Feminism as a Philosophy of Civilisation: Manifesting the FeministRevolution in " The Season of Migration to the North

Abstract

This article examines Tayeb Salih's novel "Season of Migration to the North" from a feminist perspective as a civilizational philosophy, arguing that female characters constitute a fundamental "measure" for societal and existential transformation. Instead of confining women's roles to a narrow political or legal discourse, as was the case under former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the study reframes women as a civilizational framework that measures a culture's capacity to move from unilateral submission to a dynamic duality of debate and life. Through an analysis of three pivotal female characters in the novel—the silent mother, the passionate lover, and the revolutionary Hosna bint Mahmoud—the paper traces a gradual progression from passive endurance to explicit desire, culminating in outright, and sometimes violent, rejection of male dominance. Hosna's decisive rebellion symbolises the dream of escaping from a closed, authoritarian monism (a single truth, a single authority, and a single gender commanding existence) into a dualistic space of conflict, dialogue, and transformation. By considering femininity not as a marginal subject but as a fundamental driver of cultural critique, the article concludes that Saleh’s novel foreshadows a feminist philosophy in which the liberation of women becomes indistinguishable from the possibility of cultural renewal itself.