Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature, Arts and Humanities

Representation of Women's Intergenerational Silence in Contemporary Iranian Crime Literature: A Case Study of the Novels, The Young Skull and Jordan's Crime

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Reza Satari 1
Farahnaz Ghassemi nia 2

1 Associate Professor in Persian Language and Literature, Department of Persian Language and Literature, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

2 Ph.D Student in Persian Language and Literature and Graduate in Judicial Law, Department of Persian Language and Literature, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran (Corresponding Author)

https://doi.org/10.22077/islah.2026.9813.1695
Abstract
This study explores the representation of intergenerational silence of women within contemporary Iranian crime literature, a silence viewed as a symbolic act embodying collective psychic continuity and functioning as a cultural mechanism of survival. Grounded in trauma and intergenerational memory theories, and emphasizing the concepts advanced by Caruth, Hirsch, and LaCapra, silence is portrayed not as absence but as a complex narrative articulation of pain and re-enactment of suppressed memory. The research aims to investigate processes through which remembrance and the transmission of wounds redefine feminine identity against patriarchal and cultural hierarchies of power. Using a descriptive–analytical approach and an interdisciplinary method, the study examines the correlation between crime fiction and trauma psychology through feminist and generational lenses in the Iranian novels, The Young Skull and Jordan's Crime. Findings indicate that silence functions not as narrative closure but as a platform for the repetition of the unsaid and gradual recovery of wounded memory, an unseen language acting as resistance and reconstruction of collective identity. Ultimately, trauma, intersecting with silence and transgenerational transmission, opens the possibility of restoring feminine discourse and reconstituting fractured subjectivity, enabling repetition rather than cessation.

Keywords

intergenerational silence
trauma
feminist psychoanalysis
Iranian crime literature
Subjects
Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature, Arts and Humanities

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 01 April 2026

  • Receive Date 29 July 2025
  • Revise Date 23 December 2025
  • Accept Date 01 April 2026

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