|
Abstract
|
This research addresses a critical priority within contemporary literary and cultural studies by advancing a theoretically rigorous analysis of war-inflected diaspora memoir through Derridean deconstruction. Memoir scholarship increasingly recognizes the limitations of interpretive frameworks that privilege authenticity, testimony, or thematic representation without sustained attention to textual instability (Smith and Watson 215; Gilmore 9). By foregrounding deconstruction, this study introduces a methodological intervention that challenges prevailing assumptions about memory, identity, and narrative authority. Derrida’s concepts of différance, trace, and aporia enable a deeper examination of how memoir constructs meaning through absence and deferral rather than presence or closure (Culler 94; Caputo 33).
The research also responds to an urgent need within Iraqi diaspora studies for analyses that resist reductive geopolitical binaries. Scholars such as Edward Said and Judith Butler underscore the ethical stakes of representation within contexts of war and imperial discourse (Said 27; Butler 18). Nadir’s memoir complicates dominant narratives of Iraq by refusing fixed positions of victimhood, nationalism, or cultural authenticity. A deconstructive reading elucidates how such refusal operates at the level of language and form, thereby expanding critical understanding of diasporic writing beyond sociological description.
Finally, the study contributes to interdisciplinary debates across literary theory, memory studies, and postcolonial critique. Derrida’s reflections on archive, responsibility, and relational identity provide tools capable of addressing contemporary crises of historical narration and ethical witnessing (Derrida, Archive Fever 19; Attridge 107). By situating The Orange Trees of Baghdad within this theoretical constellation, the research establishes the memoir as a vital site for philosophical inquiry and ethical engagement. The topic thus represents a
|