DIASPORIC WRITING

THE NAMESAKE
QUESTION#1
(A) PROBLEMATIZING IDENTITY: A STUDY OF GOGOL’S CHARACTER IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S THE
NAMESAKE

ABSTRACT
Jhumpa Lahiri was born to an educated middle class Bengali parents in London and grown up in Rhodes Island,
Lahiri authentically portrays her experiences of problematizing identity in her first novel The Namesake. In this novel
Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants resemble that of her protagonist, Gogol Ganguly. Lahiri
belongs to the second generation of Indian Diaspora whose ongoing quest for identity never seems to end. They feel
sandwiched between the country of their parents and the country of their birth. They are to maintain ties between the
ideologies of these two countries which are poles apart. But in this process they are caught between acute identity
crisis from where there is nowhere to go. Through Gogol, Lahiri presents identity crisis which she herself has faced
acutely. Gogol struggles throughout the novel with his dual identity - American and Bengali. He changes his name in
an effort to do away with any negative connotation there is with the origin of his name. To Gogol, it is not connected to
him or his Bengali heritage in any way and therefore he initially rejects it. The Namesake expands on the perplexities
of the immigrants experience and the search for identity. Gogol is burdened with the seemingly absurd name of the
long-dead writer, awkwardly struggles to define himself. Lahiri represents Gogol as someone who is confused about
his identity, she also presents Gogol as a prototypical transnational agent who lives between two different worlds with
the possibility of creating multiplicity of identities.

INTRODUCTION
In the Namesake, Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants resemble that of her
protagonist, Gogol Ganguly .In the Namesake, she reflects Indian Diaspora and creates a narrative that
reveals the thought of cultural difference and identity. Names play an essential role for people to identify
themselves and help to communicate

with each other. As identity becomes the core issue. Indian custom follows different kinds of customs and
ceremonies of naming a born baby. Namesake deals with the clash of cultures. Pet names are sometimes
silly and meaningless. The Namesake reflects the struggle of Gogol Ganguli that goes through identity
crises with his strange name. The novel moves around the community and couple of Bengali origin in the
USA migrated for several reasons. They are the first and their children are second generation south Asian
immigrants. Narrating the story of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, Lahiri emphases on the cultural
displacements of a family, immigrants from Calcutta who settle in Boston to study, work and raise a
family.

The main concern of novel is Gogol the symbolic of community without a name, who is himself misnamed
Gogol. He struggles with his name. Gogol wants to identify himself as a born and brought up of USA rather
than to be identified from his parent’s Bengali culture. He deserts the name Gogol and tries to become
someone else. The question of identity develops crucial when a person is culturally displaced in the two
worlds in which he is living. Gogol is born after his father survives from a depressing train accident, his
father sees the name Gogol as a pet name as a sign of his rebirth. Though, Gogol does not understand that
how meaningful is his name in the beginning. Gradually, he starts realizing the significance of his name
which creates difficulties with his identity when he grows up.
The main problem with Gogol is that he is a character who is living in two entirely different worlds. Gogol
does not understand the emotional importance of the name. He does not like to be known by a name
which is neither American, nor Indian American, nor even first name. The name becomes a problematic
for Gogol, because he feels painful with the Russian name. It makes him to disconnect himself from his
family members. Later on, Gogol grows hatred toward this name during youth and decides to use his legal
name, Nikhil, as an overcoat to escape from Indian culture. Although the name Nikhil brings more
confidence in him , Gogol is always there inside him. Soon he experiences a sense of discontent and
futility about dodging his roots.
“Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli
will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist. Yet the thought of this
eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no solace at all” (Lahiri 289).

The Namesake begins with Ashoke’s migration to the USA, with his recently wed wife Ashima, to
complete his Ph. D. in Boston. Ashima has to left her original homeland, “the country in which she has
grown to know and love her husband” (Lahiri 16), and she is now living in the host country, where
there is “not a soul on the street” (Lahiri 30); where she bore her son, Gogol—grown up there and
“takes the occasional pranks and pinpricks of some native chauvinistic classmates in his
stride”(Lahiri 44). Ashima sees USA having “another culture” and “another history” which is entirely
alien to her. Most of all, the ‘motherhood in a foreign land” was frightening experience for Ashima, and
afterwards to “raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little,
where life seems so tentative and spare” was awfully hunting her all the time (The Namesake 5- 6).
In the novel, Ashima’s constant burden and continuous anxiety of being a foreigner is revealed as:
…being a foreigner... is a sort of lifelong pregnancy- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a
continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been
ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more
complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that
elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect. (49-50)

As Gogol dislikes this name and his abhorrence for his name has been enlightened in the novel as: "For by
now, he's come to hate questions pertaining to his name, hates having constantly to explain. He
hates that his name is both absurd and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who he is, that is
neither Indian nor American but full of all things Russians" (Lahiri 72)

Gogol, Sonia and Moushumi Mazoomdar in the novel are the second generation Indian Americans, Lahiri,
find it challenging to identify themselves either with the people at home or with the present society
outside. The main character Gogol is the true child of cultural distortion who loses all his interest in his
native culture. He is charmed by the American life and he wants to be different from his parents and
wants to escape from the Bengali customs, culture, history and even his name ( from Gogol to Nikhil)
which is related with his father’s past history. It is his father’s unexpected and unfortunate death that
brings him close to the family. This cultural disorientation is actually realized when Moushumi breaks off
her relationship with the American Graham. Gogol and Moushumi resemble each other in many ways. In
their personal life “they want to settle life like their parents but their conflicting identities interact
with each other and put them dismantled.” (Lahiri 234)

Gogol’s name is one of the main causes which make him feel isolated. His loneliness starts from the
moment when he enters the world. After his birth, choosing a name becomes a problematic thing for
them. The difference between the naming process in American and Indian cultures drives them into
confusion. Ashima wants her grandmother to advise a name but the name is not received, the letter
having been lost in transit. The hospital authorities do not permit them to leave the hospital without
naming the new born, in keeping with the rules. Ashok names him Gogol after the name of his beloved
Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, thinking of it as a pet name only, which is a common practice in India. The
book of this author helps him to save his life. But this very name that is the first identity of their son, is
the very first reason which pays to the problem of identity crisis. When his parents take him to school to
start his schooling, they have a new name ‘Nikhil’ for him. But this time it was Gogol who does not
respond to the new name ‘Nikhil’. It was his first attempt not to accept a dual identity. This refusal left
him alone with his old name Gogol. Gradually, he starts knowing the rare nature of his name which
problematizes his identity when he grows up then he becomes anxious to get rid of his name. He does not
feel like an American with this name. His name Gogol “sounds ludicrous to his ears, lacking dignity of
gravity.” (76) He does not want to read Nikolai Gogol because he thinks it “would mean paying tribute
to his namesake, accepting it somehow” (92).

As name is considered an introductory ID to the world but Gogol "he came to hate question pertaining
to his name, hates having constantly to explain. He hates having to tell people that it doesn't mean
anything in Indian... he hates that his name is both silly and difficult to understand, that it has
nothing to do with who he is, that he is neither Indian nor American but of all things Russian”.

The Ganguli’s to incorporate the American way of living into their lives for their sake of children: “They
learn to roast turkeys… thanksgiving, to nail a wreathe to their door in December, to wrap woolen
scarves around snowman, to color boiled eggs violet and pink at Easter for the sake of Gogol and
Sonia they celebrate with progressively increasing fanfare the birth of Christ an event the children
look forward to far more than the worship of Durga and Sarawati” (64).

At the end of the novel, Gogol is not so anti-Gogol anymore. He accepts the destiny of Indian-American
Identity, accepts the Bengali culture and its customs without resenting the American ways of living. All
his struggles pay him back with confusion about who he truly is. He sees himself as Nikhil, determined to
be truly American, yet he fails to get rid of Gogol. In the end, he selects to stick with “Gogol,” that is Indian
identity.

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(B)DIASPORIC ASPECTS IN THE NAMESAKE

ABSTRACT
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri's second literary work, was released in 2003 and is a novel about the Indian Diaspora.
The Indian Diaspora has a long history, but it has recently grabbed the interest of creative authors. The novel depicts
the everyday routines of an Indian immigrant family who immigrated to America following the country's freedom. As
the daughter of immigrants, it's safe to assume that the writer is concerned with the obstacles that immigrants face in
America, including their traditions, values, culture, religion, language, and, most importantly, their identity. The
consequences of the Diaspora on the characters in The Namesake are examined in this paper.

INTRODUCTION
The colonial period gave individuals in Asia and Africa, the colonized territories, the chance to go to
Europe, the imperial centre. People continued to migrate for economic, political, cultural, and personal
reasons even after the colonial period ended. They made their home there. Diaspora is the phenomena of
people travelling to and establishing in a foreign nation. Because the old nation, together with its religion,
language, and culture, occupies a significant part of their minds, the settlers have a difficult time
integrating into the new land's community. Diasporas confront significant challenges from the start of
their settlement in a foreign place, as they must transcend their previous identities and blend in with the
current conditions. Their two lives old and new are divided by an unspoken conflict, resulting in a
predicament for them. They come across the juxtaposition of conflicting views about the two worlds,
which leads to a condition of dual life that is eternally tormented. They frequently learn, to their horror,
that they belong nowhere and are residents of no man's land. They can't forget their history or fully
accept the new place, so they try to live with their mental dualism. They must undergo a significant
reorganization of their ideas and behaviors in order to do so, which makes them feel alienated in their
new existence. Those who were born and reared in another country have an entirely distinct diasporas
experience. They are free of the ailment that plagued the earlier settlers in terms of their connection to
the old nation. This generation learns about their homeland via their few trips, books, films, and stories
shared by their parents. As a result, kids grow up with little awareness of their home nation, which
gradually expands as they mature. When their history is revealed to them for acceptance, or their current
identity is questioned in a strange nation, they are faced with a dilemma. Their parents' fixation with
their ethnicity can often lead to a series of inquiries regarding the paths they should choose. This
eventually leads to the same ailment as the initial settlers. However, because of their attachment to the
place in which they were born and raised, it's easy to imagine that their suffering isn't as severe as that of
the original settlers. Lahiri examines these two types of dispersion in The Namesake.

