Construction of Transracial Identity through Language, Power and Identity Formation: A Psychoanalytic Perspective of Florence Olajide’s Coconut

Abstract

The relationship between culture and psychosocial conditions is intricate and challenging. Cultural transformation and adaptation produce psychosocial confronts that can influence identity development and self-actualization. In Florence Olajide’s Coconut (2021), the protagonist’s own experiences explore how cultural displacement and adaptation erode the stage of Initiative and Industry as a child by fostering the weak sense of Guilt and Inferiority. The study aims to investigate the factors of cultural transformation and adaptation that shape and resist the psychosocial development that further constraints the virtues of purpose and competence by attaining the weakened sense of guilt and inferiority. The extended version of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development (1997) is used as a theoretical framework, further delimited to the stages of Initiative vs. Guilt and Industry vs. Inferiority. The study applies Catherine Belsey’s (2013) textual analysis to uncover themes, codes, and narratives within the memoir Coconut (2013). The textual data has been condensed into categorized data to identify the factors of Guilt and Inferiority that leads to weaken the achieved virtues of purpose and competence. The findings reveal that the protagonist achieves success through determination, strength, and acquiring education despite cultural, sociological and psychological pressures. The study further contributes to literal studies, and psychology by underscoring the importance of education, self-identity and determined nature to overcome the outcomes of complex psychosocial constraints.