Trauma and the Dialectics of Recuperation in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea

This article argues that Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea (2001) is unusual in contemporary fiction in that it suggests a way in which the lost past can be recuperated, both in the sense of being reclaimed and in the sense of healing past conflicts. The primary means by which this is shown to happen is through a dialectical encounter between the hitherto opposing groups or ideologies. The novel uses migrant distancing from the African past to ameliorate the pain experienced in that past and the close encounter between the two protagonists, Saleh Omar and Latif Mahmud, with long and bitter family histories, to explore how a dialectical relationship can be developed. By having to reframe past assumptions, each character must change not only his way of thinking about the other, but also about the past and himself. The theory used in the paper is mostly Hegelian, but also psychoanalytic.