The Figure of the “Been-to” in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (1960), Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments (1969) and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1969).
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Date
2015
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university Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertation has dealt with the traumatic experiences and problems that have been faced
by the African intellectuals during the post-independent era. Many African literary works
reflect the state of disorder and confusion into which the “been-to” returners were submerged
as it is the case of Obi in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (1960), Baako in Ayi Kwei
Armah’s Fragments (1969) and Mustafa Sa’eed along with the unnamed narrator in Tayeb
Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1969). Using Bhabha’s theory “Of Mimicry and
Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” (1994), we have tried to study some of the
common themes that are cultural clash, alienation and isolation and finally identity that lie
between the three novels. The novels are written by three distinct authors belonging to three
different cultures. Yet, these novels expose nearly the same social and cultural dilemmas that
those African “been-tos” have gone through after their return home. Achebe’s, Armah’s and
Salih’s novels are lucid portraits of the Africans’ daily life in neo-colonial Africa. These
writers portray the “been-tos” as alienated individuals whose life turn into a real nightmare
due to their Western acquired education and to the social changes that occurred in neocolonial
Africa. Abroad, the “been-tos” intensively mimic the white man that they come to
forget about their cultural heritage and their well rooted communal values and they start to
adopt that of the western man. As a matter of fact, on their return home, the “been-tos” face
problems of social and cultural reintegration because they are not able to defend any of these
two opposing cultures that can never meet. By a close reading of the three novels and by
making reference to Bhabha’s theory, we have tried to show that though they are written in
three distinct countries by three different writers, the “been-tos” suffer from nearly the same
problems: clash of cultures, alienation and identity crisis.
Description
62p.;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Citation
Media and Cultural Studies.