نشریه نقد و نظریه ادبی
سال چهارم شماره 2 (پیاپی 8، پاییز و زمستان 1398)

Subject and subjectivity are among the elements which can help determine a story as modernist. The modern subject reflects on itself, thus many characters in the modernist fiction think about themselves and their life and thoughts are the focus of the story. Concentration on ‘characters’ and their thoughts are of great importance in modernist fiction, which is less noticeable in pre-modern fiction. In Persian modernist fiction, there are two works in which such a concentration can be particularly observed, i.e. Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl and Bahram Sadeqi’s The Heavenly Kingdom. In both of these novels, the characters and their thoughts are central. In this study, first, the characteristics of the subject are listed, then a relatively precise definition of the subject is provided, and finally it is shown that the main characters of these two novels are subjects and the features of subjectivity are discernable in them. Consciousness, agency and individuality are the main features of subjectivity which are all studied in relation to the main characters of these two stories. 

In the past century, a number of Iranian writers have produced stories that can be viewed as examples of modernist fiction. One of the most important features of characters in modernist fiction is their subjectivity. In the present study, Hedayat’s TheBlind Owl and Sadeqi’s The Heavenly Kingdom, as two prominent modernist works of Iranian fiction, have been examined, with the subjectivity of their major characters being the main focus of attention. Both of these works are character-centered and the stories revolve around the minds of the characters. In other words, everything is filtered through the minds of the characters and there is no objective reality in them.

The definition of modern fiction is closely associated with the definition of modern personality, resulting in the development of different ideas about the modern personality. Subjectivity, as highlighted by modernist critics, is an important feature of modernist fictional characters. While the subject is defined in different ways, in the present study we have relied on the definition accepted by the majority of modernist critics. The subject, according to scholars in this field, is characterized by awareness, freedom, and individuality.

In the present study, first, by drawing on the ideas of scholars in this field, a definition is offered for subjectivity, based on which the subjectivity of the main characters in Hedayat’s TheBlind Owl and Sadeqi’s The Heavenly Kingdom will be analyzed. Then the most prominent features of these characters will be examined.

The main characters of two important Iranian modernist novels were examined and it was found out that both characters share their ideas about subjectivity with the reader and enjoy their free will and individuality.

In The Blind Owl, the narrator knowingly speaks about the characteristics of subjectivity, shares his ideas with the reader and even analyzes them. He examines every idea rigorously and refuses to accept any idea as a presupposition. He questions the ideas instilled into him by society and tradition and tries to redefine them. His ideas about life and death are the result of his individual awareness. He tries to protect his free will and freedom and influence people surrounding him, even by inflicting violence on them. In The Heavenly Kingdom, Dr. Hatam has devised a plan through which the characteristics of subjectivity can be found in this personality. He sometimes speaks about these characteristics directly and reveals subjective awareness in his ideas in his solitude. He thinks about his own life more than anything else and is aware of the differences between himself and others. Dr. Hatam uses his free will and freedom to joyfully torture and even kill others. He cannot view others as human beings similar to him, and by disregarding all presuppositions he starts to think about himself and others.

Contrasting the soul and the body and considering humankind as a spiritual entity were formed in Plato’s philosophical system. This duality was dominant until the twentieth century in Western philosophy. At the end of the twentieth century, the body and its conceptual-visual correlations became the focal point of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s studies, the phenomenologist philosopher. In Merleau-Ponty’s thought we are bodily perceivers. Every kind of cognition, perception, awareness, and connection of a person with herself, her and others’ surrounding world is possible only through/with the body. The body is not an individual, independent, and nonchangeable term, but like all other terms, knowledge, subjects, and objects, it is constructed and represented in relation with power discourses. Studying school stories, the present article shows how the discourse of power in educational institutions exerts its authority over the bodies with its powerful arms. The process of power with disciplinary technology and its techniques such as normalizing punishment, panopticon/monitoring of power, engineering principles, hierarchy, etc. supervises every part of students’ physical activities. And with presenting and imposing patterns regarding the manner of standing, the style of sitting, rites of speaking, type of clothing, and appearance constructs the ideal body of educational discourse. The building-space of the school, appropriate to disciplinary and supervisory patterns, has an important role in continuing supervision and monitoring. Using insults in animal terms (calf, mule, dog, etc.), the disciplinary agents impose an animal body on the students and, through this process of subjectivization, gradually correlations and metaphors of a new animal body are created for them. In school stories, the ideal bodies are those that are tame, quiet, and obedient. Disciplinary technology with different mechanisms judges, normalizes, and puts into hierarchy the incompatible and revolting bodies.