In her novel The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri explores the haunting experience of Indian immigrants
Ashoke and Ashima, as well as their children, Gogol and Sonia, who were born and raised in America. This
novel explores the Indian Diaspora through the lenses of place, time, language, and culture. In her work,
Lahiri mentions three continents: Asia, Europe, and North America. She plans to use the major characters,
Aahoke, Ashima, and Gogol, to explore the novel's topic, diasporas dilemma. Diaspora tension isn't very
high for Ashoke. It's particularly noticeable in Ashima and Gogol. Sonia is constantly kept out of the
novel's major conflict. I believe that studying the important personalities will provide us with a good
knowledge of their diasporas difficulties.

In The Namesake, Ashoke, the son of an Alahabad customs official, travels to America to study fiber optics
for a PhD. Because of the instability in India, the West has always piqued his interest. The train accident,
which occurred while he was travelling to his grandfather's home in Jamshedpur, bolstered his decision
to leave India, the country "...in which he was born and in which he had nearly died" (JL 20), and to
move to the "metropolitan centre" from "the situation of conflict and uncertainty..." (Colonial 146)
(Colonial era, 1970)

Ashoke is psychologically equipped to assimilate into mainstream American culture. His refusal to return
to India is demonstrated by his employment at an American institution, the relocation of his wife, and the
purchase of a property in the United States. But he can't forget about his history. It is an unavoidable
occurrence for immigrants. In his article "Diasporas and Multiculturalism," Victor J. Ramraj correctly
observes:
Even if diasporas may not desire to return home, they have a conscious or subconscious tie to the
ancestral country's traditions, practices, values, faiths, and languages wherever they are. (BK 215)
For this reason, he has intentionally adhered to his Indian sect during his thirty-two-year stay in America.
He has shown an interest in sending his son, Gogol, to learn Bengali. He gladly attends Durga Puja and
other religious festivities with his children out of respect for ancestral custom. He, too, has developed a
taste for Indian cuisine. The diasporas conflict in Ashoke isn't stated explicitly. When Ashima repeatedly
pressurizes him to return to India, he sometimes feels compelled to do so. But he can't guarantee that
since he recalls Ghosh, the railway passenger he encountered on his way to his grandfather's house. Mr.
Ghosh admitted to Ashoke, "it is my greatest regret, coming back," (JL 33), just hours before his death
in the train disaster, in the context of his return from London. He is concerned about India's societal
unrest. As a result, he considers his voyage to America to be his final movement, making it simpler for
him to acclimate to American society without the agony that comes with being diasporas.

Ashima's character in terms of her marriage, her trip to America, her life there, and the continual strain
she feels within to cope with American life, in the hopes of discovering her diasporas troubles.

When Ashima married Ashoke, a Ph. D., "she was studying for a college degree," her steady
environment in India altered dramatically (JL 7). In compared to the other suitors, "the first had been
a widower with four children, the second, a newspaper cartoonist who knew her father, had been hit
by a bus in Esplanade and lost his left arm," Ashoke is undoubtedly the finest suitor for her (JL7). She
appreciates her mother's "salesmanship" (JL 7) for her engagement to an American citizen. Before their
first encounter, she was "unable to resist a sudden and overpowering yearning" (JL 8) to walk into
Ashoke's American shoes.

This may seem small in relation to the novel's overall narrative, which is designed to depict diasporas
conflict. Her handling of Ashoke's shoes, on the other hand, demonstrates her unmistakable interest with
Ashoke's American identity. Ashoke's American identity overshadows her other identities as a daughter,
sister, and native Indian, as well as her cultural identities. This represents her anticipated lengthy life in
America, from which she will never fully emerge. She resembles her necklaces, chokers, and bracelets,
which are stored in "an unusually big safety deposit box in a New England bank vault" (JL 9). This is a
symbolic vaulting of herself into America's secure vault.

She, like her spouse, enjoys American life because of the safety it provides to modern citizens. Her history
begins to influence her life in America as time passes. She isn't self-sufficient enough in America to make
her own decisions about her life, work, and future. Despite living in a materialistic society, she maintains
her Indian custom of being a housewife by limiting herself to domestic duties. She, too, has spent twenty
years in America without working. When she is forty, she takes a job at a library.

With the birth of her first child, Gogol, her obsession with America fades. Existence at Cambridge during
her pregnancy is far from typical for her, and the hardest part for her is motherhood in a strange country,
where she is "terrified to raise a kid in a country where she is linked to no one, where she knows so
little, where life appears so uncertain and sparse" (JL 6). A Diaspora’s sense of estrangement is a
constant source of pain. She has suffered from it since the beginning of her life in America, and it is most
evident with the delivery of her first child, who is born: The baby's birth, like most things in America,
feels random, on half true, without a single grandmother, dad, uncle, or aunt by her side. She can't
help but pity her son as she stokes and suckles him and analyses him. She had never known someone
who came into the world so alone and destitute. (JL25)
Her shift from an Indian housekeeper to an American mother begins with her first kid, Gogol. She should
be honored as a wife, mother, and, most importantly, an American. She must undergo significant
personal, psychological, and behavioral adjustments in order to acquire all of these identities. Bringing
about change isn't always simple; it may be stressful. Throughout her lengthy existence in America,
Ashima has embraced this as well. "Recognizing the difficulty of reproducing or returning to the past,
and the absurdity of an obsessive fixation with origins" is at the heart of Diaspora (Colonial 147). In
The Namesake, Ashima suffers much as a result of her failure to replicate India. As a result, she shows her
deep dissatisfaction with her life in America and often pressurizes Ashoke to return to India. "I'm saying
I don't want to raise Gogol alone in the country," she informs Ashoke after Gogol's birth. This isn't
right. I'd want to return" (JL 33). However, she eventually comes to terms with the realities of her
existence in America. The idea that she will never be able to return to India fills her with the angst of
diasporas. She discovers conflicted feelings about her previous and present lives. As a result, she
reorganizes her day-to-day activities. She can go to the market by herself and buy all she needs, and she
"begins to take satisfaction in doing things alone" (JL 34). She has a pattern for taking care of Gogol,
cooking for them, bringing them out, or waiting for Ashoke at Harvard Yard with handmade samosas and
a new thermos of tea for seven days of the week. She will, unavoidably, grow preoccupied with her
normal American existence. However, as she revisits her past, she feels the pangs of Diaspora, which
leads to a serious dilemma in her life.

As a Diaspora, Ashima is defined by her "constant travel between home and abroad" (BK 6). The
movement constantly leads her to the construction and reproduction of the past. For this, she …dumps
the letters onto her bed and goes through them, devoting an entire day to her parents’ words, allowing
herself a good cry. She revisits their affection and concern, conveyed weekly, faithfully, across continental
the bits of news that had had nothing to do with her life in Cambridge but which had sustained her in
those days nevertheless. (JL160) She neither rejects nor accepts her previous existence. She floats
between these two worlds, like the letter her grandma mailed with her son's name on it that was
misplaced.

Despite their evident devotion to their country, diasporas have a "yearning for a sense of belonging to
the current place of domicile" (BK 216), which strengthens their bond with it. Furthermore, Victor J.
Ramraj points out the following truth while commenting on the themes of Pillai's stories: The diasporas
Indian population must be willing to adapt and change its traditions and rituals to current Western
ideas and practices. (BK 219)

Ramraj's insight does not go unnoticed by Ashoke and Ashima. As a result, neither Ashoke nor Ashima
ever meddle in Gogol's personal life, including his honors course topic selection, his relationships with
Ruth and Maxine, and his living together with Maxine at her house. They appreciate their son's newfound
Americanization, but it's an imposed welcome that doesn't come from a clean permitted heart. They
experience diasporas tension as a result of their fight between yes and no. In Ashima, it is more severe.
She is diametrically opposed to her husband and children. In response to Ashima's failure to integrate
herself into American life, Lahiri states, At forty-eight, she has learned to appreciate the isolation that her
husband, son, and daughter are accustomed to and do not seem to mind. Her children reassure her, "It's
not such a big thing." "At some time, everyone should live on their own." However, Ashima believes
she is too old to develop such a talent. (JL160)
Gogol, the protagonist of The Namesake, who was born and raised in the United States. When it comes to
naming, Gogol's existence begins with a dilemma of identification. The elders, according to Indian
tradition, are responsible for naming. Ashima's grandma, the family's oldest, is permitted to name
Ashima's first son, who "sent the letter herself, going with her cane to the post office, her first journey
out of the house in a decade" (JL 25). They, on the other hand, have never received the letter. Because a
newborn cannot be released from the hospital "without a birth certificate" (JL 27), they deviate from
convention by giving their kid a "backup" (JL 28) name in order for his birth certificate to be granted.

To come up with a "backup" name, Ashoke consults the book that saved him from a train disaster when
he was younger in India. He was reading Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Overcoat" at the time. The
rescue crew gave up hope of finding any surviving guy in Ashoke's compartment, and Ashoke was located
under the mangled limbs of Ghosh in a horrific scene. Because of the shifting of the pages of Gogol's book,
the rescue crew was able to identify him. In this sense, Gogol's work becomes a metaphorical saviour for
him, and he owes the Russian writer a lifelong debt of gratitude. So he gives his son "the perfect pet
name" (JL 28), which is Gogol.

Ashima agrees to the name because she understands that "the name signifies not just for her son's
existence, but also for her husband's" (JL 28). They aren't satisfied with the name, as Ashima explains,
"it's merely a pet name, not to be taken seriously, only something to put on the certificate for now to
discharge them from the hospital" (JL 29). "Gogol Ganguly is registered in the hospital's files" in this
way. (JL 29)

As a result, Gogol is born into the world with a name that is neither Indian nor American. Without certain,
Gogol's parents were unaware of the dreadful experience he would endure later than the rest of his
hybrid name. The name is a symbol of rejection and disapproval for Ashoke and Ashima. They react to the
typed name of Gogol on the prescription because "it doesn't seem right; pet names aren't intended to
be made public in this way," as Lahiri puts it (JL 36). It's a fresh source of friction in their lives that
displays their dissatisfaction with the present. The same thing Gogol does after going to learn a lot about
his namesake Nikolai Gogol's biography.

