The traumatic confrontation with ideology and the real in e.l.doctorow's 'welcome to hard times': a Zizekian study

AutorHojatallah Borzabadi Farahani - Maryam Beyad
CargoFaculty Member, Department of English Language, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran - Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Páginas466-482
Periódico do Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Gênero e Direito
Centro de Ciências Jurídicas - Universidade Federal da Paraíba
V. 9 - Nº 02 - Ano 2020
ISSN | 2179-7137 | http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs2/index.php/ged/index
466
THE TRAUMATIC CONFRONTATION WITH IDEOLOGY AND
THE REAL IN E.L.DOCTOROW’S "WELCOME TO HARD
TIMES": A ŽIŽEKIAN STUDY
Hojatallah Borzabadi Farahani1
Maryam Beyad2
Abstract: Social reality in its essence is
political, and any exploration of it needs
a political performance. Concerning the
issue, literature, by and large, has gained
a political function through history. It
has been an efficient political device to
represent the role and the impact of
ideology on the way of living and
     
novels in general, and his Welcome To
Hard Times in particular approve of the
    
constitution of American society and the
inevitable confrontation of the people

term] and the regressive work of
     
perception of the word, ideology is a
form of socio-political philosophy in
which practical elements are as
prominent and decisive as theoretical
1 Faculty Member, Department of English Language, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad
University, Arak, Iran * Corresponding Author Email: n_bfarahani@yahoo.com.
2 Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of
Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Email: msbeyad@ut.ac.ir.
ones. To him, ideology is a set of ideas
licensing social actions and allocating
subjects predetermined Symbolic Orders
within the context of elusive reality. It
gives them a social mandate, and a
specific identity to deal with the worldly
   
Welcome to Hard Times we come to a
community of figures, marginal though,
who take a rebellion action against
ideology to alter the given identity
employing their [personal] acts. The
present study aims at exploring this
reformative attempt on part of the people
involved in ideological restrictions.
Keywords: The Real, Symbolic Order,
Ideology, Subject, Social reality
Introduction
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow
(1931-2015, New York City) is one of
the most accomplished and eminent
Periódico do Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Gênero e Direito
Centro de Ciências Jurídicas - Universidade Federal da Paraíba
V. 9 - Nº 02 - Ano 2020
ISSN | 2179-7137 | http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs2/index.php/ged/index
467
authors of the 20th century. He has
written eight novels (Welcome to Hard
Times the first one in the sequence) all
the result of his vast amount of westerns
he read after his military service. His
works are particularly admirable for their
synthesis of fiction and history.
No need to say, applying
psychoanalytic study on E.L.

reveals the unconscious aspect of
utterance out through the analysis of
characters, relations, and situations.
Mostly, psychoanalysts work on the
matter of identity and the way of its
     
character. They state that
constructionism asserts the process of
understanding oneself, others, and
reality which are presented in the
contextual network of 
novels, especially in Welcome to Hard
Times. Such a view supports the idea that
human beings if not constructing new
things, but are transforming reality.
Though sounds noticeable, this idea
misses the crucial point that the depiction
of the world we read of in the novel is the
representative of a real ideological
system in which distinct discourses are
involved. So testing a methodology that
covers the psychological and political
elements all together seems essential.
Concerning the point, the present study
     
complex theories. It intends to offer a
comprehensive approach that helps the
readers to perceive how ideological
factors and Psychological responses are
decisive in the identity formation of man.
Moreover, the notion and the
 
novel, Welcome to Hard Times will be
examined to reveal first the mechanism
of dominant ideology on [the]

practicable act they do against such
ideological dictates.
As John D. Jost states:


 words imply the fact that
    
signifies different meanings. In this
      
body of ideas that licenses, enables, and
  
   on that

is (41). In other sense, ideology appears
        
position of centrality by ruling social
-5).

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