A Sociological Reading of Alireza Seifoddini’s Novel Kham through Lucien Goldmann’s Genetic Structuralism

Abstract

Alireza Seifoddini’s novel Kham (1985) is one of the notable examples of philosophical and social fiction produced in the post-Revolutionary period, presenting a reflection of the consciousness of a defeated intellectual. In this work, the author adopts an introspective and metaphorical perspective to portray the relationship among the human being, faith, and history within a dreamlike and uncanny atmosphere. Drawing on Lucien Goldmann’s theory of genetic structuralism, the present study seeks to demonstrate how Kham, at the linguistic, narrative, and social levels, exhibits a structural homology with the external structure of Iran’s intellectual milieu during the 1980s. At the linguistic level, dense and symbolic vocabulary reflects an enclosed and constrained mentality; at the narrative level, fragmentation and philosophical reflections signify the stagnation of collective consciousness; and at the social level, the impasse of ideals is reproduced within the closed structure of society. The findings indicate that Kham is not merely an expression of individual experience, but rather the crystallization of the collective worldview of a generation that, in its search for meaning and freedom, retreated into silence and inwardness. The study concludes that the breakdown of narrative in this novel reflects the historical failure of intellectualism in contemporary Iran.