Dominique Carnoy-Torabi; Marghrouri SHahrzad
Abstract
Introduction: In the course of one’s life, a person constantly changes due to various environmental and social factors and inevitably adopts new frameworks. One of the most radical changes that a person experiences is the transformation of beliefs and the development of a new identity. In this ...
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Introduction: In the course of one’s life, a person constantly changes due to various environmental and social factors and inevitably adopts new frameworks. One of the most radical changes that a person experiences is the transformation of beliefs and the development of a new identity. In this context, Pierre Bourdieu believes that human being is influenced by factors such as the family, the media, and the governing educational system, and thereby acquires and internalizes a set of schemas, dispositions, and habitus. Serving as a reflection of the realities of the world, literature narrates these developments. Joris-Karl Huysmans’s cycle of four novels—Là-bas (1891), En route (1895) and La cathédrale (1898), and L'Oblat (1903)—is a salient instance of this literature. The author seems to represent the course of spiritual transformations of human being in these works. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory, the present research intends to show how the protagonist changes in these narratives.Background: Sociological criticism, as a method for approaching literary works, helps examine the social dimension of a text. Many researchers in this field such as Marcel Mauss and Bernard Lahire have explored habitus as one of the key concepts of this type of criticism. There are many literary works that exhibit the function of habitus. Prominent examples include Lost Illusions (1843) by Honoré Balzac, Man's Fate by André Malraux (1933), and Submission (2015) by Michel Houellebecq. This research analyzes Huysmans’s cycle of four novels to demonstrate the impact of habitus in triggering social and spiritual transformation in a person. By studying the protagonist—who is a consistent character and [seems to be] the author’s alter ego in all four works—and the actions of other characters as well as the impact they exert on him, and finally by citing examples from all four works, we will show how an individual undergoes personal, spiritual, and social changes when placed in different situations and socializing with people from different spectrums. MethodologyAs a way to decode human behavior and development, habitus is an important subject of social studies and has attracted the attention of many researchers. This paper draws on Bourdieu's theory of habitus, which he proposed to decode and interpret individual and social developments. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979), he refers to habitus as a system of practical structures that directs the actions of social agents. In general, habitus means the set of schemas that a person acquires during their lifetime as a result of interaction with different environments. These schemas include how to eat, dress, and socialize, as well as one’s interests and preoccupations, among others. Conclusion:Analyzing Huysmans’s cycle of four novels with the help of Bourdieu's theory showed that the protagonist, Durtal, was transformed under the influence of society and cultural and religious domains as this character develops new habits such as performing religious acts and practicing spiritual meditation. Thus, our analysis highlighted the extent to which one’s identity, beliefs, behavior, and actions are subject to environmental and social conditions, which are marked by interaction with other social agents. Durtal’s interaction with clerics is a conspicuous instance in this regard. Huysmans has carved out the course of his spiritual development by representing himself through Durtal’s personality.
Mahdi Javidshad; Morteza Jafari; Navid Maghsoud
Abstract
Introduction: The Room, written in 1957 but published in 1960 is Harold Pinter’s first work and in a way includes the most frequently encountered theme of his other plays: an anxious and frightened character exposed to the possible threats of the external world emerging apparently from nowhere. ...
