“I WEAR A CROSS AT SCHOOL AND CHURCH, AND AN ALLAH NECKLACE WHILE PRAYING”: BECOMING AND DETERRITORIALIZATION IN SELECTED WORKS BY ZOYA PIRZAD

Strany: 55 - 71

Jazyk: eng

With the exception of a few scholarly articles published outside Iran concentrating on its historical, political, and sociological dimensions, the fiction of the Iranian-Armenian female writer Zoya Pirzad has generally situated within the formalistic theories by the academic community inside Iran. Some scholars have attributed the broad readership appeal of Pirzad’s fiction to her rendering of the everyday concerns of Iranian women living in a patriarchal society. Others have emphasised Pirzad’s portrayal of Armenian people and their lifestyle as the reason behind the wide acclaim given to her works in the 2000s by a public of Muslim readers. The present article, however, rather than interpreting her works, aims to discuss the energies and flows within selected works of the writer through the lens of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. We discuss among others terms such as becoming-woman/ child, nomadism, rhizome, de- and re-territorialisation, in-betweenness, to argue that Pirzad’s fiction is a locale for transformations and becomings materialised through women and chil dren. However, Pirzad also provides instances of reterritorialisation in order to make women aware of the regimes of signs which entangle them in the name of freedom. In this perspective, rather than merely targeting the nation’s male-oriented ambiance, Pirzad’s fiction proposes becoming as a possibility to improve the situation of women and children in postrevolutionary Iranian society.

ISO 690:

MAHDAVI NEJHAD, M. H., ALIZADEH, G. 2026. “I WEAR A CROSS AT SCHOOL AND CHURCH, AND AN ALLAH NECKLACE WHILE PRAYING”: BECOMING AND DETERRITORIALIZATION IN SELECTED WORKS BY ZOYA PIRZAD. In Asian and African Studies, vol. 35, no.1, pp. 55-71. 1335-1257. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/aassav.2026.35.1.03

APA:

MAHDAVI NEJHAD, M. H., ALIZADEH, G. (2026). “I WEAR A CROSS AT SCHOOL AND CHURCH, AND AN ALLAH NECKLACE WHILE PRAYING”: BECOMING AND DETERRITORIALIZATION IN SELECTED WORKS BY ZOYA PIRZAD. Asian and African Studies, 35(1), 55-71. 1335-1257. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/aassav.2026.35.1.03

Vydavateľ: Institute of Oriental Studies