ONTOLOGICAL RUPTURE AND EXISTENTIAL BECOMING

Abstract

This exegesis investigates the profound phenomenological reconfiguration of migrant subjectivity in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016). This explores how diasporic displacement manifests as an acute crisis of being. While extensive critical scholarship has rigorously examined both novels through postcolonial, sociological, and feminist paradigms, significant hermeneutic gaps persist regarding their deeper existential dimensions, particularly concerning how individuals confront and transcend structural alienation. Accordingly, traditional framings of migration as a mere socioeconomic adjustment overlook the fundamental ontological rupture experienced by the migrant subject when ideological illusions collapse. This gives rise to the following research question: How do Ali’s and Mbue’s narratives articulate the transition from thrownness and inauthenticity toward the courageous assumption of authentic selfhood? To address this, the analysis employs a comparative phenomenological framework rooted in Martin Heidegger’s ontological categories, specifically thrownness, uncanniness, and authenticity. Although this philosophical lens provides profound insight into the internal mechanics of subjective awakening and structural collapse, its inherent limitation lies in its abstraction, which risks sidelining the concrete socio-historical and material specificities of postcolonial and capitalist realities. As far as the analytical architecture is concerned, it unfolds across two distinct axes: the first examines the state of thrownness within pre-existing socioeconomic structures and the subsequent ontological rupture, while the second investigates the confrontation with dread and the emergence of pragmatic, gendered agency.