Vestnik za Tuje Jezike (Dec 2023)
Das Politische in Sama Maanis Roman Žižek in Teheran
Abstract
In the article “The Political in Sam Maani’s Novel Žižek in Tehran” we examine how the political enters into the poetics of Maani’s novel. We are particularly interested in the roles played by the satire, subversiveness and form of this postmodern-modern text. Can the political within such a literary work turn back to the recipient and reach back to the extra-literary reality without turning literature into agitprop? Our aim is to observe whether the essential elements that establish a human as a political being, the field of “being-with” (Mit-sein) or of action in the space of “being-with” (Mit-sein), or, according to Bakhtin, the event of co-being (sobytie), are present in the novel. Our study shows that all the protagonists as subjects are reduced, or split, there are no clear identities, and the narrative is fragmented. Many metatexts in the form of parentheses or additions further disrupt the unity of time and space. The video clips mentioned in the novel should also be considered as an integral part of the text. Furthermore, Tehran, which is the name given to the country in the novel, should not be understood as simply referring to Iran. In the novel Teheran bears the characteristics of other countries and the historical traits of their dictatorships. It is precisely the deconstruction of reality and the departure from realism that make it possible to literarize the political without fearing that the novel can be read as a univocal allegorical description of reality in Iran. The narrator turns to the reader and establishes a dialogue with him. In this way the recipient, i.e. the real reader, becomes the other and the field of dialogue between them becomes politically functional, since by establishing meaning and by logically constructing the narrative the reader enters as the addressed in the field of “being with” and participates by taking positions. Reading becomes an act of the political from the space of the aesthetic. However, since the novel is about one of the greatest possible traumas of humanity and is also written as a kind of poetic psychoanalysis, the process of reception and the construction of meaning of this text is at the same time a kind of healing, as is also implied in the novel’s conclusion.
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