Investigating “The Other” in the Discourse Analysis of “Thresholds” in “Showhar-e Ahou Khanom” Novel and Movie Based on Laclau and Mouffe’s Theory

Ahou Khanom (Madam Ahou’s Husband) novel, written by Ali Mohammad Afghani and its movie adaptation directed by Davood Mollapour. The noteworthy point in both works is the existence of different sense-maker layers and components in the novel and movie threshold that reveals the quality of the relationship between husband and wife in the traditional and pseudo-modern discourse. By highlighting the dispute between traditional and modern discourse, the writer and the director, invisibly and intangibly, try to present the audience the image of an oppressed and alienated woman around whom the patriarchal discourse has always formed a chain to subjugate her due to the natural differences between men and women, and has regarded her as the other and inferior and has marginalised her. So, in the present research based on a comparative-interdisciplinary approach and Laclau and Mouffe’s critical discourse analysis the structures of the thresholds of the two media were investigated. First, the micro-texts of thresholds in the novel and movie were identified, and then with the analysis of the existing point in their structure, the connection among thresholds, the nodal text and its outside world, and ways of creating meaning in different layers of micro-text were examined. Two points were revealed by studying threshold structures in Showhar-e Ahou Khanom’s novel and movie: 1. All the points found in the thresholds of both works were formed based on a macro-clash between men and women. 2. The existing points reveal patriarchally created discourse which always equates men with the nodal point, as superior, active, independent, and free, while introducing women with concepts such as marginal, inferior, passive, dependent and limited, and using the rational of the difference between men and women it excludes and rejects this rival.