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Introduction: The Room, written in 1957 but published in 1960 is Harold Pinter’s first work and in a way includes the most frequently encountered theme of his other plays: an anxious and frightened character exposed to the possible threats of the external world emerging apparently from nowhere. In this article, it is reasoned that one of the causes of the anxiety of its leading character is her personality problems which are rooted in her inability to successfully pass the development stages. Thus, the psychological theory focusing on personality problems can function as the theoretical foundation on which the latent causes of her characterization can be investigated. For so doing, Erikson’s personality development stages can be illuminating since it includes all the periods from childhood to old age.Background of Study: The Room has been discussed from various perspectives including ontology, economics, class struggles, feminism, and Freudian psychoanalysis. Such a variety testifies to the potentialities of the play. One of the approaches that can best investigate the motivations of the chief character of the play is Erikson’s development stages which cover all years from childhood to old age. In Childhood and Society (1950) Erikson introduces eight stages of development from childhood up to old age. The key to his theory is that in each stage human beings deal with a confrontation from which they should successfully pass and safely enter the next stage to finally form their healthy personality. The childhood confrontations in order involve fundamental trust against fundamental distrust, independence against shame and hesitation, initiation against guilt, and hardworking against inferiority. According to Erikson in the case of achieving the first part of each pair, the virtues of hope, will, purpose, and mastery will be acquired, respectively. The remaining confrontations which occur after childhood include identity against role confusion, intimacy against isolation, and productivity against stagnation and successfully passing those leads to gaining the moral virtues of loyalty, love, and care, respectively. The last stage which happens at the time of adulthood is the integrity of the self against despair and the acquired virtue is wisdom. For this play, the last stage is of crucial importance since Rose is a middle-aged woman incapable of making sound and healthy relationships with her surroundings.Methodology: Erikson’s developmental stages are taken to be the theoretical framework of the study for analyzing Rose’s psychological complications. Focusing on these developmental stages, the personality problems of Rose are analyzed to answer questions such as her proper growth stage, her actual current stage; the appropriateness of her present behavior and motives with emotional needs of her age, and the main incentive in her caring, mother-like attitude towards her indifferent husband, and the hidden motives behind her patent behavior. It is believed that answering such questions can shed light on parts of this play that have been intentionally kept in darkness and can offer a better understanding of the play. In attempting to answer the above questions the following concepts regarding the personality of Rose are considered and their effect on her motives, behavior, and overall personality are discussed: insecurity in the middle –age period, fundamental distrust, obsessive care, and isolation and confusion.Conclusion: It is concluded that all her personality lacks are rooted in her failure in passing the related growth stages and in her inability in acquiring the related virtues. Naturally, her behavior is confusing, improper for her age, and full of anxiety, distress, and fear. As a middle-aged woman, she must be in the stage of productivity against stagnation but in reality, she is too far from this stage. She is unable to show the possession of virtues such as identity, intimacy, loyalty, and love. She tries her best to achieve the security she has been deprived of since her childhood even of her obsessive caring for her husband, but all in vain. Therefore, the theory of Erikson regarding the growth stages and their effect on the personality is exactly applicable to this play and helps the readers to fill the gaps of the play by understanding the latent causes of Rose’s actions.
Kaveh Khodambashi Emami; Hossein Pirnajmuddin
Abstract
Introduction: By the advent of late twentieth century many experts and critics stated that the novel has experienced “an aesthetic sea change”, one affected by an inherent “desire to reconnect language to the social sphere” (McLaughlin 54). Dubbed as “Post-postmodern”, ...
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Introduction: By the advent of late twentieth century many experts and critics stated that the novel has experienced “an aesthetic sea change”, one affected by an inherent “desire to reconnect language to the social sphere” (McLaughlin 54). Dubbed as “Post-postmodern”, the new novels’ emphasize an engagement with the social world is perhaps something that promotes a more direct political engagement. This essay explores the literary representation of the spatial, temporal, and subjective relationships between the individual and a society increasingly dominated by the proliferation of reproducible images and spectacles. To this end, Franco Bifo Berardi's anatomization of what he knows as the latest phase of neoliberal-capitalist system or "semiocapitalism" would be used as the central theoretical framework in an attempt to answer the following questions: What does a return to social engagement mean for fiction as presented in the novels of David Foster Wallace? What the modality of the critique is in post-postmodern fiction as conceived of in the work of Wallace?Background of Study: Along with other thinkers such as Christian Marazzi and Antonio Negri Berardi has conceptualized the relation between language and the economy and described the "subsumption" and the submission of the biopolitical sphere of affection and language to financial capitalism. However, Berardi opts to look for a way to resist capitalism, to achieve autonomy and tries to do that from the unusual perspective of literature. This critical perspective has been adopted in this article to reveal its implications in more depth when applied to a selected number of David Foster Wallace’s fiction and can be viewed as a new step in the interpretation of the post-postmodern novels. Methodology: This essay scrutinizes the post-postmodern novel – as the emanation of language – as a suitable tool to combat semiocapitalism and to construct a strong social fabric that would affect personal and collective consciousness, consequently helping the emergence of social and political change. The focus is also on defining the formal and thematic elements of post-postmodern literature with emphasis on how the structures of such texts contribute to the critique of capitalism by compelling reader participation and response.Conclusion: Post-postmodern novelists like Wallace often write huge, informationally savvy, and erudite novels asserting that in the age of semiocapitalism and proliferation of information there is more to incorporate, discuss and debate in fiction. Post-postmodern fiction focuses on the explorations of knowledge and information and the power, even the necessity, of narrative to help us order that information and to achieve the task of meaningfully staying informed in an otherwise meaningless info-saturated semiocapitalist condition. Consequently, by deeply scrutinizing the post-postmodern novels’ narrative and formal structure, it is concluded that these works are inherently oppositional to the contemporary socio-political system. The subject is also scrutinized from a different point of view: the incompatibility between economy and aesthetics. It is argued that aesthetics and political economy stand in a characteristic relationship with each other since it is utterly impossible to reduce the former into the latter. While the contemporary economy is all about abstraction, aesthetics is all about the concrete experience of the sensitive mind. Post-postmodern fiction as a new manifestation of aesthetics with its rejection of unrealistic plots and descriptions is read as an attempt to help us achieve a concrete experience of the “real” world as an accentuation of fiction’s social impact or a line of escape from an all-pervasive abstract semiocapital context.
