Female identity and gender in Sadegh Chubak's heterotopic spaces

Sadegh Chubak highlights spaces outside the norm and accepted spaces in society in his fiction works, which is one of the prominent and distinctive features of his work. As a writer, a number of his fictional works are distinguished by the use of spaces like mortuaries, brothels, and animal stables as residences for characters, who mostly are prostitutes, outcasts, and poor or destitute women. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this article examines and analyzes Chubek's fictional spaces from the perspective of Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia. Using feminist critical discourse analysis as a method of examining the identity of women within such spaces, I will show that Chubak's fictional works are heterotopic spaces of resistance and struggle by depicting heterotopic spaces of deviation and representation of female identity and gender. These spaces, in fact, aim to criticize and condemn the society that has caused the growth and emergence of anomalies and discrimination in relation to women's rights.