راضیه اسلامیه

The deep tragedy, that the environmental damages and mental problems have caused for human, led to the development of an interdisciplinary approach -ecopsychology- which is the integration of ecology and psychology to examine above all biophilia and its impact on human psyche. Applying the ecopsychological approach, the present study proposes an innovative reading of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, the American female novelist. Ward depicts the ecological unconscious of the main characters through delineating mental peace they receive from nature. Moreover, the novel delicately portrays transpersonal ecology resulting in man’s transpersonal identification with nature. Jesmyn Ward’s work is indicative of key concepts such as ecopsychology, ecotherapy and transpersonal ecology, which were first introduced to the field of ecopsychology ecopsychology by eminent theorists, Theodore Roszak, Linda Buzzel and Warwick Fox. The present research intends to study the positive and negative effects of biophilia and eco-phobia caused mainly by psychological trauma following man’s alienation from nature. While demarcating the positive effects of biophilia on human psyche, the researcher substantiates the way psychological trauma comes to be subjected to therapy through man’s integration with green nature. Additionally, the research elaborates the importance of transpersonal ecology and identification with nature, by understanding the harmony between man and nature.

The purpose of the research is to analyze how the cyborgian theories of virtual subjectivity, dromology, enfleshed materialism, aesthetics of disappearance, hybridity and metamorphic becoming are employed by modern technology to create humanoid. Gibson’s The Peripheral delineates multiple subjectivities as well as challenges of virtual creatures through tracing the life of Flynne, the major protagonist. We are to grasp humanoid’s beyond human ‘nature’, or ‘character’, or ‘being’, or ‘transitive identity’ in a way that corresponds with other human beings. The research portrays the subjective sense of being-in-the-virtual-world and analyzes the humanoid’s development in the form of a cyborgian human simulation. Donna Haraway, Paul Virilio and Rosi Braidotti are the selected theorists introducing the theory of the research; cyborg; an umbrella term referring to cybernetic organisms. Cyborgian literary theory focuses on the author who identifies the fictional subject as a new creature, which is partly inorganic and partly machine, to demonstrate that technology does not need to be dehumanizing; rather, it acts as a re-humanizing force to claim agency over our subjectivity. The peculiar thematic characteristics of the novel as an epitome of cyborg narrative, including non-linear apocalyptic time traveling narrative, fragmentation of subjectivity, formation of transhumans and constructed humanoids, are analyzed.

Žižek supposes that traumas can turn into death-drives and offer the subject surplus jouissance. He warns that ideological systems can profit from traumas to further subjugate their citizens. Notwithstanding, Badiou construes that traumas can appear as tremendous moments of Truth/Events that betrays the voids of the Symbolic Order and actualizes the universal truths that postmodernism has constantly denied or endeavored to suppress. In so thinking, he hypothesizes that the Truth/Event will find/invent its own faithful subject that cooperate to actualize the suppressed or denied Real of their age. Badiou criticizes the Western Ethics for devising a secured mode of life that emasculates the subject of post capitalism age and deprives him of experiencing the sufferings that can confront him with the Real. Badiou states that the Western ethics deliberately ignores the positive effects of PTSD recoveries that can reveal a lot regarding the psychological and social weakness of the subject and the society as well. Defending the idea of traversing the fantasies and encountering the Real, Žižek, however, does not become convinced of the emancipatory force that Badiou attributes to traumatic Events. Instead, he announces that the subject’s fidelity to the Badiouian Truth/Event approximates to the devoted insurgents’ allegiance to the ‘mythic violence’ that enables them to disclaim responsibility for their deeds. Badiou himself is apprehensive of ever-present ‘simulacra’ that the sovereign ideology concocts to counterfeit the Truth/Event. What Žižek prescribes is an ‘Act’ that can be embodied in ‘divine violence’ that divulges the Symbolic Order’s void.

The present paper analyzes the conceptualization of contemporary forms of identity construction within the interrelation of diaspora, ethnicity, belonging, transnationality, translocationality, and interculturality. It casts critical light on the complex subjectivity by introducing the concept of translocational positionality addressed by intersectionality theory. Intersectionality is presented as an analytical tool which sets a far more integrated analysis of diaspora, the shifting devaluation of racialized, sexualized, classed, and gendered lives and factors which shape social locationality. Thereby, Floya Anthias' concept of translocational positionality is used to address the complex and intersectional frame of social locationalities of in-transit Arab women and to unravel issues pertain to identity in terms of the status of in-transit Arab women and their unstable positionality on America. Identifying and scrutinizing the complex process of self-inscription in Randa Jarrar and Laila Halaby's narratives: A Map of Home (2008) and West of Jordan (2003), the study revealed that when the sense of non-belonging to place conceived as home occurs, liberating vision for change, fluid positionality and transformation perceptibly emerge. The research concludes locations are particularly fluid and henceforth positionality, home and belonging are necessarily defined in relation to time, context and space and so susceptible to shifts, transformations and contradictions.