Subalter-nation: narrating Burma

Abstract

Drawing from Aung San Suu Kyi’s Freedom from Fear (1991) and Pascal Khoo Thwe’s From the Land of Green Ghosts (2002), this article examines how the discourses of nation-building in Burma are inextricably linked to sovereign ambitions of state-building through militaristic and insurgent means. In particular, it focuses on the contested nature of both nation- and state-building ideologies in Burma, which are characterised by a rift within their respective modes of narration: national autobiography and subaltern autobiography. The genre of national autobiography, which is commonly associated with the life histories of national leaders, has gained considerable attention in recent literary criticism. This article suggests that while Suu Kyi’s autobiography remains complicit with elite nationalism, Pascal Khoo Thwe’s life narrative charts Burmese national history through individual and communal trajectories. Within this, the article introduces the notion of subalter-nation as a narrative mode of subaltern autobiography that forges the means of another national consciousness through insurgent and secessionist sovereign ambitions.