Migration and pathology: a comparative reading of fragmented selves in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North
Abstract
The paper is a comparative reading of dissociation and spirit possession
as worthwhile tropes of analyzing the fragmented selves to
lay basis of interpretation of similar works with African and Western
cultural heritages. In spite of availability of critical works on pathological
consequences of othering on African immigrants, this comparative
reading is absent. Some literary scholars interrogate the
clinical trope and point out the need to incorporate both the
clinical and spirit possession tropes, whereas most literary scholars
focus on clinical madness as a consequence of othering, this paper
extends it to spirit possession among migrant characters. The article
adopts postcolonialism and concepts from diverse fields to enable
comparison of the clinical and possession tropes with reference to
Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2009). The study is anchored in ideas
of scholars from different disciplines such as depth psychology
(dissociation) and anthropology (spirit possession) as theoretical
bases of interpretation. To ensure a flawless interaction of these
theorists who occupy different academic disciplines, I foment an
interdisciplinary exegesis by adopting Ato Quayson’s ‘Calibrations’
theory, which is a fine-tuned tool for textual close reading that
‘oscillates’ rapidly between different domains – the literaryaesthetic,
the social, the cultural, and the political.
URI
https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2024.2427823http://repository.mut.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/6508