With the emergence of modern thought and formation of concepts connected with modernity, the meanings of individuality and the body underwent considerable changes. The politicization of the body and globalization of the media brought about changes in perceptions of the body. In the 20th century phenomenology, especially the philosophical ideas of Merleau-Ponty, the body has a central place and attracts a lot of philosophical attention. In the present study, the mechanisms of disciplinary technology and how they construct the body of students are examined through a sociological point of view, mostly by drawing on Foucault’s ideas. The panoptic principle of power has a central place in disciplinary technology. In the present study attempt is made to examine how this principle is followed in school stories and in the structure and elements of the educational institutions.

Theoretical Framework

In cultural and sociological studies of the body, the body is far from an individual, independent phenomenon or an absolute, static and unchanging concept; it is rather affected and represented by constructing institutions and power discourses. Foucault puts the body in the center of his studies and according to him, the relationship between the individual body and the social/cultural body is impossible without considering power relations. In the present study, disciplinary technology and its effects on the body in schools will be examined by relying on the ideas of Foucault.

In the present study, disciplinary technology and its ways of constructing students’ bodies are examined from a sociological point of view, based on the ideas of theorists in this field, in particular, those of Foucault. For this purpose, school stories by writers such as Choobak, Al-e Ahmad, Darvishian and Moradi Kermani are reread and analyzed so that elements of the complicated network of disciplinary technology are analyzed.

School buildings are designed in a way that students are kept under constant surveillance. The principle of panopticon is also followed in the hierarchical supervision of the principal, schoolmaster, teacher, monitor and the like, through which any abnormal bodily behavior is reported and the perpetrator is punished. School authorities rely on different forms of verbal and nonverbal intimidation and reprimand to bring students’ bodies under control. However, some students choose to protest such a structure in different ways, resulting in behaviors considered by disciplinary technology as abnormalities. Disciplinary technology executives, following the principles of panopticon, try to force the subjects to have a uniform look and outfit so that any disobedience is immediately detected and reported.

Bodily experiences, the lived body and bodily features of the students are directly associated with their acceptance, flexibility, subjugation, resistance and opposition. Disciplinary technology is used at school to produce docile, subjugated bodies, so that, as school authorities claim, qualified, efficient workforce is trained for the society. Due to the association between bodily experiences and feature and future social roles, while these students might be subjugated and docile, they do not necessarily turn into efficient workforce.

Using Norman Fairclough’s approach in critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to study Nima Yushij’s narrative poem Maneli in order to shed light on Nima’s ideology regarding the social identity of the intellectuals and the deprived classes of society. Therefore, what is considered here is the narrative agents’ social identity in the poem’s conversations and scenes. Pari and Maneli, as imaginary characters, represent Iranian society’s life-world and ideology in the years 1945-1957. In contrast to the ruling discourse and other discourses, Nima creates Maneli during these 12 years. Maneli is the symbol of escaping from reality and society to the land of Nowhere (the land of the sea) in the process of social changes. At the end of the narration, Maneli’s despair and escape from his corrupt community is reminiscent of the social status after the 1953 coup d’état. Nima’s poem describes the fate of the movement of class determinism towards Utopia. The data has been collected through documentation, and the text has been analyzed in a descriptive-analytical manner.

