Deconstructing phallogocentrism in Shahrnush Parsipur’s Touba and the meaning of night: a psycho-feminist study
Shahrnush Parsipur (1946) is a celebrated and courageous Iranian novelist. This study deals with her controversial, epic novel Touba and the Meaning of Night (1989). The novel is analyzed based on Lacanian theory of subject formation and Cixousian concept of ‘ecriture feminine. In this essay a ps...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit UKM
2015
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8876/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8876/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/8876/1/6974-25674-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Shahrnush Parsipur (1946) is a celebrated and courageous Iranian novelist. This study deals
with her controversial, epic novel Touba and the Meaning of Night (1989). The novel is
analyzed based on Lacanian theory of subject formation and Cixousian concept of ‘ecriture
feminine. In this essay a psychoanalytic-feminist discourse is used to intervene between a
phallogocentric discourse and a feminist discourse. The pivotal aims of the study are to
deconstruct Lacan’s concept of phallogocentrism, to redefine the concept of womanhood and
to reconstruct feminine identity. According to the French psychoanalyst, Jacque Lacan, it is
language that ultimately structures our conscious and unconscious mind and our identity. He
introduced a tripartite scheme of psychic development: imaginary, symbolic and real. The
symbolic order and its accompanying concept of phallogocentrism is the main focus of this
study. By deconstructing symbolic phallus as the transcendental signified which signifies
everything including female identity, the researcher’s aim is to focus on the need for a female
framework and a feminine discourse free from male assumptions in order to reconstruct
feminine identity. Helene Cixous, in her essay The Laugh of Medusa (1975), introduces a
particular kind of female writing and tries to reconstruct the women’s shattered, colonized
and marginalized identities in order to deconstruct the dominant symbolic order and
phallocentric discourse. The task of this studyis to deal with and to follow the trace of
masculine ideology and discourse in women’s identity in the novel Touba and the Meaning
of Night. The study also, inspired by Helene Cixous’sprophecy of women’s experience of
writing in a male dominated atmosphere claims that through deconstruction and break down
of phallogocentrism, female subjects are constructed and a new discourse for women is
established based on which they can reconstruct and forge their new identities. |
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