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“Neither Ākhūnd nor Fukulī”: Munāzirah and the Discourse of Iranian Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hamid Rezaeiyazdi
Hamid Rezaeiyazdi*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between “traditionalists” and “modernists”—the main categories comprised of related sub-headings such as “Islamist” versus “secular,” “reactionary” versus “revolutionary,” and “regressive” versus “progressive.” Following this binaristic approach, Iranian adaptations of modernity have often been (de)historicized as a theatre of national “awakening” resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the obstinate resistance of traditional reactionaries, a confrontation between two purportedly well-defined and mutually exclusive camps. Such reductionist dialectics has generally overwritten the dialogic narrative of Iranian modernity, a conflicted dialogue misrepresented as a conflicting dialectic. It has also silenced an important feature of Iranian modernity: the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of tradition with modernity. The monāzereh (disputation or debate) is the account of the interaction between rival discourses that engaged in opposing, informing, and appropriating each other in the process of adapting modernity. Narrativizing the history of Iranian modernity as the conflict between mutually exclusive binaries overlooks its hyphenated, liminal identity—a narrative of adaptation rather than wholesale adoption, of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, of dialogics rather than dialectics. The monāzereh is the account of modern Iranian histories.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 5: Special Issue: Dedicated to Homa Katouzian , September 2016 , pp. 855 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society For Iranian Studies 2016

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article entitled “The Dialogical Tradition of Iranian Modernity: Monazereh, Simultaneity, and the Making of Modern Iran” was published in Iranian Studies 49, no. 3 (May 2016):327–57.

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