From the discourse analysis perspective, texts reflect ideology and social relations. In the present article, the poem Maneli is analyzed based on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. Nima Yushij’s Maneli was created in response to Sadegh Hedayat’s translation of Urashima. This poem, which took twelve years to complete, retells the story of a poor fisherman who faces the inequality of social relations and the utopian world of fairy tales. The main question in the present article is: what discursive and ideological space affect the production of the social identity of the characters in this poem.

Theoretical Framework

According to Fairclough, critical discourse analysis is a combination of textual analysis, the analysis of the process of production, distribution and consumption of texts, and the socio-cultural analysis of the discursive event as a totality. An important goal of critical analysis is to eliminate power/hegemony in both theory and practice. Within the framework of critical discourse analysis, Fairclough considers textual analysis to be a combination of linguistic and inter-textual analyses, and examines the discourse at three levels of description, interpretation and explanation.

Maneli was selected for the present article based on purposeful qualitative methodology. Of different types of critical discourse analysis, Fairclough’s approach, due to its methodology, was the most applicable here.

Maneli and Pari, as the main characters in the poem, appear as opposing subjects at the beginning of the poem and their relationship and identities are represented through semantic relations. Maneli is the product of his socio-historical context and production system and, because of his social class and poverty, has a lowly social status. Based on the expressive and experimental values of the narrator, Pari has a paradoxical lover-beloved quality. In this poem, Nima Yushij represents power in the socio-economic system of production, which suffers from inequality.

Nima Yushij draws on verbal-visual discourse and narrative poetry to express his ideology in the literary tradition of the contemporary era. To oppose the despotic, capitalist discourse of the Pahlavi era, and the materialistic discourse of the Tudeh Party, he relies on the idealistic-realistic discourse, revolving around freedom, love and humanism. Pari and Maneli are two imaginary characters that formulate the social identity of the intellectuals and the lower class. This poem somehow shows the movement from the Marxist class determinism to idealism. The discourse followed by the second Pahlavi monarch, through freedom of the press, modernism, establishment of parties and civil institutions, such as the Association of Iranian Writers, affected social activists, such as Maneli, moving him from realism to idealism. Disappointment with a corrupt society at the end of the poem is typical of the intellectuals and lower classes in the years following the 1953 coup d'état in Iran.

In a number of recent studies on the history of Islamic rhetoric the division of ma’ani (the study of syntax at the level of language) and bayan (the study of tropes and figures of speech) has been attributed to Abu Yaqub Al-Sakaki. On the other hand, some scholars believe that it was first Jorjani who subdivided the study of these sciences in the history of Islamic rhetoric. It is quite plain that this controversy among scholars is superficial because any shift in the study of sciences is gradual and its emergence is not spontaneous. The same is true of the division of ma’ani and bayan. Not only did it begin before Sakaki but it also took centuries after him for these sciences to become completely separated. Considering this fact in this paper, we have studied the means to which ma’ani and bayan became separated in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Our study shows that Qotboddin Shirazi – one of the interpreters of Al-Meftah – is keen to emphasize the similarities of ma’ani and bayan. His views are later challenged by some other eminent interpreters in the 8th century AD. This shows how gradually this division occured in the history of Islamic rhetoric. This paper illustrates the confrontation between those who see ma’ani and bayan as almost similar fields and do not support their separation, and those who entirely support it.

As the development of concepts is a gradual process, historians are expected to study the formation of concepts as a constant process of change and evolution. In the present study two concepts of ma’ani (the study of syntax at the level of language) and bayan (the study of tropes and figures of speech), which were considered in the Islamic civilization to be the same for centuries, are examined. Some contemporary scholars believe that ma’ani and bayan were used interchangeably until the late 5th century A.H. According to Ahmad Matlub, Zamakhshari and Fakhr Razi treated ma’ani and bayan as a single concept and the first conceptual distinction between these two was made by Sakkaki in his Miftah al-Ulum in 626 A.H. Hashim Muhammad Hashim Mahmoud similarly holds that before Sakkaki rhetoric was not divided into ma’ani and bayan.

