Rhetoric of Feminine Narrative Discourse in Batool Al-Khudiairi’s “Ghayib” (Absent): An Applied Approach

Abstract

Batool Al-Khudiairi’s “Ghayib” (Absent) documents the economic embargo
period and the dramatic changes witnessed by the Iraqi society. The author tried
to embod the historic, social, cultural, and psychological aspects of the society.
Over such documentation, she focused on the memory of the untalked of, which
seems to be lacking historical origins: daily life, instincts, and other direct
occupations of individuals. Thus, she documented the active history; a term used
by Michel Foucault to describe the memory that deals with events in their unique
characteristics and its sharp edged aspects. It documented how the human soul
was ruined by being crushed in the grinder of the economic embargo enforced by
external powers. All of such narration is made from a feminine point of view,
giving it an additional uniqueness in the midst of that commotion and that
breakdown and construction.
The study deliberately treated the narrative discourse components on the basis
of how rhetorical means are utilized and the ensuing use of denotations, making
use of the efforts of contemporary researchers who had not limited rhetorical
treatment to poetic discourse, especially the researcher, Mohammed Anqar, a
pioneer in the novel rhetoric study project, and Mohammed Mishbal.
The study pinpointed the most prominent rhetorical techniques in the novel
elements with narrative function. The selection of such elements was made on
the basis of their centralization of use, first, and how they formed a focal point to
which other kinds or rhetoric techniques used in this or that element were
connected. Thereupon, the study consisted of three chapters. Chapter one
focused on metaphors in the spatial element, being the main type on which other
used rhetoric kinds were built. Chapter two dealt with the technique of brevity
and laconism and circumlocution in the temporal element. Finally, chapter three
revolved around the rhetoric of the artistic image. It consisted of two main parts:
(a) similes and their narrative functions, (b) metaphor and antonomasia. The
study ended with a conclusion summarizing the most prominent results reached.