Power and resistance: patriarchal discourse in young adults' fiction

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PostDoc Researcher, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

2 Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz university, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

With ongoing modernization and the beginning of development in Iran, the family has always undergone changes and transformations and is affected by different ideas. For this reason, the concept of patriarchy expressed in cultural signs, due to different valuations and its inseparable connection with society and power relations,, which is the result of an extensive research about family discourse in young adults' fictions, by examining the works in the 5 decades period of fictions writing for teenagers, we tried to find the dominant discourse in each period and the changes in the representation of patriarchy in these works. Studies show that in different time periods, the discursive representation of patriarchy, affected by the social changes of the family structure, has been as follows: 1. The first period, the 50s (metaphorical and ideological period of the family: the father in the sense of absolute power); 2. The second period at 60s and 70s: patriarchy (acceptance of power and emotionalization); 3. The third period at 80s: representation of patriarchy and resistance against it 4. The fourth period at 90s: father's absence and children's empowerment. The results show that, in the considered period, major changes can be witnessed in the representation of the patriarchal discourse, which is completely different from the discourse of the previous period, and it shows that the power and resistance between father and child, from the flow of the absolute power of the father, has progressed towards the removal of the father and the empowerment of the children.

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