"Once his basic needs are satisfied (indeed sometimes even before), man is subject to intense desires, though he may not know precisely for what. The reason is that he desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess."
The purpose of this paper is to explore the characters and situations in Tayeb Salih's novel Season of Migration to the North while applying the theories of René Girard, as put forth in Violence and the Sacred. I hope to show the many ways in which Girard has successfully anticipated the motivational and behavioral patterns of individuals and society caught up in a vengeful cycle of violence. Finally, I wish to consider the implications and limitations of these theories in intercultural interpretation, but also of the idea of intercultural interpretation itself.
Tayeb Salih's novel is a fantastic portrayal of cross-cultural and interpersonal encounter, of the pursuit of power and identity, and of the jealousy and resentment which accompany various interactions and power relationships. It relates the life events of a Sudan-born character named Mustafa Sa'eed, and the consciousness of a nameless narrator who takes an obsessive interest in Mustafa's life. As a young man, and despite his introverted demeanor, Mustafa shows extraordinary academic promise, and he is sent to receive his education in England. All along, Mustafa's thoughts and motivations are secretly trained upon seeking ways to enact revenge against England for the effects of colonization upon his homeland. Mustafa earns a reputation as a distinguished scholar while also gaining the amorous attentions of many English women. It is in his relationships with these women that Mustafa's resentment takes form. After a number of personal "conquests," Mustafa's English campaign culminates in a murder. In trial Mustafa is found guilty but, due to his own "victimized" status as a colonized foreigner, he is given only a light sentence. Humbled by his experiences, he returns to Sudan and assumes an apparent traditional local lifestyle--he marries a woman from the village, buys farmland near the Nile, and starts a family. We eventually learn, however, that his delusions of conquest take on new dimensions, as he gradually draws an unsuspecting person (the narrator) into taking an interest in his story.
The details of Mustafa's life are revealed very slowly at first, and they are all related through the narrator, who is also Sudanese-born and English-educated. The narrator does not suspect Mustafa's intentions at first, as he eagerly seeks out the particulars of Mustafa's character. The narrator is driven further to come to an understanding of Mustafa's legacy when Mustafa disappears, assumed drowned, and a chain of tragic events follows in his absence. The more he learns about Mustafa however, the less the narrator is able to control his obsessive quest, and the less he is able to distinguish Mustafa's life from his own. The story ends with the narrator following in Mustafa's steps by entering the Nile; and, in the throes of the current, he realizes his own mortality and the tenuousness of his own identity.
It is these events, as well as the actions and words of several of the minor characters which will be analyzed in this paper. I suggest that the tragedy that befalls the characters and their village can be understood in terms of Girard's theory of mimesis. Each violent act represents the struggle to attain or retain control over one's own identity and the power which this accomplishment represents. All acts, in this light, are simultaneously acts of homage as well as aggression, for they are motivated by an attempt to appropriate the power perceived in others by rivals who do not sense this power within themselves.
Girard claims that the theories about human nature which he posits in Violence and the Sacred apply universally. Making sweeping generalizations is potentially limiting and therefore a risky endeavor, for it diminishes the promise of intercultural studies--that alternatives to one's own understanding of human behavior can be discovered in other cultures. If valid, however, the assertion that mimetic desire and rivalry are transcultural constants potentially threatens to undermine the usefulness of emphasizing cultural differences, and it raises questions as to what constitutes the idea of an "other."
Girard argues that every society is threatened by the potential or actual violence of its own members. He asserts that, no matter what else human relationships may be, they are also power relationships. The act or threat of violence arises in the competition for, and attraction to, power. If an individual perceives himself as being oppressed, or sees the opportunity to increase his power, he will pattern his behavior in the manner of those more powerful than him. Because the challenge of power also entails the challenger modeling his/herself after the challenged, Girard calls this behavior mimetic. This imitative behavior, according to Girard, may include jealousy towards either an object in the possession of the rival, or even towards an object desired by the rival. This can result in destruction of the object, especially if the challenger has some power over the object, but not enough to actually possess the object. Despite the threat of this desire to social stability, it is, according to Girard, the defining (identifying) act of the individuals of a society. Those who are more powerful are reinforced in their status by the fact that their power is revered and sought after. The less powerful, too, are defined by this activity, but negatively, for it is only as a shadow of those with power.
For Girard, the problem faced by any society is that mimetic rivalry, left unchecked, actually causes a loss of identity. The mad cycle that occurs, through the imitation of behavior and retaliation, starts to cause a breakdown of social hierarchies. The vying for objects of desire (power) in order to "become" the person of dominance leads to a blurring of the necessary dualities of social organization, indeed of distinguishing anything. Under such circumstances, notions of good/evil, victimizer/victim, and even self/other become less clear. The individual affected by mimetic rivalry has the confusing emotions of hating the oppressor, and of wanting to be the oppressor. Inevitably, the confusion of emotions leads to self-hatred, and the only remaining defining act is the attempted destruction of all "other" identities, including one's own. Girard even suggests that all relationships, besides being contests over power, are also acts of aggression, whether retaliatory or oppressive. Essentially, mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry are the forces that define or destroy all identity.
While declaring all human behavior to be universally based on principles of mimesis, Girard does distinguish between "primitive" and "modern societies" in the way each deals with violence. The way a primitive society maintains itself is by "preventive" measures. Under the threat of violence, the society finds a surrogate victim--a scapegoat--who is not only innocent of the violence at hand or threatening, but also weak enough to pose no potential threat of retaliation towards anyone. The scapegoat must be blamed for all of the misfortune that has befallen or is looming over the community. In an ironic twist, however, when all of the community's violence has been diverted to and expended upon the chosen victim, that victim (or his/her/its remains or afterimage) becomes sacred. After all, the victim is responsible for the violence ceasing--the guilty is transformed into the holy.
A modern society, according to Girard, is afforded the luxury of institutionalizing acts of revenge. It reviles at the idea of sacrificing something which has for so long been held to be sacred (something innocent and helpless). Instead, the society establishes a system of justice. The judicial system represents an actual act of revenge, which he calls "curative violence". Violence is still met with violence (power in response to attempts at power). The difference is that modern society is not threatened by retaliation because it has a monopoly over the means of revenge. The power relationships have become institutionalized, and individuals, no matter how they may feel towards those institutions, are themselves made to consent to the system of justice in actualizing any retaliatory measures:
The system does not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectively limits it to a single act of reprisal, enacted by a sovereign authority specializing in this particular function. The decisions of the judiciary are invariably presented as the final word on vengeance.
A third, and less definable designation, is a society which shows signs of being both primitive and modern. Such a society can be defined, according to Girard, as being in transition, or evolution, from primitive to modern. This change may either occur due to forces inside or outside of the society. In either case, it is due to an individual or group, with enough acquired power, asserting a system of formal legal retribution for any acts of violence. The definitive break comes, "when the intervention of an independent legal authority becomes constraining."
As previously mentioned, however, Girard stresses that the motivational and behavioral patterns of mimetic desire and rivalry occur universally, irrespective of the modernity or primitiveness of a society or its members. Either a society can contain the aggression or it cannot. If it cannot, the society and its members, as we shall see in the situations Tayeb Salih presents, are threatened with loss of identity, violence, and sometimes, death.
In the case of Mustafa, we witness an individual who realizes the power the British colonial empire has over his land, people, and himself. He decides to retaliate against this dominance and to "liberate Africa", yet he also becomes educated in the land of his oppressors, and 'cultured' in the European sense of the word. Instead of attending to the matter of avenging or liberating Africa, however, he pursues the desirous objects of his oppressor--those things which make one enviable and powerful within British society. He becomes successful in British terms; he is a published and well-respected intellectual, and he wins the attention and affection of several English women.
Here we see that Mustafa's act of revenge has taken the form of mimetic rivalry. His pursuit of his oppressor's signs of power (intellect, respect, women) has resulted in his becoming, to quote one of his classmates, "a black Englishman." The advantage he realizes over the women in particular shows his acceptance of the polarities that define English society. He cannot (or is not willing to) fight against colonialism of his country by Britain, but he is willing to become a conqueror in his own right. He plays along with his female acquaintances' attempts to realize their desires through him. They wish to impose an identity upon him in order to fulfill a role which cannot be fulfilled by men of their society. Englishwomen are attracted to him not for who he is, but for who they want him to be. His awareness of this situation, as well as his vindictiveness (his need as a perceived victim to violently retaliate against someone/something), inspires him to take advantage of his power over the women he meets. In turn, each woman, whose love (desire) he leaves unrequited, destroys herself via suicide.
Mustafa's conquests continue until he meets Jean Morris. As Davidson indicates, she "knows his [Mustafa's] game and can play it as well as he." This game is of course the one that Mustafa has adopted as an "Englishman." His inability to possess Jean, except on her terms, is the beginning of the end of his reign as an amorous conqueror. Instead of imposing his self-concept on Jean, she imposes one on him. She works to destroy all that he had become (as an "Englishman"). And in the end, he is only able to destroy the object of his desire, along with his self-identity. She is elevated to an angelic, or deified status, out of his reach. He is reduced to the status of a murderous savage--the shadow of the "cultured man." An important observation by Girard provides an interesting explanation for Mustafa's situation:
The victim of this violence both adores and detests it. He strives to master it by means of a mimetic counterviolence and measures his own stature in proportion to his failure. If by chance, however, he actually succeeds in asserting his mastery over the model, the latter's prestige vanishes. He must then turn to an even greater violence and seek out an obstacle that promises to be truly insurmountable.
By destroying the object of his desire, Mustafa resorts to a final desperate attempt at power, simultaneously, however, his weakness is revealed. Mustafa's already compromised attempt to avenge his homeland inevitably results in reinforcing the prevailing dynamics of Anglo-Sudanese power relationships and stereotyped identities--his action betrays his 'savage' origins.
Mustafa's identity gets further manipulated, this time by the British legal system. His defense, successfully arguing for a light sentence, portrays him as a victim. "These girls were not killed by Mustafa Sa'eed but by the germ of deadly disease that assailed them a thousand years ago." Mustafa realizes that he is again being defined by his oppressors, that he "is a lie." The blow is humbling. Not only has he failed in his attempt to conquer the object of his (oppressor's) desire, but he has also, in essence, been told by British society that, far from being a threat, he is instead a sort of helpless plaything--an object of his oppressors. Mustafa may have actually realized his lack of control over his own destiny when, upon reflection, he insists that it was "a decision of my own free will" to move away from home to pursue an education in the English school system.
Mustafa's struggle to find or discover an identity involves either imposing an identity of himself on others or having one imposed upon him. Clearly, he is in an ambiguous situation. We may want to ask whether or not Mustafa can really be considered an "other" (from a Euro-centric perspective). Regardless of the successes and failures of his retaliatory acts, which are actualized in mimetic rivalry, we see that Mustafa has accepted the polarity of identity as oppressor/oppressed. It remains to be seen whether or not this polarity is imposed upon him as a part of his assimilation into European culture, or if in fact, as Girard would have it, this condition is universal.
The narrator too, we find, is in a culturally ambiguous situation, also being Sudanese born but educated in Europe, and having his own identity struggle. While he did not attempt a course of revenge for his homeland against British colonialism, he is drawn into a curiosity about Mustafa. This later turns into resentment and rivalry. Despite his best intentions, it becomes apparent that he too is tainted by the "germ of a millennia".
The curiosity the narrator first shows towards Mustafa might be seen as a competitive challenge. The narrator assumes that he is the only one in this small village who possesses (the power of) an English education. When, however, in a drunken rapture Mustafa recites some English poetry, the narrator feels his power threatened. This is enough for the narrator later to demand that Mustafa tell his story. What we see is that Mustafa is still up to his game of creating identity (maybe even attempting to achieve immortality) by generating a mystique about himself, based upon what he knows would interest certain people. Mustafa requires an oath of confidence from the narrator, knowing the narrator was too suspicious to consent to such a request without hearing the tale. In so doing, Mustafa lures the narrator into an intense curiosity, one which lasts throughout our entire experience of the story.
Upon Mustafa's mysterious disappearance, the narrator learns that he has become the guardian of Mustafa's family and estate, including the key to a room which no one but Mustafa has entered. It does not take much for the narrator to see this as the "key" to solving the mystery about this man. But he does not open the room at first, nor for a long time. The narrator may have felt that he was already being drawn too far into Mustafa's life-story, but believed, at the same time, that he had control of himself, of his identity, and that he could resist his curiosity. In other ways, however, he is getting drawn into a mimetic rivalry with Mustafa. After a visit with Hosna, the narrator admits to himself, that, ". . . in one form or another I was in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the widow of Mustafa Sa'eed, and that I--like him and Wad Reyyes and millions of others--was not immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe."
The narrator's attack on his blood brother Mahjoub is yet another sign of mimetic rivalry and its consequences. Mahjoub, upon being confronted by the narrator to give him an explanation for the violent events surrounding Hosna's death, discredits her, saying she was mad. The narrator, taking offense and defending his (after-)image of her, insists that it is Mahjoub who is mad. It is at this moment that the narrator, already threatened by a superior (and yet absent) intellect in Mustafa, is criticized for his love of Hosna and his ineffectiveness in preventing her misfortune. Mahjoub also tells the narrator that "schooling and education have made him soft," and that he is "crying like a woman." Besides this, Mahjoub declares that Hosna "wasn't worth a millième," and that it was only out of decency that they buried her worthless body. All of this prompts the narrator to attack Mahjoub.
Earlier the narrator had realized that he was in love with Hosna. Following this altercation, though, he declares that what he thought was love, is really hate. This is an astute observation, but the insight is tragic. Lapsing into a fugue, the narrator begins to lose sight of his own identity as distinguished from Mustafa's: "I begin from where Mustafa Sa'eed had left off." The power of the absent Mustafa lords over him still: "Yet he at least made a choice, while I have chosen nothing." This is the only distinction the narrator can make. He is being negatively defined by Mustafa's life, and he is caught in the nihilistic situation of being involved in a mimetic rivalry with a ghost. At this point, the narrator has lost his chance to possess Mustafa's wife, has also been chided for desiring her (while being humbled by the fact that other people do not regard her as desirable), and has watched his identity get reduced to a competition with Mustafa. These circumstances prompt him to enter the secret room, now unable to resist the temptation to learn the secret of his rival's power.
One of the first images the narrator encounters is of "his adversary." Moments later he realizes that he is viewing a mirror image of himself. Setting up the mirror may have been a clever ploy on the part of Mustafa, but the narrator's vulnerability is what makes his mistake so horrifying. Elsewhere in the room, the narrator discovers memorabilia from Mustafa's life as an Englishman which draws the narrator further into Mustafa's life.
The narrator, we see, is caught in a situation similar to Mustafa's relationship to Jean. Finding himself the victim in a power and identity struggle, the narrator is reduced to a few final mutually destructive acts. First, he swears to burn up all of Mustafa's possessions, including the room. He has determined that he has been duped, much like Mrs. Robinson (who knew Mustafa since his days as a young man, and now wants to write his biography) into wanting to preserve the memory of Mustafa, and thereby assisting in Mustafa's ego-driven quest for immortality. Second, the narrator enters the Nile, mimicking Mustafa, in what can be seen as an attempt to complete the effort to overcome and become his rival. In his last act the narrator tries to possess the one thing that Mustafa had that he did not--the ability to make a decision--in order to assert himself and thereby "become" himself. The only way he is able to attempt this however, is by continuing to follow in Mustafa's footsteps. When he realizes that he has accomplished nothing more than risking his own destruction, he acknowledges both his own vulnerability, his need for others, and that identity is no more real than a role played by an actor on a stage.
Because of their European educations, we might want to consider that neither the narrator nor Mustafa make good case studies in examining human behavior for cross-cultural universalities. It cannot, however, merely be the narrator's and Mustafa's educations that created culturally ambiguous figures. Mustafa's widow, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, using Evelyne Accad's assessment of her, is an Arab woman with "acquired foreigness." The villagers blamed Hosna's assertiveness on foreign influence when she resisted marriage to Wad Reyyes, when she later demanded that the narrator marry her, and finally when the marriage resulted in their deaths. Defining an "other" (from a Euro-centric perspective) is a tenuous business. In the case of all three of these individuals, we have to question their qualifications as "genuine" "others" because they have been "tainted" by European culture.
Though we may attempt to look for a "purer" example of an "other" (again, from a Euro-centric perspective), the definition of such a person does not become any clearer. Let us consider Wad Reyyes. He is a pillar of conservatism when it comes to upholding the traditional values of his society (for example that women should be obedient and circumcised, and that men may marry as many women as they wish--provided they had permission from the women's male guardians). Furthermore, he is not Euro-educated. When he determines that he wants to marry Hosna, he expects her to consent--in his mind she has no alternative, nor should she desire one.
Why, though, does Wad obsess over Hosna? According to Accad, it is precisely because of her "acquired foreigness," that she represents an exotic power. This is not to say that there is a mimetic rivalry between Mustafa and Wad; rather, this desire resembles the attraction of English women for Mustafa. It is an opportunity for Wad to somehow possess an object possessed by power greater than his own--that of Englishness. This behavior is in line with the aforementioned theories of Girard.
In contrast, we could suggest that Wad's arousal was due to the heavily sexual content and competitiveness of an earlier discussion between village elders. Nevertheless, we still see participation in mimetic desire/rivalry, and in this case the behavior is coming from a source closer to what could be typically considered an "other," someone closer to the traditional values of the village. Also interesting to note is the voice of Mabrouka, Wad's eldest wife. Upon learning of his death she responds: "Good riddance!" and later "Wad Reyyes dug his grave with his own hands and Bint Mahmoud, God's blessings be upon her, paid him in full."
Now why would Mabrouka, an elder woman of the village, long acquainted with its traditions, untainted by foreigness from what we can tell, and evidently accepting of the multiple marriage system, say such "culturally" blasphemous things? Again, the people of the village blame this disruption of their way of life on foreigness--that it has infected the village. Girard would call the infection mimetic rivalry. Here we have a case where social differences are indeed being threatened--Hosna, a woman affected with dangerous ideas, has resisted her traditional obligation to obey her father and her suitor. The conflicts which ensue--the narrator's grandfather attacking Hosna's father, Abdul Karim quarreling with Bakri, and the fight between the narrator and Mahjoub--are all socially threatening events in an escalating cycle of retaliatory violence.
The chapter in which the narrator crosses the desert is particularly rich in symbolic imagery suggestive of mimetic desire and violence. It begins with the narrator describing a desert sun with, "its rays spilling out on the ground as though there existed an old blood feud between it and the people of the earth." In consulting with the policemen, he refers to the deaths of the man in the El-Mirisab tribe, but also the English suicide casualties of Mustafa, as victims of sunstroke. Finally, as the sun goes down, he describes himself as feeling, "that we are all brothers; he who drinks and he who prays and he who steals and he who commits adultery and he who fights and he who kills. The source is all the same." It is another moment of tragic insight for the narrator and the reader into the "universal" power, here symbolized by the sun. In its light (power), people are defined and separate, but susceptible to violence. In its absence all distinctions between individuals and between good and evil dissolve.
By the novel's conclusion, we are left to wonder whether or not this village will be able to recover from the violence. Learning how it responds in its defense would tell us at least, in light of Girard, whether this society qualifies as primitive or modern. Barring the sureness of being told the answer by Salih, the closest explanation, it seems, is that this village exists somewhere between a condition of "primitiveness" and "modernity." The aforementioned desert scene in which the narrator encounters both a group of policemen (who, ironically, were on their way to arrest a woman who had killed her husband), representing the semblance of a modern legal system, and some Bedouins, who, in their nomadic lifestyle, represent the primitive, is suggestive of the transitory state of this land, caught somewhere between justice and sacrifice.
The ambiguous state of being explains why the village was unprepared for its misfortune, and why the villagers were in such a state of paralysis. On the individual and social level, the village's sense of identity is undermined by competing desires to the extent that destructiveness reigns. As we have seen, most of the villagers blamed the origin of violence on 'foreigness.' If the village had been in a truly primitive condition, according to Girard's theory, its inhabitants would have attributed the disruption to a much more innocent and tangible victim. This village, apparently, has neither modern nor primitive means of defense. The society is modern enough not to have resorted to a communal sacrifice, yet it has no means, other than by individual acts of revenge, to deal with the challenge of authority by traditionally subordinate members of society. In the tension between modern and primitive modes of existence, the members may have felt a real ambivalence towards both. They seem to have perceived both the idea that their old way of life was a problem and that the solution to the problem was imposed upon them.
Although Girard's system provides compelling explanations which can help us understand the behavior of the novel's characters, it would still be hasty in this context to declare that his theories substantiate a universality of human behavior. This however, may never be possible. There are some other possibilities to consider. One obvious consideration is that this is a work of fiction, and as such, the author is free to impose any sort of personal agenda s/he wishes in order to promote her/his idea of what human behavior should be, or in fact is. Should the work of fiction be marked with qualifications and warning signs? I will defer to Theodor Adorno in briefly addressing this question:
...the person who suspects--rightly--that domination is ever present in art runs the risk of selling out to...totalitarian tendencies, for he will be inclined to say to himself that things have always been this way and that there is nothing he can do about it, forgetting that the illusion that art puts before us of an Other implies the possibility of that Other, too.
For Adorno, the realization that a "factual" account of an 'other' is actually closely related to fiction means that the opposite is also true. The benefit of constructions of the 'other' lies in the recognition that such constructions, when acknowledged as fictions, potentially represent a desire for, or an insight into, a certain reality, which would be the very basis for a theory which might then be empirically validated or negated. Likewise, the fictional representation of the 'other' is a continual reminder to examine and recognize the mythical dimensions behind any pervasive or widely accepted social beliefs about the 'other,' including Girard's.
Beyond the issues that we are discussing a work of fiction, or that its characters may have been influenced by their colonizers, there is also the consideration that perhaps the "contagion" which affected the village was in fact a unique characteristic of modern European culture, but it had infected every one of the members of the village. If so, then none of the characters in this story can truly represent a genuine "other" from an-"other" culture. It raises the question as to how anyone (from a European culture) can possibly endeavor to study an "other" when even the slightest exposure can potentially set off a culturally destabilizing chain of events.
Girard admits to this effect, but does not defeat his argument. European patterns of violence do not preclude the same patterns originating in other cultures. If sacrificial crisis was an entirely European phenomenon, thanks to our (Euro-"minded") infectious "modernity", we would not be able to know anything of the preventative measures of a "primitive" society, if our contact made it no longer primitive. Girard provides an extensive variety of examples of anthropological studies of "primitive" societies, from all over the world, which confirm the "scapegoat" mechanism as a mode of "preventative" violence. His references include case studies of "primitive" societies in other parts of Africa, also Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, and he even includes evidence about Europe's "primitive" past, from ancient Greek drama (such as Oedipus), all of which corroborate his thesis.
Girard's thesis that mimetic rivalry is a least common denominator, a basic condition extant in all human behavior, reveals the lineage between the primitive and the modern. It also raises questions about the function of intercultural studies. The desire in Western culture to study other cultures may be nothing more than the desire to assert and control our own identities--an attempt to subvert the helplessness (such as that experienced by the narrator at the story's end) that coincides with the realization that identity and its meaning are arbitrary, artificial, and vulnerable. The question follows--is cultural anthropology, and the idea of finding and highlighting differences between cultures futile? Eric Gans, who has appropriated much of Girard's theories in a concept he calls "generative anthropology," might give a qualified "no" as his answer. He has taken a self-critical approach to his analysis of "others," one which attempts to acknowledge and account for the influence different cultures have upon each other in their encounters. It is, however, an approach which nonetheless rests upon the necessity of the violent origins of any and all societies:
Cultural relativism has its virtues, for the varieties of social organization all have something to teach us, but its dogmatic status among anthropologists corresponds to a self-interested romanticism (self-interested because only they in the West have access to the revelations that non-Western cultures hold in store for us) that operates by denying the unique and unprecedented success of the Western tradition in permeating the totality of the world's societies.
The perhaps unsettling implications of this line of reasoning are themselves ripe with potential violence, but they do follow a Girardian logic. Gans continues to work through these implications in his current writings on cultural studies.
The insight Girard provides places then the onus upon anyone who engages in intercultural study to reconsider the supposed innocence (value-free methodology) of studying "other" cultures. If all acts are acts of aggression, and one has the privileged position of being aware of one's power over "other" cultures, there needs to be an awareness of what purpose the "other" is serving. Furthermore, one needs to be aware of the potential harm a "modern" society poses to a "primitive" society, if that society is not prepared for the aggression. An "other" can be used to fulfill the role of the sacrifice in an intercultural sense. As such, that "other," is imposed upon with an identity used to justify domination. After the victim's culture has been nearly decimated, the remaining individuals are suddenly given an identity of sacredness. This identity too, is imposed and it only serves to fill a role in the victor's understanding and social attitudes. This would conceivably explain the "godlike" status of Mustafa to the women he met, but perhaps it can be extended to the reason why Britain started allowing Sudanese to attend its schools. To go further afield, this pattern possibly explains European (and Euro-American and Euro-Australian) culture's relatively recent reverence towards traditional Native American and Australian Aborigine peoples and lifestyles. All this may remind us that Western culture is not as far from a state of "primitiveness" as one might like to think. It was in this light that Girard called attention to the mimetic nature of the escalating buildup of nuclear arms between so-called "modern" nations. Without a procedure to check the escalation, all nations risk mutual destruction. Nations that pride themselves on their "modernity," which, among other characteristics, entails benevolence towards the helpless and the innocent, still need justice that operates intersocially. Otherwise, intersocial behavior becomes indistinguishable from "primitive" behavior, except that, in its (unchecked) power, the violence is potentially all the more devastating.
It seems that Girard's argument that mimetic rivalry and aggression lie at the root of all human behavior is a strong one, at least in this humble context. Girard's analysis is both revealing and disturbing, but its implications are great and warrant further application and examination. His ideas offer insight into what we know about "others" and how we know it. In conclusion, it might be said that increased self-conscious criticism on the part of those endeavoring to interpret "others" would prove to be, if not less violent in the effect on "others," at least more sensitive of the motives involved in interpretation and the violence it entails. Identity of the "self" and the "other" is never a certainty. We fight each other to attain it on our own terms. As we saw with individuals such as Mustafa and the narrator, the blurring of their identities became a sign symbolizing this competition. Every definition of "self" and "other," and even the idea of "self" and "other," represents a battle being fought by all individuals to establish identity favorable to his/her "self."
Accad, Evelyne. "Sexual Politics: Women in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North." Season of Migration to the North, By Tayeb Salih: A Casebook. ed. Mona Takieddine Amyuni. American University of Beirut.
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory, Translated by C. Lenhardt. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Davidson, John E. "In Search of a Middle Point: The Origins of Oppression in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North." Research in African Literatures. Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 1989, Univ. of Texas, Austin.
Gans, Eric. The End of Culture. University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985.
Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. translated by Patrick Gregory. Johns Hopkins. Baltimore, 1977.
Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. Michael Kensend Publishing, New York, 1989.