The Predicament of Complicity with Hegemonic Masculinity in Goli Taraghi's In Another Place

Abstract

The theory of hegemonic masculinity has been influential in studies of men, masculinities, and gender relations. In most human societies, accordingly, a normative conception of manhood dominates over a network of subordinated, marginalized, and complicit masculinities within an intricate web of relations that sustain the overall subordination of women to men. Focusing on one representation of complicit masculinity in this article, I build on the notion of gender visibility in literary fiction towards a critique of masculinity in contemporary Iran from the vantage point of postcolonial feminism. In fact, masculinities and femininities are highly visible phenomena in Goli Taraghi's In Another Place, especially and exclusively when representations of urban, upper middle-class, and contemporary Iranians are concerned. The curious case of Amir-Ali, the novella's protagonist, is the scope of study as I contextualize a problem of complicity with hegemonic masculinity in modern-day Tehran. The problematic unfolds in the narrative towards Amir-Ali's fruitless but performative revolt, and eventually sheds light on Taraghi's exclusive feminist agenda.

Keywords::

• Contemporary Iranian literature
• Goli Taraghi
• hegemonic masculinity
• In Another Place; Iran
• postcolonial feminism

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my friends and colleagues, Mostafa Abedinifard and Yalda Yousefi, for insights on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ For a thorough history of masculinities studies, which also inform my account of the discipline, see M. S. Kimmel and M. A. Messner (eds) (2009), Introduction, in: Men's Lives (Boston, MA: Pearson Education), pp. xi–xix. I must also note that the so-called men's movement, having often involved anti-feminist campaigns, has been part of the history of men's studies. Mythopoetic, and Christian men's movement, as well as the Promise Keepers have been the main offshoots of the men's movement that have mostly been rebuffed by profeminist scholars and activists such as Connell. For a lively debate on the men's movement see: M. S. Kimmel (ed.), (1995) The Politics of Manhood: Profeminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men's Movement (And the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer) (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).

² T. Carrigan, B. Connell, & J. Lee (1985) Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity, Theory and Society, 14, 5, p. 578.

³ M. S. Kimmel (2005) The History of Men: Essays on the History of American and British Masculinities (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), p. 5.

⁴ Kimmel and Messner, Introduction, p. xvi.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Carrigan et al. Sociology of Masculinity, p. 589.

⁸ R. W. Connell, J. Hearn, & M. S. Kimmel (2005) Introduction, in: Kimmel et al. (eds) Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities (London: Sage Publications), p. 4.

⁹ S. Mills (1998) Post-Colonial Feminist Theory, in: S. Jackson & J. Jones (eds) Contemporary Feminist Theories (New York: NYU Press), p. 98; and M. Moallem (2005) Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 159.

¹⁰ Moallem Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister, p. 161.

¹¹ Ibid, p. 175.

¹² See Edward Said (1997) Covering Islam (New York: Random House), for more on representations of the Muslim world in US media (with a particular angle on the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979–81). For a focus on gender as relevant to Western representations of the Muslim world, see Zillah Eisenstein (2004) Against Empire: Feminism, Racism, and the West (London: Zed Books). And for a brief critique of Islamophobia through representations of Muslim men, see Hamid Dabashi (2011) Brown Skin White Masks (London, Pluto Press), pp. 30–32.

¹³ M. Ghoussoub & E. Sinclair-Webb (eds) (2000) Preface. In: Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Saqi Books), p. 8.

¹⁴ L. Ouzgane (ed.) (2006) Introduction. In: Islamic Masculinities (London: Zed Books), p. 1.

¹⁵ R. W. Connell (1991) Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Oxford, UK: John Wiley and Sons), p. 184.

¹⁶ Ibid, p. 183.

¹⁷ Ibid, p. 184.

¹⁸ Ibid, p. 185 (emphasis added).

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Connell (1998) Gender Politics for Men, in: S. P. Schacht and D. W. Ewing (eds) Feminism and Men: Reconstructing Gender Relations (New York: NYU Press), p. 226.

²¹ I nevertheless must note that Taraghi has been reluctant openly to embrace feminism as a driving force in her fiction. Yet it is undeniable, as Taraghi too has admitted, that a ‘feminine principle’—by which she possibly means the feminine perspective through which she exerts influence as a woman artist—sustains her work even though she is ‘not a feminist’ in the strict sense of the word. Quoted in A. Motlagh (2011) Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press), p. 149.

²² Kimmel, The History of Men, pp. 5–6.

