Cultural Imposition and Identity Formation: A Cross-Cultural Study of Inaam Kachachi's The American Grand-Daughter

Abstract

In spite of all attempts to refine the real image of colonialism as the angel  of mercy which has  staff of Moses to flip up the scales, yet such attempts are doomed to fail. Hence, this article shows the impact of cultural imposition on identity formation by applying Frantz Fanon's concept of "cultural imposition" to Inaam Kachichi's The American Grand-Daughter within the context of postcolonial theory. A question has been raised about the nature and the role of cultural blending. The article argues that imposition as a process has a negative impact when applied to culture since it generates a feeling of double consciousness. This article also extends our knowledge of the effect of living within two cultures which generates characters with duality of thinking but not hybrid characters and also to make scholars aware of the impact of such a blending. The most striking result to emerge from this study is that Kachachi's characters undergo a mental conflict since another culture is imposed alongside with their own culture, leading to double consciousness that dominates their thinking.