The purpose of this article is to critically examine two plays, namely Cambises (1569) by Thomas Preston and The Sophy (1641) by John Denham, through the lens of Edward Said’s theoretical framework. These works, although relatively unfamiliar in our country, offer valuable insights into the prevailing political and cultural discourse of Renaissance England, during which the nation's expansionist policies were beginning to form. In line with the prevailing tendencies among writers of their era, Preston and Denham, whether deliberately or indeliberately, practiced Stereotyping and Othering, because their knowledge of the East was neither objective nor direct; it was merely a reproduction of the stereotypical images in previous texts. Through misrepresenting the East and its people, their works became a part of the broader political and cultural discourse of their country, reflecting a thirst for superiority. It is crucial to recognize that such cultural misrepresentations played a significant role in shaping public sentiments, laying the groundwork for expansionism and colonialism. Through a contrapuntal reading of these dramatic works, we can uncover the intricate relationship between cultural artifacts and the underlying power dynamics at play, which provides us with a nuanced understanding of their impact.

The present article attempts to show how Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart has made use of the notion of "Othering" from a new perspective. Many critics have focused on postcolonial criticism to suggest that Achebe's novel is a sharp criticism of the Western colonialism in Africa. However،the present article tries to suggest that Things Fall Apart is more concerned with the internal than external "Othering". Achebe has succinctly focused on the internal dynamics of the African local culture to reveal its weak points through which the Western culture infiltrated the traditional tribal structure. The Most important aspects of this internal Othering is portrayed in the African communities' of making special parts of the society as strangers and subaltern. The Western colonizers appropriate this particular quality of societal making of strangers to bypass the structure of local power and dominate the community.

The beginning of the formation of literature, and especially contemporary poetry, was accompanied by some opposition to this modernist current from the traditionalist professors of academia.Contradictions that sometimes led to the "Western" and "alien" reading of the movement, such as the romanticism, symbolism, or surrealism of modernist works; The works, according to traditionalists, were created in imitation of Western literary schools. Subsequent generations of masters of Persian literature, consciously or unconsciously, accepted this alienation as the obvious principle, and as a result, the currents of contemporary poetry and prose were written and analyzed under the headings of Western literary schools.Part of this attribution and application is due to the weakness of Persian literary criticism in the areas of principles, methods, and conceptualization. conceptualizations, and clear terms, regardless of the background of these attributions that arose from otherness. This study shows how the use of Western literary schools in the analysis of contemporary literature began with the modernization and marginalization of the modernist current, and in the following decades the weakness of Persian literary criticism stabilized and continued this trend. The knowledge gained in this way from contemporary Persian literature is an incomplete knowledge that considers the formation of modernist literature to be sometimes an imitation of Western literature; As a result, he does not acquire a deep genealogy and deep roots of this movement, and only considers features of contemporary poetry and prose that bear some resemblance to some Western literary schools.

Justice is one of the most important issues in Iranian society. The main issue of the present study is epistemic justice and the gap between its definitions in everyday life and policy making domains. For that matter, we purposefully selected the pages of young users on social media networks of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram and then conducted their virtual ethnographic, thematic and semiotic analyses. Thereafter, policymaking texts were thematically analyzed, as well. While the findings of cyberspace confirmed the existence of hermeneutical (epistemic) injustice; we saw two types of otherization in space where the first is elitist and the second is based on reading of the dominant discourse of being the criterion that people are trying to confront with. The consequences of these otherizations include the contrast between official rulings and opinions of the people, the polarization of the society, being voiceless and probelmatization of difference. Epistemic justice at both national and transnational levels that are connected to each other manifested itself in the data. A review of relevant policy documents confirms the lack of opportunities for youth participation in macro decision-making, inattention to different lifestyles, otherization, pathological attitudes and policing and judicialization of issues. It seems that by eliminating the shortcomings of existing programs and operationalizing them, taking advantage of the academic capacity of universities and moving from abyssal thinking through radical plurality and de-linking, we can see the elimination of epistemic injustice, especially among the youth.

