" The Absent Hall", Representation of the conflicts between Traditionalism and Modernism in Iran during 1980s

This is an article about the discourse analysis of «The Absent Hall»، a novel by Hossein Sanāpour. Depending on post-structural approach of «laclau and mouffe»، it indicates that Sanāpour has depicted the challenge of tradition and modernity in the Iranian urban society of 1980s and has picked out the issue of Identity and its retrieval among different viewpoints. This study indicates that the Sanāpour novel disregards all of the distinctive traditional discourses and simultaneously articulates them in a way that they would be against modern discourses. His text organizes and represents the traditional and modern discourses about what is the disputing point of subject identity so antithetically that traditional discourse forms on the basis of gender differences and، in a broader scale، superiority of men over women. The younger generation tendency toward modernism، and finally، its success in forming its identity based on several dimensions of this discourse means the victory of modern discourse against the hegemony of traditional one