A Study of Cultural and Discursive Backgrounds of Identity Formation in Khanlari’s the Eagle

The interconnectedness of multiple sciences in humanities has led to effective integrated approaches in the field of intertextuality. The issue of identity is one of the important topics that is fundamentally related to sociology, cultural semiotics, discourse analysis, anthropology and even literary criticism. The present study has made an attempt to use the common elements of semiotics, discourse and anthropology in connection with the element of identity with an intertextual approach in order to represent the identity in Khanlari’s poem, the Eagle. Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and the concepts of “self” and “other” in the field of cultural semiotics have been selected as the main interpretive tools to represent the process of eagle’s identity formation in interaction with foreign culture and abjection drives. The results showed that, at the beginning of the narrative, death, as the abjection drive, forces the subject to find a solution, but after interacting with the subculture (culture of magpie) and observing the abjection drives, including the living environment and magpie feed, returns to its social identity and, while considering death as desirable, rejects abjection drives and leaves the foreign land.

The present study aims to answer the main question of what specific cultural, discursive and social elements have played a role in determining the eagle’s identity by using the above tools in an intertextual approach. The present study is an intertextual study with a discursive approach that has used cultural semiotics, discourse analysis, anthropology, and a little narratology. It seeks to take an intertextual approach to the process of representing the identity of the seeker hero in the Eagle, translated and rewritten by Parviz Natel-Khanlari. This poem is originally in Russian and there are many translations with different alterations and extensions.McAfee (2006) has elaborated on Kristeva’s views, including the concept of abjection, in a book entitled Julia Kristeva.Khosravian (2009) has given an overview of the aesthetic and pictorial aspects of Khanlari’s the Eagle.Following the theories of Bermon and Greimas, Aghakhani et al. (2011) have studied the two narrative poems of the Eagle and the Serivili House.Pour-Ali et al. (2014) have interpreted the novel “The Rule of the Game” using Kristeva concept of abjection.Salimi Kouchi and Sokout Jahromi (2015) have studied the characters in Anārbānu and Her Sons from the perspective of Kristeva’s abject body and have discussed the concept of abject body in the Introduction.Alami and Babashahi (2017) have interpreted Siavash’s story based on Kristeva’s theory of abjection.

Death is represented in the beginning of the poem as the abjection drive, and the eagle tries to find a way to avert it. Since conversation is the beginning of culture, formation of any of the cultures, supercultures and non-cultures requires the existence of dialogue and conversation. In the Eagle, the dialogue between the magpie and the eagle is the beginning of the formation of cultures and the demarcation between superculture, non-culture and culture. The cultural atmosphere of the magpie appears in the beginning as a superculture with which the eagle enters into conversation in order to have a long life. In order to draw the attention of the eagle and impose cultural elements related to its culture, the magpie claims that the winds that blow in the heights are the cause of death and short life of the eagle. Later in the conversation between the magpie and the eagle, by highlighting its culture, the magpie criticizes the culture of the eagle and tries to take the eagle with him and invite him to a life full of filth. The description of abject drives through the magpie’s habitat and food symbolically represents the cultural and social system of the “other”, which is in conflict with its own culture. The eagle enters the land of the magpie to find out the secret of the magpie’s long life. The eagle is reminded of its abjection struggle by being in a foreign land, which is the residence of the magpie and the place of filth and humiliation. Conflict with the abject element occurs in two stages through recall and return to the eagle’s social identity. In terms of social identity, the eagle and magpie have a group conflict. After interacting with the magpie, the eagle recognizes this group conflict again. In this cognitive process, the eagle’s perceptions and evaluations of its social group and its opposing social group lead to the representation of its social identity. This is where the eagle realizes that being an eagle requires accepting a set of signs and necessities belonging to the social identity of the eagle group, and what he thought about longevity was only a crude dream that is incompatible with his social identity and that he must give it up. In addition, a set of signs and values ​​of the magpie social group are in conflict with the social identity of the eagle and must be rejected. After communicating and evaluating the eagle from within the magpie culture, the cognitive process of the eagle, as a cognitive subject, is formed and interaction with abject drives within another culture leads to cultural transformation.

The eagle, as a cognitive agent, interacts with its opposing social group in order to find its identity. In the process of finding the eagle’s identity, the element of death first appears as an abject and inconsistent drive, but after the subject interacts with the alien world and the culture of the “other”, it rejects the abject drives and, during a cultural metamorphosis, the superculture becomes non-culture and the narration ends by considering death as a desirable, normal and harmonious thing. In this way, the identity of the eagle, which is living with dignity at the peaks with a short life and rejecting another culture (magpie), is revealed. Although death is considered one of the abject drives in the first part of the Eagle, in the end, the drive of death protects the eagle’s definite identity and prevents the eagle from mixing with the filth and degrading life of the magpie.