 Theoretical Framework

The present article is based on the idea that concepts go through changes in their meaning and application throughout their history, making it impossible to understand a concept without knowing about the changes it has undergone. Thus, here, attempt is made to examine the process through which ma’ani and bayan developed separate meanings.

As in the present article Sakkaki is considered to be the first person to distinguish between ma’ani and bayan, this study will focus on a period covering one century before and one century after him, i.e. 6th to 8th century A.H. Annotations on Miftah al-Ulum, which have attracted little attention, will be the focus of attention.

Based on the results of the present study, the distinction between ma’ani and bayan can be traced back to Sakkaki rather than Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani. Before Sakkaki, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi had practically, rather than theoretically, distinguished between these two terms when outlining the main topic of his book Nihayah al-Ijaz fi Dirayah al-‘I’jaz. Motarzi Ganjavi has written an important introduction to rhetoric, in which he has somehow divided rhetoric into ma’ani, bayan and badi’. However, it was not until about one hundred years after Sakkaki that the separation between ma’ani and bayan was accepted by most scholars. In the decades following Sakkaki, commentators on his work were divided into two groups: one agreeing with a minimal separation of these two sciences and the other accepting a maximal distinction. However, with the emergence of scholars such as Taftazani and al-Jurjani the ground was prepared for accepting the separation of these sciences.

A close study of commentaries on Miftah al-Ulum reveals that the farther we get from the time of Sakkaki, the larger grows the number of supporters of separation of these two sciences. Sakkaki’s position in this regard is somewhat ambiguous; he considers bayan to be a branch of man’ani, but at the same time he devoted two separate chapters to them, with distinct definitions for each science. Some scholars, however, believe that al-Jurjani laid the foundation for the separation of these two sciences by writing a book about each. If we accept this to be the case, then, al-Jurjani’s works should be examined to arrive at an answer to the questions concerning the separation of these sciences.

The limitations and prohibitions affecting women’s writing during history have taken form in parallel with the restriction of women’s lives to the indoors and have, thus, become institutionalized. Even though fictional literature in Iran was formed in the modern period, it was dominated by the patriarchal discourse, nonetheless. Women’s fiction mainly included the reproduction of gender clichés. Since the 1990s, along with the quality and quantity of the developments in women’s novel writing, the growth of information and education, women’s further presence in society as well as the gradual change of their position in the fields of economy and culture, the knowledge created in women’s fictional literature has established a new form of authority and changed the equation of power from a unilateral action to a mutual one. Women writers have introduced new statements into fictional literature as a real issue, and have produced knowledge leading to a kind of resistance against predominant and settled power. They use the reverse processes which reproduce the distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ statements. This paper analyzes and interprets the conceptual data of ten famous and successful novels by female authors in two decades, and studies the change in the concept of power in these novels. The most important actions aiming at female power reproduced in the Persian novel during these decades are: challenges to the traditional patriarchal power structures, the expression of emotional rejection in matrimonial life, difference in maternal methods and the definition of the domestic woman, the kitchen as the main center of power in the house, the femininization of urban spaces, the change of gender roles and clichés and diversity of forms of family life. These elements have led the relations of power from a one-dimensional perspective to an interactive one in Iranian fictional literature.   Extended Abstract.

Limitations women have faced throughout history, along with their minor role in society, have become institutionalized. Although fiction writing developed in Iran in the modern era, the masculine discourse has always dominated it. Fiction by women writers has been predominantly a reproduction of gender clichés. Since the 1990s, as the awareness of women of their status increased and they started to play a more active role in society and gained a better cultural and economic status, they have produced numerous novels of high quality, through which new forms of power have been developed, changing the power relations into an interactive action rather than a one-way one.

In the present study, gender and power are the main foci of attention and Foucault’s ideas about power, which according to him is a network of relations that constantly interact with different actors, are employed.

