Arabic Literature

Drop of the Other in the Novel “Shawq Al-Darwish”; A study in Light of the Dynamism of Identity and Difference

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Fateme Araji

Department of Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran. Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22059/jalit.2024.369994.612772
Abstract
The colonial powers defined, defined, and narrated the nature of the colonial countries, that is, “the other,” according to their cognitive system and in service of their colonial goals. The novel "Shouq Al-Darwish" narrates how the colonizer rose to be the final giver of meanings, purposes, and legitimacy, and this resulted in falsifying the historical path of the indigenous groups. The novel was full of religious symbols that fit the historical background of the events, a struggle between the Islamic Mahdist trend and the Orthodox Christian trend in Sudan. In this research, we aim, with a descriptive-analytical approach, to identify how the novel provides an insightful reading of part of the history of the Mahdist Revolution, through which the balance of central hegemony is tipped in favor of reality, in light of the colonial attempts that rendered the indigenous peoples inert and referred to only as categories that must be erased. Its cultures. The conditions of the colonial countries were represented in vague, primitive images, separating them from their culture and making them imagine that breaking with it would lead them to modernity. This novel describes how the East lived under the preoccupation of anxiety, fragility, and confusion regarding its authorities, as it had no choice but to follow the Western other, especially in the main character, “Bakhit Mendil,” as he found himself in specific frameworks that did not allow him global integration and did not allow him to develop his own identity. Among the mechanisms that the novel came up with to present this image is to represent the religious-historical interrelationship from an important angle. This is because history is described as a final, fixed substance that cannot be touched upon. However, the novel, as a text based on imagination, made history the subject of questioning and cast a shadow of doubt on the history that The "Mahdist Revolution" was described as a bloody and subversive movement

Keywords

identity
difference
post-colonialism
cultural hegemony
Shawq Al-Darwish’s novel
Subjects
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  • Receive Date 22 December 2023
  • Revise Date 04 February 2024
  • Accept Date 14 February 2024

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