| Abstract
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In "The Heteroglossic Narratives of National History: Mythified Histories and the Postcolonial Condition," I examine the function of myth in the making of a nation and in the writing of national history. I use the term "myth" in two ways. First, I use it to refer to the fantastic texts found in the cultural repository of every nation; and I suggest that the heteroglossic language of these myths embody the several temporalities and competing discourses that make up a nation. Second, I use it to refer to a meaning-making process, which Barthes calls "mythification," to discuss the stages by which a nation-state or an empire imbues an originary event with new meanings, and eventually gives it a new reality. Thus combining what are often discussed separately, I suggest myth as a tool to articulate nation as a contested cultural representation. Opening Chapter One, " Positioning Myth and Nation: Contested Terms," with the analysis of a mythical tale that I heard from my grandmother, I discuss the potential of myth in representing suppressed voices. In Chapter Two, "Mediated Spaces: Mythified Nation and History," I trace how imagined mythical spaces transform dominant discourses—such as nationalism, Islamism, and secularism—into narrative acts, and expose the ways in which a nation is invented, spanning texts from Conrad, Rushdie, and Pamuk. In Chapter Three, "Myths of Resistance," I demonstrate the ways in which the subaltern deploys resistance to physical and discursive violence through mythological figures, analyzing texts from Indian, Bengali, and Kyrgyz literatures. In Chapter Four, "The Arched Stone Bridges, and the Immurement Legend: Mythical Metaphors for the Balkan Consciousness," I read the immurement legend and the bridge, both common Balkan motifs, as dualistic codes of transgression that can bring together multiple histories. In covering texts from various locations and national literatures, I aim to demonstrate the potential of myth to establish an overarching perspective that can still recognize difference, and that can challenge the conventional notion of nation as a linear, homogeneous body.
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