Yasaman Mokarrami Rostami; Alireza Farahbakhsh
Abstract
Introduction: In Julia Kristeva’s conception of the abject, anything that falls outside the normativity of a dominant system is dubbed as repulsive and deplorable. Abject subjects are the subjects who are rejected by society because of their heterogeneity; ironically, sometimes they resort to crime ...
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Introduction: In Julia Kristeva’s conception of the abject, anything that falls outside the normativity of a dominant system is dubbed as repulsive and deplorable. Abject subjects are the subjects who are rejected by society because of their heterogeneity; ironically, sometimes they resort to crime to get back into the society, but the transgression usually lead to further exclusion and abjection. The present research endeavors to trace and comment on the manifestations of Kristeva’s notion of abjection in Gholam Hossein Saedi’s The Dump (1966) and realize how certain characters of the narrative are abjectified and how they respond to their sense of abjection. Background Studies: There have been only a few studies on Saedi’s The Dump and most of the relevant critical surveys have tried to expose its realistic and naturalistic overtones. In their “Psychological Analysis of Characters of Three Stories from Gholam Hosein Sâedi (Beggar, Destitute, and Garbage Can) According to Karen Horney’s Theory,” Jalil Shakery Jalil and Behnaz Bakhshi focus on social and psychological issues and discuss the detrimental effects of poverty on the life of a number of Saedi’s characters. In her “A Comparison between the Story of Ashghalduni (Dustbin) and the Adapted Movie Dayere-Ye Mina (The Cycle),” Zahra Hayati adopts a sociological critical approach and probes into the impacts of trauma in Saedi’s selected works. In “A Criminological-Victimological Analysis on ‘Dump’ (‘Ashghaldooni’): A Long Symbolic Story by Gholam Hossein Saa’edi,” Mehrdad Rayejian Asli and Ali Molabeigi deal with notions such as delinquency and felony in Saedi’s The Dump, focusing on the close relation between literature and criminology and the formation of identity in light of social interactions. In their “The Visual Capabilities of Gholam Hossein Saedi’s Grave and Cradle in Iranian Cinema,” Fataneh Ghajaghi et al. have delved into the prevalence of social ills and evils in Saedi’s works and inspected the role they play in his characters’ identity crisis.Methodology and Discussion: The present study draws upon Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, formulated in her seminal book Powers of Terror: An Essay on Abjection (1982). Abjection blends such notions as power dynamics, linguistics, sociology, and psychoanalysis, and by emphasizing the role of the mother’s body in the formation of the subject’s identity, it also uses feminist concepts and criticizes oppression and patriarchy. This research analyzes the relationship among the society, characters, and language with what is defined and treated as abject in Saedi’s The Dump, highlighting the conflicts between the semiotic and the symbolic in the social context.Conclusion: This Kristevean reading of Saedi’s The Dump reveals that the major characters of the novel are all abjectified by the dominant power dynamics and social normativity. They are marginalized and reduced to non-citizens since they simply cannot climb the social ladder and purge themselves of their socially-imposed manifestations of abjection. Although they are driven by such innate stimuli as instincts of survival and life-force, they fail to return to the security and purity of the symbolic stage (chora or the semiotic space) and all their desperate attempts push them more deeply into depravity and abjection. They even resort to conformity and abject objects, jobs, and lifestyles, but again, what they end up with is nothing but exclusion and alienation. It can be argued that in Saedi’s The Dump, the society as a whole is a dump and the characters of the novel are its abject and foul-smelling garbage. Keywords: Abject, Semiotic Order, Symbolic Order, Kristeva, Saedi, The Dump
Alireza Farahbakhsh
Abstract
Introduction: Like intertextuality, intratextuality is an important notion in textual analysis and narratological studies. It does not deny functional and conceptual similarities with intertextuality, which is a more familiar narratological term. While intertextuality seeks interconnectedness among hypertexts ...
