• Shohel Rana

  Author

This paper critically explores some of the post-colonial experiences with the lens
of the latest psychoanalytic theories. By giving a deconstructive reading of the
text Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee, the article relates the
psychological and other troubles of the central character Michael K who lives in
a post-colonial Africa, with the psychological troubles of an individual in the
Lacanian ‘Symbolic Order’ where the child faces similar sort of alienation and
emptiness after the biggest separation from its mother . To explain the experience
of the endless attempt of the individual in particular and the colonized society in
general to meet the unconscious that is, the desire to be in fullness of power in the
imaginary world with the mother or the pre-colonial states, this paper’s literary
review section discusses Lacanian ‘Mirror Stage,’ Freudian psychoanalysis,
nationalism, decolonization and existentialism and relates them with the main
argument. Divided mainly into three parts, this paper firstly shows the conflicts
rose following the imposition of the colonial or patriarchal rules. Then, it
describes the process of the natives’ turning back to the innocence or the precolonial
state to face the trauma and finally elaborates how, when the conflicts
are unresolved, the problems become unavoidable which symbolize the unending
colonizer-colonized relationship as complex and frustrating.

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