Gogol's hybridized name is always a source of conflict for him, a stimulus for him to uncover his own
acculturated identity, for him to shuffle and reshuffle his perspectives on his twin identities in America.
He bears a striking similarity to Edward Said (1935-2001), an Arab named after the Prince of Wales. In
his article "Between Worlds" from Reflections on Exile, Edward Said states, Moreover, as a
Palestinian going to school in Egypt with an English first name, an American passport, and no
certain identity, I was an uncomfortably anomalous student all through my early years, with an
unexceptionally Arab family name like Said connected to an unlikely British first name (my mother
admired the prince of Wales in 1935, the year of my birth), I was an uncomfortably anomalous
student all through my early years: a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an English first
name, (557)

Gogol, certainly, does not suffer from the same extent of identity problem as Said. However, he is brutally
tortured for his name as he integrates into American culture, befriends American females, and goes about
his daily duties.
The diasporas are shaped by time and geography. Because of the time and distance between them, Gogol
and Sonia have no feelings for India, their family, or even the Indian culture. They don't have the same
sentiments for their Indian relatives that their parents have. During their brief visits to India, they do not
appreciate the company of the numerous mashi, pishi, mama, maima, kaku, and jetu because "they do not
feel close to them as their parents do" (JL 81). They are mildly saddened by the death news of their
relatives. According to Lahiri, the typical sight of their house after receiving death news is: These killings
wake Gogol and Sonia up in the mornings, their parents wailing on the opposite side of their thin
bedroom walls. They wander into their parents' room, confused, embarrassed at the sight of their
parents' weeping, and just somewhat depressed. (JL 63)

A look inside Gogol's thinking will offer us a pleasant impression. Gogol has been uninterested in
preserving good ties with the Indians since the beginning. Even his girlfriends are all from the United
States. Later, his marriage to Moushomi proves to be a complete disaster, leading him to regard his own
people as a formed group.

Gogol always favors the American way of life to the Indian way of life. His connection with Ruth is the
culmination of a lengthy yearning to make friends with an American girl. To cope with Maxine's American
existence, he undergoes a significant transformation. Even yet, he strives to shake from his parents'
questionable habits in order to have a more genuine relationship with Maxine. Again, Lahiri says:

He didn't want to go to his father's alma mater, live in a Central Square apartment like his parents did, or
revisit the streets that his parents talked about fondly. He didn't want to go home on weekends, to go to
pujos and Bengali parties with them, to be completely immersed in their culture. 126 (JL)

It's also the fact that he doesn't have a smooth American existence with Maxine at Ratcliff's House.
Because he is an Indian, he feels inferior in Maxine's household, which motivates him to become more
Americanized. The tension that emerges from the coexistence of his ambiguous cultures, which he
inherited from his own family and American society, is then produced. This conflict might sometimes lead
to diasporas re-discovering him. Gogol's relationship with Maxine falls down as a result of his recognition
that there is a gap between them that makes their connection impossible. The loss of his father adds to
this knowledge. "He realises now the shame that his parents had within, at not being able to do
anything when their parents died in India," he says (JL 179). He is now regretful for his indifference to
his parents' feelings. With his father's death, cremation, newspaper obituary, calls from other places with
condolence messages, the mourning period, and the feast on the breaking day of the mourning period, his
life takes a new turn. All of this has given him a fresh perspective on himself and a strong psychological
bond with his family. His condescending tone has changed in response to his newly discovered devotion
to his family. "It is the image, more than anything else, that attracts Gogol back to the home again
and again," Lahiri adds. (JL189). In this manner, the portrait becomes a testament to his self-discovery,
which liberates him from American materialism and machinery, although for the time being. This is a
major struggle for him since Americanism has always been a dominant factor in his life, whether
consciously or unconsciously. To his own people, he is an outsider. The fact that he is aware of his
isolation is the most crucial aspect about him.

In Reflections on Exile: Essays, he encounters the same sorrow as Edward Said did in his essay "Between
Worlds." My whole education was Anglo centric, so much so that I knew a great deal more about British
and even Indian history and geography of the Arab world. But although taught to believe and think like
an English schoolboy, I was also trained to understand that I was an alien, a Non European Other,
educated by my betters to know my station and not to aspire to being British. The line separating Us from
Them was linguistic, cultural, racial, and ethnic. (558)

Even his decision to marry Moushomi Majoomder, an Indian like him, was the result of an unavoidable
reshuffling of his thinking that he had practiced in his childhood. Now he's trying to figure out what they
both have in common. "In a way, he thinks, its true- they have the same coloring, the straight, thick
eyebrows, the tall, slim physique, the high cheekbones, and the black hair," Lahiri writes (JL 203).
Gogol's realization aids us in establishing his altered viewpoint. Both Ashima and Gogol, the novel's two
main protagonists, are able to interpret their fragmented ideas about their final future course before the
novel's end. "Six months of her life in India, six months in the United States," Ashima says (JL 275).
"True to the meaning of her name, she will be without borders, without a home of her own, a
resident everywhere and nowhere," writes Lahiri (JL 276). But, in terms of her life, this resolve isn't
necessarily definitive. She has a lot more to deal with. Ashima's diasporas tension of dual life is revealed
by Lahiri's observation: She had been missing her life in India for 33 years. She will now miss her position
at the library, where she had previously worked. She won't be able to stop throwing parties. She will miss
living with her daughter, the unexpected relationship they have developed, travelling to see old movies
together in Cambridge... She will miss the land where she met and fell in love with her spouse... He will
continue to occupy her thoughts here, in this house and in this town. (JL 279)

Gogol's mother's choice to spend six months in India after selling the property and dividing her time in
America opens up a new realm of possibility for him. "And yet these experiences have made Gogol,
fashioned him, decided who he is," Lahiri writes (JL 287). With his rediscovery of himself at his father's
house, among his mother's friends, and amid the books gifted by his father on his birthday, he becomes
another Ashoke for the time being. Lahiri correctly reveals Gogol's eventual fate: As the evening
progresses, he would become distracted, longing to return to his room, to be alone, to read the book he
had previously abandoned. It was about to go from his life completely until he rescued it by chance,
forty years ago, when his father was recovered from a smashed train. (JL 290)

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is a masterpiece more about Indian Diaspora. There isn't a lot of
diasporas tension around Ashoke. However, Ashima and Gogol are well-known characters with diasporas
problems. This is an increasing challenge among Indian immigrants, and it is extremely tough for them to
overcome. Lahiri hasn't attempted to bring her characters together. Ashima's final decision on her life is
just temporary. Her diasporas conflict is noticeable. Gogol's life, on the other hand, is similar to that of
millions of Indian immigrants who are continually divided by emotion, personality, religion, culture,
language, and, most importantly, relationship.

-----------------

(C) COMPARISON OF ASHIMA & KAUKUB’S CHARACTER

CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF ASHIMA FROM TNS
Homesickness can be defined as the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation
from home. The frantic attempt to recreate the previous life leads to depression and a loss of identity.
Distraught and alienated in America, Ashima pushes her Bengali heritage upon her children, Gogol and
Sonia, in an effort to lessen her homesickness throughout The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Ashima
completely rejects the bewildering American culture that is thrust upon her and becomes depressed and
homesick.

These characteristics cause her to be very miserable in her new home on Pemberton Road as she wishes
she could be surrounded by the Bengali culture she grew up with and loved so dearly. Furthermore, this
sense of homesickness and absence of her native culture causes her to force her ways upon her children
in an effort to recreate the feeling of a life she abandoned many years earlier, yet she is only to be
disappointed when her children reject that heritage.

First and foremost, Ashima has been homesick since the day she found out she was leaving Calcutta, India
to live with her husband Ashoke in America. This feeling of homesickness grew ferociously throughout
the years she lived in America, a world that lacked the Bengali culture she yearned. For example, Lahiri
writes how Ashoke would leave a cup of tea on the bedside table next to his wife where she is lying
“listless and silent” and when he returned “he would find her still lying there, the tea untouched”
(11).

This displays how deeply depressed Ashima feels due to her nostalgia and how it took a toll on her
mentally as well as physically. The only time she finally started going out of the house and found some
happiness was when her son Gogol was born. To further describe Ashima’s unhappiness, Lahiri writes
“before Gogol’s birth, her days had followed no visible pattern. She would spend hours in the
apartment, napping, sulking… but now the days that had once dragged… are consumed with
Gogol… ” (35).

After Gogol was born, Ashima had someone to put her full attention on, a routine she could follow,
making the days go by faster and a little less lonely. Now, instead of sitting at home alone in the dark
crying reading the letters her parents have sent her, she would go on walks with Gogol and sit in the park
admiring the day. Gogol gave Ashima something she had not had in a very long time, happiness and a
purpose to live. Thus, a lifelong pursuit to recreate the Bengali culture she longed for in her children’s
lives began.

Furthermore, not only was the nostalgia of her home and culture deeply depressing Ashima, but she was
also distressed by the fact that she was an alien, all alone in a foreign land she has no desire to be in
without the support of any extended family. She was an outsider in her new world, leading her misery to
overwhelm her character. Her distaste for American culture, as well as preference of her own, can be seen
in Judith Caesar’s statement by which, “the material world of America seems to be a source of
unhappiness to Ashima… thus throughout the book, she struggles to… dapt herself to life in the
country to which she has come”(4).

Moreover, Ashima is in a continuous battle with herself, fighting every day in order to try and overcome
her dreadful feelings for the American society she has to raise her children in. Caesar also discusses the
identity of the self and how it is hard to recover it when you are torn away from what you love. This sense
of “self” is what is making it extremely difficult for Ashima to adapt to another “home. ” In addition, by
Tamara Bhalla describes the difficulty immigrants have with adapting to an alien land or culture.

