Fiction as travelogue: Memory, exilic identity, and the relational construction of alterity in Sa’di Yusuf’s Nīqūsiyā
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15548/diwan.v18i2.2658Keywords:
Sa'di Yusuf, Travel writing, Exilic identity, Alterity, Cultural memoryAbstract
Travel writing has traditionally been studied through non-fictional texts, leaving a significant gap in understanding how fictional narratives can also function as a medium of travel representation. This study responds to that gap by examining the Arabic short fiction Nīqūsiyā as a work of travel writing, applying Carl Thompson's travel-writing framework, which emphasizes reporting the world, revealing the self, and representing the other. The study addresses how fictional narratives construct travel experiences and represent foreign space, exilic identity, and alterity within the framework of travel writing. Using a qualitative interpretive method and textual analysis, this research analyzes narrative strategies, empirical details, and comparative representation. The data in this study consist of words, phrases, and sentences from the short story. At the same time, data were collected through repeated close readings of the text, followed by systematic documentation of segments representing the travel narrative. The findings show that the world is reported through administrative, geographical, and sensory details that create a sense of factuality while reflecting the narrator's subjective framing of reality. By revealing the self, the journey serves as a medium for emotional and existential transformation, in which memory and exile reshape the narrator's self-awareness and identity. Meanwhile, the other is represented through contrasts between the foreign space and the narrator's space of origin, showing that alterity is relationally constructed through cultural memory and personal experience. This study implies that in fictional travel writing, exilic identity and alterity are relationally constructed through the interplay of memory, space, and subjective experience.
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