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Introduction: Like intertextuality, intratextuality is an important notion in textual analysis and narratological studies. It does not deny functional and conceptual similarities with intertextuality, which is a more familiar narratological term. While intertextuality seeks interconnectedness among hypertexts and hypotexts, intratextuality sets about to discover and decipher it within the structural totality of a single work. In other words, the emphasis is laid on self-reflexivity rather than other-reflexivity in that the objective is to unveil the connectivity that in-text narratives, sub-narratives and frame stories maintain through sustained allusions and dialogues. The major questions of the research include: What is intratextuality and what are its characteristic features? Are they discernible in the narrative fabric of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas? What structural and thematic roles, if any, do they play? Background Studies: Bakhtine’s Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929), Kristeva’s Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (1969), Barthes’ Image-Music-Text (1977), and Genette’s Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1982) are among important sources on intertextuality and its principal categorisations. In his article "Moonlight Bright as a UFO Abduction: Science Fiction, Present-Future Alienation and Cognitive Mapping" (2011), William Stephenson claims that Michell’s sci-fi novel is highly polyphonic and multifaceted. In his article, “Speculative Fiction as Postcolonial Critique in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas,” Nicholas Dunlop argues that Mitchell’s postmodern novel harmoniously mixes different and heterogeneous narrative styles as well as typical aspects of sci-fi and fantasy novels. George Gessert’s 2005 article, “Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell,” predominantly deals with plot-development, characterisation, and story-telling techniques, beside such themes as inhumanity, slavery, and apocalypse. In Close Reading with Computers: Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2020), Martin Paul Eve uses computer-assisted charts to analyse lexical and grammatical distributions in the novel to prove the unity and harmony of narrativity despite all apparent heterogeneities.Materials and Methods: To answer the stated questions, this narratological study first offers a brief digest of the term intratextuality, which recognises and endeavours to locate intertextual relations and echoes inside the narrative structure of the same work, and then probes its applicability to the Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Genette’s well-known hypertext and hypotext as well as his five-partite categorisation of transtextuality, comprising intertextuality, metatextuality, paratextuality, hypotextuality, and archetextuality are also contextualised in the novel. In addition, notions such as organic narration, self-reflexivity, self-allusiveness, symmetricality, and in-text relations are deemed pivotal throughout the mainstream discussionsResults and Discussion: This research shows that identical characters and incidents, one way or another, keep reappearing in all of the six nested stories of the novel, thereby constructing a tightly-knit network of reciprocal references and allusions within its narrative structure. Furthermore, the sustained recurrence of such motifs as reincarnation, dominance, quest for truth, death and symbols and images associated with them in all narratives creates an intratextuality of self-reflexive themes, which reaffirm themselves in every new intratextual dialogue. Transtextual relations are also discernible in the novel, predominantly in the repeated titles of the six narratives in two halves of the novel, protagonists’ comments on characters and incidents in a previous narrative, and in recurring themes and motifs which expand and modify in every new appearance.
Alireza Farahbakhsh; Rezvaneh Ranjbar Sheykhani
Abstract
This article aims to investigate the different effects of the concept of the subaltern in the major characters of Lahiri’s The Namesake in terms of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha’s theories. One of the important and central issues in cultural studies and postcolonial literature, which has ...
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This article aims to investigate the different effects of the concept of the subaltern in the major characters of Lahiri’s The Namesake in terms of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha’s theories. One of the important and central issues in cultural studies and postcolonial literature, which has received much attention in the recent decades, is the notion of the subaltern. The central questions of the article are: Can the components associated with the concept of the subaltern be traced in The Namesake? How do the main characters react to their portrayal as ‘the other’ and ‘the inferior’? Do they manage to ‘speak’ and construct an identity that negates ‘otherness’ and ‘inferiority’? To answer the questions, manifestations of the concept of the subaltern are analyzed in the demeanor, identity and social interactions of Ashima (the main character of the first generation) and Gogol (the main character of the second generation). Ashima and Gogol’s conscious and unconscious strategies for liberation from subalternity and creation of a socially equal identity are also explored. The article shows that in The Namesake, immigration affects not only the identity of the first generation immigrants but also the identity of their children. Subalternity is discernible in Ashima’s arranged marriage, her sheer dependence on her family and husband, pregnancy, immigration and also in Gogol’s name and his relationships with white Americans. Ashima, who initially rejects the Western culture, gradually comes to appreciate it and adapt herself to it. Also, Gogol who always shunned his true identity and cultural roots, in time takes interest in Indian culture. The article also indicates that hybrid and ambivalent identities create a voice for subalterns and give them a sense of power and belonging, so much so that they become ‘the self’ (in contrast with ‘the other’) in the new cultural context.