She does this by quoting Lahiri stating, “for being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort
of lifelong pregnancy – a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts… ”
(qtd. In Bhalla 120). By including this quote and then furthering her point by continuing this
comparison Bhalla is able to show how challenging adapting to a new culture truly is. However,
motherhood in a foreign land also saddens Ashima. Dahiya adds onto this discovery as she states, “the
thought of bringing up a baby in an alien land terrifies [Ashima)” (501).

In an effort to decrease this fear as well as to decrease her homesickness, Ashima does everything in her
power to recreate the culture she grew up with and misses when her children are born. Examples of this
can be found throughout the novel, whether it be from the day Gogol is born and her husband, Ashoke,
and her struggle to name him, how Ashima cooks only Indian food for her family and enrolls Gogol in
Bengali lesson and forced him to go to them until he was an adult, and her insist on planning a traditional
Indian wedding for Gogol.

The constant Bengali dinner parties they would attend or host as a family on every Saturday is another
instance where Ashima is trying to recreate her old culture for her children. For example, the dinner
parties would consist of only Bengali families and friends, Bengali food, language, customs and culture. By
making Gogol and Sonia go to these parties Ashima was trying to replace the family members back in
Calcutta with new Bengali families in America, as well as expose them to controlled environments Ashima
deemed fit for her “perfect Bengali family.

Unfortunately, Ashimas efforts were of no use as her children, Gogol and Sonia, rejected her and Ashoke’s
culture. This can be shown in an article by Himadri Lahiri in which she discusses the relationship
between the first and second generation Indian Americans as well as the struggles the family faces within
themselves. Furthermore, it discusses the differences between Ashima and Ashoke and their children, as
well as how their children disapprove of their parent’s culture due to the fact that they were born and
raised in American society.

In addition, by rejecting their heritage, Gogol and Sonia crush Ashima’s hopes and dreams of recreating
the culture she longs so desperately for them to embrace themselves, which once again leaves her
depressed and homesick. An example of how Gogol rejects his heritage and Ashima’s wishes, is when he
dates a bold, American girl named Maxine. By dating her, staying with her and her family instead of his
own, as well as ignoring his mom’s phone calls, Gogol is rejecting his family and all of Ashima’s effort to
create the “perfect Bengali family.

This is further shown when Gogol refuses to go to the train station with his family to see his dad off on his
trip, which is an Indian tradition. Instead he went on a vacation with Maxine, once again rejecting his
roots for the American society he grew up in. In conclusion, there is no greater sorrow than to recall
a happy time of one’s life when in a state of complete misery. Ashima became a victim of such misery as
her husband plucked her form her homeland in Calcutta and forced her to assimilate to the
incongruent American culture.

Nothing about the American lifestyle appeals to Ashima, leading her to reject it and fully embrace the
traditional Bengali heritage instead. By doing so Ashima realizes the dreadful truth that she does not,
under any circumstances, want to raise her children in this foreign land she loathes and is so far away
from the people she loves. Since she cannot move back to her beloved home land Ashima does everything
in her power to recreate her culture in America. She even goes as far as to try to replace the family
members left behind in her old life.
She does this so that she may raise her children surrounded by the heritage she is so nostalgic for.
Although Ashima has good intentions, her main goal is to influence her children in such a way so that she
may have a sense of family like the one she left behind many years earlier. Unfortunately, this desperate
lifelong pursuit to reduce her sense of homesickness by forcing her culture upon her children leads to
Gogol and Sonia preferring the American culture to their parents. Which eventually causes them to reject
their parent’s heritage leaving Ashima broken hearted, drowning in her own nostal.

 Old-School Ashima
At the start of the novel, Gogol's mother Ashima is the most culturally conservative member of the family.
She misses her life back in Calcutta terribly and has trouble settling in to her new American life. The
narrator tells us, " On more than one occasion [Ashoke] has come home from the university to find her
morose, in bed, rereading her parents' letters." See, unlike Ashoke, who is attending graduate school,
Ashima is isolated in Cambridge, with no friends of her own. In Calcutta, she would have had the company
of siblings, parents, cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, but now they're thousands of miles away.

In Cambridge, Ashima is surrounded by strangers, and she doesn't quite feel that she fits in. There are
new customs to learn, new ways of doing things. Combine that with the grief of leaving your family, home,
and loved ones behind, and you've got a serious case of the blues:
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy – a perpetual
wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a
parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has
vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. (3.3)

Her position as an immigrant gives Ashima a unique perspective that her children can't share. They don't
know what it's like to leave their home, because America is their home. Unfortunately, the fact that she
shares this experience only with her husband a bit of a rift between her and her children:
Having been deprived of the company of her own parents upon moving to America, her children's
independence, their need to keep their distance from her, is something she will never
understand. (7.25)

As the years go by, Ashima is the glue that keeps the family together. And when her children leave the
nest and adopt aspects of the American lifestyle, it must be hard to watch. She and Sonia clash when
Sonia hits high school and has a budding social life. She dislike's Gogol's choices in women – Maxine in
particular – because they know nothing of Bengali traditions.
It's a lonely life, what with her children growing up and her family back home growing old. In many
ways, the one thing Ashima can count on is her husband Ashoke, and their steadfast love, which is
"an utterly private, uncelebrated thing." (6.51)

Unfortunately, this makes Ashoke's death all the more tragic, and Ashima mourns his death deeply. We've
come to expect deep, intense feelings from Ashima, but these are particularly moving:
Ashima feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away from the
mirror, she sobs for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the thought of the move she is about
to make, to the city that was once home and is now in its own way foreign. (12.7)
  A New Ashima
By this point we know that Ashima has plans to move back to India, but we're surprised to find out that
she now thinks of Calcutta as foreign. It used to be home. So what has changed in Ashima to bring about
this change of heart?

It seems our homesick Ashima has grown accustomed to life in the states. She has accepted her
daughter's non-Bengali fiancé, and she understands why Gogol divorced Moushumi, and she gets along
with her children better in general. She has even managed to make a few American friends, through her
job at the library.

She is no longer completely Bengali, but she hasn't become an American either, and it seems like she is at
peace with that. Frankly, that's a fitting end to her character, because her name means "she who is
limitless, without borders" (2.21), Ashima has reached a point where she really has transcended
boundaries, and in the world of The Namesake, that is no small feat.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF KAUKUB FROM MML

The author portrays the contrast between Shamas and his wife, Kaukab; this represents the contrast
between the two forms of Islam. Shamas refuses to condone the extreme practices espoused by some
traditionalists. His interpretation of his religion is modernist and moderate; he belongs to the liberal
humanitarian side of Islam. His wife Kaukab, on the other hand clings to an extremist form of Islam. She
refuses to understand the free-thinking of her husband and children. This serves to show the author‘s
neutrality. Islam is also a religion of love. God is merciful and benevolent according to this interpretation
of the religion and this too is alluded to in the novel. This constitutes Aslam‘s impartial stance. So, while
he depicts Islamic extremism, he does not leave out the reverse side.

Shamas further makes sacrilegious remarks during his arguments,

“I cannot be expected to believe what an illiterate merchant-turned-opportunistic- preacher – for he
was no systematic theologian – in the seventh-century Arabian Desert had to sayabout the origin of
life… It took Kaukab several minutes to understand what she had just heard, and then she had to
steady herself against a wall because she realized that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was being
referred to here. (p. 26)

After hearing the blasphemous remarks by Shamas her wife Kaukab was in shock; she accused Shamas
for making her children sacrilegious and blasphemous towards their religion Islam. This secularization
was not bearable for Kaukab. She thought about her husband Godless ideas and these ideas were
transmitted by Shamas to his own children. She was assured that with the passage of the time her
children will be turned towards Godlessness. Aslam sketches the situation as following;

After Jugnu, her mind, flooded with bitterness and sorrow, had turned on Shamas because Shamas
himself had confused the children with his Godless ideas, undermining her authority and devaluing her
behaviour as though it was just neurotic and foolish.

Although majority of the characters are inclined towards secularism, but he has highlighted the
conformist and orthodox characters as well. For instance Kaukab has been given wider space by the
writer in the novel. She is devoted Muslim and has orthodox mind-set. She has firm belief in her religion
and teachings endorsed by the religion. She has anti-western sentiments and hatred against white people.
Due to her orthodox thinking she has spoiled not only her life but also the lives of her children.
Due to her conservative mind set she was not happy with her matrimonial life, as the narrator tells about
her constricted thinking approach and she blamed her father not to verify what type of people he was
giving her daughter to them.

She seems racist to some extent, she hates all the white people, while her own religion does not allow
such kind of thinking and attitude. She was not willing to cook food for Jagnu’s white woman; she wept
bitterly and considered all of them sinners while they were celebrating the feast.

Kaukab was so rigid in her attitude towards white people that during the feast she did not allow the
white woman to touch her body, she had the point of view that these white people are impious and sinful.
Aslam elaborates Kaukab’s rigidness in the following words;
“The white woman leaned over and tried to place a hand on Kaukab’s arm, but she shrank away:
“Don’t touch me, please. May Allah forgive me, but I don’t know where you’ve been,” (Aslam, 2004, p.
27)

Although Kaukab’s view on the Other’s society seems to oscillate between the Western society as being
Christian or simply atheistic, depending on what view is more beneficial at the moment. According to
Kaukab Islam is only legitimate faith. Her point o view depicts that she is the victim of religious
fanaticism. She has been inculcated misleading concepts of other religion except Islam.

Facing the threat of a possible Christian infiltration, Kaukab is obsessed by raising her children into good
Muslims and not become influenced by their uncle Jugnu and through him, Western values: Allah gave
her everything, so how can Kaukab not be thankful… how could she have not tried to make sure that her
children grew up to be Allah’s servants, and how could she approve of Jugnu marrying the white woman,
or later, approve of him living in sin with Chanda? For the people in the West, an offence that did no harm
to another human or to the wider society was no offence at all, but to her – to all Muslims – there was
always another party involved – Allah. (Aslam, 2004, p.43). Vasectomy of Charag is considered a Western
feature and what is more, a “Christian conspiracy to stop the number of Muslims from increasing”
(59). She also resents her daughter for using “white expressions”: “do not try to sound white by saying
things like ‘Oh Christ’, because you don’t impress me” (Aslam, 2004 p.102).