The importance of childhood in finding identity and young audience’s attempt in decrypting signs in other culture encouraged our research team to study the performance of IRIB Children Network programs in the 2nd half of the year 1396, based on Lotman semiotics in creation of other as an anti-hegemonic action and establishing the self culture. Our study shows that western dialectic has targeted and forced itself to the Islamic semiotics shield. Our study presumes the western culture as a pod culture and our weakness in creating the Other is not being recognized as a cultural collaboration. The philosophy of the Network is based on self and also other instead of polarized Self vs Other and its using a mixture of Self and Other. Based on Umwelt theory, children productions have a conservative approach to society and its issues, traditions and history. On the other hand imported media emphasis is on social adherence, wealth, power and lifestyle. One of the most influential anti-hegemonic methods to encourage patriotism is cultural translation of imported Medias. In this case repetition and creativity was used effectively but it was necessary to create cultural Self and Other as an approach to attract and deflect, so that the aired media could have shown the traits of our cultural foundation.

In this article، the story of Khosrow and Shirin is evaluated using assumptions of postcolonial studies and cultural semiotics. Shirin''s presence in place of a female immigrant in Ctesiphon with its dual demand for allegiance with the host country''s culture on the one hand and Shirin''s emphasis on maintaining and codifying her home-country''s culture on the other hand، stucks her in a challenging situation. In this paper، the mechanisms of center culture in the host country، for marginalizing Shirin، and the process of “othering” as her resistance strategy to maintain the cultural identity of “herself” in the host country is analyzed and the role of gender in the success of this process is shown. The results show that the host country''s culture tries to marginalize Shirin as a dangerous «other» who seeks out to disrupt the established dominant culture order. Therefore her situation in the host country، sets the stage for the process of othering by her، as an act of resistance، considered as an anti-hegemonic act in order to stabilize her own cultural identity. Shirin''s “othering” are divided in to two categories of “distanct others: and close others”. Interestingly Shirin''s “gender others” or “men” in the host country''s land، are under the category of “close others” and “gender in-groups” or women are under the category of “distant others”. Thus she takes two different approaches towards each. By such reading Khosrow and Shirin can be a reflection of the marginalized voices which manage to survive in the dominant center culture.

Persian travelogues of the Qajar period are amongst the first encounters of Iranians with the-West-as-the-Other and due to this various forms of othering of the Europe can be recognized in them. Since metaphor is one of the principal devices in the process of othering, the main aim of this paper is to provide a critical-cognitive study of metaphorization of the "the West as the Other" in two early instances of Persian travel account in such an era. The under-study travelogues in this research are Masir-e Talebi and Hayrat Nameh. The main approach used in this study is Critical Metaphor Analysis which provides the ground for offering a critical-cognitive analysis of the role metaphor plays in different texts and discourses. Exploring these two travel books, it is found out that a number of conceptual metaphors have been used in them for representing the West which offer a hyperbolic, idealized and heaven-like image of Europe to the readers. The combination of these conceptual metaphors finally leads to the formation of an iconographic frame of reference or megametaphor which suggests a coherent integrated picture of Europe. Such metaphors metaphorize that place as the Heaven or utopia which could be used as a model for Iranian society in that time.

At least in the last three decades, the concept of identity and its consequences on the behavior of governments at the regional and international levels have been the focus of attention for researchers and more broadly, critics of traditional theories of international relations. In other words, it is argued that, unlike traditionalists who focus on certain principles in the behavior of actors, to explain the actions of states, one must take seriously the power, preferences, interests and normative structures, that are inextricably linked to the identity of the actors. For example, post-Structuralists argue that the identity of the state is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that mark the 'inside' from the 'outside', the 'self' from the 'other', and “domestic” from “foreign”. Against this background, this research tries to evaluate the process of othering by actors in international arena and answer the basic questions of what othering is. What role does othering play in the identity of actors? In addition to answering the above questions, this study also attempts to evaluate othering in the eastern policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation.

research question: 

How do the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation try to distinguish themselves from others with the "looking to the east" strategy and what is the common point or intersection of their strategies?Research hypothesis: The research has arguments, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation are trying to distinguish themselves from others (the West) by emphasizing elements such as geography, culture, civilization, ideology, etc. The common point of this distinction is the rejection of the West (especially the United States). Similarities in the Eastern strategy of the two countries, such as the geographical overlap, the emphasis on traditionalism and traditional values (anti-modern) and anti-hegemonic multipolar order also strengthens this common position.

