Totalitarianism

Neil Simon’s plays, through their comic exterior, target serious social critique at the contemporary media-ridden culture of America. This research is a study of Simon’s theater from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s speculations on human condition, totalitarianism, and violence. The selected plays, Fools, Lost in Yonkers, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor are scrutinized according to the three main concepts in Arendt’s thought, which are “action”, “work”, and “labor”. Action is a set of goal-oriented human activities carried out in plurality and imbued with the hope for new possibilities. Plural action is the most effective means of resisting totalitarianism that only wishes to downgrade action to work and then labor through violence. However, despite impositions and enforcements of violence, action always remains in the history for future generations to draw inspiration from. In Simon’s theater, despite its nonpolitical and humorous façade, action is inevitably thwarted, but its positive outcomes cannot be plagued. Simon puts on a vivid display the sparkles of pluralism and action regardless of immanent violence and its democratic disguise.

Cross comparison of works of art and literature has stabilized itself as an outstaning field which has attracted many researchers. Intellectuals and their works have contributed to the revelation of current themes of the communities of their times. This paper has tried to detect the thematic commonalities of Franz Kafka’s the Metamorphosis and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World regarding modern man’s obsessions. Based on the theoretical views and content analysis of the two works, the research reveals the illustration of the serial and linear world trend from bureaucracy as the initial offshoot of modernism to totalitarianism as a global movement which is detected in dystopian literary works as the commonality of the two writers. The two writers have deployed similar fiction elements, namely characterization and theme, to achieve these goals. On the line of their artistic endeavour, their reflection of such trends in the two selected works shed light of the clarification, manifestation, prognostication, and the possible eradication of these modern man’s obsessions.

Resistance literature deals with concepts such as subjugation and deliverance. Translation of this type of literature has played an important role in transferring such concepts to other countries. The purpose of this study is to present a quantitative-analytical study of the novels of resistance literature translated from English to Persian during the four administrations which were in power in Iran between 1978 and 2005. To this end, historiography approach proposed by Pym (2014) was applied. Primarily, the themes of the novels were classified based on Harlow (1987) and DeShazer’s (1994) model of classification of resistance literature. The themes include race discrimination, class conflict, war, colonialism, post-colonialism, and totalitarianism. Then, the translated novels of each administration were examined to see which ones covered the above themes. The results indicated that only 6% of the published translations of the period under study was allocated to resistance novels. It can be concluded that translation of resistance novels was marginalized, and Iranians were basically reading novels covering themes other than resistance literature.

Hannah Arendt was one of the most prominent thinkers of political philosophy in the twentieth cen-tury, and the views of many scholars in the field of political philosophy in the present century are still inspired by her thought. She is the author of books such as Totalitarianism, Revolution, and The Human Condition. In the intellectual system of Hannah Arendt, the manner of formation and func-tioning of totalitarian states has been explained, and Arendt, with subtlety and precision, depicts the accompaniment of the masses with the state machinery in the creation of totalitarianism. She ex-plains that the totalitarian current, by riding on the wave of the emotions of the masses and penetrat-ing into the minds of human beings, carries them along with itself. Profound and unique concepts are seen in her political philosophy, including the political matter resulting from human action in the public realm which, alongside civil society, can bring about the liberation of the citizens of the modern world. The concept of theoretical challenge between the two concepts of moral evil and human rights finds meaning precisely at this point. Arendt faced a set of events and incidents which she tried to describe under concepts such as totalitarianism and human rights and, of course, also expressed her own solution. With the current understanding of Arendt’s political thought, it can be said that her solution in human rights lies in the concept of citizenship rights, plurality, freedom, the public sphere, political participation, and so on. With the critiques that Arendt directs toward the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it can be concluded that her understanding of this concept is very different from what is heard today, and therefore her words may not only be incomprehensi-ble but may even lead to misunderstanding and mental confrontation. Therefore, addressing this subject can, while enlightening the audience, create a ground for the recognition of Hannah Ar-endt’s political thought, particularly her ideas in the field of moral evil, human rights, and the rela-tion between these two in her thought. In addition to all this, finding an answer to the causes and factors of the phenomenon of evil and violence is of great theoretical and also practical importance, and the recognition of Arendt’s thought can be an important step in this direction.