Subalterns’ Reclamation of Position as the Ultimate Response of Postcolonial Mind in Iranian Nights

Abstract

This paper deals with the subalterns’ reclamation of their position as the ultimate response of postcolonial mind in the play entitled Iranian Nights by Tariq Ali and Howard Brenton. This re-appropriation of subalterns’ position, through the literature produced in the third world countries, is the counter attack on whites’ long hegemony in depicting them as uncouth, female-like, childish, brute, baboons, illiterate, and uncivilized. Subaltern, literally, refers to any person or group of inferior rank and station, whether because of race, cast, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion. By deconstructing the power structures and re-orienting the western taboos about the ‘Third World’ countries, this paper traces the process of re-Orientalism that is an attempt of the subalterns to renovate their history, reinstate their self-worth, and redefine their identity either through freedom of speech or writing back to the empire. In addition this research paper applies Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of ‘Subaltern’ and extends its research compass in order to redefine the western thought about the portrayal of non-western woman.