An Analysis Of Barbara Harlow's Resistance Literature

Many people thought that the struggle towards independence, liberty, freedom and self-building was only through trifles of weapons in general. Some of them believed in that out of innocent ignorance and others out of deliberate negligence. It was a kind of absurd thinking that the resistance only through violence; literature played a pivotal role in the armed and political battles. Resistance literature is a stunning way or response against oppression using written words. It aims to elicit sympathy for certain issues, and educate the whole world about them. It is an accurate reflection for the reality. As a matter of fact, for every action, there is a reaction. Resistance literature is a normal reaction against oppression and human slavery. It uses a pen instead of a gun.

As one of the foundational texts in the field of postcolonial writing, Barbara Harlow’s Resistance Literature introduced new ground in western literary studies by not only calling for a wider, more serious assertion of previously ignored Third World texts, but also for demanding that critics abandon their New Critical mantle of neutrality and objectivity in favor of a methodology that takes the social, political, and historical circumstances of these works into account. Marlow argues that the term of "Resistance" was used for the first time, with reference to literature, by the Palestine writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani in his study literature of resistance in occupied Palestine 1948-1966. The critic divides resistance literature into two categories: under occupation or in