مطالعات بین رشته ای ادبیات، هنر و علوم انسانی

 Although Michel  Foucault (1926 - 1984) emphasizes that the dominant paradigm of the renaissance era is based on resemblance and analogy, contrary to Foucault's view, metaphorical thinking and analogy is not merely dominant in the pre-modern society, but is also active in the modern and contemporary era, and according to the cognitive theory, it exists in the human being's whole life. The present research aims to investigate the relationship between socio-space metaphors in Foucault's thought. By studying Foucault's works and applying the metaphor identification procedure model, his main metaphors were extracted and analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. Based on Foucault and Derrida’s theories power is the determining metaphor and has a linguistic character, other metaphors are a function of the metaphor of power. They believe in metaphorical form Power and knowledge are the same. Further, power creates knowledge and controls it spatially and has a great share in its reproduction and chain circulation. Most of Foucault's metaphors of space, such as situation, displacement, place, context, realm, sphere, the horizon, archipelago, land, and landscape, have a military background and are intertwined with power. Foucault likened the modern world to Jeremy Bentham's panopticon power. Foucault's panopticon architecture metaphor is location-based and social one. In other words, he has embodied or objectified the modern world as a disciplinary field or society. The results show that based on Lakoff and Johnson's theory, Foucault has used the metaphors of architecture as well as the panopticon as a source domain to explain the target domain (modern society).

Call of Duty is a popular first-person shooter (FPS) game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007) was the first game in the franchise which did not focus on the World Wars’ history. It was also the first Call of Duty which had a continuous interactive digital narrative (IDN). This article attempts to take a comparative approach to the game. As a cultural product, the game is susceptible to postcolonial and orientalist discourses. This article attempts to apply Edward Said’s theories to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in order to prove that the game’s IDN was shaped by postcolonialism and orientalism. The game functioned as a cultural medium which disseminated orientalist discourses amongst its player base. As such, this article tries to not only shed light upon a lesser-known aspect of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare but also to demonstrate that computer games are not exempt from external cultural forces.

This s tudy explores traumatic effects and healing in Toni Morrison’s Home based on Cathy Caruth’s theory of trauma. By analyzing the novel’s portrayal of trauma, it inves tigates the manifes tations of trauma, the mechanisms of healing, and the interconnectedness between literary representations and academic trauma theory. The s tudy enhances the unders tanding of the memories of war and s truggles with feelings of guilt and shame. Reviewing exis ting literature, it identifies gaps in the application of Caruth’s concepts in analyzing the novel, emphasizing the need for a more in-depth exploration. The methodology involves applying Caruth’s theories to Morrison’s narrative s trategies, examining fragmentation, belatedness, and repetition related to characters’ traumatic memories and healing. The research ques tions address how Morrison depicts the healing process, the narrative techniques employed to convey trauma effects, and the contribution of literary devices like flashbacks to trauma representation. By bridging trauma theory with literary analysis, the s tudy concluded Morrison’s novel Home indicates the traumatic experiences of Frank Money’s Korean War and racial violence, which not only trigger personal traumas but also reflect his torical traumas affecting African American experiences.

Adwaita Mallabarman’s (1914-1951) Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1956), translated by Kalpana Bardhan as A River Called Titash (1993), Manik Bandyopadhyay’s (1908-1956) Padma Nadir Majhi (1936), translated by Ratan K. Chattopadhyay as A Boatman of the Padma (2012), and Syed Waliullah’s (1922-1971) Kando Nadi Kando (1968), translated by Osman Jamal as Cry, River, Cry (2015) are novels which portray the identity of the people of Bangladesh who live by the side of the rivers Titash, Padma, and Bakal. The biodiversity of these rivers was once resourceful, but they lost their flow because of the imbalance in the river ecosystems for siltation, drought, and deforestation. The lifestyles and identities of fishermen and people are greatly influenced by the change of river ecosystems. Different writers in Bengali literature have written about the changes of human life in connection with the flow of different big and small rivers. Mallabarman writes about fisherman (Malo) community who catch fish in the Titash; Bandyopadhyay portrays the identity of fishermen who catch fish in the Padma; and Waliullah writes about the farmers and the people who depend on the movement of steamers and live by the side of a tributary called Bakal. These three novelists show beautiful landscapes of Bengal in different seasons and also show how people become victims with the change of biodiversity and ecosystems. This paper explores the change of the ecosystem of the rivers Titash, Padma, and Bakal which change the lifestyle of the people who are dependent on them.

