World), different epochs (seventeenth century versus twentieth century), different ways of telling (and presenting) stories (theater versus novel), and different discourses (colonial and post-colonial).

Carey-Webb's reflections start from the controversy among Fredric Jameson, Aijaz Ahmad, Prasad Madhava, and others about the rhetorical nature and agency of Third World Literature and the concept of the Third World novel as a necessary representation of national history (national allegory). Making Subjects is about how modern literature establishes national identity, and the critique of nation making is the common ground which allows the author to compare a wide range of cultural elements mentioned above: perspectives, epochs, ways of telling, and discourses. The book's introduction elaborates Benedict Anderson's thesis (in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism) about how human subjects become capable of imagining themselves part of a national community that they defend wholeheartedly, even though it is abstract and repressive. According to Anderson, the development of a capitalist marketplace for printed books in European vernacular languages in the context of a massive, urban, anonymous, "clock time" form of culture makes possible the socio-semiotic process: to become national.

Carey-Webb's analysis is especially attractive for readers interested in drama. He searches for the historical place and socio-semiotic function of early modern European drama in the cultural economy, arguing that

 
   the true antecedents of what we would today describe as a national 
   conscious begin to appear in the sixteenth century. John A. Armstrong 
   argues that in this period profound economic, religious, and linguistic 
   developments were matched with an increasing centralization and 
   bureaucratization of the state apparatus (14). 

Carey-Webb points out that in a society not yet fully literate, theater was a primary ...

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Crafting the Taiwanese: the ambivalence of Taiwan's national identity.(WORLD IN...
Magazine article from: Harvard International Review Ho, Norman March 22, 2006 700+ words
...it difficult to create a tangible national identity that encompasses all of its 23 million...construct a distinctly "Taiwanese" national identity. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many members...DPP) see the establishment of national identity as a vital element to Taiwan's...
Fostering a national identity.
Newspaper article from: Gulf News November 23, 2008 700+ words
The dilemma of national identity has become a source of major...globalisation. This phenomenon eroded national identity in favour of one global character...interest. In the Arab world, national identity has become a question of existence...
National Identity Security, Inc. New Startup Introduces New Biometrics...
Press release article from: PR Newswire June 21, 2005 700+ words
...YORK, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- National Identity Security, Inc. will begin shipping...Credit Card/Check Fraud that use National Identity Security's Biometrics Authentication...Identity Theft and Fraud FREE. National Identity Security, Inc. supports its Biometrics...
Vietnamese New Year rice cakes: iconic festive dishes and contested national...
Magazine article from: Ethnology Avieli, Nir March 22, 2005 700+ words
...sociocultural ideas of contemporary Vietnamese national identity expressed by these dishes, and explores...means for practicing and "concretizing" national identity. (Vietnam, national identity, food symbolism, rice cakes...
Defining crucial element of national identity.
Newspaper article from: Gulf News October 31, 2008 700+ words
...Federal National Council on UAE's national identity, Wejdan Al Mutairi, an Emirati...months we have been hearing about the national identity. Nobody has told us what the national identity is". Al Mutairi was referring to...
Consultation begins to bring national identity scheme a step closer to reality.
News wire article from: Europe Intelligence Wire November 21, 2008 700+ words
...2008 Consultation begins to bring national identity scheme a step closer to reality The...finer detail of the next phase of the National Identity Scheme. The Identity and Passport...volunteers at the end of 2009. The National Identity Scheme will provide people with an...
National Identity scheme moves forward.
Press release article from: M2 Presswire August 9, 2007 700+ words
...9 August 2007-UK Government: National Identity scheme moves forward(C)1994...another milestone in delivery of the National Identity Scheme with the start of the procurement...Minister Meg Hillier said: "The National Identity Scheme will be a crucial part of...
National identity scheme delivery plan published.
Press release article from: M2 Presswire March 6, 2008 700+ words
...6 March 2008-UK Government: National identity scheme delivery plan published...RDATE:06032008 The delivery of the national identity scheme gathered momentum today as...British citizens enrolled on the National Identity Register will be able to choose whether...
Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Britain,...
Magazine article from: Canadian Journal of History Hendley, Matthew April 1, 2005 700+ words
Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Britain...Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Britain...investigation of the formation of national identity and the construction and...
German National Identity Since the Holocaust.(Review)
Magazine article from: Canadian Journal of History Reiche, Eric G. December 1, 2000 700+ words
German National Identity Since the Holocaust, by Mary Fulbrook. Cambridge...the interest and imagination as much as that of national identity. Defining German national identity remains a particularly difficult quest. As Mary...
For more facts and information, see all results

Source: HighBeam Research, Making Subject(s): Literature and the Emergence of National...

©2009 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA