Research Journal of Language and Literature (RJLL)

Quest for Identity in Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea: An Afrofuturistic Analysis

Rana Muhammad Faraz — 2025-01-27

This research delves into the historical plight of the Black community, focusing on their oppression in a racialized world as depicted in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea. The study explores the impact of colonizers’ oppressive ideology on the Black population, resulting in alienation and chaos, while also highlighting the struggle of the community to establish its identity in a futuristic world. The theoretical framework used for the study is Afrofuturism, a genre that envisions alternative futures and recontextualizes past experiences through an Afrocentric lens. Focus is on Yatasha Womack’s concept of Afrofuturism. The research explores how characters challenge and dismantle internalized oppressive ideologies, transforming them into advocates for justice and empowerment. Furthermore, Afrofuturism reimagines the themes of alienation from the novel in a future where historical and present-day issues of oppression are addressed, and Black communities are empowered and celebrated. This vision emphasizes affirming Black identities, celebrating cultural heritage, and transforming historical traumas. Afrofuturism provides a powerful lens for understanding identity struggles within a Triple Colonized scenario, offering hope for a future where diverse identities are embraced and empowerment leads to collective healing and transformation.

Statutory Rape Victimisation: A Psychoanalytical Study of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa

Kashifa Khalid — 2025-01-27

This study aims to analyse the aspects of a statutory rape victimisation in Kate Elizabeth Russell’s novel My Dark Vanessa through Freudian psychoanalytical aspects of id, ego, superego, conscious mind, unconscious mind, and trauma. It seeks to consider the mechanism behind the projection of desires and emotions involving the statutory rape victimisation in order to highlight its impact. It tends to emphasise the ways through which an ephebophile, the antagonist of the novel, controls the whole narrative of the statutory rape by being in a power position and his role in manipulating a victim’s perception of trauma-tied reality in My Dark Vanessa. The ephebophile’s psyche plays a significant role in fulfilling his unusual desires. His urges originate from the unconscious mind; however, it is the conscious mind that becomes a source of gratification of his desires. As far as the victim, the protagonist of the novel, is concerned, she defends her abuser for her own survival from the abuse-associated trauma. Yet, her failed defence guided by the unconscious mind, leads to the revelation of traumatic symptoms. However, through free association with the help of a therapist, she then succeeds in liberating herself from the trauma that has been buried in her unconscious mind all those years. Thus, this study analyses the actions and consequences concerning the statutory rape victimisation on both the victim and ephebophile in Russell's My Dark Vanessa by using Freudian psychoanalytical theory.

Theatre from a Political Fabulist: Teklehawariat Teklemariam and the First Ethiopian Play: Fabula: Yawreoch Commedia (Fable: The Comedy of Animals)

Jane Plastow — 2025-01-27

This article looks at an Ethiopian fantasy play produced in 1921. It is a play that draws on both European and African influences to create a story utilising anthropomorphic animal characters. In his introduction to Fabula: Yawreoch Commedia (Fable: The Comedy of Animals) (English translation, Belayneh Abune, 2010), the writer, Teklehawariat Teklemariam (1884-1977), mentions three fabulists; the ancient Greek of possibly African extraction, Aesop, the French La Fontaine and the Russian Ivan Krylov, whose stories he had loved as a boy and who had inspired his fantasy writing. Teklehawariat came to theatre after being brought up in Russia during his teenage years and this was also where he encountered animal fables; neither form having been part of his earlier Ethiopian religious-focused education. However, from Ethiopia the play took both a range of biblically inspired animals representative of ideas of good and evil, the poetic form, qene, which was the main mode of oral creativity in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the linked concept of samena worq (wax and gold), whereby an outer story conceals alternative, deeper layers of meaning. Teklehawariat used this form in the hope that the animal characters would entertainingly engage his noble audience while simultaneously veiling his covert but scathing condemnation of incompetence and corruption in the Ethiopian court so that he would not provoke the ire of the ruling Empress Zauditu.

Exploring Ethical Selfhood and Otherness in Michael Ondaatje’s The Cinnamon Peeler: A Levinasian Analysis

Dr Zakia Resshid Ehsen — 2025-01-27

This study analyzes The Cinnamon Peeler (1991) by Michael Ondaatje through Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy, particularly his concepts of "Ethics and the Other," shifting the focus from postcolonial to ethical and existential dimensions of identity. Levinas argues that the self is fundamentally shaped by encounters with the Other, emphasizing an ethical responsibility that deeply influences one's sense of self. This analysis explores how situations and events in the text construct an environment where the migrant experiences fragmentation, alienation, and a profound ethical connection to the Other. Levinas’s ideas suggest that identity is not a fixed essence but a continuous process of becoming, influenced by ethical demands from the Other. Migrants, whose pasts are marked by trauma and displacement, grapple with reconstructing emotional, psychological, and social connections in a new environment, where their identity is continuously redefined. The study investigates how the poetics of selfhood and otherness are reflected in the characters' lexical, psychological, and physical gestures, highlighting the continuous ethical engagement that shapes their existence. By tracing this ongoing process of ethical transformation through Levinas's philosophy, the analysis determines how the identity of a migrant undergoes profound changes when faced with the Other in a new cultural context. This approach challenges the notion of a fixed, singular identity, emphasizing instead the constant process of ethical responsibility and engagement that defines human existence, as articulated by Levinas.

Transitivity Analysis of U.S. Media’s Representations of the Muslim World in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor News Discourses: A Postcolonial Perspective

Anila Afzal — 2025-01-27

The present study which is grounded in Said’s Orientalism has carried out transitivity analysis of U.S. digital media’s discourses on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with the purpose to explore the way the Muslim world - Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uighur Muslim community of China - has been portrayed in these. For this purpose, four feature articles have been selected from the websites of four digital news outlets for the clause-based analysis of data. The study is qualitative in nature with focus on the interpretation of data on the basis of recurrent motifs and themes. The results indicate the presence of the Orientalist bias in the representations of the Muslim world which has been linked with terrorism, extremism, corruption, greed and weakness. In comparison U.S. civilizing role in the form of economic and military endeavours in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been emphasised. The transitivity patterns highlight the ideology of a superior U.S./the Occident set against an inferior Muslim World/ the Orient. The study is significant in foregrounding the relevance Said’s theory hold in 21^st century and in highlighting how language can become a stake in the empowerment or marginalization of social groups.