صراع الهوية المستلبة: حضور الأندلس في الرحلة العمانية "عين وجناح" لمحمد بن سيف الحارثي The Conflict of Alienated Identity: The Presence of Andalusia in the Omani Travel Narrative Ayn wa Janāḥ (Eye and Wing) by Muhammad bin Saif Al-Harthi Section Articles

Abstract

This study uncovers the image of alienated identity in Omani writer Muhammad bin Saif al-Harithi's journey to Andalusia, recorded in his book "Ayn wa-Janah" (Eye and Wing). It starts from a central problem: how is alienated identity shaped in the encounter with the Western Other and the Arab self alike, and what patterns does it assume? The study holds that alienation is not confined to the defeated alone but extends to the victor too, whenever he fails to genuinely belong to what he inherited or built. It adopts a critical-analytical method, drawing on postcolonial concepts established by Frantz Fanon and Gayatri Spivak, the concept of the "victorious subaltern" developed by the study to trace the alienation shared by the defeated and the victor, and Jacques Lacan's "mirror stage" theory, used to analyze the defenses of the "fractured subaltern." The study moves through eight sections: from the alienation of transient identities and identity disturbance, to the distortion of heritage by the "victorious subaltern," the erasure of identity under capitalism, myth as a tool to justify incapacity, rebellion against self-identity, the fractured subaltern's discomfort at seeing his image reflected in a similar Other, and finally "alienated victory," where alienation extends to history itself. The study concludes that alienation is a deep, entrenched structure affecting the defeated and the victor alike; that nostalgia, myth, distortion, and the theft of history deepen alienation rather than resolve it; and that travel narrative traces identity conflict with exceptional depth, placing the self in direct confrontation with the Other, history, and place at once.

Keywords: Alienated Identity, Travel Literature, Postcolonial Criticism, Fractured Subaltern, Lacan's Mirror Stage.