Fear of Intimacy in Rabih Alameddine’s I, The Divine

Abstract

The paper examines how the Lebanese American novelist Rabih Alameddine in I, The Divine (2002) shows the psychology of hybrid subject in Diaspora. Through creating a fictional space, the author sheds light on how Sarah suffers from fear of intimacy due to a combination of past traumatic experiences: The Lebanese Civil War, the rape scene, separation from her mother. Through a close reading of Alameddine's novel, the study does not only stress how fear of abandonment, fear of betrayal, and fear of low self-esteem intertwine to form a fear of intimacy in Sarah's emotional relations, but it also highlights how the protagonist unconsciously avoids attachment as a defense mechanism employing Freud's ideas.