-----------------------
 REFLECTION ON EXILE & NATIONALISM+ COSMOPOLITANISM
QUESTION#2
(A) INTERPRETATION OF TERM ‘EXILE’ BY EDWARD SAID & BY ME AS PHYSICAL &
PSYCHOLOGICAL EXILE

ABSTRACT
Diaspora is a term that is usually used for Jews Diaspora in the past but now we have other examples of it as Mexican,
and Chinese Diaspora. The term Diaspora can be used as a synonym of Exile. Exile can be symbolized as cruelty of man
to man, where a man or group can create false assumptions towards other ethnic groups/races, as Hitler always said
that Jews didn’t have their own culture and country, he exceeded his all the boundaries and created a history of cruelty
by extermination thousands of Jews. In all the sense Diaspora created annoyance, suffering and depression in humans,
but Edward Said in his Reflection on Exile has suggested the right way to deal with exile. He remarks, instead of being
weak one should be strong in exile. Sometimes, exile has power to impart the virtues in a righteous way. He advises, we
should not relay or attach our identity only with the nation and its land. He set the example of various writers as
Conrad, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were not forced to live in another country but they resided willingly in another
country. Even few have produced their masterpiece on exile. He counts many benefits of exile as learning more than
one language and culture. So Said is not in favor of any forced Diaspora, but relay to deal Diaspora in the right
attitude.

INTRODUCTION
Diaspora can be used as the synonym of exile or vice versa. Diaspora most of the time is forced, not
according to the exiled people. We have a vivid and numerous Diaspora that can show the inhumanity of
man to man. As Jews, Mexican, Chinese are among the world known Diaspora. Diaspora writing is as
about “assaulted by multiple historical, cultural, and political forces, the migrant usually
appropriates several identities. Diaspora literature explores identities forged in the crucible of
multiple cultures, cities, and races rather than just ‘home’ and alien ‘land’”. In general, Diaspora “was
used to refer to the mass dispersion of a population from its indigenous territories, specifically the
dispersion of Jews.” Originally, Diaspora belongs to same dynasty of traumatic event such as
imperialistic conquest, slavery, wars, and these can be as natural disasters. In the past years basically,
Diaspora belonged to Jewish dispersion but at the modern time there is no set definition and
belongingness of the term, because it has changed over the time. According to Oxford English Dictionary
Online, ‘the first known recorded usage of the word Diaspora in English language was in 1876’.

Since Edward Said’s Reflection on Exile has been published, scholars and writers have changed their view
about exile, the work has also shown exile can be beneficial for the people, they have ample of paths to
use their exile in the right attitude. However, exile can cross the boundaries of cruelty and deliver a huge
amount of suffering and alienation to the people. He never advocates the exile but he favors the correct
use and positive frame of mind in exile. Said observes ‘the exiles knows, that … homes are always
provisional. Borders and barriers, which also became prison, and are often defended beyond
reasons and necessity. Exile crosses the border, breaks barriers of thought and experience’. We can
understand the intensity of his essays from the above few lines. In essays of ‘Reflection on Exile’ he
affirms the experience of exile can permit people to see the exile world in a new horizon. He utters to the
exile people to be strong instead of making themselves weak. Palestine theory has revealed many facts
and figures in front of us which are drawn by the writer with great authority to speak on the theme. He is
adamant in his views that one should not romanticize exile. He also admits, exile has torn millions of
people from the nourishment of traditions, families and geographies.
Ethicality and Humanism both are the ardent enemy of exile. Exile people have experienced life in death
situations, cruelty without mercy produced by the fellow human. Edward Said takes the words of critic
George Steiner that the whole genre of twentieth century western literature is ‘extraterritorial’ literature
by and about exile. He records the changes in Diaspora, earlier the degree of miseries, suffering and grief
as same today. “But the difference between earlier and those of our own times is, it bears stressing,
scale: our age-with its modern warfare, imperialism, and the quasitheological of totalitarian rulers-
is indeed the age of refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration.”(Reflection on Exile, 180) One
of the recent and live examples of Diaspora is Rohingya Mulims, Bangladesh transported them into
Bhasan Char island, there are no proper facilities of food and accommodation, it can be considered pure
inhumanity towards humanity. It like as Edward Said writes “People bundled out of their homes and
prodded, bussed or walked to enclaves in the other regions; what do these experiences and up to?”
(Reflection on Exile, 182)

If, nation and exile can understand together into the context of each other, they can better be understood.
Said connects nationalism with belonging and belonging to exile people. A nation provides basic
surroundings to the natives to grow but in the case of exile people they deprive from all the cares which a
nation can do for its natives. Nationalism is only belonging to a particular nation and its culture, where
the people nourish with language, tradition, moreover, emotional connectivity to the place and
community (people). These factors prevent them from escaping from their past memories. In fact people
associate their identity with their nation. At any coast they want to return from their native home. Exile is
full depression, past memories of the home land, feeling stringent, and full of sufferings. “Exile, unlike, is
fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, and their
past. They generally do not have armies or states, although they are often in search of them. Exile
feels, therefore, an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by choosing to see
themselves as a part of triumphant ideology or a restored people.” (Reflection on Exile, 183).

Said records show nothing is reliable and exile is a jealous state, in fact humans are jealous in their basic
nature whatever they achieve they are not ready to share with others. In exile one fact occurs that people
come closer on the name of nationality even, at the same time they can also go closer to that person who
is cheating them on the name of help. He set an example of Palestine exile that has reconstructed the
experience of Jewish exile. ‘Palestinians felt that they have been turned into exile by the proverbial
people of exile, the Jews’. Even though Jews were also bearing the same pain which they gave to
Palestinians. Jews denied entering Palestinians in the country by Jews.

Many people who are on exile, are equipped with intelligence and skilled in their profession but they
have to confront hostile, stringent and weird behavior. The feeling of belonging has lost, contrary they felt
orphan on another’s land. Exile created expatiation from native place. Against the weapon of difference
exiled have only weapons of tranquility and doldrums. They have to behave in a righteous manner while
they are not pleased by their conditions. Exiles looks at the bundle of suffering with resentment as the
theme of Joseph Conrad’s Amy Foster, Said considers this creation one of the best among exile writing.
Edward Said also has shown different sides of exile, where exile is there without the frightful conditions
of exile with bitterness. Expatriates live willfully in other states for any political issue for their own
country. Hemingway and Fitzgerald were not forced to live in France. Theodor Adorno, German
philosopher observed that a good, honest life is no longer possible, because we live in a cruel and ruthless
society. According to him ‘exile is an intellectual mission’; he wrote his masterpiece when he was in
exile. So there are many writers who were/are living in exile willingly.

We can also count the benefit of Diaspora that a numerous historian and writer have transformed their
thought to observe exile moreover ready to accept as a challenge for survival. No doubt, the
circumstances are not favorable in exile, but to be strong is a good weapon for bottlenecks of exile.
Commonly, people know one culture but exiled have the knowledge of two at least. “Soyinka’s work
expresses a continuing and deeply embedded consciousness of a land given meaning by Yoruba
culture, its myth, belief and associations. In the settler countries such as Australia, New Zealand and
the West Indies, many writers express a sense of alienation from or ambivalence towards a
landscape and natural world which differ from that of their ancestral homeland and are at odds
with the natural imagery implanted in the literary traditions which have accompanied them.”
Edward Said writes that Exile is never the state of being satisfied, imperturbable, or secure and exile is
life outside habitual order. The agony of displacement is related to fear of loss of belonging and people
personify the land as the only identity of them, specifically exiled. They want to return to their homeland,
which is an inevitable question for them.

Said has a strong notion about exile and after effects of it, in-fact, he presents them very well in
consequently with splendor views of other critics, and writers. Said clearly remarks, exile is full of
depression, atrocities and suffering of exile people. Said also emphasizes learning new things as more
than one language, culture and can elevate their skills in exile. It is not necessary that the entire virtues
can flourish in exile but it is the right attitude to deal with exile to learn new things. He confirms that
loneliness, and loss of identity in exile and it is also not easy to erase the memories of the past. He also
mentions the various examples of writers who are living in exile without forcing anyone. In general
views, exile or Diaspora cannot work with humanity; it always ruins and destroys the desired life of the
people.
Edward Said and Exile: a gaze at counterpoint
ABSTRACT
This article sets out to analyse the concept of exile as portrayed in the work of Edward Said. Our author’s central idea
of this term is that even if the term exile is inconsistent in the metaphorical sense he defends, it is enriching
intellectually, given that from this perspective, it provides a different vision through which an “exiled” intellectual can
analyse the historical experience. In other words, Said, believes that even authors who are not exiles in real terms and
fully belong to their respective societies can adopt such a vision. In doing so, a distance is created, enabling critics to
embrace a global vision that transcends ideological boundaries and facilitates the study of others and their culture
within a humanistic context. The methodology followed in this work sheds a critical light on the interesting, albeit
contradictory, concept of exile proposed by Said as a tool for cultural studies. In short, to a point, this essay aims to
demonstrate how Edward Said’s approach to the term of exile is relevant. Indeed, his own work is largely influenced by
authors who have been exiles quintessentially speaking, and who somehow shaped the critique he put forward during
his life.

INTRODUCTION
Edward W. Said (1935–2003), known worldwide as the author Orientalism and also for his staunch
defence of human rights in Palestine, his country of birth, with which he identified himself lifelong. He
was also a well-known literary critic, author in this field of books such as The World, the Text and the
Critic (1983). On reading Said’s work, however brief it may be, we immediately grasp the complexity,
richness, and even the controversy of the conceptual apparatus underlying the author’s theoretical
framework. This terminology provides a key to perceiving his cultural theory and his work as a public
intellectual and, as we will see later, poses complications for certain critics. As stated above, this New
York academic, of Palestinian origin, was the author of an interesting work in the cultural field,
particularly within the scope of the orientalist theory that, along with other works, gave rise to a whole
field of new studies — in spite of him, according to some critics. This was the case of postcolonialism:
Young (2001); Kennedy (2000); Child (1997); Spencer (2010). Without disregarding, indeed, his
remarkable contribution to literary criticism, as he was — first and foremost — a professor of English
literature and comparative literature at the renowned Columbia University in New York.

