The Construction of Self and the Rejection of the Natives as the Inferior Other: Sadegh Hedayat’s Blind Owl
- Khalil Mahmoodi
- Shanthini Pillai
- Raihanah M
- Esmail Jelodar
Abstract
Iranian intellectuals including Iranian modern literary writers who were supposed to act as the consciousness and voice of their people fall prey to the imported Western modernity. The influence of these western education and culture rendered them so alienated that pushed them to build a big rift between themselves and the rest of the society. This causes these writers to create an image of the natives that comes to the fore as the most macabre and stereotypical representation of the indigenous people. Although many different studies have been carried out on the Blind Owl, it seems that little focus has been cast upon the major reasons of such presentation. This paper explores the text to reveal how the author, by giving credit to himself as an ‘I’, artist and a painter, struggles to build a rift between himself and the others, the rest of the society, the world of Rajaleha, the Rabbles. This study, by focusing on the representation of the native as the other, attempts to disclose the orientalised system of representation that the author has employed to portray the majority of the society as the peripheral and finally as the ‘Other’.
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- DOI:10.5539/ells.v1n1p80