Alienation in modern Iraqi literature

Abstract

The research titled Alienation in Modern Iraqi Literature by researcher Sanaa Abd Sakb examines the phenomenon of alienation as a prominent feature and an organic component of contemporary Iraqi literary production, both in poetry and narrative. The researcher proceeds from a fundamental hypothesis that alienation in the Iraqi experience was not an intellectual luxury or merely an imitation of Western schools. Rather, it was an inevitable and forced response to the harsh political and social conditions that stormed Iraq, ranging from successive wars and economic sanctions to the dominance of authoritarian regimes. These combined factors transformed alienation from a mere romantic theme expressing sorrow and loneliness into a comprehensive existential stance and a foundational structure revealing the fragmented identity crisis of the Iraqi individual.

The study rigorously reviews the concept, distinguishing between linguistic and terminological connotations. It differentiates alienation from related concepts such as normlessness, which implies the collapse of values guiding behavior; reification, which reduces humans to mere tools in a vast machine; and powerlessness, representing the loss of ability to influence reality. The study expands to cover two types of exile: internal exile, experienced by the individual within their homeland under the weight of oppression and fear, and external exile, suffered by migrants in the diaspora. In her conclusions, the researcher indicates that internal exile was more lethal to the human psyche, generating a complex sense of isolation and symbolic death, where the intellectual lives alienated amidst their family and a society with eroded values.

On the artistic and analytical side, the study tracks the lexical and symbolic corpus that dominated alienation texts, noting the prevalence of vocabulary suggestive of darkness and nihilism, such as night, silence, coldness, death, and walls. The study also addresses the symbolism of place, where the city in alienation literature—whether the usurped Baghdad or the cold capitals of the diaspora—transformed into a space of imprisonment, loss, and the reification of human relations. Meanwhile, the Village remained in the writers' memory as a symbol of the lost paradise and the beautiful past that is impossible to retrieve. Furthermore, the researcher touches upon the image of the woman, which transcended its emotional dimension to become an objective equivalent for the homeland and the land; searching for her is a search for roots, and losing her means the loss of belonging.

The study concludes with findings that confirm the dominance of a pessimistic tendency in Iraqi literature during that era, where the alienated writer views death as potentially the only salvation from the absurdity and futility of reality. The researcher concludes her work with a set of recommendations calling for the continuation of this critical effort by studying the shifts in the concept of alienation in post-2003 literature, focusing on the specificity of alienation in Iraqi feminist literature, and conducting critical comparative studies between domestic and diaspora literature to gain a deeper understanding of the transformations of Iraqi identity.