كليدواژه :
فرديت , خويشتن , دروني شدن تحقير , ماخوليا , سم سلوون , رمان لندني هاي غريب
چكيده لاتين :
Introduction: This paper depicts the lived experience of the black characters in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners with regards to the concepts of self, mind, and body.
Reading Selvon in the light of Fanonian concept of epidermalization and the Freudian
notion of melancholia, the current research argues that the black immigrants
suffer from a traumatic s tate of mind, which results in self-contempt, psychic disintegration,
and physical disorientation. In its conversation with the current body of
research on the topic, this paper foregrounds the black characters’ sense of loss in the
metropolitan life of London to eventually argue that Selvon’s characterization moves in opposition to his empowering narrative techniques and linguis tic s trategies.
Background S tudies
The confrontation of the colored immigrant with the white culture, which
is the dominant feature of the novel, has been approached by various researchers.
There have been considerable s tudies on Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners in the pas t
few decades highlighting various aspects of the novel including its language, form,
and narrative s tructure among others.
In “The politics of migration and empire in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners”,
Kenneth Usongo focuses on narrative s tructure and characterization in the novel. In
his discussion, he argues that the episodic s tructure of the s tory corresponds to the
absurd and aimless life of the colored characters. Usongo disapproves of the way
the characters of the novel absorb the signs of the white culture since he believes,
they ins till “the myths of a superior civilization” and contribute to “a deep sense of
cultural inferiority” for the immigrants (199). In his “Black London: The politics of representation in Sam Selvon's The Lonely
Londoners”, Nick Bentley indicates that the use of s tream of consciousness in the
novel is part of Selvon’s attempt to create a fresh form of discourse. He believes that
Selvon manipulates the modernis t narrative techniques to give them his touch. By
doing so, he would be able to empower black people. The problem with the novel,
Bentley sugges ts, is that its representation of black characters does not help Selvon’s
experimental method: “s tereotypical representations of black identity” brings about
an “ambivalence” which probably put Selvon’s goals at risk (“The Politics of Migration”
45). In another research, Bentley argues that Selvons’ “subversion of the
[English] language” is successful in “empowering of the marginalized black subject”
since it provides “what Mikhail Bakhtin would describe as an example of the
heteroglossic function of narrative fiction” (“Form and Language” 77).
For Kris tine N. Kelly, the wandering of the immigrant characters in London is a s trategic
approach to change their situation. She argues that Selvon’s “London becomes
a plane of action and interaction, a ground-level, mobile enactment on networked
space” (68). This dynamic feature creates a space of becoming where the black immigrants
could redefine their identity so that they revisit the seemingly essentialis t
conceptions of the hierarchic binary of black and white. Kelly generally disregards
the alienation of the black characters in the white world of London and argues that
their wanderings enable them to walk and obtain whatever has been denied to them.
Rebecca Dyer opposes the novel’s positive political overtones and its dis tressing ge ography and argues that such a contradictory approach while inventing a deviation
from “proper” English, may not give black immigrants a real chance for changing
their hard life (113). In its dialogue with the exis ting literature on the topic, the current
research argues that the contradictory nature of the novel’s attitude towards the
black people lacks the required s trategies for their emancipation.
Methodology and Argument
This research primarily focuses on Franz Fanon’s theory of epidermalization as explicated
in his Black Skins, White Masks. Fanon believes that epidermalization has
become the essential part of the psyche of the black people which promotes the idea
that they are essentially an inferior type wherever they go (4). Therefore, “[w]herever
he goes, the Negro remains a Negro” (133). In the lived experience of the black
people in the white world, it is obvious that they suffer from alienation and self-contempt;
that is why they have an unconscious desire to emulate the white people and
an “attempt at a hallucinatory whitening” (74).
Fanon’s epidermalization can be better unders tood in the light of the Freudian concept
of melancholia. Freud defines melancholia as “a reaction to the loss of a loved
object” or “an object loss which is withdrawn from consciousness” (245). Such a
reformulation of perception results in “a turning away from reality….and a clinging
to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis (Freud 244).
The characteris tic feature of melancholia is that the melancholic person believes that
such a loved-object loss is not an eternal separation, and therefore, he longs for a
prospective reunion. The migrating subjectivities, uprooted from the rural Islands, in
their transition to the metropolitan London, experience the mos t traumatic scenes of
their lives, not because of war or any other disas ter, but actually, because of the very
alienation they encounter in the fractured world of London divided into little worlds.
Conclusion
Selvon’s characters experience a traumatic sense of loss, self-contempt, and alienation
in the exilic world of London which necessitates an unconscious desire for
changing the color of skin and the boys’ desire for the white women. The boys do not
attempt to nigrify the white world since their actions sugges t their escape from blackness;
rather, they s truggle to denigrify themselves by associating themselves with
white people. While mos t of the current research approves Selvon’s experimentation
with language and narrative form as a s trategically political approach, his s tereotypical
characters do not promote such purposes. Rather, they boos t the dominant white
cultural conceptions of the black immigrants.
