Iranian Culture
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Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Iranian Culture Throughout modern Iranian history, culture has served as a means of imposing unity and cohesion onto society. The Pahlavi monarchs used it to project an image of Iran as an ancient civilization, reemerging as an equal to Western nations, while the revolutionaries deployed it to remake the country into an Islamic nation. Just as Iranian culture has been continually reinterpreted, the representations and avo- cations of Iranian identity vary among Iranians across the world. Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity demonstrates these fissures and the incompatibilities that refuse to be written out of national culture, analyzing works of literature, popular music, graphic art and film, as well as oral narratives. Using works produced before and after the 1979 revolution, created both inside and outside Iran, this study reveals neglected complexities and contradictions in the field of Iranian cultural production. It considers how contested claims to cul- ture, whether they originated in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, shape our under- standing of this culture and what spaces they create for new articulations of it, and in doing so offers an important reexamination of our collective concept of culture. This book would be an excellent resource for students and scholars of Middle East studies and Iranian studies, specifically Iranian culture, including film and contemporary literature and the Iranian diaspora. Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature and culture. She is author of Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History . Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Iranian Studies Edited by Homa Katouzian, University of Oxford and Mohamad Tavakoli, University of Toronto Since 1967 the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has been a lead- ing learned society for the advancement of new approaches in the study of Ira- nian society, history, culture, and literature. The new ISIS Iranian Studies series published by Routledge will provide a venue for the publication of original and innovative scholarly works in all areas of Iranian and Persianate Studies. 1 Journalism in Iran 7 Continuity in Iranian Identity From mission to profession Resilience of a cultural heritage Hossein Shahidi Fereshteh Davaran 2 Sadeq Hedayat 8 New Perspectives on Safavid Iran His work and his wondrous world Empire and society Edited by Homa Katouzian Edited by Colin P. Mitchell 3 Iran in the 21st Century 9 Islamic Tolerance Politics, economics and conflict Amīr Khusraw and pluralism Edited by Homa Katouzian and Alyssa Gabbay Hossein Shahidi 10 City of Knowledge in Twentieth 4 Media, Culture and Society Century Iran in Iran Shiraz, history and poetry Living with globalization and the Setrag Manoukian Islamic State 11 Domestic Violence in Iran Edited by Mehdi Semati Women, marriage and Islam Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Zahra Tizro 5 Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan 12 Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam Anomalous visions of history Qur’an, exegesis, messianism, and form and the literary origins of the Babi Wali Ahmadi religion Todd Lawson 6 The Politics of Iranian Cinema Film and society in the Islamic 13 Social Movements in Iran Republic Environmentalism and civil society Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad Simin Fadaee 14 Iranian-Russian Encounters 22 Nomads in Post-Revolutionary Empires and revolutions since 1800 Iran Edited by Stephanie Cronin The Qashqa’i in an era of change Lois Beck 15 Iran Politics, history and literature 23 Persian Language, Literature Homa Katouzian and Culture New leaves, fresh looks 16 Domesticity and Consumer Edited by Kamran Talattof Culture in Iran Interior Revolutions of the 24 The Daēva Cult in the Gāthās Modern Era An ideological archaeology of Pamela Karimi Zoroastrianism Amir Ahmadi 17 The Development of the Babi/ Baha’i Communities 25 The Revolutionary Guards in Exploring Baron Rosen’s Archives Iranian Politics Youli Ioannesyan Elites and shifting relations Bayram Sinkaya 18 Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah 26 Kirman and the Qajar Empire The Pahlavi state, new bourgeoisie Local dimensions of modernity in and the creation of a modern Iran, 1794–1914 society in Iran James M Gustafson Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner 27 The Thousand and One Borders 19 Recasting Iranian Modernity of Iran International relations and social Travel and identity change Fariba Adelkhah Kamran Matin 28 Iranian Culture 20 The Sīh-rōzag in Zoroastrianism Representation and identity A textual and historico-religious Nasrin Rahimieh analysis Enrico G. Raffaelli 29 The Historiography of Persian Architecture 21 Literary Subterfuge and Edited by Mohammad Gharipour Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Contemporary Persian Fiction Who writes Iran? Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Iranian Culture Representation and identity Nasrin Rahimieh Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Nasrin Rahimieh The right of Nasrin Rahimieh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rahimieh, Nasrin. Iranian culture : representation and identity / Nasrin Rahimieh. pages cm. — (Iranian studies ; 28) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Iran—Civilization. 2. Iran—Intellectual life. I. Title. DS266.R275 2016 955—dc23 2015007782 ISBN: 978-1-138-91378-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-69118-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 To the memory of my parents, Mahommad Rasoul Rahimieh and Oranous Hadidian, for teaching me that one could be at home in multiple languages and cultures Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Contents List of figures x Acknowledgments xi Note on transliteration xiii Introduction 1 1 Back to the future: time travel and Iranian identity 16 2 Shooting the past, staging the revolution 43 3 Stage managing the return of the repressed 62 4 From the displaced to the misplaced 84 5 The hen’s husband, or deterritorializations of Persian 104 6 Illuminating internal alterities 127 Conclusion 143 Index 151 Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Figures 1.1 Cover of Iraj Pezeshkzad’s novel Mashallah Khan dar bargah-e Harun al-Rashid 21 2.1 Googoosh LP album cover 50 3.1 Poster for Maxx 69 4.1 Simon Ordoubadi poster (Houman Mortazavi) 91 4.2 Simon Ordoubadi poster (Houman Mortazavi) 95 Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 Acknowledgments This book originated from my experiences as Maseeh Chair and Director, 2006– 2014, of the Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the Univer- sity of California, Irvine. I am grateful for the opportunities this Center afforded me to engage with students, colleagues, and members of the Iranian American community. The Maseeh Chair endowment, generously established by the Mas- siah Foundation, greatly enabled my research. I reserve a special recognition for Dr. Fariborz Maseeh, the founding benefactor of the Center. I would like to also acknowledge my fellow colleagues at the Center, Touraj Daryaee and Hossein Omoumi, and the Center’s manager, Angélica Enríquez, who were part of the eight-year journey that resulted in this book. The Center’s multidisciplinary projects that brought intellectuals, scholars, writ- ers, filmmakers, and artists together were particularly enriching for me. I thank Mazyar Lotfalian for his support in their design and execution. Mike Fischer, Kim and Mike Fortun, and George Marcus provided crucial intellectual support and helped carve out a space for reimagining the study of Iran. I am grateful for their intellectual support and guidance. Shervin Emami, Sharareh Frouzesh, Philip Grant, Allia Ida Griffin, Alexan- der Jabbari, Monica Katiboglu, Shadee Malaklou, Ali Meghdadi, Ghada Mourad, Leila Pazargadi, Mohammad Rafi, Guilan Siassi, Amy Tahani-Bidmeshki, Parisa Vaziri, and Kyle Wanberg at UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, and UC San Diego have all contributed to the development of my ideas. Our exchanges in graduate semi- nars, conferences, and symposia were part of the process that shaped this inquiry. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Kyle Wanberg and Sharareh Frouzesh for Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:56 05 August 2016 including me in the writing group they initiated in the summer of 2011 that served as a valuable forum for working through drafts. This book came into its own during the last four years of my mother’s life when she divided her time between California and Alberta. Her needs, she sometimes worried, would prevent me from writing this book. She had taken care of her ailing mother for nine years and she knew well the demands of caregiving.