Melanholija i nemogući identitet u romanu Numidia Tariqa Bakarija
Melancholy and the Impossible Identity in the Novel Numidia by Tariq Bakari

Summary/Abstract: Moroccan writer Tariq Bakari’s novel Numidia uncovers the issue of pure identity and the search for it. In essence it is the search for an answer to the question of whether a person can be both Arab and Berber at the same time. Through a discontinuous plot, diverse models of storytelling, relying on political, religious, and cultural subtext, the novel raises the intricate question of whether it makes sense to search for a pure identity. The style of the novel Numidia includes a strong note of poetic, reflexive, elements of sadness, lostness, misunderstanding, resignation due to rejection by others, as well as the elements of betrayal, guilt and self-reproach. All this hints at psychoanalytic preferences that seem appropriate in order to comprehend the main questions Bakari raises in this novel. In this paper, Numidia’s novel is elaborated on the basis of Freud’s notions of melancholy and regret, and on the basis of the various elaborations and upgrades of Freud’s perceptions relating to these two types of relationships towards the loss. In this particular novel, we witness an incurable melancholy loss stemming from the narcissistic identification of the main character Awdad / Murad with his idealized “lost objects”, that is, the Berber and Arab constituents of identity. At the end hero is neither being able to relinquish any of the sides while the dictate of social pathology inevitably requires identification with ancestry by blood.

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