EXILE AS A STRATEGY FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Undoubtedly, many of the basic concepts developed by the American writer are closely related to his
work as a literary critic. In this essay I will analyse one of the most common threads of his cultural
theory: the concept of exile. I will place particular emphasis on the fact that, although this term harbours
several contradictions, for Said it is an enriching concept that paves the way for cultural research on new
dimensions and offers another vision, among other things.

To begin with, I should point out that although Edward Said’s analysis of this concept stems from the
social and political history of displacement, it delves deeper. For him, the term is both real and
metaphorical. In other words, even intellectuals who fully belong to their respective societies can be
considered as either integrated or marginal. Therefore, Said believes that the rule governing the course of
the intellectual as an outsider in his own society is that of exile, the perception of being dissatisfied in the
community itself is to always feel out of place. It is this metaphorical sense of the word he advocates as a
study tool — as we will clarify later — which gave rise to the special, and for many critics the ambiguous
and confused, vision of the work of this intellectual in exile.

In this context, it should be noted that Said’s approach to the issue of exile is not without proper support.
His treatment of this issue is strengthened by his own personal experience. As he narrates in his
autobiography entitled Out of place (1999), his life experience was marked by a crucial event. His whole
family, he tells us, was forced to leave their homeland, Palestine, after the Israeli occupation, and they
took refuge in Egypt. Later, for other mundane reasons, he himself left the aforementioned Arabic
country and headed for the United States.
As predictable, his first days in the USA were tough and he describes his arrival in the American continent
as the saddest day in his life. In addition, the author himself has recorded in his writings that his own life
experience was always conditioned by the circumstance of displacement and alienation with respect to
his birth place. In this regard, he states the following in his above-mentioned memoir:
Along with the language, it is geography — especially in the displaced form of departures, arrivals,
farewells, exile, nostalgia homesickness, belonging, and travel itself — that is the core of my
memories of those early years. Each of the places I lived in — Jerusalem, Cairo, Lebanon, the United
States — has a complicated, dense web of valences that was very much part of growing up, gaining
an identity, forming my consciousness of myself and of others. (Said, 2000: Prefix p xii).

Likewise, Linda Anderson, in her article entitled “Autobiography and Exile: Edward Said’s Out of
Place”, asserts that Said’s own memoirs serve to shed light on Said’s shifting, even contradictory, position
on exile, the question for her being: How can we understand the position of our author on this subject?
On the one hand he speaks of exile as a real and cruel experience; the dismemberment of a human being
from his native country that can never heal. On the other hand, he insists on the metaphorical aspect of
such an experience. Following this line of reasoning, the writer asserts that this contradiction remains
unresolved in Said’s theory of exile. For her:
Said has written about exile in a similarly paradoxical way, invoking it as a metaphor for
intellectual’s desired condition of marginality and continual journeying, and as a real historical
event (Anderson, 2009: 165).

In our opinion, even admitting the aforementioned author’s point of view, the contradictions that lie at
the heart of Said’s approach to exile, his analysis of this point, imply a new way of seeing; a lens through
which one can perceive both historical experience and human relations. In this respect, exile would be a
strategy rather than a vital dismemberment in the life of intellectuals: “it is a means not an end; it is
above all a way of thinking” (Spencer, 2010: 389). It is — in Said’s opinion —: … an alternative to the
mass institutions that dominate modern life. Exile is not, after all, a matter of choice: you are born
into it or it happens to you. But provided that exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nursing a wound,
there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous (not indulgent or sulky)
subjectivity (Said, 2000: 183).

From this perspective, the above would mean that, although it may seem paradoxical to speak of the
advantages and the pleasures of exile, by seeing through the exile’s eyes, an intellectual embraces
originality because, as Said points out, as opposed to most people who have knowledge of a single culture,
a foreigner is always aware of at least two cultures. Thus, by crossing cultural borders, apart from having
his or her own culture, the “exiled” intellectual adapts to the culture of the receiving country. This range
of views, which such an intellectual has appropriated, helps him or her to have a contrapuntal awareness,
a concept which Edward Said defines in the following terms:
In the counterpoint of western classical music, various themes play off one another, with only a
provisional privilege being given to any particular one; yet in the resulting polyphony there is
concert and order, an organized interplay that derives from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic
or formal principle outside the work. (Said, 1993: 59–60)

Furthermore, Said’s proposal of exile as a research strategy for writers who feel hemmed in by the
cultural and national barriers of their native countries also implies that that open themselves up to the
opportunities afforded by seeing through the gaze of an outsider and an outcast. This critical approach
enriches our view of the other and his or her culture, and enables us to actually travel to other humanistic
conjunctures and judge them according to the worldly conditions in which they were born.

In short, this concept of exile does not exist in a stable state, on the contrary, for Said such a term would
imply: intellectual restlessness, dissatisfaction with established norms, and rupture with tribal loyalties.
Thus, in the words of the American professor Exile: … exists in a median state, neither completely at
one with the new setting, nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half-involvements and half-
detachments, nostalgic and sentimental on one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on another
(Said 1994: 48).

In any event, it should be noted that when reflecting on the experience of exile, Said bore in mind the
experience of the many exiles that influenced his intellectual work. Among these authors, noteworthy is
the presence of Joseph Conrad, on whom Edward Said’s first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of
Autobiography (1966), was based, and to which he returns repeatedly throughout his work, such as
Cantus firmus and as a future stamping ground.
For Said, there is an account in Conrad’s novel Amy Foster (1901) that seems to exemplify the fate of the
exile. In this story, the novelist tells the tale of a young man named Yanko, who left his home country to
settle in England where he endured the hardships of exile. The young man does not know the language,
nor does he know how to communicate with anyone. Only a young plain peasant girl called Amy tries to
communicate with him. They marry and have a son but when Yanko falls ill, the young British woman
tears their son away from him and flees.
In this account, Yanko’s fate is described as a supreme disaster of loneliness and despair. In Said’s words,
Conrad took the exile’s neurotic fear and turned it into an aesthetic principle. For him:
Each Conradian exile fears, and is condemned endlessly to imagine, the spectacle of a solitary death
illuminated, so to speak, by unresponsive, uncommunicating eyes. (Said, 2000: 143).
In this respect, and as one critic pointed out, might we believe that Said himself feared a similar death?

But when our author speaks of exile, he does not refer to something sad and helpless, even though he
recognizes that one of the paradoxes of an exile is his or her feelings of happiness with the hint of
unhappiness. On the contrary, he tells us that his book Culture and Imperialism (1993) was mostly
written in New York City, city of the exile par excellence. Moreover, belonging to both sides of the
imperial experience enabled him to understand them better and more easily. For Spencer, all Said’s work
— from his first book Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography 1966 to his last writings on
the Iraq war and his impression of the late style — was distinguished by his awareness that
personality, identity and perspectives are not static, but can be enriched by exposure to new
experiences, strange encounters and thought-provoking reflections (Spencer, 2010).

INTELLECTUAL EXILE IN SAID’S PERSPECTIVE

Said at the beginning of his article describes the concept of exile as the “saddest fate” (Said 1996, 47),
thus Said illustrates the concept of exile in two different periods premodern and modernism. In
premodern, Said means by exile that someone who never feels at home and had a bitter sense from the
past and unknown the fate in the present time and in the future. In the 20th century, the concept of exile
transforms from exclusive punishment into the punishment of the whole society and people due to a
result of wars, famines, diseases, and so on.

Based on Said’s perspective that exile never means to be totally cut off and isolated from the place of
origin because the exiled people have roots in their original homeland, identity, own language, traditional
culture, and religion, thus there are several factors that link them with their homeland, but at the same
time, they remind them that they are in exile, not being in a real home. Therefore, the exiled writers
should not completely focus on new setting or fully on the old, but they have to be in “a median state”
(Said 1996, 47) when producing their works that engage with their experiences in their homeland and
their new residence after displacement, thus their works become hybridity. Furthermore, Said uses the
term of exile to refer into two purposes, actual and metaphoric condition. The actual condition refers to
an individual or a group of people who live in unfair and being in a terrible position either they live in
origin homeland (internal exile) as Said mentioned in his article that “even the natives have become
exiles in their own country” (Said 1996, 49) such as Palestinian’s condition, or people who live in a new
home after exiled (external exile) for different reasons (racism, minority, famine or religion) such as Irish
Catholics who forced to leave Ireland to North of America and Great Britain because of the famine. Said’s
purpose of using the metaphor condition in order to describe the role of the ‘modern intellectual.’ He
tends to use Gramsci’s meaning to define the concept of the ‘intellectual’ which it means that anyone who
works in any field connected with the production or with distribution of knowledge and performs a
particular set of functions in the society such as broadcasters, academic professionals, computer analysts,
lawyers, government advisers, and authors.

Thus, Said classifies the condition of intellectuals who are members of society that they live either
‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders.’ Insiders refers individuals who belong to the society as it is, they have never
been in any kind of disagreement or opposition, thus they can be known or say always “yea-sayers”
(Said 1996, 52). While outsiders represent individuals, who feel strangers in their own society, thus they
can be known or say always “nay-sayers” (Ibid.).The best pattern that sets the way of the intellectual as
an outsider because it represents the condition of exile as they have always a sense that they are
strangers in their own home.

