Constructing the Notion of Nation: A Postcolonial Quest

Abstract

Postcolonial writers have been very conscious of their role in the construction of the nation. They construct the nation by deconstructing the western constructs about the colonized countries. This game of constructing and deconstructing between the colonized and colonizer generates from the fact that the nation is a cultural construct, built out of and upon the artistic, theoretical and philosophical discourses about the nation which hardly allow articulation of subaltern voices and even if subaltern appears it is dislocated only to be reinvented in the form of advertisements on bill boards. Constructing the nation is a postcolonial project of great significance as postcolonial literatures seek to erase the image of their nations as primitive, savage, and ancient. Writers seek to retrieve a pre-colonial past that would help them in constructing the nation or national identity.