Dissociation Narrative: Manic Depression in Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail
The literary exploration of psychopathology underscores the psychological dimension of reality, which stimulates conversations on mental health. Besides the palpable narration of psychiatric conditions, novelists also consciously distort the texture of language and narrative as a postmodernist way of reflecting on the subject of psychological disintegration. This article examines episodes of manic depression, which are engendered by traumatic memories, in Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail. The text is subjected to a critical evaluation, paying a close attention to the characters’ conducts and utterances as well as its narrative texture. The analysis rests on the tenets of Psychoanalysis and Trauma model. The combination of these critical theories helps in the diagnosis of the characters’ psychological states, accentuated by the overall fragmentation of the narrative form. In other words, the two approaches deployed in this article enable the researchers to account for the various manifestations of mental instability by the protagonist and other characters, as evident in the content and form of the text. The researchers argue that besides the distressing episodes that constitute the centre-stage of the novel, Abani utilises a characteristic dissociative language to foreground the morbid minds of the characters featured in the novel.
Keywords: Trauma model; Literature and psychiatry; Dissociation in narrative; Chris Abani