Fatemeh Pourjafari; leila Baradaran Jamili
Abstract
The present study is based on the interaction between aesthetics and ethics and by focusing on the rhetorical narrative theory and the ethical philosophy it aims to investigate the aesthetic representation of ethics in On Beauty by Zadie Smith. On this account, this study relies primarily on James Phelan's ...
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The present study is based on the interaction between aesthetics and ethics and by focusing on the rhetorical narrative theory and the ethical philosophy it aims to investigate the aesthetic representation of ethics in On Beauty by Zadie Smith. On this account, this study relies primarily on James Phelan's rhetorical approach to narratology and Charles Taylor's philosophy of ethics. According to Phelan, the study of narrative aesthetics deals with the analysis of the narrative techniques, employed by the author and the narrator. Free indirect discourse and narrative voice are two techniques that contribute to the aesthetic dimension of the narrative. Through free indirect discourse, the readers are given a chance to enter inside the characters' unconscious mind which is integrated within the narrative flow, while narrative voice is defined by Phelan as the synthesis of style, tone, and ethics. Furthermore, the ethical world of the story is analyzed concerning the characters' various attitudes towards the concept of beauty, and their tendency towards human connection and altruism as ethical goods. Smith’s characters search for their authentic selfhood within the pluralistic context of the globalized world while practicing concern for others. This article aims at exploring the ethical values embedded in the choice of using certain narrative frameworks in Smith’s novel, and their relation to the contemporary tendency in literature towards rejecting postmodern fragmented narrative world.
Bahman Zarrinjooee; Seyed Vahid Abtahi
Abstract
John Barth, among postmodern American novelists, is apt to be called the reviver of Pyrrhonist tradition in the Twentieth century. In his creation of Pyrrhonist characters, he criticizes the American value system and the empty life of contemporary man in a broad sense. The End of the Road, Barth’s ...
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John Barth, among postmodern American novelists, is apt to be called the reviver of Pyrrhonist tradition in the Twentieth century. In his creation of Pyrrhonist characters, he criticizes the American value system and the empty life of contemporary man in a broad sense. The End of the Road, Barth’s second novel is a successful example in which the marry traits of a protagonist give their place to the mean qualities of an antagonist. In the novel, the anti-hero characters suffering from a mental paralysis under the title “Cosmopsis” resort to “Mythotherapy” which means nothing but a distortion of identity. Among the consequences of this treatment are, of course, “Decidophobia” and “hyperbolic Cartesian doubt.” Interestingly, Barth’s description for the irrationality of such a man corresponds to the definition of rationality in Pyrrhonism. On this basis, the main question of the research arises from the fact that Barth’s views are an embodiment of those historical thoughts regarded as Pyrrhonist skepticism, which have been developed through ages by different forms. Apart from the historical impressions on the formation of modern skeptical philosophy which was flourished first by Cartesian doubt and developed by Hume’s empiricism the research also examines Barth’s postmodern-skeptical cosmology which derives from his obsession with identity and meaning. The overall point inferred by the researchers is that how Barth in The End of the Road indicates human decisions rely most on “emotions” rather than “reason” and that the rationality of man take him nowhere but in itself.
Hossein Mohseni; Kian Soheil
Abstract
Cyberpunk is one of the latest genres in the development of science fiction. In it, characters deal with various cybernetic and technological advancements with futuristic affinities. In this genre, characters experience such futuristic advancements through a series of images and surface values. In the ...
