سیروس امیری

Abstract The migration of Iranians before and after the Islamic revolution in 1979 and subsequent departure of Iranians to western countries, particularly to the United States, formed the Iranian diaspora. Concerned with various serious cultural and national vacillations, marginalization, and discrimination, Iranian diaspora now looks for new means of redefining themselves in the host land’s cultural context through literature. This dissertation investigates the liminal formation of narrative, identity and space in selected novels by diasporic women authors through the analysis of representative texts in English including, Funny in Farsi, Laughing Without and Accent, The Saffron Kitchen, To See and See Again and Sons and Other Flammable Objects. Theories of post-colonialism and post-structuralism will be crucial in addressing these issues, while the analysis explores how the Iranian diasporic identity is informed by an inherently traumatic and violent history of the Patriarchal hegemony, discourses of power, regimes of truth, and performativity. Focusing on the traumatic experience of the Iranian immigrants and preoccupation of the female subjects with history, performative normative discourse and the relationship of protagonist and author with Iranian cultural practices of the ancestral home, this dissertation investigates the process of hybridization and defining the cultural identity. How literature opens up new spaces of expression for the reconstruction, maintenance and negotiation of a desired state of being and identity for diasporic Iranian communities rooted in their diasporic present and the homeland of the past is also considered. Researches indicate that how the Iranian immigrants attempt to (re)construct and negotiate their identities within conflicting contexts in terms of creating the third space. The anticipated findings concentrate on defining the states in which the diasporic Iranian literature inscribes itself into new society and culture, redefin