FARZIN VAHDAT God and Juggernaut: Iran's Intellectual

126 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 39 (2007)

process of modernization going on, it nonetheless is a language with an uneasy relationship to the contemporary world (p. 110). Although Classical Arabic is “natural” to some writers—Haeri mentions Taha Hussein as a prime example (p. 110)—for most people, writing is translating the “self” into a written language that is far less contemporary than their natural mother tongue. Preventing Egyptian Arabic from becoming a language of writing and self-expression creates an uncertain relationship with its own contemporaneity (pp. 149–50). And, the author concludes, because “the language that is used by speakers to produce and construct a large part of Egypt’s contemporaneity is not allowed to develop while the other language over whose contemporaneity there continue to be unending struggles remains the official language . . . , there is an abiding and deeply conflicted sensibility toward just what Egypt’s contemporaneity is and should be” (p. 157). The core of the book investigates the division between Classical and Egyptian Arabic from different angles; the monograph comprises six chapters, including a general introduction (chapter 1) and a conclusion (chapter 6). Chapter 2 deals with the attitude toward the use of Classical Arabic in daily life, mainly based on interviews with Egyptians from different social layers. In chapter 3, the production of printed texts is focal—especially the role of editors and correctors in the process; chapter 4 deals with the written language of Egypt’s most important newspaper, al-Ahram, as well as with articles about Arabic published by that same newspaper. Very revealing in this respect is the author’s study of the various ways that spoken words are converted into written language. For this, she explores the representation of interviews with the Egyptian president Mubarak, novelist Naguib Mahfouz, actor Omar Sharif, and comedian Adel Imam. The penultimate chapter, chapter 5, returns to the subject of language attitude and examines the views of authors, poets, journalists, and publishers who were interviewed (among whom is the most famous Egyptian publisher and bookseller, Madbouli). The language of school textbooks, the short life of a journal in Egyptian Arabic, censorship, and the role of politics are dealt with as well in this chapter under the general heading of “Persistent Dilemmas.” The conclusion in chapter 6 is followed by notes, a bibliography, and a general index. In all, the book is a welcome contribution to the field of Arabic linguistics.

DOI: 10.1017.S002074380639109X FARZIN VAHDAT, God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002). Pp. 283. $35.95 cloth. $19.95 paper.

REVIEWED BY ROBERT D. LEE, Political Science Department, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo.; e-mail: [email protected]

The Pahlavis pursued a distorted vision of modernity, neglecting the development of the autonomous, self-determining individual in favor of the construction of a rationalist, self- determining, authoritarian state. The clerics who have replaced the Pahlavis have rejected positivistic conceptions of modernity but have adopted another form of certainty that is no less, or only slightly less, demeaning to individual autonomy. Farzin Vahdat blames Iranian intellectuals, who have, in his view, undervalued the place of individual freedom and overvalued positivistic understandings of modernity. The argument depends upon conceptions of modernity that Vahdat attributes to Kant and Hegel. For him, the idea of modernity originates in Kant’s assertion that truth emerges not from God or nature but from the human will. The idea gives rise to a profound ambiguity that plagues Europe and the rest of the world including Iran. On the one hand, Kant asserts the