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Cyberpunk is one of the latest genres in the development of science fiction. In it, characters deal with various cybernetic and technological advancements with futuristic affinities. In this genre, characters experience such futuristic advancements through a series of images and surface values. In the present study, it is asked what the status of characters’ knowledge and identity is in the cyberpunk world. Through utilization of ideas of Garfield Benjamin and William Haney, two well-known critics in Cyberculture and Posthuman/Cyborg Identity, the study believes that cyberpunk citizens’ knowledge and definition from their identities is shattered and non-essential. Cyberpunk citizens have fluid movement between their various identities and have a simultaneous sense of belonging and non-belonging to all of them. All these identities are formed around the hollowness and emptiness of the citizens’ identity core, which is the only essence of posthuman subjects.
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.
Hoda Shabrang
Abstract
Immigration experience is always accompanied by tension and conflict. In other words, the immigrant is always under a double paradoxical command. The host asks the immigrant to assimilate into its culture, yet simultaneously it orders him to keep a distance which results in the “paradox of assimilation ...
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Immigration experience is always accompanied by tension and conflict. In other words, the immigrant is always under a double paradoxical command. The host asks the immigrant to assimilate into its culture, yet simultaneously it orders him to keep a distance which results in the “paradox of assimilation and difference”. Therefore, the immigrant will be in an impossible situation: on the one hand he has to actively participate in the assimilation process; on the other hand, he should keep his distance from the host culture. The Immigrant artist is not allowed to create a kind of art which is completely related to his culture because it is not readable and understandable in the host country, neither is he allowed to create some kind of art which is completely related to the host culture since that place is reserved for the artists of the host country. In this article, first the “paradox of assimilation and difference” and its consequences will be discussed, then the movie A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour, who is an immigrant Iranian-American director, will be analyzed. The aim is to show how her shattered identity as an immigrant artist is represented in her art. Although this impossible situation seems very painful at first glance, it is beneficial for the immigrant artist. In this hybridized space, she creates a kind of art which is innovative and unique, because she is not completely preoccupied with the hollywoodian clichés imposed by the host culture.
Dominik Carnox –Torabi; Monireh Akbarpouran
Volume 13, Issue 17 , October 2017, , Pages 79-99
Abstract
Imagology, as un approach in Comparative Literature for the study of images and representations of the alien ("other") in a literary work, may have a special relation with Epic genre; because only in this genre, representation of Other necessarily accompanies rejection, fear and exaggerated humiliation; ...
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Imagology, as un approach in Comparative Literature for the study of images and representations of the alien ("other") in a literary work, may have a special relation with Epic genre; because only in this genre, representation of Other necessarily accompanies rejection, fear and exaggerated humiliation; and in the trilogy of reactions to the alien, defined by Daniel Henri Pageaux, i.e. xenophobia, xenophilia and xenomania, this representation is placed in former category. The Epic genre, in fact, is an identity-based genre that, highlighting the differences and conflicts between Us and the Other, covers up the internal contradictions and conflicts and reconstructs social identity. This identity is certainly defined in relation to an otherness which monsters and ogres are examples. In this article, we would analyze the poetic of Other representation in the epic genre, study the mechanism of exclusion and deformation of the alien, and examine its relation with the intrinsic properties of epic.
Narges Montakhabi Bakhtvar
Volume 13, Issue 17 , October 2017, , Pages 245-268
Abstract
Ethics has undergone huge changes in postmodernism as many playwrights of the era have tried to capture the deep interconnection between language and subjectivity. The present essay is an attempt to unravel the new ethical dicta set forth on the American and British stage from the 1960s to 1980s. The ...
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Ethics has undergone huge changes in postmodernism as many playwrights of the era have tried to capture the deep interconnection between language and subjectivity. The present essay is an attempt to unravel the new ethical dicta set forth on the American and British stage from the 1960s to 1980s. The critical framework for this study relies on Giorgio Agamben’s thought and philosophical oeuvre. Agamben’s ethical renovations happen at the close proximity of language, ontology, and politics. He firmly asserts that experiencing the matter and being of language can be considered as an ethical act that questions cultural clichés imposed by power. Postmodern theater has witnessed an unprecedented shift in the role of language; it has forced the audience to venture the theatrical experience in order to be at the margins of communication and speech. This process can be deemed as ethical from Agamben’s point of view as it entices the viewers to see beyond and through the capitalist and ideological workings. Through such a limit experience, theater can find its true stance as a site for communality. The ultimate purpose of this study is to put forward the mechanisms through which performance can become an ethical gesture by installing the awareness of the fact that liminality of language can in itself be a new form of subjectivity.