Deconstructing Phallogocentrism in Shahrnush Parsipur’s Touba and the Meaning of Night: A Psycho-Feminist Study

Abdol Hossein Joodaki, Zeinab Elyasi

Abstract


Shahrnush Parsipur (1946) is a celebrated and courageous Iranian novelist. This study deals with her controversial, epic novel Touba and the Meaning of Night (1989). The novel is analyzed based on Lacanian theory of subject formation and Cixousian concept of ‘ecriture feminine. In this essay a psychoanalytic-feminist discourse is used to intervene between a phallogocentric discourse and a feminist discourse. The pivotal aims of the study are to deconstruct Lacan’s concept of phallogocentrism, to redefine the concept of womanhood and to reconstruct feminine identity. According to the French psychoanalyst, Jacque Lacan, it is language that ultimately structures our conscious and unconscious mind and our identity. He introduced a tripartite scheme of psychic development: imaginary, symbolic and real. The symbolic order and its accompanying concept of phallogocentrism is the main focus of this study. By deconstructing symbolic phallus as the transcendental signified which signifies everything including female identity, the researcher’s aim is to focus on the need for a female framework and a feminine discourse free from male assumptions in order to reconstruct feminine identity. Helene Cixous, in her essay The Laugh of Medusa (1975), introduces a particular kind of female writing and tries to reconstruct the women’s shattered, colonized and marginalized identities in order to deconstruct the dominant symbolic order and phallocentric discourse. The task of this studyis to deal with and to follow the trace of masculine ideology and discourse in women’s identity in the novel Touba and the Meaning of Night. The study also, inspired by Helene Cixous’sprophecy of women’s experience of writing in a male dominated atmosphere claims that through deconstruction and break down of phallogocentrism, female subjects are constructed and a new discourse for women is established based on which they can reconstruct and forge their new identities.


Keywords


Shahrnush Parsipur; Touba and the Meaning of Night; Lacan; Cixous; Phallogocentrism

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bressler, Ch. E. (2007). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. New Jersey, US: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Brivic, Sh. (1991). The Veil of Signs: Joyce, Lacan, and Perception.US: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Cixous, H. (1976). The Laugh of the Medusa.(K. Cohen & P. Cohen, Trans.). Chicago Journals. 1(2), 875-893.

Culler, J. (1997). Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Guerin, W. L., Labor, E., Morgan, L., Reesman, J. C., & Willingham, J. R. (2005). A Hand Book of Critical Approaches to Literature (5thed.).

New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Habib, M.A.R. (2005). Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History of Literary Criticism from Plato to the Present. United Kingdom, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Joodaki, A. H., & Mahdiany, H. (2013). Equality versus Freedom in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut: A Study of Dystopian Setting. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature.

(4),70-73.

Joodaki, A. H., & Vajdi, A. (2013). Body, Love and Maternity in Sylvia Plath and Forough Farrokhzad: A Study Based on Helen Cixous's Ecriture Feminine. CS Canada. 6(3), 74-78.

Lodge, D., & Wood, N. (2000). Modern Criticism and Theory (2nded.). United Kingdom, UK: Pearson Education.

Milani, F. (1992). Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Parsipur, Sh. (2008). Touba and the Meaning of Night. (K. Talattof & H. Houshmand, Trans.) New York, NY: The Feminist Press.

Rabate, J. M. (Ed.). (2003). The Cambridge Companion To Lacan. USA, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ragland-Sullivan, E. (1986). Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. United State of America, USA: University of Illinois Press.

Rivkin, J., & Ryon, M. (1998.2004). Literary Theory an Anthology. United Kingdom, UK: Blackwell.

Rezaei Hezaveh, L., Low Abdullah, N. F., & Yaapar, M. S. (2014). Revitalizing Identity in Language: A Kristevan Psychoanalysis of Suddenly Last Summer. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies. 14(2), 1-13.

Smith, J., & Kerrigan, W. (Eds.). (1983). Interpreting Lacan. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Sy, Kadidia. (2008). Women’s Relationships: Female Friendship in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Love, Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come. (Doctoral Dissertation). Georgia State Uniersiy, 4(22). http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/30

TalebianSedehi, K. (2014). Speaking Charaters in Possessing the Secret of Joy. 3L: Language Linguistics Literature®, Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 20(2), 55-66.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021