Dynamics of Reminiscence and the Pilgrimage of Migration in Amin Maalouf’s Rock of Tanios

Abstract

The article explores the literal and metaphorical signification of home for migrants. Rock of Tanios, a migrant narrative by the Lebanese-French migrant writer Amin Maalouf, is deconstructively analyzed. Migration, in its passage, brings about a confrontation with the traditionally established notions of home, homeland, identity, and the subsequent transformation. The complex relationship between personal and political experiences is underscored to prove that in the evaluation of cultural production at the locus of migration the ideological standpoints on nationalism and nation cannot be easily segregated. For a migrant, home is no longer a unification of experience referring to a nation-state, an architectural construction or a sense of belonging. When memory plays the part of a mediator and makes the present interact with the past, the notion of home is formed, and for those who have to part from their traditional birthplaces, ‘home’ is no longer something fixed but fluid.