Abstract
Different nations suffer from colonialism around the world. Colonialism is a battle of power, domination, and subjection. It aims at destroying the identity of the colonized nations, and utilizing their resources. Nations under the hegemony of colonialism struggle to maintain their collective identity and national heritage; they resist and struggle to voice the sentiments of their nation to the whole world. Moreover, they recount their stories of anguish and oppression through their literature. This thesis pursues a comparative study to investigate how different nations suffer from colonialism and post colonialism, and how they articulate their collective identity through their literature. This paper scrutinizes the themes of collective identity and resistance in two different novels: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, an Irish novel by James Joyce and The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant, a Palestinian novel by Sahar Khalifeh. To achieve these aims, the study adopts Alberto Melucci's theory of Collective Identity, and Barbara Harlow's Resistance Literature in order to compare and contrast the struggle of two nations/cultures that fall under colonialism. The research spots and reveals that the struggle of Ireland and Palestine is similar; both suffer from oppressive and hegemonic regimes: Zionism in the case of the Palestinians, and imperialism in the case of the Irish people.
Key words: Collective Identity, Literature of Resistance, Colonialism, Nationalism, Post Colonialism