Historical Fantasy: exploring the Spectrums of Fetishism and Nostalgia in Sadeq Hedayat's <i>The Blind Owl</i>

Abstract This article explores the interplay between the individual and the collective in The Blind Owl and illustrates how a distinctive historical perspective emerges from its complex allegorical form. A close reading of the novel reveals how the text superimposes biographical and cultural pasts through the juxtaposition of sexual fetishism and nostalgia, presenting both as symptoms of a fraught relationship with one’s infantile and cultural histories. The article reads The Blind Owl as a satirical critique of a figure whose conflicting desires to commemorate and forget the past drive a series of fetishistic behaviors, culminating in failure. Ultimately, the novel offers a cynical reflection on the nationalist nostalgia cultivated by traditionalist intelligentsia within the peripheral modernity of early twentieth-century Iran.