The semantic construction of Afghan immigrant women in the contemporary fictional literature of Afghanistan: A case study of nonfiction border from the collection of short stories Why Shouldn’t Make Darkness My God?

Abstract

Nonfiction is a new type of narrative literature influenced by the praxis of cultural-political discourses in the representation of reality. The dominant discourse seeks to display its desired patterns of action and life, with fictional literature being one of its channels. This study was conducted with the aim to highlight the semantic construction of Afghan immigrant women in the contemporary fictional literature in Afghanistan through the theoretical perspective of Homi K. Bhabha and Theodor W. Adorno. It also aims to identify the representations of these women in the nonfiction literary genre and interpret them according to the cultural context of the destination. To achieve this goal, "Border" from Why Shouldn’t Make Darkness My God? A collection of short stories by Masoumeh Jafari, a contemporary Afghan writer, was selected as the case study. It was analyzed using Seymour Chatman's narrative method in three sections of story, discourse, and ideology to illustrate the concept of Afghan immigrant women from lingual and ideological perspectives. The findings show that the identity of Afghan immigrant women was changed according to the cultural discourse governing the society, leading to identity diffusion (confusion) and their re-immigration to new land rather than their homeland to deal with this crisis. The interruption and cultural interference of the host society with the Afghan immigrant women is represented through the marginal and protesting voice of the author of "Border" to the existing situation and the context of the dominant realities, reflecting the "critical" function and "emancipation" of art in the analysis and criticism of the structures of domination and oppression.

Keywords

• afghan immigrant woman
• contemporary fiction literature
• identity diffusion
• narrative analysis
• nonfiction of border