Abbas Goudarzi; Alireza Jafari
Volume 14, Issue 19 , October 2018, , Pages 279-296
Abstract
The present paper means to study the cultural tension between the dissident voice and dominant discourse in a selected number of Saul Bellow’s novels. To this end, the theoretical framework of Cultural Materialism is applied based on which there exists tension in the relationship of every literary ...
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The present paper means to study the cultural tension between the dissident voice and dominant discourse in a selected number of Saul Bellow’s novels. To this end, the theoretical framework of Cultural Materialism is applied based on which there exists tension in the relationship of every literary work with its cultural context in which it is produced. The dominant cultural system, however, has to keep its upper status through retrieving and restating its beliefs and ideologies by making them ever acceptable and logically sound to the subjects. As the main player in the field of cultural interactions, the dominant system also has to face and make peace with the new and dissident voices which may present a threat to its stability. This, the dominant system, achieves through containing the dissidence within itself.
In Bellow’s works, dissidence is especially noticeable as he comes from a religious-cultural background (he was from an immigrant Jewish family) whose many values are in sharp contrast with those of the reigning cultural system of American society. Due to this discrepancy and contrast, the writer has set out to present a voice of dissidence through being critical of the sociocultural milieu and taking up a seemingly different way of fiction-writing.Thus, the main focus of this study is to approve of the fact that despite Bellow’s desire for being different from and dissident to the cultural system, his voice is actually contained within and subordinated to the larger community’s perspectives and ideological practices and is even retrieving and reproducing them, because, as Cultural Materialism argues, text is bound with the context of its production and can barely go or act beyond its precepts.