Riverbend's blogosphere: mockery and menace in colonial discourse.
This paper explores how Riverbend's blog/bookBaghdad burningresonates with representations of Bhabha's conceptualization of the Other through the concept of mimicry which disrupts colonial discourse. Riverbend, the pseudonym of the blogger ofBaghdad burninglaunched 17 August 2003, generates two repr...
| Published in: | Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 327 - 339 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Aug2013
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=88893179&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 88893179 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 17405904 RF5 jtl: Critical Discourse Studies issn: 17405904 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Aug2013 vid: 10 iid: 3 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 88893179 10.1080/17405904.2013.791233 ppf: 327 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 91KB tig: atl: Riverbend's blogosphere: mockery and menace in colonial discourse. aug: au: Abdul Jabbar, WisamKhalid affil: Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada su: Imitative behavior Discourse analysis Postcolonialism Cyberspace Nationalism Iraq sug: subj: Iraq Imitative behavior Discourse analysis Postcolonialism Cyberspace Nationalism keyword: Baghdad burning blogging colonial discourse postcolonial Riverbend ab: This paper explores how Riverbend's blog/bookBaghdad burningresonates with representations of Bhabha's conceptualization of the Other through the concept of mimicry which disrupts colonial discourse. Riverbend, the pseudonym of the blogger ofBaghdad burninglaunched 17 August 2003, generates two representations of mimicry. The first is the new Iraqi governing members who, ‘hand-picked by Bremer’, represent how mimicry slips into mockery. To Riverbend, those governing members are puppets with colonial masks who project themselves as Iraqi nationalists. Their interest in Iraq is in fact a continuation of the colonial pretensions. Second, Riverbend resists the colonial discourse by utilizing mimicry as likeness with menace to both the colonizers and their mimic men. As she uses the empowering language of the colonizer as well as western humour and knowledge of pop culture to accentuate resistance, Riverbend eventually becomes a menace to the colonizer because she ‘is almost the same, but not quite’. Through the lens of mimicry as a colonial mode to legitimize authority, Riverbend becomes the voice of dissent or of resistance using cyberspace to expose both the colonizers and their mimic men as part of the ongoing colonial discourse which is both pretentious and dehumanizing. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Critical Discourse Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Critical Discourse Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2013 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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