Negotiating Identity under Cultural Hegemony: Indigenous Resistance in Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood

Abstract

This paper explores how Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood reflects the dynamics of cultural hegemony as conceptualized by Antonio Gramsci, particularly in relation to the socio-political history of the Naga people. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony explains how dominant groups maintain control not merely through political or economic coercion but through the internalization of dominant ideologies by the oppressed. Through a close reading of the novel, this paper investigates how the Indian state imposes a hegemonic national identity that marginalizes Naga voices, history, and culture. The paper further analyzes how Kire’s narrative both depicts and enacts forms of resistance—individual and collective—against cultural erasure. The novel serves as a counter-hegemonic discourse, preserving oral history, indigenous identity, and the memory of political struggle. By applying Gramsci’s theoretical lens, the paper aims to foreground the tensions between domination and resistance, identity and nationalism, and memory and erasure in Bitter Wormwood.