2024 : 11 : 5
Mohammad Ghaffary

Mohammad Ghaffary

Academic rank: Assistant Professor
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4012-0093
Education: PhD.
ScopusId: 55573741900
HIndex: 0/00
Faculty: Literature and Languages
Address: Department of English Language and Literature​, Faculty of Letters and Languages, Arak University, Arak, Iran
Phone:

Research

Title
The One Who Plants Evils: A Contrapuntal Reading of Othering and Identity Politics in “Odysseus’s Tale of Trials” from Homer’s Odyssey
Type
JournalPaper
Keywords
othering, romantic epic, national identity, contrapuntal reading, “Odysseus’s Tale of Trials”
Year
2024
Journal مطالعات بین ­رشته ­ای ادبیات، هنر و علوم انسانی
DOI
Researchers Mohammad Ghaffary

Abstract

Othering, as the basic political economy of identity construction, has been operative in human societies since ancient times, but it has been conceptually investigated only in recent times. Employing contrapuntal reading, the deconstructive strategy adapted by Edward Said from classic Western music, the present paper deals with the issue of identity politics in “Odysseus’s Tale of Trials” from Homer’s Odyssey to unravel the ideological subtext of this canonical romantic epic and give voice to the figures monsterized and suppressed by the hero and the narrative voice. It is argued that The Odyssey has significantly contributed to the construction of Western subjectivity, giving a sense of national or cultural identity to both ancient Greek people and modern Western man via setting them in opposition to their others. However, upon a contrapuntal reading, Odysseus is no different from the so-called savage, barbarous, villainous others he confronts in his quest and the identity constructed for both parties is merely a matter of convention and discursive power. Thus, the findings of this study challenge the commonsensical identity politics at work in Western culture, in the hope of paving the way for further critical readings of such classical texts and reevaluating their translations.