Matn/Pizhūhī-i Adabī (Dec 2023)
Iranian and Arab Nationalism in Persian Stories of the Iran-Iraq War
Abstract
War stories are one of the most important genres in contemporary Persian literature. One of the motives in these stories is to refer to to some aspects of Iranian and Arab nationalism. In this research, various aspects of this motive are studied. In this research, the ideological aspects of the representation of narrators of the stories about the Iran-Iraq war about Iranian nationalism (including the Pahlavi discourse) and Arab nationalism (including the Baath discourse) are investigated. For this purpose, the articulation of nationalism or challenging it in a corpus including thirty thousand pages of fictional works about the war (including works that are classified as "sacred defence stories" and works that have a different approach) is examined qualitatively in the framework of critical discourse analysis. Studying these works clarifies the link between the identity of discourse participants (producer and consumer) and their representation and interpretation methods. Analyzing these works shows that the works of the revolutionary authors challenge Iranian and Arab nationalism; constructing Islamic/Iranian opposition and supporting the Islamic side, and opposing modernism and Westernism in Iranian nationalism (and the Pahlavi discourse) are the important aspects of challenging this discourse. In some other works, where the authors have an Islamic-Iranian identity and do not make the opposition between Iranian and Islamic identity, the Pahlavi discourse, which articulates extreme Iranian nationalism, is challenged in terms of moderate and minimal nationalism. In some cases, some signs of extreme Iranian nationalism are articulated in the revolutionary works. In some other works whose authors' identities include aspects of cosmopolitanism, the extreme Iranian and Arab nationalistic values are mainly ignored, and the authors concentrate on cosmopolitan values or moderate and minimal nationalism.Keywords: Persian War Story, Iranian Nationalism, Arab Nationalism, Pahlavi, Ba’ath. IntroductionWar stories are one of the most important genres in contemporary Persian literature, but they have been studied less than other types of stories. In particular, the stories of the Iran-Iraq war, an event that the Iranian people are still connected with in different ways, have special importance. After more than three decades since the end of the war, there are deep and wide ideological conflicts in the explanation of its various aspects as well as between the various narratives of this event. Different attitudes in war stories show these conflicts explicitly or implicitly.These works show different aspects of the identity of their producers and consumers. Writers represent insiders and enemies in a special way, and this representation evokes different reactions in different groups of audiences. Audiences who have a shared identity with the authors consider their report to be true, while the author's representation and the reader's interpretation are influenced by their identity and ideological position. This ideological attitude of discourse participants is manifested in the linguistic application and analysis of these different aspects of power relations. One of the ideological aspects of Persian war stories, which is frequently observed in these works, is reproducing or challenging Iranian nationalism and challenging Arab nationalism. The ideology of nationalism has been the official ideology in Iran and Iraq for a historical period, and it has led to various conflicts between these two countries. In Iraq, Arab nationalism legitimated attacking Iran. In Iran, from the constitutional revolution to the present day, humiliating Arabs has been one of the basic aspects of nationalism. For this reason, taking a position in favor of or against nationalism in the war story shows reproducing social relations or changing them in the historical period after the war.Research Question(s)The research questions are:What is the general stance of war fiction works towards Iranian and Arab nationalism?What is the relationship between the identity of narrators and the general stance of stories towards Iranian and Arab nationalism? Literature ReviewThere are many studies that have been done about resistance literature; for example, the following can be mentioned: Mahmoudi (2012) shows that most women consider war stories as a medium to recount their problems. Hesaraki (2017) claims that the writers of the stories experienced the war themselves or heard the events of the war from the main characters and, inspired by real elements, have made changes in the process of war fiction. Salehi et al. (2018) conclude that the structure of the titles in the stories of the 1960s is very simple, and the authors choose titles that are more artistic in the following decades. Hanif (2012; 2010) investigated the evolution of war fiction, its adaptation patterns, and the influence of festivals on the audience. Soleimani (2002) has studied war literature in some sections; she pointed out the lack of artistic structure in some stories and considered it weak. Baronian (2007) has reviewed seven collections of short stories. In some parts of the book, the theoretical foundations and concepts of war are discussed, and various analyzes of the Iran-Iraq war are considered.As can be seen, there has not been detailed research on the different aspects of Iranian and Arab nationalism in Persian war stories; this is despite the fact that the war story is one of the most important literary genres in contemporary literature and that nationalist ideas in various forms frequently appear in these works. This research aims to analyze the different aspects of Iranian and Arab nationalism and the ideological conflicts arising from each of these stories. MethodologyThis research considers different aspects of the stance towards Iranian and Arab nationalism in Persian war stories. The population studied in this research includes about 30,000 pages of fictional and narrative war texts (specifically some narrates centered on memories of the people present in the war). These works are diverse in terms of general attitude; for example, some of them reproduce revolutionary and Islamic values, and some articulate the cosmopolitanism discourse.This research aims to analyze the different aspects of Iranian and Arab nationalism and the ideological conflicts, based on Fairclough’s CDA. In some parts, it uses some aspects of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of discourse, especially in the discussion about the discourse of nationalism and its moments articulated in different texts. The analysis of ideological language uses is based on systematic functional grammar (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), especially his framework for analyzing experiential metafunction and lexical cohesion. In order to recognize ideological uses, this research applies Van Dijk's ideological square (Van Dijk, 1998: 267). ConclusionPersian war stories mention some aspects of extreme Iranian nationalism and Pahlavi discourse, on the one hand, and Arab nationalism and Ba’thism, on the other hand. Usually, these stories challenge these discourses. In such works, there are these aspects of Iranian nationalism:In some works, there are racial insults and prejudices against Arabs.Sometimes, Pahlavi's discourse is challenged in terms of nationalist values (in terms of moderate and minimal nationalism).There is an ideological conflict between nationalist and Islamic discourse in several works about people's names; the subjects of nationalist discourse choose ancient Iranian names, and the subjects of Islamic discourse choose Islamic names.In many works, there are reactions to modernism, Westernism, and opposition to Shar’ in the Pahlavi discourse (which is formed based on the ideology of extreme nationalism). and the Pahlavi discourse has been challenged because of those aspects.In connection with the discourse of Arab nationalism and Ba’thism, there are these aspects:Arab nationalism tries to create a link between Iranian Arabs and Arabs in Arabic countries, especially Iraq. However, writers of Persian war stories, by differentiating between Iranian Arabs and Iraqi Arabs, challenge Arab nationalism.In connection with the previous fact, Arab nationalists propose one Arab nation. The authors of Persian fiction reject this idea as a negative representation of the theorists of one Arab nation.In connection with the previous two facts, the Arab nationalists use Arabic geographical names for some regions of Khuzestan as an excuse to attack this part of Iran.
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