THE EMBODIMENT OF TRAUMA: KAFKA IN TANGIER BY MUḤAMMAD SA‘ĪD ḤĞĪWIĞ

Apstrakt

In recent decades, Arab authors have explored traumatic events and the consequences of collective trauma on people, underscoring how these provoke imperceptible or ignored disturbances and changes in behaviour and attitudes, as well as analysing how repressive political systems concur in undermining identity. A special side of this mechanism is the effects of trauma on the body, the only concrete thing people possess. Therefore, alienation and transformation of the body have become more prevalent in the literature as symbols of individual and collective disturbances, whereas the act of writing functions as a remedy.

It is not strange, therefore, that Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915) has attracted the interest of Arab writers, as it represents how the body responds in a society where an individual does not find its place. 

From this perspective, I discuss the novel Kāfkā fī Ṭanğa (2019) by Moroccan writer Muḥammad Sa‘īd Ḥğīwğ exploring how themes of transformation, alienation and power have transitioned from The Metamorphosis to a contemporary Arab novel, positioning these themes as the current expression in Moroccan literature.