A Post-Colonial Construction of an Authentic and Dignified Identity: Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

This paper aims to analyze Tayeb Salih’s classic novel Season of Migration to the North in terms of and as a post-colonial construction of an authentic and dignified identity. Post-colonial literature at large tries to re-read and re-write the history of colonialism and imperialism through the perspective of the colonized who was almost entirely silenced in the Western version of history. Refusing the silencing and misrepresentation of the colonized peoples by the colonizers in accordance with their interests, post-colonial literature enables the colonized to speak and to construct an authentic and dignified self. In this respect, post-colonial literature is a project of self-understanding, self-representation, and self-construction. As a post-colonial novel, Salih’s Season of Migration to the North deals with the biased construction of the identities of both the colonized and the colonizer as the heritage of the 19th and 20th century British imperialism and demonstrates that those identities constructed by the imperialist culture are misrepresentations that have devastating effects on the relationships between cultures and people. Telling the story of two well-read Sudanese men who were educated and lived in Britain for long years, the novel shows how the imperialist culture has negatively impacted the lives and souls of both the colonized and the colonizer. As a meaningful response to this culture, Salih’s novel examines the question of how people and cultures should interact in a disinterested manner and how the colonized can construct an authentic and dignified self in opposition to the imposed colonial identities and representations.