نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
This article presents a psychocritical reading of the novel The Most Secret Memory of Men (2021) by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Positioned at the intersection of psychocriticism and postcolonial studies, this research examines how the writer’s subjectivity is represented within the creative process of writing—a subjectivity deeply intertwined with colonial memory, identity crisis, and the quest for symbolic legitimacy. In this work, the figure of the writer manifests as a site of dense, tension-ridden imaginative projection. The methodology is grounded in Charles Mauron’s psychocriticism, employing an intra-textual superposition of texts to identify the obsessive metaphors and metaphorical networks organizing the text’s unconscious. Accordingly, this study seeks to answer the following questions: How does the narrative representation of the writer formulate a personal myth? and How is the transition from a colonial wound and identity crisis into aesthetic power achieved? The findings reveal seven clusters of obsessive metaphors: social rejection, the burning passion for writing, sexual imagery, the distorted perception of the father, racism, alienation from religion, and internalized colonialism. The analysis of these metaphors demonstrates that the novel’s labyrinthine and polyphonic structure reflects an imagination governed by rupture and compensation. Ultimately, these metaphorical networks culminate in the creation of a personal myth: the “writer-as-victim,” a figure for whom writing is simultaneously an ordeal, self-dispossession, and transformation. Comparing these findings with the author’s biographical data reveals that Mbougar Sarr’s narrative labyrinth serves as a mirror for redemption through art, wherein aesthetic sovereignty addresses the violence of history and the ruptures of the postcolonial subject.
کلیدواژهها English
