MOHAMED ZAFZAF'S AL-MARءA WA-L-WARDA OR THE VOYAGE NORTH IN THE POSTCOLONIAL ERA

Extract

In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said considers the topos of the voyage North as one of the motifs in the “culture of resistance.” Traveling North is seen in this respect as a reversal of imperial and colonial history. When, for instance, Mustafa Saء ed in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North goes to England, his objective is to conquer—so he thinks—with his “penis” the country of his colonizer. The cultural encounter between Britain and the Arab–African nation of Sudan involves for Saءed a configuration of power in which the West is imagined as a woman to be raped in the same way colonial armies raped the virgin territories of the Orient and Africa.