Abstract:
Generation of Narrative; Removal of Dystopia/Living with (Dys)topia: The Last Pomegranate of the World (2002) and The Time of Negligence (2004)Abstract:Both the postmodern novels The Last Pomegranate of the World (2002) written by Bachtyar Ali, an Iraqi Kurdish writer, and The Time of Negligence (2004) by Mohammad Reza Kateb have a dystopian space. During those years, Iran was in a state of transition from the Khatami presidency to Ahmadinejad, and Iraq was going through the last years of Saddam's rule. In order to investigate the pervasive state of dystopia, we went to the utopian openings of the main characters and studied the novels from the window of the possibility of getting rid of dystopia. Due to the complex conditions of the Middle East, the duplicated or integrated characters have unattainable utopias that cannot exist due to reification, privatization, etc. Depending on the situation, opium (a kind of story here) and promises are ideological/utopian paths in which the characters are emploted. Bachtyar's praised promises are hopeful for the removal of dystopia, and Kateb's blamed opium provide the possibility of coexistence with it. In this way, utopia reveals ideology and emancipatory literature predicts the future by inserting the reality structure into the novel structure.
Machine summary:
Sociology of Art and Literature, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring & Summer 2023 The Birth of Narrative; Eradication of Dystopia/Living with (Anti-)Utopia The Last Pomegranate in the World (2002) and Time to Repent (2004) 1 Mohammad Ragheb Abstract Both postmodern novels, The Last Pomegranate in the World (2002) by Bakhtiar Ali, a Kurdish Iraqi writer, and Time to Repent (2004) by Mohammad Reza Kateb, exhibit a dystopian space.
ir 172 Sociology of Art and Literature, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring & Summer 2023 Introduction The two novels, Time to Repent (2004/2005) by Mohammad Reza Kateb and The Last Pomegranate in the World (2002) by Bakhtiar Ali, were written in very close years and, without the authors being aware of each other's work, depict a dystopian space of Iranian society and the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which, despite many similarities, reveals the differences in the perspectives of writers and Middle Eastern intellectuals; differences that are dependent on the social conditions of their time.
). Here we examine a kind of ideology in the form of dystopian novels, but apart from the objections that Jisman raises regarding homology 4 to the work of Lucien Goldman 5 (Ibid: 54-55), we want, like him, to go to the connections between the structures of social reality and the fictional world: “The novel form has the most direct and immediate connections with economic structures in the precise sense, that is, with structures of exchange and production for the market” (Goldman, 1992: 272).
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