Exit the Big Other: “Disintegration of the Big Other” Through the Unsymbolizability of Trauma in Exit West
Abstract
This research investigates the cause of the “demise of the big Other” after the experience of trauma and the symbolic meaning of the elements of magic realism in Exit West. Saeed and Nadia, and countless such victims of conflict, pass through magical doors to escape their predicament. This paper explores the symbolic meaning of passage through such doors and comments on the freedom afforded by the seeming failure of social rules in the wake of traumatizing conflict as well as the elements of unfreedom on the other end that await those who escape. This study is undertakes Psychoanalytic Criticism of the primary text, chiefly relying on the findings of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek in order to explain the mysterious collapse of socio-cultural regulations. Saeed and Nadia, in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, are involved in a secret relationship because the big Other of social rules in the novel has no place for such a human connection. However, this big Other, as social authority which provides Symbolic Efficiency, collapses following each traumatic encounter, primarily the killing of Saeed’s mother, allowing Nadia to live with Saeed. The big Other’s prohibition is arrested because of the very nature of trauma: the big Other is the domain of language whereas trauma is a manifestation of the Real, beyond language. Ergo, the big Other is subverted by trauma. Saeed and Nadia pass through magical doors into a realm where their regional social conventions are nullified. These doors represent trauma and open into spaces of relative freedom. In these spaces, the big Other invades again, represented by little Others in various modalities; nevertheless, remnants of freedom still exist. Besides bringing to light and interpreting trauma in a renowned work of literature, a new mode of resistance to social rules is discovered.
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