This article focuses on Reza Amir Khani’s The Stateless ─ Bivatan ─ (2008) in an attempt to find out whether Amir Khani reflects mulicultural policies or criticizes them. To this end, two major themes of “othering” and “democracy” are examined through the perspective of cultural studies and the deployment of Žižek’s theory of the post-political world. It is argued that Amir Khani offers an anti-narrative in which the hybridity of racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural notions does not imply the collapse of liberal humanism’s meta-narrative of ‘self/other’; on the contrary, it offers a front to protect liberal capitalism. Such a world is discussed to be a version of Žižek’s post-political society where ‘exile’ is the basic condition of post-globalization, and ‘capital’ instead of ‘geography’ does the map-making. In this world, Democracy is presented not only as a masque for the current hierarchical system but also as a deliberate strategy to deny ‘recognition’ to post-global exiles.
 
Extended Abstract
 
1. Introduction
While multiculturalism is believed to have developed simultaneously with the advent of globalism in the second half of the 20th century, rarely has the world witnessed the collapse of geographical, cultural and racial boundaries, on the one hand, and the breakup of national and ethnic identities, on the other hand, as it does today. This has resulted in ambivalence and hybridity in the West, as inseparable elements of postmodern life. Yet, it seems that the West is still obsessed with its colonial discourse and treats minorities based on the Hegelian master-slave system. Following the September 11 events, with the onset of the so-called “war on terror” policy in the West, conflicts were reduced from cultural-racial wars to wars between religions and led to the “double otherness” of minorities – especially Muslims – and their visibility. Writers and critics have been concerned with multiculturalism globally and challenged the post-political world. Reza Amirkhani is among the first Iranian writers to have focused on contradictions in multiculturalism in the form of migrant literature and dealt with it in his novel Bivatan [The Stateless] (2008).
 
2. Theoretical Framework
The present article draws on the New Left discourse – especially the ideas of Slavoj Žižek and Giorgio Agamben as two prominent figures – which was developed in the late 20th century to criticize the discourse of multiculturalism. This discourse, by deconstructing democracy as a lever used by the power discourse to suppress “the other”, tries to introduce multiculturalism as a new version of the colonial discourse, which instead of employing violence, politicizes cultural differences based on the liberal humanist discourse. The ideas of postcolonial critics, such as Homi Bhabha, are also relied on in the present study as the ideas of both group of thinkers overlap in many ways.
 
3. Methodology
In the present study the multicultural approach and ideas of New Left critics are adopted to discuss the concept of the non-Western “other”. By rereading the text of the novel, the author tries to deconstruct the power discourse and open up a new intellectual horizon to the West from the viewpoint of “the other”.
 
4. Findings and Discussion
Reza Amirkhani’s Bivatan can be regarded as an account of the life of a man who, impressed by propaganda and scientific progress of the West, seeks “life” in the US but is eventually sentenced to “death”, in the figurative meaning of losing all values, freedom and humanity, because of the crime of “otherness”. This novel is in fact a representation of the contemporary society of the post-political era in which the capitalist system has been able to replace older concepts such as “ethnicity”, “nationality” and “identity” with modern myths such as “multiculturalism”, “democracy” and “citizen rights” and thus develop new criteria for the evaluation of personal, cultural and social values, which are based on “utilitarianism”, “relativity” and hierarchical relationships.
 
5. Conclusion
The US described by Amirkhani represents a society that, contrary to its claims regarding freedom and democracy, is police-dominated and controlling. In such a society, which is revolves around the imperialistic “self/other” dichotomy, the “other” is always a threat that should be controlled at any price so that the civilized Western “self” is not endangered. Tyranny and suppression are inseparable from this society and the main prerequisite for accepting people is adapting oneself to American logic and Western values. In fact, this represents the commitment of American society to maintaining the colonial logic that is reflected in the speech made by George W. Bush, following the September 11 Attack:  “either with us or against us”.