The romantics in the West are paying close attention to Eastern mystical literature and poets such as Hafiz, Rumi, and Sa’adi. The intellectual similarities of Goethe, the great German poet in the 19th century, with Ibn-al-‘Arabī, an Islamic mystic and philosopher, and the common characteristics of the beloved in Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan and Ibn ‘Arabī’s Tarjoman Al-Ashwaq, have made some call them “spiritual brothers”. The purpose of this study is to explain the role of earthly love in human spiritual transcendence in the lyric poems of two great Arab and German poets. This research, using content analysis method and the approach of the American school of comparative literature, examines the characteristics of the two beloveds in Ibn-al-‘Arabī’s and Goethe’s work, namely, Nizam and Marianne (Zulikha), and how this earthly love has become the basis for transcendental love for the two poets. The results of this comparison show that although there is no mention of Goethe’s acquaintance with Ibn ‘Arabi in the former’s biography, there are similarities in issues such as unity of existence, transcendental love, and the union of the lover and beloved. For the two poets, love is the ladder for their spiritual excellence. In the eyes of the two poets, love turns any plurality into unity and reveals the beloved in different shapes and forms.

J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello is about animal rights and animal Ethics. In this novel, an aging novelist gives a series of lectures about animals and their moral status. Elizabeth Costello takes issue with the tradition of Western philosophical thought which is based on the binary opposition between reason and emotion. In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk’s Janina Duszejko is also an elderly woman haunted by the horror of what human beings do to animals. The present interdisciplinary study -a library-based qualitative research- reviews the similarities between these two characters and aims to show that Duszejko could be seen as Costello’s alter ego. It surveys the writers’ choice of sentience over reason, the way the texts have undermined the arguments of their major characters, and the similarities between animals and prisoners of concentration camps. Findings show that Coetzee and Tokarczuk do not uphold the Western tradition that divides experience into reason/emotion, masculine/ feminine, justice/ love, and public/ private. In both novels, the writers avoid binary oppositions and through Costello and Duszejko ask the readers/audiences to open their hearts and become one with their victims.

Othering, as the basic political economy of identity construction, has been operative in human societies since ancient times, but it has been conceptually investigated only in recent times. Employing contrapuntal reading, the deconstructive strategy adapted by Edward Said from classic Western music, the present paper deals with the issue of identity politics in “Odysseus’s Tale of Trials” from Homer’s Odyssey to unravel the ideological subtext of this canonical romantic epic and give voice to the figures monsterized and suppressed by the hero and the narrative voice. It is argued that The Odyssey has significantly contributed to the construction of Western subjectivity, giving a sense of national or cultural identity to both ancient Greek people and modern Western man via setting them in opposition to their others. However, upon a contrapuntal reading, Odysseus is no different from the so-called savage, barbarous, villainous others he confronts in his quest and the identity constructed for both parties is merely a matter of convention and discursive power. Thus, the findings of this study challenge the commonsensical identity politics at work in Western culture, in the hope of paving the way for further critical readings of such classical texts and reevaluating their translations.

