Déconstruction du traumatisme et reconstruction dans le pluriel des particuliers dans La Maison des épices (2014) de Nafissatou Dia Diouf.

Nafissatou Dia Diouf situates her novel, La Maison des épices (2014), in a former slave and spice counter of the same name, located in Mbour, Senegal, which has been transformed into a modern mental health center. Séga, the twenty-year-old son of Docteur Yérim Tall, was brought to the Maison des épices by his father, a psychoanalyst in charge of his own son's treatment. Séga suffers from amnesia and is unbalanced and decentered following the death of his French mother Pauline in a plane crash which he survived. This paper examines Séga's journey as he navigates and negotiates plural identities (Serge T... Louis... Séga) in search of his true lost identity. The mix of modern and traditional therapies at the Maison des épices triggers Séga's re-centering and rebalancing. His plural identities take on a much bigger scope, becoming the sign of an enlarged and plural "Sénégalité," because in addition to his re-rooting in the Serer hinterland of central Senegal (thanks in part to the use of a traditional psychic Wolof healing ceremony, the ndëpp), he is re-anchored by extension in mother-earth (Africa). The epigraphs prefacing each of the novel's chapters anticipate the rehabilitation and return of the African part of Séga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]