2 - Reflecting on an Idealized Past

Summary

My purpose in this chapter is to concentrate on the individual’s own remembrance of the past and how she renews memories to move history forward in accordance with her own imagination, as well as on the broader constraints and opportunities that shape her present life. The interaction that takes place between individual and collective remembrance requires further attention in the social sciences and within memory studies. This trend permits the formation of a distorted conceptualisation of how change occurs and at times results in overinvesting in a linear progression of history. I marshal various sources of evidence – including a special issue published by a Hezbollah cultural institute, some of the analysed articles from which are not publicly accessible – to argue this: at least one reading of Iranian women’s conceptualisation of their status and formation of rights, roles, and responsibilities in the post-revolutionary era is its nonlinearity and connection to individual goals and memories. I contextualise women’s own words from memoirs and other texts within long-term histories of activism in modern Iran and consider the conditions, structural spaces, and opportunities that made their acts of citizenship visible, and, at times, invisible.