نگار شریف

The present study argues the relationship between the media’s power and the reconstruction of subjectivity in Zubaida’s Window, a novel by Iqbal Al-Qazwini. It is a description of the tortured psyche of the exiled woman and her attempts to reconstruct her displaced subjectivity among different versions of media’s Baudrillardian simulacra and to distinguish reality from unreality. Media’s depictions of death and war’s destruction can generate xenophobia among natives who may blame immigrants for their social problems and disturbing spatial harmony. Qazwini re-emphasizes that xenophobia can destroy an immigrant’s self-perception and trigger the preference for death. Moreover, the hyperreal versions of truth and ignoring the subaltern’s voice and revelation affect an immigrant’s mentality negatively and persuade her/him to prefer loneliness and death to have social interactions. This article focuses on the significance of media in the reconstruction of subjectivity, intensification of anti-immigration views, and the dark sides of modern war based on the interrelated theories of David Miller and Derek Gregory. Considering the issues of compulsory displacement and territoriality, Miller focuses on the ethical/political dimensions, while Gregory examines the causes of armed conflicts and geopolitical factors. By applying such an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers investigate Zubaida’s mental downfall, her failure in the reconstruction of subjectivity, and her inability to reconcile different self-images. This article examines her ceaseless effort to reverse the colonial power of media by adhering to her homeland’s memories, or watching her country’s news through TV’s representation, or ignoring spatial interactions, and lack of interest in self-renovation.

The present study focuses on the strategic process of enlisting the readers’ empathetic responsiveness in Thomas Hardy’s major Wessex novels. The analytical perspective draws on Suzanna Keen’s theories in affective narratology; it intends to uncover the stylistic strategies of affective impressionism in the Wessex narratives. The methodological procedure is grounded in the qualitative appraisal of the emotive aspects of Hardy’s realistic representations through critical discourse analysis. The research approach is influenced by the recent mind theories in cognitive science, emphasizing emotional perception as the most significant determinant of the gestalt of interpretations. The semi-fictional world of Wessex capitalizes on an insight into the primacy of emotive sensibility over cognitive rationality. The authorial intentionality in the Wessex narratives aspires to propagate human compassion by resorting to the literary application of the empathy-altruism hypothesis. The melioristic agenda for edification via investment in the readers’ emotive capacities saturates the narratives’ impressionistic composition. The manipulation of the narrative consciousness foci in the major Wessex novels enables Hardy to maintain his readers’ empathetic identification with his characters’ predicaments in a philosophical context. Moreover, the tagged characterization of the protagonists establishes the intended impressions of their temperament and demands the corresponding empathetic responses from the readers.

The present study addresses one of the most recently debated areas in postmodern literature and art, the revival of interest in theatricality. The researcher aims to introduce a few strategies which are used to turn the intertextual elements and the pastiche into working tools for creating theatricality. In order to do so, Thomas Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) which was later made into a movie version as well, directed by Stoppard himself, is examined. The study tries to show how theatricality can affect the performance as well as the contribution of the spectators to the dramatic text and performance. The shared experience of the pastiche made based on Hamlet by William Shakespeare, can contribute to the understanding of how theatricality can work when intertextuality is a powerful and positive force. The sample scenes chosen here are concluded to be the examples of how the illusion of having a stable identity is what not only the characters, the players or the author just assume to exist, but also what the text deliberately and constantly recreates. The playful nature of theatricality highlights the way each of these contributors willingly dupe themselves for the show to go on.