A Postcolonial Critique of the Novel "Days of the Gun" by Habib Khodadadzadeh

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Allameh Tabatabaee University

2 MA Student of Comparative Literature, Allameh Tabatabaee University

Abstract

As one of the approaches of cultural studies, postcolonial criticism analyzes reflections of colonialism in literary texts. In this kind of cultural criticism, the researcher aims at rereading and deconstructing the colonial discourse, and hence it is tied up with the two issues of ‘the colonizer’ and ‘the colonized’. Since the post-colonial critique is concerned with dualities such as ‘Self’ and ‘The Other’ or ‘the colonizer’ and ‘the colonized’, it is undoubtedly considered as one of the areas of comparative literature studies. From the perspective of this criticism, the writers, in accordance with the procedures and orientation for or against colonialism, portray some of its aspects in a literary text. Relying on post-colonial theories, this study investigates the novel "Days of the Gun" by Habib Khodadadzadeh. It was also concluded that the decolonizing writers often try to take advantage of mechanisms such as nativism, aggrandizing the colonized “I” versus the colonizer “other”, emphasizing the superiority of the ethical codes of the colonized, owning up the colonizer’s assets, inverting the possessor-possessed equation, redefining colonized history from its own perspective, objectifying the concept of “other”, and imposing Eastern cultures on the West. This study also claims that writers can wipe out some of the consequences and negative reflections of colonialism through such texts and play their roles in vitalizing cultural and national traditions.
Keywords: Comparative literature, Cultural studies, Postcolonial criticism, Western dominant discourse, Eastern deconstructing discourse, Days of the Gun.

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