Published in the same year, 1999, Edward Said’s Out of Place and Mahmoud Darwish’s “Mural” amplify eulogical voices of the dying self. Despite the sombre theme dominating both works as swansongs, Darwish and Said manage to subvert it to transform their works into ghostly texts. In this essay we examine the aesthetics of the proper name and diasporic identities as represented in the aforementioned works, employing Derrida’s theory of the ghostliness of the proper name. We argue the names of Darwish and Said are ghostly presences of the absence of their bearers. Both authors, regardless of the overwhelming theme of decay in their works, conjure the apparition of the name to revive their absent presence. While Darwish’s use of his name is philosophical, Said’s use of his name addresses the social and psychological impact of heterogeneous identity. Thus, in addition to Derrida’s doctrine on the aesthetics of proper names, we employ a dialogical model of acculturation developed in cross-cultural psychology to scrutinize the psychological intricacies involved in Said’s hyphenated identity, the conflicting voices of Edward and Said and his fluctuating movement between contradictory voices and “I” positions of feeling assimilated, separated and marginalized.

Title

Interventions

Publisher

Taylor & Francis Online

Publisher Country

United Kingdom

Publication Type

Online only

Volume

--

Year

2020

Pages

14