Psychological and Cultural Borderlands in Tayyib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

Hussein H Zeidanin

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.1p.75

Abstract

This paper explores the conflicting points of view of the narrator and Saeed in Tayyib Salih’s novel. Their conflict emanates from psychological and ideological sources and foreshadows their relations with the western civilization and women. While some scenes and events of the novel introduce Saeed as an alter ego or double of the narrator for their identical social, cultural and educational backgrounds, others represent him as an id that needs to be regulated and controlled by the narrator who plays the role of the ego. The paper further contends that Saeed is neither a nationalist nor assimilationist; rather, he is a culturally hybrid character who equally identifies with the occidental culture of England and the oriental culture of Sudan. His latent hatred, mistrust and enmity towards the occident can be considered ironic or parodic on the ground that he vigorously seeks to import the western values of modernism, urbanization, egalitarianism and enlightenment to Sudan. Keywords: Double, consciousness, unconsciousness, hybridity, mimicry, narcissism

Highlights

Tayyib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North addresses such postcolonial themes as nostalgia to the pre-colonial era, questioning of orientalism and imperialism, formation of double consciousness and cultural hybridity which the controversial relationship between the narrator and Mustafa Saeed epitomizes
In the light of this perception, I am going to explore the psychological and cultural borderlands in Season, where incompatible cultural and psychological elements coexist in the characters of Mustafa Saeed and the narrator
Because the novel is set in the postcolonial history and culture of Sudan, I will critically analyze it in the light of Homi Bhaba’s postcolonial theory of cultural hybridity, and argue that Saeed is a hybrid rather than a fundamentalist or nationalist

Summary

Introduction

Tayyib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North addresses such postcolonial themes as nostalgia to the pre-colonial era, questioning of orientalism and imperialism, formation of double consciousness and cultural hybridity which the controversial relationship between the narrator and Mustafa Saeed epitomizes. Du Bois (1990) uses the term “double consciousness” to describe the multiple facets of the African American identity. He defines it as “a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. One ever feels his two-ness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (8-9). In the light of this perception, I am going to explore the psychological and cultural borderlands in Season, where incompatible cultural and psychological elements coexist in the characters of Mustafa Saeed and the narrator. Because the novel is set in the postcolonial history and culture of Sudan, I will critically analyze it in the light of Homi Bhaba’s postcolonial theory of cultural hybridity, and argue that Saeed is a hybrid rather than a fundamentalist or nationalist

Novel Overview

Psychological Borderlands

Dictates of Consciousness

Dictates of Unconsciousness

Cultural Borderlands

Conclusion