In the present article, data from ten successful novels dealing with power are analyzed in order to explore the changes in how power is commonly perceived. The novels studied here deal with different aspects of power and women’s influence, through which the power shift in the feminine discourse in novel writing can be analyzed.

Women introduced a new proposition into fiction, which has led to the development of a kind of resistance to the dominant power. In this article, conceptual data from ten successful novels by female novelists in the past two decades have been analyzed to examine changes in the concept of power in these novels. Among the most important themes concerning the power of women reproduced in Persian novels in the past two decades are challenges to the traditional structures of patriarchal power, feelings of emotional rejection in married life, differences in definition of femininity, kitchen as the core of power at home, femininity of urban spaces, changes in gender roles and clichés and the variety of family forms.

Concepts such as hegemony, suppression of women and resistance developed in the novels by women novelists in the 1990s and 2000s. The presence of women, as the “other”, explained their perception of reality and challenged the analysis of social behavior and discourse of power. The feminine attitude toward being and human relations and the reproduction of feminine knowledge have resulted in the development of new situations that create new forms of behavior. Women have a closer look at human relations and attach more importance to interpersonal relationships in family life in their novels. The discourse created by women, which revolves around private life and unhealthy power relations in the traditional culture, has focused on revealing problems in the norms of power relations and highlighted incorrect concepts in a way that their pre-determined coherence and rationality have been disrupted.

In the past one hundred years, as textual criticism has become more common in Iran, we have witnessed an increase in the number of textual criticisms of classical works. These editions, except in some cases, are generally a kind of imitation and methodological duplication of the work done by renowned scholars in the field, and do not move beyond the virtual structure of the text in question. One of the main challenges of textual criticism in contemporary Iran is the disregard for the theoretical fundamentals of this field. Underdeveloped theoretical foundations, in most cases, have reduced the edition of Persian texts to a simple and mechanical countermeasure. Considering the necessity of theoretical discourse in the field of textual criticism, this paper tries to explore, explain and critique the teleology of textual criticism in various traditional, modern and postmodern views. Moreover, the relationship between reader comprehension and textual criticism has been criticized as one of the forgotten principles in the theoretical areas of correction.   

Textual criticism has been defined variedly in different eras and civilizations. The kinds of texts, ideologies, worldviews, social structures and scientific movements in different periods of human civilization have resulted in the development of different methods of textual criticism. These methods have been based on users’ understanding, which has been in turn affected by the goals pursued in textual criticism. At least three kinds of teleological viewpoints, developed in classical, modern and postmodern eras, can be traced in textual criticism. In the classical era, the text is considered to be sacred, while in the modern era it is desecrated and examined within the framework of a scientific process. By going beyond textuality, postmodernism seeks to identify factors contributing to the production of the text, no longer finding it to be exclusively formed by the author.

In the past two centuries, European scholars have tried to replace traditional methods of textual criticism with modern ones. Textual criticism has a thousand-year-old history in the Islamic civilization. In the contemporary era, although many valuable Islamic works have been textually analyzed and emendated, Muslim scholars have been unwilling to join the theoretical discussions on textual criticism, such as the teleology of such an endeavor. Our understanding of the text and the methods we use to reconstruct old and modern texts are directly influenced by the telos followed in the textual analysis of texts. Teleology is the basis of theories of textual criticism and provides the theoretical framework for textual studies. Thus, engagement in such discussions, which have been predominantly overlooked in Iran, can pave the way for theoretical debates on the nature of textual criticism. 

In the present study, first the traditional perfectionist attitude toward textual criticism, which is based on the Iranian culture in the Islamic era, is examined. Then, the bases of the modern experimental attitude will be discussed, and finally the pluralistic postmodern viewpoint will be studied. Also, the role of the audience in the teleology of the texts will be analyzed. 

