Volume 7, Issue 3 (September 2025)
IEEPJ 2025, 7(3): 1-11 |
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Abasi S, Borzabadi Farahani H, Azizmohammadi F. (2025). Politics of Identity in Its Cultural Context: A Žižekian Study on Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House. IEEPJ. 7(3), 1-11.
URL: http://ieepj.hormozgan.ac.ir/article-1-1069-en.html
URL: http://ieepj.hormozgan.ac.ir/article-1-1069-en.html
1- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
2- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran ,053225372522@iau.ac.ir
2- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran ,
Abstract: (1429 Views)
Objective: This study applies a Žižekian framework to Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House, examining how the play represents identity not as a stable essence but as a process of continuous negotiation within the confines of domestic life. Drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytic concepts—particularly the Big Other, the Real, and jouissance—the article explores how Ruhl’s characters navigate between social expectations and personal desires. These tensions reveal the fragility of identity as it is sustained through fantasies that are constantly threatened by collapse.
Methods: The analysis employs close reading and psychoanalytic interpretation, situating Ruhl’s dramaturgy within Žižek’s theory of ideology and subject formation. Humor and grief are examined as key dramaturgical devices that expose ideological contradictions within the domestic sphere.
Results: The study finds that Ruhl uses humor and mourning not as emotional tones but as mechanisms that destabilize fixed meanings and reveal the limits of social identity. Jokes and moments of loss open glimpses into the unspeakable aspects of subjectivity, where the boundaries between pain and pleasure, self and other, begin to blur.
Conclusions: By bringing Žižek’s ideas into dialogue with Ruhl’s poetic dramaturgy, the article argues that The Clean House transforms the domestic sphere into a politically charged site of ideological struggle. The play demonstrates how modern theatre can stage the instability of identity and expose the contradictions that shape contemporary subjectivity.
Methods: The analysis employs close reading and psychoanalytic interpretation, situating Ruhl’s dramaturgy within Žižek’s theory of ideology and subject formation. Humor and grief are examined as key dramaturgical devices that expose ideological contradictions within the domestic sphere.
Results: The study finds that Ruhl uses humor and mourning not as emotional tones but as mechanisms that destabilize fixed meanings and reveal the limits of social identity. Jokes and moments of loss open glimpses into the unspeakable aspects of subjectivity, where the boundaries between pain and pleasure, self and other, begin to blur.
Conclusions: By bringing Žižek’s ideas into dialogue with Ruhl’s poetic dramaturgy, the article argues that The Clean House transforms the domestic sphere into a politically charged site of ideological struggle. The play demonstrates how modern theatre can stage the instability of identity and expose the contradictions that shape contemporary subjectivity.
Type of Study: Original |
Subject:
Educational Psychology
Received: 2025/04/5 | Accepted: 2025/05/15 | Published: 2025/09/1
Received: 2025/04/5 | Accepted: 2025/05/15 | Published: 2025/09/1
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