Negotiation national identity of characters in Mochtar Lubis’s Maut dan Cinta a postcolonial study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the negotiation of nationalism in Mochtar Lubis’s novel Maut dan Cinta through Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial perspective. This study used a qualitative approach with content analysis methods. The data consist of quotes from narration, dialogue, monologues, and events in the novel that represent the process of negotiating the characters’ nationalistic identity. Data were collected through intensive reading (close reading) of the entire novel, followed by identifying and marking excerpts for analysis. The data were analyzed in stages, namely through open coding to identify identity phenomena that emerged in the text, axial coding to connect excerpts with Bhabha’s conceptual categories, and selective coding to formulate the subject’s crisis and the patterns of negotiation of the characters’ nationalistic identity based on the concepts of ambivalence, mimicry, hybridity, and third space. The results show that the characters’ nationalistic identity is negotiated through two interrelated mechanisms. First, a subject crisis emerges when the character faces a conflict between personal interests and collective responsibility toward the nation, resulting in national identity being in an ambivalent and liminal condition. Second, the formation of the national subject takes place through the appropriation of colonial knowledge, mastery of foreign languages, communication technologies, international diplomacy, and journalistic practices that are transformed into strategies for national struggle. The findings affirm that nationalism in Maut dan Cinta is represented as a dynamic and hybrid identity continuously constructed through psychological, ideological, and cultural negotiations.