Description
Book SynopsisOffering a new perspective on Iran''s politics and culture in the 1960s and 1970s, Ali Mirsepassi challenges the prevailing view of pre-Revolution Iran, documenting how the cultural elites of the Pahlavi State promoted a series of striking ''Gharbzadegi'' or ''Westoxification'' discourses. Intended as ideological alternatives to modern and Western-inspired cultural attitudes, these influenced Persian identity politics, and projected Iranian modernity as a ''mistaken modernity'' despite the regime''s own ferocious modernisation programme. Focusing on the cultural transformations which defined the period, Mirsepassi sheds new light on the Pahlavi State as an ideological gambler, inadvertently empowering its fundamentalist enemies and spreading a ''quiet revolution'' through secular and religious civil society. Proposing a new theoretical framework for understanding the anti-modern discourses of Ahmad Fardid, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and Ali Shari''ati, Iran''s Quiet Revolution is a radical re-i
Trade Review'Mirsepassi interprets the Pahlavi monarchy's collapse during the 1979 revolution as resulting from internal tensions, which originated among Iranian cultural and political elites seeking a merger of Persian and Shi'a traditions while rejecting a vision of corrupt materialistic Westernization to achieve a purified spiritualism … Recommended.' D. A. Meier, Choice
Table of ContentsIntroduction. The Quiet Revolution; 1. The 'Anti-Modern' allure; 2. De-politicizing Westoxification: the case of 'Bonyad monthly'; 3. Ehsan Naraghi: chronicle of a man for all seasons; 4. Iranian cinema's 'Quiet Revolution '(1960s-70s); 5. 'Bearing witness' to Iranian modernities; 6. The Shah: a modern mystic?; 7. The imaginary invention of a nation: Iran in 1930s and 1970s; 8. An elective affinity: variations of Gharbzadegi.
