Persistence as Survival: Agamben’s Rereading of the Body and Memory in the Novel I Love ‎Manchester United by Mehdi Yazdani Khorram

This study, relying on the theoretical framework of Giorgio Agamben, the contemporary Italian ‎philosopher, reexamines the concept of "persistence" in the novel I Love Manchester United by ‎Mehdi Yazdani Khorram. Agamben, through concepts such as the state of exception, bare life, ‎testimony, and embodied memory, demonstrates that the suspension of law reduces humans ‎from citizens to bare life, stripped of official protection; a life that continues solely through the ‎body and tangible experience. In light of this perspective, Yazdani Khorram’s novel, with its ‎fragmented structure and polyphonic narratives, presents an image of Tehran at historical ‎turning points such as September 1941 and winter 1952. The characters’ bodies—like the ‎student ill with history, the old man from Dezful, the murdered woman in the square, the ‎accidental wrestler, the crying worker murderer, and the fat man collaborating with the Nazis—‎serve as a "living archive" and carry the memory of resistance or subjugation. These bodies, by ‎continuing to live amid chaos, reveal a new form of persistence that, according to Agamben’s ‎logic, is "survival in the state of exception." The research method is qualitative, analytical-‎interpretive, and based on combining Agamben’s concepts with the phenomenology of the ‎body. The aim is to transfer the concept of persistence from the level of ideology and heroism ‎to the level of appearance and embodiment, where the continuation of life and memory itself ‎counts as an act of resistance.