Pathologizing Otherness

Abstract

The nexus between literature and society is well known. Literary texts textualize the social imaginaries and contours of societal patterns of their origins. Instances of insanity and fragmentation of selves have been associated with othering processes that stem from crevices within the culture. Deliberate stigmatization of people owing to their differences such as ethnicity, sex, political ideology, religion, race, class and physique has devastating consequences on their selves. Proponents of post-colonial studies such as Frantz Fanon squarely blame otherness for most psychological anomalies people experience. He contends that the constant negation of the other results in psychic collapse and symptoms of madness are sequels of othering. African scholars such as Achille Mbembe have reiterated Fanon’s conversation with regard to the African experience. True to this perspective, African novelists have demonstrated how othering processes in the social and political spheres have bruised characters and caused fragmented selves and insanity. Characters with divergent political views are relegated and denied their humanity. As a result, they end up with psychic collapse without hope of recovery. Women characters have been relegated because of their sex differences and have not borne the psychological impact of gender otherness. Those female characters unable to have children have faced the brunt of relegation given that most African cultures prize children. Unable to confront cultural otherness, their psyches have collapsed and they ended up schizophrenic. Some characters cannot bear the stigma of otherness and resort to self-isolation or otherness. Laing refers to such persons as schizoids—patients that cannot establish interpersonal relationships like other normal human beings and resort to intra-personal relationships typical of psychopathy. Some characters are relegated by their ethnicity and can neither have well-paying jobs nor be entrusted with political power. The resultant trauma has devastating effects on their selves and they end up fragmented or mad. Literary works such as Hisham Matar’s The Return and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood demonstrate the above psychological impact of otherness on characters. Whereas in Matar’s novel parallels will focus on Fanon’s exploration of clinical madness as a consequence of othering, Emecheta’s work will be used to interrogate Casey’s perspective on the nexus between culture, possession and madness. It is the contention of this study that the psychological consequences of othering in the African novels are similar to those of COVID-19 restrictions in African Nations. With the advent of the pandemic, aspects of social sanity that Laing advocates like sociability, making friends, visiting them, going to churches, mosques, parties are legally prohibited. Introverted personalities that were previously viewed as abnormal for avoiding society are now appreciated as exemplary models to be emulated to combat the pandemic. Social distancing, an attribute typical of psychopathy in Laing’s perspective, occupies a higher stave among measures adopted by governments to fight the pandemic. Since the Coronavirus has no cure, every victim is the “Other” and governments have legitimized their stigmatization through quarantine. Just like Foucault’s reference to the confinement of the poor in asylums during the Augustan period, so is the plight of Coronavirus patients. With these restrictions come ill consequences on many economic sectors, and many African people working in the entertainment and tourism industries have lost their jobs. In societies where class is esteemed, the jobless turn into the “class others.” Culturally, men have always been breadwinners in African families and once they become jobless they lose their hold as heads. If their wives run small businesses then they usurp financial authority, and gender roles are inverted. The men become the “others” in the family. Whereas the aforementioned writers focus on morally prohibited strands of otherness and their impact on the mental health of characters, COVID-19 has invented morally accepted strands of otherness that have similar psychological consequences on society. Otherness is institutionalized and systematized like the colonialism that Fanon delves into, hence possible nexus in the consequences. This study is based on comprehensive qualitative library research and deploys a close reading of four texts as a basis of discourse and reflection.