Politics of evasion and tales of abjection: Postmodern demythologization in Angela Carter and Ghazaleh Alizadeh

Abstract

Angela Carter and Ghazaleh Alizadeh as the prophetesses of postmodern fairy tales in British and Persian literature re-narrativize these tales as a loophole from socio-political stagnation and cultural paralysis. Evading direct contact with the political jargons of their eras, they seek gender generativity via the fairy tale machine. Alizadeh finds refuge in modernizing Persian fairy tales. Carter chants her frustration at Thatcherism through gender subversion. Carter’s and Alizadeh’s revulsion at the politics of gender in their eras can be read via the duet between the abject and the chora in Kristeva’s thought. It is through the encounter with the external abject that the internal abject is activated culminating in the efflorescence of the chora. The liminality of the chora becomes the battleground on which poetics of gender beats off politics of logos through subversion and syncretism. While Carter obtains abjection through overt sexualization of fairy tales, Alizadeh resorts to indirection due to the political climate of her time. Unlike Carter who is quite outspoken about her fairy tale project, Alizadeh is reticent, allusive, and somber trying to remind her readers of the gloomy reality that being a woman in the Middle Eastern countries is always already punctuated with docility.