MUNA’S THESIS

MUNA’S THESIS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the Study

Identity Formation is an aspect of literary studies that has not only always been a very focal point of research but also studies immensely the series of events, contacts and cultural moderations, altercations and developments that generated the need for the study of identity and its mode and process(es) of formation. Identity formation is a very vital aspect of the post-colonial theory that mirrors extensively the nature of the colonized person in a post-colonial era as one in an endless search for a re-assertion of personhood. This research explores the nature of identity formation of postcolonial subjects in attempts to establish a sense of stable personality, one that they hope will enable them to exist as non-ambivalent beings. It describes the nature of humanity and a quest for the understanding of oneself. Identity formation as a facet of literary studies is one that emanated from the desire of most post-colonial scholars to re-assert their cultural values and re-affirm the societal tenets that colonialism either drove to moribundity or entirely obliterated. The crux of the study of identity formation in this context is to delve into the historical tendencies that characterize societies, taking into cognizance, the aesthetic values of the pre-colonial existence, the tidal sequence of colonization and post-colonization and the loss of the identity created by the disengagement with the traditional tenets that flourished in societies prior to the advent of colonialism and its attendant change in cultural norms and values.

It is pertinent to employ the tenets of the pre-colonial society in the establishment of a sense of personhood and belonging for the colonized person. These tenets which include the revaluation of cultural norms and values, reawakening of the communal doctrines that held the people in unity with the societies and the tradition-bestowed identities of the pre-colonial societies are tenets that are in recent years, heavily propagated by the Blackman in his desire to find a voice in the midst of people whose ideologies have been shaped by the contact with colonialism. In attempting to unify two divergent and contrasting cultures, these colonized people find themselves dangling between these contradicting cultures, unable to wholly align with either. In other words, they are of two worlds belonging fully to neither. The need for cultural reaffirmation and re-assertion of identity have prompted scholarly studies that have their aims geared to establishing the identity of the colonized beings as characters beleaguered with altered sense of identities and personalities and hence, have been deprived of the ideal sense of belonging dictated by their cultures. These studies examine immensely the maladies of these postcolonial subjects who have been caught in the web of conflicts that exist between two contrasting and often disagreeing cultures that are inadvertently embodied in their identities.

 

MUNA’S THESIS

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