{"title":"‘I Choose Life’: Negation, Agency, and Utopian Hope in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North.","authors":"Uchechukwu P. Umezurike","doi":"10.24193/mjcst.2022.14.04","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North dramatizes the violence of colonialism and patriarchy and their impact on the African psyche. This article shifts from the prevailing scholarship on Mustafa, the main protagonist, to locate hope in what one does, not merely as an abstract concept. The unnamed narrator exemplifies Salih’s vision of a postcolonial subject that recognizes the perils of binary thinking and aspires instead toward an ethic acceptance of vulnerability and difference. Invoking Tia DeNora’s conception of hope as “an orientation to action” and “a space for possibility,” I show how the narrator’s embrace of hope is linked to and complicated by the effects of colonialism and patriarchy in his Sudanese village. Overall, the aim of this article is threefold: first, to examine Salih’s critique of female negation and male hegemony; second, to highlight Salih’s rejection of passivity and fatalism–how both undermine individual and collective agency and reinforce female negation in society; and, lastly, to consider Salih’s postcolonial utopianism and privileging of autonomy.","PeriodicalId":36476,"journal":{"name":"Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.24193/mjcst.2022.14.04","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North dramatizes the violence of colonialism and patriarchy and their impact on the African psyche. This article shifts from the prevailing scholarship on Mustafa, the main protagonist, to locate hope in what one does, not merely as an abstract concept. The unnamed narrator exemplifies Salih’s vision of a postcolonial subject that recognizes the perils of binary thinking and aspires instead toward an ethic acceptance of vulnerability and difference. Invoking Tia DeNora’s conception of hope as “an orientation to action” and “a space for possibility,” I show how the narrator’s embrace of hope is linked to and complicated by the effects of colonialism and patriarchy in his Sudanese village. Overall, the aim of this article is threefold: first, to examine Salih’s critique of female negation and male hegemony; second, to highlight Salih’s rejection of passivity and fatalism–how both undermine individual and collective agency and reinforce female negation in society; and, lastly, to consider Salih’s postcolonial utopianism and privileging of autonomy.
塔伊布·萨利赫(Tayeb Salih)的《北方移民季》(Season of Migration to the North)戏剧化地描述了殖民主义和父权制的暴力,以及它们对非洲人心理的影响。本文从主流学者对主人公穆斯塔法的研究转向将希望定位在一个人的行动中,而不仅仅是一个抽象的概念。这位未具名的叙述者体现了萨利赫对后殖民主体的看法,即认识到二元思维的危险,并渴望在道德上接受脆弱性和差异。引用蒂亚·德诺拉(Tia DeNora)关于希望是“行动的方向”和“可能性的空间”的概念,我展示了叙述者对希望的拥抱是如何与他所在的苏丹村庄的殖民主义和父权制的影响联系在一起并使其复杂化的。总体而言,本文的目的有三个方面:首先,考察萨利赫对女性否定和男性霸权的批判;其次,强调萨利赫对被动性和宿命论的拒绝——这两者是如何破坏个人和集体的能动性,并加强社会对女性的否定;最后,考虑萨利赫的后殖民乌托邦主义和自治特权。