The Subaltern Between the Rhetoric of the Archive and the Struggle of Identities: A New Historicist Reading of Bashshār ibn Burd’s Bā’iyya

Abstract

This study explores the textual structure of Bashshār ibn Burd’s qaṣīda within an analytical framework grounded in New Historicism, as an approach capable of revealing the dimensions of identity conflict between the center and the subaltern. It re-interrogates cultural authority through a reading of the archive as a dynamic arena of conflict and negotiation, rather than a fixed repository of memory.

The study proceeds from the hypothesis that the archive, as a record of events and a space of power, is shaped by dominant forces that determine what is preserved and what is excluded. It draws on the theoretical insights of Jacques Derrida, Stephen Greenblatt, and Gayatri Spivak to demonstrate how Bashshār transforms his Persian archive into a tool of resistance against marginalization, reclaiming the voice of the Persian self in the face of ʿAbbāsid authority.

The analysis is structured around three textual trajectories:

1. Glorious Past and the Power of Memory (verses 1–9): In these lines, the poet evokes symbols of the Persian archive (Kisrā and Sāsān) to assert his cultural superiority, contrasting it with a depiction of the Arabs as backward and nomadic.


2. Archival Argumentation and the Poetics of Negation (verses 10–18): Here, Bashshār employs the rhetoric of negation and repetition to undermine Arab cultural symbols, constructing a counter-discourse that affirms the supremacy of the Shuʿūbī self.


3. The Active Self and the Artifice of Praise (verses 19–32): Praise appears in this section as a deceptive strategy, outwardly aiming to appease authority, while covertly portraying the Persian self as the true agent of historical agency.

The study suggests that Bashshār ibn Burd, through this poem, enacts a resistant act that destabilizes official narratives and reclaims a suppressed civilizational archive. The text thus shifts from mere invective to an ideological proclamation that reconfigures cultural roles and grants the subaltern the authority to deconstruct and reconstruct dominant discourse.