Discourse Analysis of the Position of Fath-Ali Shah and Naser al-Din Shah’s Bodies in Qajar Semiosphere

During the turbulent period of forming political, social, and historical revolutions in the face of western art and culture, Qajar painting goes through old and new elements, and settles in a wide range of challenging and new concepts. One of these concepts is the functioning of the body which acts as a powerful semiotic system in Qajar painting and in the direction of producing meaning, in dealing with "non-culture". Non-culture is one of the basic and practical terms in Yuri Lutman's cultural semiotic approach, which is opposed to culture. For Lutman, the most central concept is the semiosphere with the dual space: in such a way that the meaning is produced from the opposition of the dual concepts in this space. Therefore, this research aims to examine and compare the type of function and position of Fath-Ali Shah and Naser al-Din Shah's bodies in opposition to "Non-culture", with the purpose of using "body-signs" in Lutman's cultural semiotics approach. The purpose of this study is explaining how both kings' bodies are portrayed as their own bodies in the culture, in the face of another body within the "non-culture". This study is carried out through comparative-analytical method. The result of the analysis indicates that the cultural bodies of both kings in the discourse system of semiospheres in the face of "non-culture" have unequal status towards each other. The image of Naser al-Din Shah is constantly appearing towards another body within "non-culture", and in the dialectic of his own body/ another body, is considered as "close-body", despite Fath-Ali Shah who avoids it. As a result, with the influence of "non-culture", the image of Naser al-Din Shah is more exposed to change and transformation than Fath-Ali Shah, and the cultural body of king gradually fades.