لیلا برادران جمیلی

The work of Slavoj Žižek includes the highly arguable concepts towards the re-articulation of the Lacanian notion of the death drive.This paper presents an expository trend joining the fragmentary depictions of the death drive inSuzan-Lori Parks's play, Father Comes Home from the Wars. The present analysis begins with tracing the most intuitive aspects of Žižek’s re-articulations of the concept in connection to the Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalytical concepts of the death drive. Opposing the notions of the death drive as biological instinct, Žižek instead highlights the Lacanian notions of the excess of negativity, "undead" eternal life, and symbolic mortification. In Father Comes Home from the Wars, the death drive stimulates Hero as a social antagonist and allows him to defy his constraints as a slave and develop an entirely different man with a new form of subjectivity. His struggle towards freedom makes him the subject of conflict and disintegration. Hero's attempts are in vain and ineffective as freedom tends to figure forth to the Real and becomes the target of oppression. The paper ends with focusing on how the notion of self-relating negativity consolidates the foregoing Lacanian concepts and how the illusion of freedom opens up the experience of loss or trauma and undermines Hero's desire for emancipation.

The present study seeks to argue the ethical values of the narrative strategies in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a post-postmodern novel by the Indian author Arundhati Roy. To carry out the research, the prominent features of James Phelan’s rhetorical theory of narrative and Charles Taylor’s ethical philosophy are examined. By applying such interdisciplinary approaches, the researchers investigate the characters' ethical positions in their quest for "authenticity" and "recognition" by focusing on the novel’s "ethics of the told" and "ethics of the telling." The study indicates the characters' attempt to reach full awareness of their in-depth inclinations and their quest to achieve an authentic self. Living in India's multicultural context, though suffering from non-/mis-recognition by others, Roy’s major characters can become authentic, free, and fulfilled through seeing the world and its people out of pure love for collective goodness. Eventually, highlighting the aesthetic strategies and authorial creativity provides a horizon to comprehend the different outlooks towards the ethical values and commitments that circulate freely within the novel's narrative world.

This article postulates the concepts of subjective violence and objective violence in constructing the revolutionary others in The Slave (1964), the ideological play by Amiri Baraka (1934-2004), also known as LeRoi Jones. The blacks are identified as the others in the white dominant societies, and the inconvenience of their livings under no effective ‘Civil Rights’ has faded their legitimated targets. They have detached themselves from their origins and experienced numerous troubles in the dominant imperialist world. Jones’ The Slave focuses on the revolt of a black man against the whites’ subjective and objective violence. The paper has centralized Jones’ concepts of black art and identity related to American ‘Social Movements’. Baraka’s The Slave revolutionarily fights back the whites’ violence. To develop the purpose of this study, Žižek’s concept of violence and his psycho-ideological impacts through the lens of Lacan are to be analyzed. The Slave indicates the centrality of a black massive movement toward the achievement of self-rule, self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-realization. LeRoi Jones, as the leader of the ‘Black Arts Movement’ and founder of ‘Black Power’ of the 1960s, attempts to re-define and support blacks’ literature, art, and culture as the operational mission.

This article unravels the concept of eco-trauma in American Indians’ lifestyle in Gardens in the Dunes (2000), a novel portraying eco-concerns of Leslie Marmon Silko (1948). Silko’s novel is preoccupied with ecological concerns of American Indians who depend on nature to continue their existence. Being detached from their ancestral lands, Indians encountered several psychological problems due to their indispensable loyalty to nature. This article focuses on the significance of environment and ‘place’ according to Lawrence Buell (1939), and traces ‘place’ as the center of feeling for a person. Cheryll Glotfelty’s connection between nature and culture, and Cathy Caruth’s perspective on trauma have been utilized to explain Indians’ psychological problems due to loss of ancestral lands. Eco-traumatic approach illustrates the interrelation of Native American’s identity and culture with their living place. Indeed, Indians return to their land to eliminate their environmental concerns. Their ceaseless effort to reverse eco-trauma by adhering to their ancestral ritual is also examined in this article. Silko re-emphasizes and stipulates that the notion of nature can consolidate Indians’ identity; hence, loyalty to natural environment ensures how Native Americans’ loss of land and nature opens up the experience of eco-loss or eco-trauma and diminishes Native Americans’ culture.

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.