Schizophrenic Identity; Victorious Femininity and Defeated Masculinity: A Post-colonial study of The French Perfume by Amir Taj Alsir

Abstract

Intellectual and cultural invasion, a new type of colonialism, makes it possible to alienate nations without war. The reflection of such an invasion on identity appears sometimes as schizophrenic symptoms, which turn the colonized into psychos alienated and disconnected from reality. Since issues such as I-Other challenge, and its clear manifestation, namely duality of East/West, are among the most important concepts of post-colonial literary criticism, post-colonial literature, especially the novel, has widely discussed the problem of identity. Arab writers have repeatedly referred to the encounter of the East and the West, and its reflection on post-colonial identity. Using the East-West encounter in the form of men and women relationship, the Sudanese novelist, Amir Taj Alsir, presents the identity crisis of its characters in The French Perfume. However, unlike other novels, this time a western woman comes to the East (Sudan) and causes identity crisis for a man inside his homeland. Indicating the negative implications of this imaginary visit, the novel warns of new methods of western colonization without military apparatus. Using an analytical-descriptive approach and the post-colonial critical tools, this research seeks to carry out an aesthetic analysis of the application of the masculinity/femininity duality in the expression of the western impacts on the identity of nations in the post-colonial era. The results indicate that the title of the novel represents a soft policy which manages to eliminate even the bitterness and negative attitudes in the colonized nations towards colonialist. The analysis also shows that schizophrenia and dual personality of the hero and his disability in winning the love of his western would-be mistress represent the East’s disability to achieve Western achievements.