Said goes on to interpret how exile can productively contributing to the construction of the intellectual’s
thinking. As an example, he refers to Theodor Adorno and Erich Auerbach who fled the Nazis and did
vital work that reflected their experience of disruption. Said holds that exile can foster a scrupulous
subjectivity, independence of mind, critical perspective, and originality of vision. Thus, exile contributes
to be in a contact with more than one culture which gives the individual an awareness of coincident
dimensions of reality. Because exile life is a dynamic life which is decentered as people live on the margin
of the established order and thus the individual must create his/her own structures of meaning. If the
intellectuals force to live in exile, they are always going to be marginal and that they cannot follow a
prescribed path. Nevertheless, if they can experience that fate not as a deprivation but as a sort of
freedom, as a process of discovery and as the particular goal, they set themselves dictates, thus it is a
unique pleasure. Theodor Adorno who was the dominating intellectual conscience of the middle
twentieth century, whose entire career skirted as he fought the dangers of fascism and communism. His
background partially Jewish, he left his native Germany in the mid-1930s shortly after the Nazi capture of
power. Although Adorno returned to Frankfurt in 1949, his years in America stamped him with the
marks of exile forever. So his works later reflected his experience in America to produce a great
masterpiece, the Minima Moralia, which published in 1953 and subtitled Reflections from Damaged Life.

CRITIQUE
As stated above, the concept of exile portrayed in Said’s work poses a problem for certain critics. In a
way, Said’s treatment of these writers in exile is abstruse and skeptical. Abdul Jan Mohamed describes
this as speculation, since he only places them in other cultures to track the policy of the inroads made
into those cultures.

The best example for this critique is Said’s analysis of Eric Auerbach’s work. It is true to say that the
latter author wrote his monumental book entitled Mimesis (1942) when he was a refugee in Istanbul,
fleeing from Nazism. But the problem for Abdul is that Said attributes the very existence of this book to
his Eastern exile. This argument does not appear to convince Jan Mohamed at all, given that there is no
clear indication that the East had a decisive influence on Auerbach’s ideas to the point of changing them.
Furthermore, for him, the German author writes as a Western intellectual and for a Western audience just
as if his book were to see the light anywhere other than the East. In this context Abdul states that: Said’s
specular appropriation of Auerbach for defining the value of exile seems to overlook some
fundamental differences between the two men. While Auerbach writes about and for Western
cultures, Said does not write principally for or about Middle Eastern cultures; he writes in the main
for and about the West. Even The Question of Palestine is addressed, at least in part, as Said
explicitly acknowledges, to a Euro-American audience. Thus, while Auerbach is an exile in the weak
sense, that is, a subject who always belongs to his home culture in spite of, indeed because of, a
circumstantial and temporary alienation, Said, who is neither quite an exile nor quite an immigrant,
is able to develop, out of his more complicated border status, an enabling theory of “exile” an
“ascetic ode of willed homelessness” (Abdul Jan Mohamed, 1992: 221)

CONCLUSIONS
In short, and to conclude, it is worth pointing out that the academic and intellectual evolution of our
author demonstrates a mind already matured by the experience of exile, a person who prefers not to be
ascribed to fixed ideas or geographically restricted worlds. His own identity is not geographically
determined but rather his self-perception is of a cluster of flowing currents. These are of transcendence
because they are not static, quite the reverse, they are in constant movement. Besides, Said prefers this to
a solid and ahistorical identity. Anyway, the author states that: “With so many dissonances in my life I
have learned actually to prefer being not quite right and out of place” (1999: 295).

Thus Said’s writings imply we should consider the whole world, including ourselves, as a strange land,
from whence to spread human love to geographies worldwide and never hold on to one as our own. Here,
it seems fitting to end this article with a fragment quoted by Said throughout his work:
“It is therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change
about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind
altogether. The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every
soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign
place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his
love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his” (Hugh of St. Victor, 1961: 101).

------------------
 NATION & NATIONALISM
QUESTION#3
What is difference between nation and nationalism?
At the heart of nationalism lies the belief that humanity is (or ought to be) divided into nations, and that
nations are (or ought to be) the basis of independent sovereign states. The basic problem of nationalism
is the difficulty (if not impossibility) in making political facts correspond to the national ideal.
Nationalism
The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena:
1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and
2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-
determination.
(1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of
common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and specifically about whether an individual’s membership in a
nation should be regarded as non-voluntary or voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-
determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over
domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

(A) ERNEST RENON THEORY OF NATIONALISM & HIS CONTRIBUTION

 “What is a Nation” -an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
 Renan wrote it in order to symbolize the nationalism which was born in France as a result of
the French Revolution of 1789.
1) Confusion in the Idea of Nation
 “At the time of the French Revolution, many believed that the institutions of small independent cities
such as Sparta and Rome could be applied to our great nations of thirty or forty million souls. In our
days, a yet greater error is committed: one confounds the idea of race with that of the nation and
attributes to ethnographic, or rather linguistic, groups a sovereignty analogous to that of actually
existing peoples.”
2) Difference between an empire and a state
 “What characterizes these different states? It’s the fusion of the populations that comprise them.”
 Two essential circumstances have contributed to this result:
 The first is the change of religion.
 The second is the change of language due to
 prolonged stay at a different territory
 Cross-cultural marriages
3) Change of time, Change of Perceptions
 “The false system according to which the nobility owes its origin to a privilege conferred by the king
in recognition of services rendered to the nation (such that every noble is in fact “ennobled”) first
appeared as a dogma beginning in the thirteenth-century.”
 “Historical inquiry, in effect, throws light on the violent acts that have taken place at the origin of
every political formation, even those that have been the most benevolent in their consequences. Unity
is always brutally established. The reunion of northern and southern France was the result of a
campaign of terror and extermination that continued for nearly a century.”
 4) The Essence of a Nation
 A nation might have a lot of stories of violence and brutal bloodshed, “the essence of a nation is that
all of its individual members have a great deal in common and also that they have forgotten many
things.”
 Amnesia
 Two things to constitute the principle of a nation:
 Past (Common suffering)
 Present (desire to live together)
5) Constituents of a nation
 “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or
spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich
legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to
perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.”

6) The Misconceptions regarding Base of a Nation

Community of Interest, yet another Misconception
 “Community of interest is assuredly a powerful link between men.
 Do interests suffice to make a nation? I do not think so. Communities of interest determine
commercial treaties. However, sentiment features in the making of nations.
 A nation is a body and soul at the same time.
 A Zollverein [customs union], by contrast, is never a fatherland.”
7) Role of Geography in the Making of a Nation
 “Geography and what are called natural frontiers certainly play a considerable part in the division of
nations” but again topography is important from a strategic point of view only. It does not necessarily
divide people among ‘nations’.
 “Geography provides the substratum, the field of battle and of work but man provides the soul. Man is
everything in the formation of this sacred thing that one calls a people. Nothing material suffices.”
8) Solidarity through Common Past and Common Responsibilities
 The nation, like the individual, is the outcome of:
 a long past of efforts, sacrifices, and devotions.
 having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made
great things together and wishing to make them again.
 “…. people share a glorious heritage as well, regrets, and a common program to realize. Having
suffered, rejoiced, and hoped together is worth more than common taxes or frontiers that conform to
strategic ideas and is independent of racial or linguistic considerations.”
9) Summary and Conclusion
 “Man is a slave neither of his race, his language, his religion, the course of his rivers, nor the direction
of his mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, in sane mind and warm heart, created a moral
conscience that calls itself a nation. As long as this moral conscience proofs its strength by sacrifices
that require the subordination of the individual to the communal good, it is legitimate and has the
right to exist.”
------------------
 (A) PARALLEL IDEAS OF NATIONALISM BY MULTIPLE NATIONAL THEORISTS ANS THEORIES
(B) COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ERNEST RENON & BENEDICT ANDERSON

1) Ernest Renan (theory in 1882 in What is Nation?

 According to Renan, two things to constitute the principle of a nation:
 Past (legacy of Common suffering)
 Present ( consent, desire to live together)
 Nationalism connects individuals to the state.
 Nationalism is a process through which:
 individuals become sentimentally attached with each other and to their homeland
 They are motivated to help other fellow nationals
 Through national identity they gain self esteem and identity
“Man is a slave neither of his race, his language, his religion, the course of his rivers, nor the
direction of his mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, in sane mind and warm heart,
created a moral conscience that calls itself a nation. As long as this moral conscience proofs its
strength by sacrifices that require the subordination of the individual to the communal good, it is
legitimate and has the right to exist.”

2) Ernest Gellner (Nation and Nationalism, 1983)

 Nation and nationalism are products of industrialization.
 Emerge of nations and nationalism marks a sharp disjunction between elder agrarian societies and
modern industrial society.
 Some of the central features of nationalism in Gellner's theory:
 Shared, formal educational system
 Cultural homogenization and "social entropy"
 Central monitoring of polity, with extensive bureaucratic control
 Linguistic standardization
 National identification as abstract community
 Cultural similarity as a basis for political legitimacy
 Anonymity, single-stranded social relationships
 “It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.”
 “The strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also,
the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an
independent nation, free of foreign domination.”
 Cultural homogenization- “…it must be one in which they can all breathe and speak and produce;
so it must be the same culture. Moreover it must be a great or high (literate, training sustained)
culture, and it can no longer be diversified, locality-tied, illiterate little culture or tradition”

3) Anthony Smith
 Nation is not an old entity, it can be traced back to the early Middle age
 Today nation and nationalism, both are considered modern phenomena.
 The nation is a product of nationalist ideologies
 The nationalism is an expression of modern industrial society
  The nations are a phenomena of a particular stage of history, and embedded in purely modern
conditions
 He introduces the concept of ‘ethnie’ meaning:
 A collective name, a common myth of descent, a shared history, a distinctive shared culture, an
association with specific territory, a sense of solidarity
A nation is "a named population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical
memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for its
members". Ethnies are, in turn, defined as "named units of population with common ancestry myths
and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with a historic territory and some
measure of solidarity, at least among their elites".

