Discourse

Exegetical theories of human knowledge include human understanding of the divine word. No textual theory is formed in a vacuum. The prominent events and currents in the society, both political and cultural, create discourses in the society. Social events such as Marxism, liberalism, nationalism and other schools, the formation of international institutions and human rights, the occurrence of religious reformism, the fight against colonialism in Islamic countries, etc. during the last century created discourses in the society that caused changes in scientific attitudes and human and Islamic sciences, and then, the interpretation of the Qur'an. Compared to the traditional interpretation of the past fourteen centuries, these discourses placed in the form of a re-thinking or new-thinking interpretation. According to the claim of the immortality of the Qur'an, this validity is responsible for its relevance to the times. The interpretation and reading of the Qur'an is responsible for this update. Therefore, this article tries to refer to the effective discourses in recent centuries with the help of social issues and analytical approach and to measure the reflection of these discourses and the new and innovative opinions of commentators and researchers in the form of concrete examples of the impact of these discourses. The selected discourses are the discourse of religious reformation and return to the Qur'an, the discourse of new schools and isms, and the discourse of experimental sciences. However, there are definitely other effective discourses that cannot be discussed in this article. The purpose of this research is to gain self-awareness in discourse-oriented interpretations and attempt to conceptualize discourses. It is an attempt to provide a framework for some of the effective factors in interpretive innovation.

The aim of this research paper is to study the notion of power and other related concepts devised by Foucault in the novel of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Foucault's theory of power suggests that power is omnipresent, that is, power can be found in all social interactions. In fact, that power is interwoven in all social relations. Moreover, a discourse is made by the government in which identity of characters does not remain fixed and autonomous; truth, as a metaphysical concept, which is supposed to exist as a definite reality becomes a mere game by power relations. The most important aspect that can be seen in this novel is the role of discourse and power in society. Since the novel is set in Jazz age and it coincides with rise of new ideology called American dream, it could be concluded that the characters are influenced by the discourse in which they are living. In fact, the ideology of American dream controls their lifestyle – particularly, the main character – Jay – who has changed himself from a proletarian into a member of bourgeoisie society. Therefore, the identity of the characters is not a fixed concept since how they have gone through process of changing influenced by power relationship which can be seen within them. Moreover, the concept of truth is distorted and unstable in this novel.

In 19th century Iran, through the publication of travelogues, the expansion of capitalism, and familiarity with the governance methods of Western countries, a system of knowledge or grand discourse emerged that represented Iran's backwardness and illness. Within this system of knowledge (episteme), various discourses aimed at remedying this illness were formed, one of the vital being the discourse of modernist nationalism which served as a counter-discourse to the "Anti-autocratic Constitutionalist" discourse and sought to justify its propositions in response to it, was extensively exploited by the Pahlavi court and managed to become the dominant discourse of the court for a long time. The present study employs the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, focusing on the question of ‘What the semantic network of modernist nationalism discourse was and what function it aimed to achieve?’ The semantic coordinates of this discourse are examined. The results indicated that the most significant signifier of the modernist nationalism discourse was "Iranian nationalism," which, by outlining a semantic network composed of various elements such as superficial and top-down modernization, centralization (establishment of a dominant state), the necessity of reviving the monarchy and kingship, secularism and opposition to Islamism, and the strengthening of militarism, aimed to consolidate the power of the Pahlavi regime by providing a solution for Iran's backwardness.