A Negation of the Assumptions of the Metaphysics of Presence in Mandanipour’s Again Facing the River

First forged in the writings of French philosopher Jacque Derrida, deconstruction undermines the Platonic philosophy and dominant Western discourses to negate the metaphysics of presence, logocentrism, and binary oppositions. In this standpoint, although Derrida subverts such dichotomies as speech/writing, absence/presence, and truth/virtuality, he does not aim to privilege writing, presence, and virtuality above their oppositions; instead, he seeks to overcome the limitations of textual meaning to reach pluralism in interpretation. Shahriar Mandanipour’s Again Facing the River bears abundant metaphysical assumptions which the narrator endeavors to undermine in order to present galore signifiers and signs by constantly deferring meaning to provide the ground for new interpretations of the text. Based on a descriptive-analytic approach, this article attempts to investigate such concepts as the rejection of ultimate truth, death of the author, poststructuralist semiotics, the dominant ideology of the text by negating binaries and values, and so on.