Traditional scholars have adopted a perfectionist outlook toward textual criticism as a tool for annotating and ornamenting texts. In the modern outlook, which has been influenced by scientific-experimental movements such as Darwinism, the text is regarded as a kind of evolution and attempt is made to trace the possible changes that the text has probably undergone so that its original form is revived. In the postmodern attitude toward textual criticism, a democratic approach is adopted and the text is considered to be the outcome of the contribution of different factors rather than being exclusively created by the author; thus, the postmodern critic tries to offer different accounts of the changes in the text, rather than reverse these changes. 

Our conception of the text and its reconstruction is rooted in the telos resulting from the outlook taken by researchers and manifested through their taste and concerns. Audiences in different eras determine what objectives different texts and textual studies should pursue. However, not all audiences do exert the same influence; “superior audiences” develop new ends for researchers by attaching more importance to specific types of research. By refining their ideological and scientific beliefs, these audiences provide textual researchers with more reasonable ends.

The two decades 1990s and 2000s could be regarded as the period of establishment of women’s literature and the formation of a feminine discourse in Iran. Shiva Arastui is one of the authors who attempt at de-stereotyping the notion of femininity by bringing women under focus. This article focuses on a critical study of the two discourses of power and gender and their mutual relationship in the short story “Shazdeh Khanom” (“The Princess”). The story advances on two internal and external levels. On the external level, the prevalent political discourse is undergoing a change due to the Islamic Revolution, and consequently, the individual’s position as subject in society, including the definitions of woman and femininity, changes. On the internal level, the narrator finds herself standing between tradition and modernity. Backed by social consciousness, she refuses to blindly accept parts of the tradition, but still remains a subaltern in the patriarchal society. These changes are not unilateral. As a change in the discourse of power leads to a change in the discourse of gender, the change in the discourse of gender and gender identity gives rise to women’s consciousness of their rights and demands, and this, in turn, obliges the higher ranks of society to recognize women’s existence and to accommodate themselves to the new definitions.

Women’s literature has undergone enormous changes in the past two decades. In the 1990s and 2000s not only did the number of women writers increase, but also the quality of works produced by women improved significantly. The publication of literary magazines, translations of modernist and postmodernist works and different literary workshops are among factors contributing to the development of new styles and forms of fiction writing, resulting in higher self-confidence among female fiction writers. In her works, Shiva Arastui tries to abandon the clichés associated with the concept of femininity. The present article offers a critical study of the discourses of power and gender and their relationship with each other in Arastui’s “ShazdehKhanom”.

Theoretical Framework

The present article relies on the ideas of Norman Fairclough on critical discourse and how power and hegemony develop in the society. He sees discourse to be made up of social practice, discursive practice (including the production, distribution and consumption) and the text. Discourse analysis, to him, is the analysis of each aspect separately and in interaction with one another. This article tries to find out whether there is a significant relationship between the discourses of power and gender in fiction.

The present article is follows a descriptive methodology and draws on text analysis to provide answers to the main questions of the article.

At the external level of “Shazdeh Khanom”, the dominating discourse of power is changing and the conflict between the discourses of the monarch and the people has brought about a change in the social hierarchy and, consequently, the subjectivity of individuals. New roles and expectations, which had been previously absent in the traditional discourse, develop for revolutionary women. At the internal level, the narrator is poised on the boundary between tradition and modernity. Fully aware of the changes, she refuses to fit in with the expectations created by tradition and the feminine discourse. Arastui provides us with a picture of the Iranian society in transition.

Any change at an upper level, in turn, brings about changes at lower levels, and movements at the base of a pyramid cause movements in upper levels. Women’s development of a new definition of their individual and family identity and their conscious attempt at fighting for their rights lead to changes in tradition, which control and direct women’ actions and behavior, and force the discourse of power to rethink its methods and practices in relation to members of society and their subjectivity. Women, as a result, use writing as a critical reaction to the discourses of gender and power and try to raise awareness about their status and situation, resulting in the formation of a feminine discourse that forces other discourses to accept their presence, new definitions and expectations.