Migration and pathology: a comparative reading of fragmented selves in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North

Abstract

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 literary-aesthetic, the social, the cultural, and the political.