“The past goes to sleep, and wakes up inside you”: Identity Crisis in Hassan Blasimʼs “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes”

Document Type : Research in linguistic and literary studies

Author

South Valley University Qena Faculty of Arts, Dept. of English

Abstract

This article examines “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes,” the last of the fourteen stories that comprise Iraqi writer Hassan Blasimʼs collection The Corpse Exhibition. In “The Nightmares” Blasim is not concerned at all about depicting the reception of refugees in Europe. As evident in the title itself, what is central to the story is the psychological impacts of war on the individual. Drawing on Julia Kristevaʼs psychologically-informed theory of the abject, this article attempts to show how the central character in Blasimʼs short story situates his ethnic origin as an abject object that he should avoid by all means to be able to bury the traumatizing memories of the war. The article argues that, by situating the crisis of identity in the context of the protagonistʼs nightmares, Hassan Blasim manages to articulate the anxieties of exile and the complexity of identity construction particularly for traumatized individuals. Despite his constant denial and avoidance, the central character in the story, Carlos Fuentes, fails to neither construct a hybrid identity nor bury his former self.

Keywords

Egyptian Journal of Linguistics and Translation
Volume 10, Issue 1
January 2023
Pages 59-79

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