4) Benedict Anderson
 The nation is imagined because most citizens will never meet one another face-to-face, and yet see
themselves as being part of a “political community” that is like a family, with shared origins, mutual
interests, and “a deep, horizontal comradeship.”
 A nation is a cultural construct, with a particular history rooted in the fall of monarchies and empires,
as well as specific advancements in literacy, technology, and capitalism.
 The nation’s borders are seen as definite (“limited”) and it is seen as the only legitimate authority
within those borders (“sovereign”).
 Nationalism’s rise both coincides with and further encourages endless advancements in technology,
the spread of capitalism around the globe, and governments’ rapid expansion through bureaucracy.
 Nationalism relies on a variety of administrative practices that allow people, territory, and history to
be understood as controllable by the power of a centralized state.
 “…the nation in anthropological spirit ; it is an imagined political community, and it imagined as
both inherently limited and sovereign.”
 “nation-ness as well as nationalism are cultural artifacts of particular kind”.
 “Nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self consciously held political
ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that precede it, out of which- as well as against
which- it came into being”.

Different definitions and forms of nationalism

Nationalism is a concept that is not easily defined. There are numerous definitions and forms of what is
nationalism, and many of these definitions even overlap. However, there is no one definition that is more
adequate than another.

To begin with, the most well know definition today is from Professor Anthony Smith. He states that
nationalism is simply “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity
for a population which some of its members deem to constitute an actual or potential “nation” (Smith,
2001).” In this definition, Smith reveals what he believes the three main goals of nationalism are:
autonomy, national unity, and national identity. Smith agrees that there is one main point of agreement
and that is that the term nationalism is a modern phenomenon (Smith, 2001). Civic nationalism is basically
defined as a group of people which have a certain loyalty to civic rights or laws and pledge to abide by
these laws. Ethnic nationalism is basically a group that possesses a common culture, language, land, etc
(McGregor, 2010). Smith writes that “every nationalism contains civic and ethnic elements in varying
degrees and different forms. Sometimes civic and territorial elements predominate; at other times it is the
ethnic and vernacular components that are emphasized (Smith, 2001).” Smith’s most popular argument
features civic and ethnic types of nationalism as opposed to eastern and western types. Even more
specifically, Smith makes the distinction between both civic and ethnic nationalisms. He also believes that
“Many modern nations are formed around pre-existing, and often pre-modern, ethnic cores (Smith, 2001).”
Smith is claiming that nations had pre-existing-origins prior to their ‘new origins’ of their new nation.
Smith’s definition seems to be the foundation for nationalism, although he certainly was not the first to
attempt to define it.

On the contrary to Anthony Smith’s definition of nationalism pertaining to the civic and ethnic type, Hans
Kohn has argued that the two main types of nationalism are eastern and western. His definition states,
“Nationalism is a state of mind, in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due to the nation-
state (Kohn, 1965).” Kohn’s argument includes both eastern and western types of nationalism which refer
to Eastern and Western Europe. “Eastern nationalism conceived the nation as an organic community,
united by culture, language and descent (McGregor 2010).” This particular idea could possibly be related
to Smith’s ethnic type of nationalism. “Western nationalism conceived the nation as a political and civic
community, held together by voluntary adherence to democratic norms (McGregor 2010).” Again, western
nationalism could be perceived as a civic type of nationalism. This can be recognized as two similar
classifications on two unfamiliar grounds. Kohn believes that nationalism relates directly with eastern
and western Europe and that it is also where the ‘state of mind’ of nationalism originated. He certainly
does not go into as much detail as Smith on the definition. He also relates only towards Europe which is
why he is being identified as over simplistic.

Next, Carlton J. H. Hayes’ definition of nationalism states, “Loyalty and attachment to the interior of the
group (namely the nation and homeland) are the basis of nationalism (Hayes, 1926).” In this definition, a
common cultural background and a common cultural group are considered the main factors in forming a
nation (Naqvi, Ali). That remains true with most of the definitions of nationalism. Hayes definition of
nationalism seems to be more specific to the ‘ethnic’ ties toward nationalism. In other words, Hayes is
saying that land, language, and blood are the basis of nationalism. He is saying that nation is something to
be proud of (Naqvi, Ali). Hayes also believes that these ‘ethnic’ qualities are the most important; even
religion does not compare. “It is attachment to nationality that gives direction to one’s individual and
social postures, not attachment to religion and ideology. A human being takes pride in his national
achievements and feels dependent on its cultural heritage, not on the history of religion and his faith (Hayes,
1926) (Naqvi).” This quote further proves Hayes’s view on nationalism and how it relates to one’s culture
and past, and specifically not related to religion at all. The reason Hayes’s definition is unique from
others, is his emphasis on the fact that religion is not a factor in forming a nation. To further specify
Hayes’s definition on nationalism he says, “What distinguishes one human being from another are not their
beliefs, but their birth-place, homeland, language and race. Those who are within the four walls of the
homeland and nation, belong to it, and those who are outside it, are aliens. It is on the basis of these factors
that the people have a feeling of sharing a single destiny and a common past. (Hayes, 1926).” This quote
goes hand in hand with Hayes’s definition of nationalism and just further explains it. According to Hayes,
nationalism does not exist without that ‘ethnic’ background.

Furthermore, according to scholar Benedict Anderson, nationalism is, “a new emerging nation imagines
itself to be antique (Anderson, 2003).” This is similar to how Anthony Smith and Carlton Hayes defined
nationalism. It is mostly like Smith’s ethnic nationalism, which focuses more on the origin of the nation.
Anderson focuses more on modern Nationalism and suggests that it forms its attachment through language,
especially through literature (Anderson, 2003). An important part in Anderson’s theory is the stress he puts
on the role of printed literature (Anderson, 2003). In Anderson’s mind, the development of nationalism is
linked with printed literature and the growth of these printed works. People were able to read about
nationalism in a common dialect and that caused nationalism to mature (Anderson, 2003). Anderson’s
definition of nationalism and nation differ greatly from other scholars. He defines nation as “an imagined
political community (Anderson 2003).” He believes this because “the nation is always conceived as a deep,
horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for
so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings (Anderon,
2003).” Not only is Anderson’s theory distinctive because of the “printed literature theory”, but also
because it is the “imagined political community.”

Another prominent Nationalist researcher, Ernest Gellner states that, “nationalism is primarily a political
principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent (Gellner, 1983)”. Gellner
was once a teacher of Anthony Smith. Although most scholars would agree that nationalism appeared
after the French Revolution, Gellner further argues that nationalism became a “sociological necessity in the
modern world (Gellner, 1983).” His argument is similar to the uniqueness of Benedict Anderson’s “printed
literature” theory, but Gellner focuses more on the industrialization of work and cultural modernization to
explain how nationalism expanded (Zeulow, 1999). Gellner believes that “states only exist where there is
division of labour, therefore the state comes before nationalism (Gellner, 1983).” Like other scholars,
Gellner believes that nationalism is a political force. Gellner also stresses the congruency of nation and
politics. He does not believe one can occur without the other one. There are many criticisms to Ernest
Gellner’s theory, including Anthony Smith saying, “It misreads the relationship between nationalism and
industrialization (Smith 1998).” Not all of the critics view Gellner’s theory as a misread. Most agree that he
is the father of nationalism studies and most say that his nationalism work was brilliant (University of
Wales Press). One can usually relate their definition of nationalism with Ernest Gellner or Anthony Smith.
Gellner stresses the importance of the political side, while Smith puts the importance on cultural. Neither
is right nor wrong, just a difference of opinion.

Historian John Breuilly defends a more modern theory of nationalism, similar to Benedict Anderson’s. In
reference to nationalism, he concludes, “The rise of the modern state system provides the institutional
context within which an ideology of nationalism is necessary (Breuilly 1985).” Breuilly argues that the
process of “state modernization provides an important factor in understanding historical signs of
nationalism (Cormier, 2001).” Breuilly argues that nationalism does not have much to do with ethnicity or
ethnic background, but rather more to do with political motivation. Breuilly is not the first scholar who
believed that ethnic background had nothing to do with nationalism. In fact, Breuilly’s definition relates
well to Gellner’s in the sense that they both argue in favor of political motivation. “Nationalists are seen to
create their own ideology out of their own subjective sense of national culture. (Breuilly, 1982).” This
particular quote is quite similar to Anderson’s imagined political community theory in that Breuilly does
not support the ethnic side of nationalism nearly as much as others nationalists. Breuilly criticizes most
scholars due to the fact that they believe in national culture because he believes that there is no such
thing. He believes that the political component of nationalism is by far the most important. Breuilly
indicates in his definition the importance of the state system; hence the political force necessary for
nationalism to occur.
In Peter Alter’s definition of Nationalism, he states, “Nationalism is a political force which has been more
important in shaping the history of Europe and the world over the last two centuries than the ideas of
freedom and parliamentary democracy or, let alone, of communism (Alter, 1994).” His argument is similar
to John Breuilly in the sense that he agrees that there is a strong emphasis on nationalism being a
“political force.” Alter is saying that it has everything to do with being a political movement instead of the
idea of freedom. In reference to nationalism, Alter states, “It can be associated with forces striving for
political, social, economic and cultural emancipation, as well as with those whose goal oppression (Alter,
1994).” His outlook on nationalism seems much broader than other scholars. This particular reference
virtually sums up many scholars definitions together. Alter does not seem to have a specific argument on
nationalism, as in civic vs. ethnic or western vs. eastern but just an acceptance that nationalism could be
based on all of these arguments. Again, Alter says, “It can mean emancipation, and it can mean oppression
dangers as well as opportunities (Alter, 1994).” There is no precise argument when he tries to define
nationalism even though he does have the idea that nationalism is directly related to a political force.
Alter also states that nationalism was important to shaping Europe, however most scholars agree with
that statement to begin with. Most modern scholars would relate to Alter’s style of defining nationalism.

In conclusion, the definition of nationalism is not easily defined and scholars that have tried to define it
differ, in some amount of detail, from each other. Each scholar seems to have his own uniqueness and
input to the definition, however, these definitions tend to pertain to one certain area of nationalism.
According to the previous scholars, there are a myriad of styles of nationalism including: political,
cultural, ethnic, civic, eastern, and western. Many aspirations are desired because of nationalism, including
establishment of homeland, separation, expansion, etc. Although the definition of nationalism is
essentially particularistic, scholars have been able to identify a few common ideologies. Some common
ground includes; most scholars agree that nationalism started after the French Revolution. They also agree
that nationalism occurs because of a desire for national independence.
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