Transgressing liminal spaces: Three perspectives of the Iranian dilemma & exile in Germany.

摘要

This thesis explores the literature of Iranian authors living and writing in Germany during the last fifty years and specifically focuses on three authors, Bozorg Alavi, SAID, and Sudabeh Mohafez and their exilic experiences in Germany. In its analysis, this paper assesses the exilic conditions of displacement through the lens of Homi Bhabha's conception of liminality. In providing literary analysis of each author's works, I attempt to reveal the means by which, if any, these three authors are able to create a third space, outside of liminality, as well as national and political constructs, wherein they are able to produce new subjectivities and new narratives in exile. Liminality, as a distinctly dichotomous notion of identity negotiation, is eventually shown to fail on one level or another for each of these authors. The thesis concludes by offering a new approach of analysis for exilic literature relative to the Iranian contingent in Germany, which de-emphasizes liminality in a dichotomous sense, and instead suggests analysis from a stand-point of heterogeneity.