SECULAR VERSUS SACRED POWER POLITICS: A FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ORHAN PAMUK’S NOVEL SNOW

Abstract

Creative works fabricate fictional worlds with the use of imagination but they also incorporate the figments of intricate realities around human beings. In this sense, these fictional narratives transcend the boundary of the field of Humanities and provide case studies to examine real life happenings which have implications for the discipline of Social Sciences. This paper contends that a Foucauldian discourse analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow (2004) illustrates the religious and political realities of contemporary world in a poetic manner. It can be read both as a literary piece of work and as a real life document to study the altercation between the sacred and secular forces in contemporary era. Currently, the global peace situation is suffering on the pretext of extremism emanating from both secular and sacred fundamentalism. Many countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria are facing militancy, terrorism and civil wars due to the tussle between these two forces. Fictional accounts of such real life realities, such as Pamuk’s novel Snow, provide valuable insights which help in comprehending these complex social phenomena Therefore, this is an interdisciplinary investigation which simultaneously conducts hermeneutic textual analysis of a literary text and also adds on to the field of politics of religion in contemporary milieu. The paper contends that prevailing ideology in the novel as well as of the contemporary world is neither religious fundamentalism nor secularism but the overriding discourse is the ‘power-play’ between these two gigantic forces which are manipulating masses all around the world.