²³ F. Milani (1992) Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 13. For more on the development of Iranian literature by women see K. Talattof (2000) The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press), pp. 139–140.

²⁴ Moallem, Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister, p. 159.

²⁵ A. Motlagh, Burying the Beloved, pp. 63–64. Motlagh's chief cases in point are ‘The Servant’ in Scattered Memories, and ‘Amineh's Long Journey’ in In Another Place, centering on two sets of domestic servants—male and female, Iranian in the former, Bengali in the latter—who become literary vessels for the narrators (in both scenarios ‘à la Taraghi’ figures) to reflect their own selves in the image of the ‘other’ in the particular aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when the old social order was no longer in place.

²⁶ F. Adelkhah (1999) Being Modern in Iran, J. Derrick (trans.) (London: C. Hurts & Company), p. 4.

²⁷ Ibid, pp. 4–6.

²⁸ Ibid, p. 32.

²⁹ For a brief reference to Hidayat and Luti as ‘the ideal of the Robin Hood-bandit,’ see Wilhelm Floor (2012) ‘Luti’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition. Available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/luti; accessed October 14, 2013.

³⁰ See, for example: S. Zarlaki (1389/2010) Khalsiheh Khatirat [The ecstasy of memories] (Tehran: Nilufar); and I. Haddadi, & F. Durudgaryan (1390/2011) Tahlil-i Kuhan Ulgu-i Dastan-i Jay-i Digar [An archetypal interpretation of In Another Place], Adabyat va Zabanha, 16 (Summer), pp. 147–170.

³¹ For more on the difference between ‘gender archetype’ and ‘gender identity,’ see Connell (2005) Masculinities (Oxford: Polity Press), pp. 12–15.

³² J. Butler (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge), p. 11.

³³ G. Taraghi (2009) In Another Place, K. Emami & S. Khalili (trans), in: N. Mozaffari & A. Karimi-Hakkak (eds) Strange Times in Persia: An Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 221.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid, p. 216.

³⁶ Michael Hillman (1982), ‘The Modernist Trend in Persian Literature and its Social Impact’, in Iranian Studies, 15, 1–4, p. 16.

³⁷ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 221.

³⁸ Ibid, p. 216.

³⁹ Taraghi (1389/2010) Jay-e Digar, in: Jay-e Digar (Tehran: Nilufar), p. 171.

⁴⁰ S. Gerami (2003), ‘Mullahs, Martyrs, and Men: Conceptualizing Masculinity in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Men and Masculinities, 5(3), pp. 260–265.

⁴¹ Connell, Masculinities, p. 76.

⁴² Connell, Gender Politics for Men, p. 226.

⁴³ Connell, Masculinities, p. 79.

⁴⁴ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 224.

⁴⁵ Taraghi, Jay-e Digar, p. 181.

⁴⁶ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 224.

⁴⁷ Ibid, p. 226.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid, p. 252.

⁵⁰ Ibid, p. 227.

⁵¹ Motlagh, Burying the Beloved, p. 75.

⁵² Gerami, ‘Mullahs, Martyrs, and Men’, pp. 260–261.

⁵³ Ibid, p. 265.

⁵⁴ Ibid, p. 264.

⁵⁵ Ibid, p. 270.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 239.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid, p. 216.

⁶⁰ Ibid, p. 217.

⁶¹ M. Foucault (2002), Of Other Spaces, in N. Mirzoeff (ed.) The Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge), p. 243.

⁶² Ibid, p. 239.

⁶³ Taraghi (1380/2001) Interview with K. Fani and A. Dihbashi, Bukhara, 19 (Mordad), p. 49 (Author's translation).

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid, p. 51.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Kimmel (2006) Manhood in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 41–43.

⁶⁸ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 228.

⁶⁹ Ibid, pp. 230 & 234.

⁷⁰ Ibid, p. 250.

⁷¹ Ibid, p. 229.

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ Taraghi, Jay-e Digar, p. 243.

⁷⁴ Connell, Gender Politics for Men, p. 226.

⁷⁵ Ibid, p. 228.

⁷⁶ Adelkhah, Modern in Iran, pp. 47–50.

⁷⁷ Ibid, p. 175.

⁷⁸ Ibid, p. 53.

⁷⁹ Ibid, pp. 175, 70.

⁸⁰ Taraghi, In Another Place, p. 270.

⁸¹ Ibid.

A briefer version of this article was presented as a paper at the 9th biennial Iranian studies conference (ISIS) in Istanbul, Turkey, August 2012.