Metramorphic borderlinking in Aliyeh Ataei’s “The Alcove” and Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul
Date
2026
Authors
Zarvasi, Fatemeh
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Abstract
This thesis explores subjectivity and violence in Aliyeh Ataei’s “The Alcove” and Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul through Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-Lacanian critiques in the context of Afghanistan. Focusing on these two works, the study explores how heteropatriarchal, phallocentric socio-symbolic orders shape subjectivity and perpetuate violence. Lack-driven desire operating through asymmetrical dialectics between the Self and the Other, produces multiple forms of violence—from gender-based violence at the micro level to broader political violence structuring contemporary encounters between East and West. While literature and sociopolitical discourses appear distinct, a dialogue between them becomes significant. I argue that the meta-narratives of these two works reveal literature’s potential to shift from a phallic gaze to a matrixial one. In other words, the texts move from phantasmatic, phallic representations to those of trauma, structured by a matrixial logic that opens access to an innermost human capacity for compassion—what Bracha L. Ettinger terms co-naissance, co-response-ability, and metramorphic borderlinking. Co-naissance, which means “to be born-with,” refers to a mode of subjectivity generated through co-emergence in difference. Drawing on the intrauterine relation between mother and fetus, Ettinger conceptualizes matrixial stratum in which the subject and the Other are linked without fusion. Thus, in encounters between the Self and the Other, subjectivity emerges within a differential relationality through the process of metramorphic borderlinking that bears co-naissance and co-response-ability rather than through lack and separation. In this matrixial sense, “The Alcove” and Homebody/Kabul provide the opportunity of contemplating the possibility of relationship with the Other in alternative non-violent manners that can add to the socio-political domain.
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Keywords
Matrixial theory, Literature and ethics, Theories of violence, Subjectivity, Self-other relations, Psychoanalyis, Aliyeh Ataei, Tony Kushner