Post-colonial Transformation as a Mode of Resistance in the Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish

This paper aims to demonstrate how the transformative strategies of resistance introduced by Bill Ashcroft in his theory of transformation can be contextualized in Mahmoud Darwish's poetic discourse of resistance. It also attempts to investigate which of Ashcroft‟s transformative strategies are intensively woven into the texture of Darwish‟s poems to impart a creative mode of resistance. To counter the Israeli colonial discourse of hegemony and injustice, Darwish defiantly produces, through his poetry, an anticolonial discourse that aptly challenges and transforms the Israeli imperial discourse. What is remarkable in the anti-colonial discourse rendered in Darwish's poetry is the fact that it is approached from the lens of the Palestinians themselves and it follows a systematic pattern of resistance. It starts with a process of interpolation through which the poet tries to understand the imperial discourse, analyzes it in detail and then adapts and changes it to correct its misrepresentation of reality. This mode of transformative resistance never leads to direct confrontation with the enemy's discourse. It, rather, involves creative ways of transcending the provocative, imperial discourses and disclosing their inconsistencies.