Alienation on Move: The Postmodern Status of Estrangement in Elif Shafak’s

Abstract

Alienation is mainly conceptualized as being the sense of detachment from self and social groups, and also as a loss of sense of belonging. It is distancing oneself from experiencing crystallized totality both in the social world and within the self. This paper investigates how various discourses construct such sense of estrangement in ways of which they produce norms and limits as being original and essential to human existence. Therefore, individuals feel alienated when they lose belonging and membership for being exposed to such discourses. The paper, thus, puts postmodern theories in dialogue with these specific discourses to rethink and deconstruct the notion of alienation. In light of this, it analyses Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love (2011), thereby exploring the postmodern portrayals of home, nation, culture, and religion. Consequently, this paper interrogates and demonstrates the method whereby this selected novel gives birth to a positive alienation by means of proposing transnationality, multiplicity, spirituality and global citizenship as alternatives to stagnant dogmatic discourses.