Analysis of the discourse of gender in Qajar era paintings, a case study of the painting of Fath Ali Shah Qajar period (1212-1250 A.H.)

Master's Thesis of Art Research

Abstract

Gender in the Qajar era in Iran, which is a pre-modern society, was not a hegemonic or objectified concept, the dual opposition of woman/man in this society has not yet been properly formed, which means that a wide range of different forms of gender and even sexual action with a tolerant approach is understandable and thus acceptable. The concept of beauty and attributing this concept to Femininity was not consistent with the 19th century perceptions of the Qajar era in Iran. During the Qajar period, a beautiful face could be attributed to both men and women, and in certain circumstances, both of them were known as objects of desire, regardless of whether they were women or men/men or witnesses. Not only the concept of beauty in the characters of the paintings of Fath Ali Shah era (both men and women) does not match with today's components, yes, it works in the opposite direction, so that the beauty of men in the images of women and the beauty of women can be matched with the beauty of Amardan or eunuchs. A transgression of fundamental concepts such as woman/man in a pre-modern society was realized during a discourse process, a process that, together with visual signs, depicts a part of the wider discourse involved in power relations in Iran.

Key words: discourse, Foucault, gender, Qajar, Fath Ali Shah, painting

1- Chapter 1

Research overview

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The Qajar period is one of the most contradictory and amazing historical periods of Iran and the place where old and new elements collided, political and social revolutions took place and the beginning of serious cultural and artistic developments. As a result of the efforts of intellectuals of recent generations, the socio-cultural developments of the 13th century have been studied in many branches of art, especially poetry and literature, music and architecture. While there is a lot of work left in the field of painting and visual arts of the Qajar era. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct studies that look at the development of painting in this era from different perspectives. Examining the art of this period depends to a large extent on understanding the social, political, economic contexts and the whole powerful current that changed the spirit of history from its eastern to western aspect. The current research tries to investigate the paintings of the first period of Qajar art by using the discourse analysis method.

In this regard, the researcher did not categorize the topics in five chapters in order to achieve his desired goals in this thesis:

The first chapter of the research plan; The motivation of the research, statement of the questions, objectives and importance of the research and the research method of the thesis are explained in this chapter. The research method is qualitative and like other qualitative research, it deals with the text and not with quantitative and numerical values ??(number and frequency) of the variables. In fact, in this type of research, the text not only provides the main data on which the findings are based, but it is also the basis of the interpretation of these data, and at the same time, it is the main means and means of presenting and transmitting the findings.

The second chapter begins with the definitions and framework related to the research topic in order to open the text, and in its first part, it deals with the genealogy of the discourse, and then examines the discourse from the perspective of Foucault, and after that, the genealogy of gender and the difference between the two The word sex and gender are expressed and sexist discourse is taken into consideration; And at the end, it ends with the discussion of semiotics and social semiotics with the visual meaning of this chapter.

The third chapter is actually a history, which first deals with the discourses and social conditions in the Safavid era and examines the sexual behavior in this era, introduces men, women, and men, and in the next part, the formation of the Qajar era and the gender discourse in the Qajar era are studied. After that, the discussion of modernity and its entry into Iran and sexuality in the modern period has been discussed.

In the fourth chapter, in this chapter, 7 works of painting related to the Safavid era and 40 works related to the Qajar era have been analyzed and examined.

The fifth chapter deals with the research findings and answers to the questions and conclusions. Bourdieu's definition, every work of art is defined within a space, and this space does not mean a homogenous system of ideas, but a system of differences and variations within which every work of art is defined. The space that he calls the space of strategic possibilities in reference to Michel Foucault, that is, the space where every producer, including writer and artist, undertakes his creativity based on strategies that are based on selecting and rejecting some of the cultural trajectories and positions.The space that he calls the space of strategic possibilities in reference to Michel Foucault, that is, the space where every producer, whether writer or artist, undertakes his creativity based on strategies that are based on the selection and rejection of some of the cultural trajectories and stylistic, technical and thematic positions that separate the inter-discourse and extra-discourse space. Discourse analysis, unlike style analysis, does not seek to draw a unified space of the dominance of an idea in a historical era and reveal the rules of style and creativity in that era, in discourse analysis we go further and look for the contexts of text production. It should be emphasized that the purpose of discourse analysis is not the analysis of the meaning of the text, but the analysis of the conditions in which this meaning is produced, and therefore the analysis of the institutions that generate meaning and reproduce the discourse is emphasized. The process of moving from the text to the institutions that generate discourse expresses the ultimate desire of discourse analysis in revealing the relationship between text, power, and ideology. It can be claimed that the subject of artistic discourse is closely related to the subject of disciplinary vision; Because, unlike literature, art uses different sign systems and in some cases mixes these different systems and creates multi-system texts and discourses.

Now if we accept that the way artistic systems change in each historical period emerges on the basis of fundamental developments in the macro discourse of that period and also accept that discourse is not only limited to words and phrases and non-verbal signs and symbols are also in the form giving them a role, we try to find, with a clairvoyant eye, signs in the pictorial tradition of the Qajar era, in which the attention to the female figure increased compared to the previous era, and the portrayal of famous court women, women of the royal harem, dancers and musicians attracted the attention of painters as well as the royal apparatus, to find that in interaction or in challenge with each other, they create a process that is influenced by the discourse of gender and formed within it.

The importance of understanding gender becomes apparent when we accept the assumption that sexuality is in fact a key provider of our understanding of who we are. Not because of what we are now, but because of the place of gender and perhaps its centrality in a range of strategies that create a knowledge of the subject and a set of norms. Knowledge and norms by which the subject's behavior is regularized. The important place of gender in such a normative discourse clearly shows the importance of understanding it and the mechanisms of its involvement in knowledge and norms; And also the need to recognize gender as a comprehensive and historically constructed phenomenon in human life.

Since discourse analysis is an approach that is mostly used for verbal arts and less research in Iran is devoted to the study of the formation and emergence of non-verbal systems, especially visual arts within a discourse, we try to show how, in addition to linguistic propositions, non-linguistic propositions such as visual signs are under the supervision and control of the discourse of this era. emerge and themselves cause the formation of a new discourse in the heart of a society.

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1) What are the constituents of gender discourse in the Qajar period?

2) How does gender discourse in this period find textual objectivity in paintings?

1-4-

This research, like other qualitative researches, deals with text. And not with quantitative and numerical values ??(number and frequency) of variables. In fact, in this type of research, the text not only provides the main data on which the findings are based, but it is also the basis of the interpretation of these data, and at the same time, it is considered the main means of presenting and transmitting the findings. Here we use the information and insights available in the literature on the subject as background knowledge to comment on the observations and propositions of the research in the context of this literature.

1-5-

This research tries to address the category of gender in Qajar period Iran by adopting the discourse analysis approach and uses paintings as a document for this claim. Although this issue has been considered from descriptive-historical dimensions, it has not been investigated from the perspective of discourse analysis. Also, due to the lack of an analytical view with interdisciplinary theoretical foundations that unfortunately exists in the academic space of visual arts in Iran, the connection of two discursive-linguistic and visual fields and the analysis of the relationship between the two will open a way that will not be unaffected by the common stereotypes in the conventional view of visual tradition in this era.