This research is qualitative, and the author has tried to test the research hypothesis using a descriptive-analytical approach. The data needed to explain the problem is also collected through library studies (authorized articles, books and internet sources). Since the purpose of the research paper is to provide evidence of othering in the search strategy of Iran and Russia, the conceptual framework of othering was used to test the hypothesis

The results of this research show that countries define their identity in the regional and international arena and differentiate themselves from others through the process of othering. This distinction is based on the specific characteristics of each country, which can be cultural, historical, geographical, etc. This othering is an inevitable part of identification. The results of this research also show that identification and foreign determination can be seen largely in the looking east strategy of the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran and Russia are trying to distinguish themselves from others (especially the West) by referring to their unique geographical, cultural and civilizational features in the form of a look-to-the-east strategy and at the same time they try to attract others (especially Eastern countries) to their side. In the meantime, there are some commonalities between the Russian Federation's and the Islamic Republic of Iran's strategy of looking East, which increase the areas of convergence towards identification and cooperation with each other. The first of these similarities is the geographical overlap. In this context, both countries emphasize regions such as Central Asia and the Caucasus as a region of the East. Regardless of the physical geographical dimension, both countries consider regions such as Latin America in their geopolitical imagination as part of the Looking to the East strategy. The most important point in this context is the non-contradiction of the geographical borders of these two countries.The second similarity between the eastern strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation is that both countries emphasize traditional values. Values such as justice, equality, freedom and similar values that are usually in conflict with modern values (especially the interpretation represented by the United States and European countries in the form of liberalism). Finally, the third feature of the Eastern strategy of these two countries is their emphasis on the anti-hegemonic multipolar order. Based on the interpretation of these countries, there are different countries and civilizations in the international system, each of which has its own characteristics and coordinates, so we cannot have one.

This article investigates that in what discourse the social issues of the border dwellers do not become problematic. We have chosen the theory of Orientalism (internal) in order to explain the non-problematization of social issues. According to this theory, the general approach of the center is alienation in the peripheral (border) areas, and by creating dualities (linguistic, ethnic and religious), it attempts to securitization of space and implement the policy of assimilation. The general research method is the historical-documentary method. The analysis of media representation shows that out of 781 search items (from 2000 to 2021), the most news about the economic field with 456 news (58%), followed by the security field with 283 news (36%) and then the social and cultural issues of the border dwellers are only 28 news (3.5%), which is an indication of the non-existence of the social issues of the border dwellers. According to the findings, the most prominent social issues of the border areas are massive migrations, the existence of multidimensional poverty, high illiteracy rate, educational situation and inappropriate health treatment situation. The main issue in the current policies is, first, the approach of alienation, and at a lower level, the emphasis is on economic factors and solutions. Economic solutions have not been successful due to weak laws and implementation defects. The suggestion of this research is to adopt a pluralistic approach and simultaneously pay attention to the internal capabilities of bordering regions, villages and cities, such as paying attention to the agricultural economy, expanding welfare services (educational and health), expanding the individual capabilities of people and paying attention to the social development of these areas.

Our purpose in this research is to identify the types, strategies and consequences of constructing of justice. Most of the definitions of justice are made by youth and in the Iranian virtual space. Therefore, the main method is virtual ethnography and the data was analyzed by semiotic reading and thematic analysis. Types include agentic/critical, responsible, utopian, individualistic and national/transnational justice. Distributive, procedural and interactional justice are the most represented. Although epistemic justice is not expressed directly, it is seen in most definitions. Similarities can be seen between some aspects of the Islamic definition of justice with the Marxist, human rights, and liberal definitions of justice, although the latest definition simultaneously emphasizes individualism. There are strategies such as integrating the definitions of justice, iconizing, the role of power with various discourses, and resisting it in virtual space which has led to elitist definitions of justice, virtual agency of users due to the lack of direct possibility to bargain with power, dual otherizing, resistance to otherizing, and the spread of negative emotions. There was a lack of space in the dialogue between the youth and the power around justice.