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Showing 2 results for Nationalist Discourse
Volume 20, Issue 79 (4-2023)
Abstract
The present study aimed to investigate the discursive antagonism in war novels. To this end, first antagonistic discourses were identified, and then the antagonistic atmosphere and otherness between the discourses represented in the war novels were analyzed: otherness in such novels focuses in part on the foreign enemy (Iraq). In this process, the Iraqi enemy is othered as a disbeliever in an ideological reading based on the discourse of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Moreover, there is a tendency towards focusing on the enemy’s arms, hence neglecting the agency of its human forces. On the other hand, the liberal and ethnic nationalist discourses are othered as the domestic antagonistic discourses. The liberal discourse strives to deconstruct the idea of public mobilization by using the specialization slogan and defeat the hegemonic dominant discourse by weakening public mobilization. By juxtaposing ethnic values against national interests, the ethnic nationalist discourse strives to substitute ethnic values for national identity markers or give priority to the former. Finally, the Islamic revolutionary discourse becomes hegemonic, succeeding to marginalize the antagonistic discourses, or suppressing the other discourses by its hegemonic interference at times.
Iran Masoud Farahmandfar, Iran Abdolrasoul Shakeri,
Volume 28, Issue 4 (9-2021)
Abstract
After the occupation of Iran by the Allies in 1941, the Shāh of Iran was forced to renounce the crown in favor of his young son, and from then until the CIA-backed Coup of August 1953, the Iranian society experienced a period of relative cultural freedom, and particularly the press enjoyed an unprecedented liberty. One fruitful outcome of such freedom was the publication of serial novels with sociopolitical themes. One remarkable example is Dar Nim-e Rāh-e Behesht (Midway to Paradise) by Saeed Nafisi, which was published, in forty installments, in one of the most influential periodicals of that time, Kāviyan. Since serialized novels are reader-centered and their publication depends on how the readers receive them, Laclau and Mouffe’s qualitative method of discourse analysis has been used to analyze the political sphere of the time as well as the discursive sphere of the novel. Analysis of Nafisi’s novel Midway to Paradise shows that amongst the four major sociopolitical discourses of the period between 1941 and 1953—namely, Marxism, nationalism, Islamism and monarchism—the aforementioned novel supports the discourse of nationalism, which is revealed and represented by the narrator. This discursive position is also articulated by a critique of the ruling political discourse and its ‘Westoxified’ agents. The novel also debunks the myth of Communism as defined by the Soviet Union and argues that the Communist paradise is nothing but a sham delusion.