The discovery of the motives behind human actions turned into a controversial issue among philosophers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While supporters of libertarianism maintained that human actions stemmed from an inner will, the Necessitarians, on the other hand, believed human actions were an effect of previous external causes. David Hume, however, came up with a middle-way solution for this dispute which he named his Reconciling Project. This comparative study aims to discover the concept of the Reconciling Project in the works of Alexander Pope. To achieve this the article would elaborate upon Hume’s thoughts on the theme mentioned above expressed in the eighth chapter of his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding entitled Of Liberty and Necessity. It would trace it to the works of Pope by analysing Pope’s views in Essay on Man and his notion of The Ruling Passion. It would be argued and concluded through a comparative method that Hume’s thoughts had found their way into the works of Pope, and both thinkers found human instincts as the real motive behind human actions. Through an intertextual analysis, it would also be concluded that this was either the direct effect of Hume's thoughts on Pope or that both figures were influenced by the same intellectual currents of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment, and secularisation.

The post-black playwright, Marcus Gardley has been concerned with the concept of African American identity as defined within the nexus of diverse socio-cultural elements. This study explores the role of religion as an integral and indispensable constituent of African American identity in three of Gardley’s plays, namely, And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, The House That Will Not Stand, and A Wolf in Snake Skin Shoes, while considering the relevant cultural and sociological studies on the role of religion in African American communities. Drawing upon the conception of identity in the framework of African American criticism, the focus of this paper is on Gardley’s intricate portrayal of the function of church and religious beliefs in shaping black identity. It is argued that Gardley’s insightful and multilayered depiction of religion in his drama delineates a rather complex and paradoxical function where African American identity both benefits from, and bears the negative impacts of, religiosity. This study reveals that, in Gardley’s plays, Christianity sometimes acts as a soothing balm to African Americans who have for long fought not only racial discrimination but also collective and individual traumas in various stages of their lives, as in the cases of Free, Maud Lynn and Miss Ssippi. In some cases, however, a type of Christianity promoted by the black church is presented as an obstacle in the way of some African Americans’ recognition of their true identity, as observed in the case of Gumper.

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 present research is to read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men in the light of Fredric Jameson's theories. In Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, the writer depicts how irony and self-consciousness have penetrated the culture of postmodern man and how capitalism and neoliberalism have influenced people's lives and identities and, with the help of ideology, have turned man into a thing incapable of human relations. Fredric Jameson declares that historicizing literary texts can help the readers understand the latent and deep layers of meaning in the works. Jameson's main concern is that in a neoliberal society, the authorities use ideology to preserve power, and by ideology, they turn citizens into consumers. The result is the alienation and reification of people, and they lose their true identities, which is the death of the postmodern man. By reading this short story collection from a Jamesonian perspective, the reader tries to investigate the man's identity in a neoliberal society to show how a closed system like a neoliberal system can preserve power by using ideology to influence the mindset of the citizens and reify and alienate them and impose the superiority of market on them. This research shows how Wallace investigates man’s identity in a neoliberal society to show how a closed system like a neoliberal system can preserve power by using ideology to influence the mindset of the citizens and reify and alienate them and impose the superiority of market on them and how the identity of people is gone and how the death of the postmodern man has happened.

There have been major changes in African contemporary literature. It depicts the decentralized realities that Africans experience in the increasingly interconnected world going beyond singular narratives. The devolution of ethnic cultures and the rise of a generation struggling with fragmented identities are reflected in the emergence of new African voices both within and outside of the continent. One of the best examples of this trend is the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie crafts a story that skillfully combines disparate cultural elements—Nigerian and American—while providing a nuanced examination of self-identity and the feeling of being other through the journey of Ifemelu and Obinze. This article centers on Adichie’s use of the idea of decentralized realities to illustrate the challenges faced by African migrants who have to reassess who they are in the face of societies that frequently marginalize their cultures. Americanah draws attention to the intricacy of cross-cultural encounters as well as the ongoing discussions and conflicts surrounding identity and belonging. In a world where borders—both physical and cultural—are always changing, the characters grapple with the idea of where they truly belong. The article explores how Adichie illustrates the psychological and emotional costs of navigating a world that does not always acknowledge their multiple identities by looking at their individual journeys. In the end, Adichie’s Americanah explores the complex realities of the diaspora in a profound way as a representative work of contemporary African literature. The book promotes empathy and a greater comprehension of the complexity of individuals torn between cultures by making the reader confront preconceived ideas about identity and belonging.