Shifting Personality, Narcissism, and Trauma Among African Immigrants in the Diaspora: A Horneyan Reading of Teju Cole’s Open City

Abstract

Discourses on African Diaspora literature have mostly hinged on issues of hybridity, displacement, cross-cultural alienation, and Diaspora compromise as essential responses to the condition of the African immigrants in their host country. Such narratives, however, often neglect the importance of individual traits and personality formation as unconscious constructs by African migrants in response to the harsh reality they face, and an attempt to cope with or escape daunting psychosocial stressors that permeate the Diaspora space.  This paper interrogates the character formation of the African immigrant in the Diaspora, exemplified in the characters of Julius, Farouq, and Moji, in response to the prevailing social, cultural, political, and economic environment in the Diaspora. Using Karen Horney’s strand of psychoanalysis, the paper accounts for the narcissistic, traumatic, and dynamic identity and personality traits of African Diaspora immigrants in Teju Cole’s Open City, and puts forward the argument that these anti-normative behaviours are a technique adopted to survive incidence of racism and alienation in the Diaspora.