“They turned my wishes to death”: Strategies of Legitimization through Spatial Proximization in War Poetry of Afghanistan

Abstract

This article explicates the strategies of legitimization through spatial proximization. Although, there is a spike of interest in war poetry in recent years, proximization and legitimization aspects of war poetry still need to be explored. Thus, it is important to investigate war poetry from such perspectives because “poetry occupies a critical place in the war resistance literary tradition” (Metres (2007, p. 5). In this article, we grapple with the ways in which legitimization strategies are operated at the level of spatial proximization. Cap argues that (2013), “spatial proximization always forces the vision of a physically destructive character of the ODCs’ impact” (p.74). This article draws attention to rhetorical interplay between legitimization strategies and spatial proximization: one leads to the other. War poetry of Afghanistan uses spatial proximization as an instrument for legitimization purposes. In order to critically analyze the poetics of war, we have adopted Cap’s (2012) model of proximization which contains spatial, temporal and axiological proximization. However, we have utilized only spatial proximization aspect of the model because it suits with my study. Our findings show that legitimization strategies are manifested in war poetry of Afghanistan for achieving certain political goals. This study is important because it provides critical insights to the readers concerning the rhetorical and political nature of war poetry.