JabrmI. Jabrm, especially as “... the people who read him most and translated
him and commented on his work were themselves the leading young writ-
ers and poets of the new generation.”^80 He further adds that Eliot was to him
and his generation “an articulate and concise advocate of new incipient
thoughts.”^81 With this impact, poets in their early maturation cannot resist
the attachment, especially as Eliot’s discontent and criticism of a dying
civilization, along with his readings of tradition, offer them a much-needed
preparation.
3 “Disidentification,” the penchant to displace and transform the domi-
nating ideology, culminates increasing consciousness against hegemonic dis-
course, not only against the latter’s neo-patriarchal assimilation of colonialist
legacy and its resilient practices to sustain power, but also its manipulation
of culture, religion, and history to increase its power and tighten hegemony.
Conversely, transformative and deviational poetics resorts to different regis-
ters to counter and undermine hegemony. It brings to the foreground histor-
ical figures, who stood against oppression and fought for social and political
justice. In this epistemological domain, modernist poetics forges its imprint,
for the Eliotesque allegiance to “something outside us,”^82 and the use of
objective correlatives from history, mythology, and tradition drives many to
develop another line of engagement with indigenous faiths, mythologies,
symbols, and historical figures.
Undermining poetics
The “disidentification” process could take a number of positions, not only
against tradition at large, but also against practices, realities, and lifestyles
that are rife with contradiction, and that manifest a discord between tradi-
tional indigenous past and pressing needs. This disidentification may evolve
also as an act of negation in transformative poetics. Thus, Adnnls in an early
poem already cited, “The Language of Sin” (1961), expresses utter discontent
with heritage at large.
I burn my inheritance, I say that my land
is virginal, that there are no graves in my youth.
I am above God and Satan;
My ways are deeper than theirs.
In my book I walk
in the procession of the blazing thunderbolt, in the procession of the green
thunderbolt,
I shout—there is no Paradise, no fall after me,
and I erase the language of sin.^83The poet’s register partakes of the tradition that he debates; yet his use of
the “green thunderbolt” shares the symbolism of Qur’mnic rejuvenation.
THE TRADITION/MODERNITY NEXUS