Abstract: The long literary history of Gilgamesh is inextricable from the history of empire. The epic itself condemns its main character for the imperial nature of the quest that he launches against Humbaba, and the violence he wreaks on the territory that he conquers: as the gods pour scorn on his seemingly triumphant deeds, the reader is left to question the value of imperial expansion. The epic survives in a series of manuscripts kept at Nineveh, the capital of the mighty Neo-Assyrian empire, as King Assurbanipal used the war with Babylon to amass a centralized repository of knowledge. These manuscripts were excavated in the nineteenth century in another instance of imperial adventurism, in the form of British and French archaeologists making forays into the Middle East, leading to the dispersal of the manuscripts across primarily Western museums. The chapter discusses the many links between Gilgamesh and imperial conflict, suggesting concrete pedagogical exercises that can be used to introduce students to postcolonial criticism and its relation to world literature.
How to cite: Aya Labanieh, “Gilgamesh and Postcolonial Pedagogy,” Approaches to Teaching Gilgamesh, edited by David Damrosch and Sophus Helle. New York: Modern Language Association, forthcoming.
Aya Labanieh 