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ability of the mind to formulate truthful propositions of universal validity. Hegel understands history as a dialectic of ideas producing ever greater degrees of truth. Together Kant and Hegel open the way toward the models of modernity characteristic of Marx, Weber, and a succession of sociologists. (Vahdat is himself a sociologist trained at Brandeis.) Modernity means a rationalization of society. A modernizing ruler is one who transforms society according to the universal rule of reason. On the other hand, the Kantian revolution spurred a development of individualism—what Vahdat calls “universalizable subjectivism”—that underlies the development of liberalism. Au- tonomous individuals may not, and often do not, concur in the “rationality” of decisions taken in the name of modernization. They may prefer liberty over progress and even culture over convenience. Vahdat interprets the intellectual history of Iran in the past century as an ef- fort to reconcile these two conflicting dimensions of modernity. (In an appendix, he shows how European philosophers, such as Althusser, Adorno, and Habermas, have dealt with the problem.) Vahdat thus accounts for the tribulations of Iran in terms of a philosophical dilemma found in the works of Kant and Hegel but not peculiarly European by virtue of that fact, notwithstanding the view of Orientalists and Pahlavis that modernity is a European product to be exported or imported. Vahdat claims Iranians were “unique” in the non-European world in their efforts to tangle with modernity at a fundamental, philosophical level, but it would take quite a different book to support that claim. His claim that the Islamic Republic has not found a unique solution to the philosophical dilemma stands up much better. To do this sort of analysis is to give great weight to ideas and the intellectuals who propound them. They take precedence over statesmen, foreign operatives, military adventurers, demagogues, entrepreneurs, Islamists, and fortuna in explaining the course of Iranian history. Not surprisingly Vahdat cites Gramsci. God and Juggernaut, the title of the book, suggests a struggle against dual hegemonies: the determinism of religion and the positivism of modernity. It is the intellectuals who must battle to restore human agency. After an introductory chapter devoted to the development of European thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, Vahdat treats Malkum Khan, Kermani, Akhundzadeh, Talebuf, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. In each case, he provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an analysis of the thinker’s relative emphasis on “positivist subjectivity” and “universalizable subjectivity.” However awkward and academic these terms, the author has achieved remarkable clarity in the exposition. The systematic treatment of the themes makes disparate systems of thought, although briefly presented, comprehensible to the reader. A chapter entitled “The Eclipse of Universalizable Subjectivity and the Quest for a Col- lective Subject,” analyzes Iranian positivists (Iranshar and Kasravi); socialists such as Tabari, Jazani, and Ahmadzadeh; and idiosyncratic thinkers such as Maleki, Al-e Ahmad, Naraqi, and Shayegan. Most of these thinkers put the need for modernizing society ahead of the need to cultivate autonomous individuals. The author devotes the final pair of substantive chapters to revolutionary and postrevolutionary Islamic discourses. Vahdat finds that Ali Shariati, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Ayatollah Motahhari all resort to something he calls “mediated subjectivity.” Human beings participate in subjectivity by means of God, who is the ultimate subject of all thought and action. Are human beings genuinely autonomous agents or do their thoughts and actions reflect God’s will? Free will is an ancient theological problem, and Vahdat finds no satisfactory resolution in revolutionary Islamic discourse. The Iranian constitution itself bears the marks of contradictory allegiance to the will of the people and the will of God. Vahdat discovers hope in the postrevolutionary discourse of Abdolkarim Sorush. “Sorush’s political thought continues to evolve. Yet, his discourse seems to have set the stage for achieving subjectivity at a universal level without, one must hope, falling into the positivist

trap.” (p. 211). Vahdat judges the thought of Reza Davari-Ardakani, another postrevolutionary thinker, as antimodern in its embrace of mysticism. Vahdat accepts the secularist dimension of positivism even while he resists its tendency to undervalue the individual. By virtue of its dogged pursuit of a plausible and stimulating hypothesis, this book helps a reader make sense of disparate elements in the Iranian intellectual tradition. It puts the Iranian dialogue in the context of a broader philosophical debate about modernity and constitutes a useful complement to Boroujerdi’s Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Tri- umph of Nativism (Syracuse University Press, 1996) and Tavakoli-Targhi’s Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography (Palgrave, 2001).

DOI: 10.1017.S0020743806391106 MINOO MOALLEM, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005). Pp. 278. $60.00 cloth. $24.95 paper. AFSANEH NAJMABADI, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005). Pp. 377. $60.00 cloth. $24.95 paper.

REVIEWED BY NORMA CLAIRE MORUZZI, Department of Political Science and Program in Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago; e-mail: [email protected]

During the 2005 MESA meeting in Washington, D.C., a panel on gender and borders in Iran and the region included an unexpected digression on the difficulties of doing research in Iran since the revolution. A member of the audience raised the issue during the discussion period, and panelists and audience members alike suddenly found themselves venting their frustrations over visas, minders, and other bureaucratic obstacles. The discussion quickly returned to the more specific topics of the presented papers, but the digression itself was illuminating. It is hard for scholars based outside to manage the research context in Iran, whether for fieldwork or archival studies. Writing on modern and contemporary Iran involves an extra handicap, and thus also requires an extra push in order to achieve the normal scholarly goal of a well-conceptualized study substantiated with careful empirical detail. The two books being reviewed here both reflect this difficulty with research and writing on Iran. Minoo Moallem’s Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister is a sophisticated analysis of the competing discourses of Islamic fundamentalism and feminism, but it lacks equivalently developed empirical grounding. With regard to a contemporary social polity with a notorious split between officially sanctioned religious/political discourse and popular perceptions and behavior, this is a problem. Afsaneh Najmabadi’s Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards displays the opposite tendency: it provides a wealth of historical, social, and cultural detail about 19th- and early 20th-century gender and sexual roles but lacks almost any theoretical conception of social power. In a book attempting to present an argument about the changing roles of the genders within the development of a modern national identity and related social movements, this is also a problem. Moallem’s book places the Iranian case within the theoretical context of postcolonial and postmodern gender studies. Najmabadi’s book brings sexuality studies and queer theory to bear on the history of Iranian national political identity. For Moallem, the theoretical context overwhelms a rather thin analysis of contemporary social life, and the specific Iranian examples remain underdeveloped. For Najmabadi, an abbreviated social theory nonetheless overwhelms the archival work and drags the argument over the cliff of wishful thinking.