Abstract

The article, informed by the recent work of scholars who have examined and theorized the feminization of nation-states in the context of contemporary post-colonial literary production, performs an analysis of Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game (2006) that focuses on the novel’s conflations of woman and nation. The paper argues that, while Bassam, the text’s narrator and protagonist, undertakes a journey toward manhood that is troubled by his country’s (Lebanon’s) civil unrest and violent political upheaval, he, like the text’s other male characters, is and remains throughout an active subject-citizen endowed with agency. Because the same cannot be said about the female characters in De Niro’s Game, the narrative ultimately illustrates that, however ‘‘in flux’’ Lebanon society may be, patriarchal power structures persist, rendering real women the passive objects and symbolic projections of a nation whose destiny is determined by her ‘‘sons’’ and ‘‘lovers.’’

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