عنوان

Debating Iranians: The discursive practice of Munāzirah and the making of Modern Iran

Number

TL48868

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Debating Iranians: The discursive practice of Munāzirah and the making of Modern Iran

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Hamid Rezaei Yazdi

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Toronto (Canada)

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2015

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

254

Text of Note

Committee members: Brookshaw, Dominic; Downes, Paul; Hassanpour, Amir; Reilly, James; Sandler, Rivanne

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-92674-2

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

Body granting the degree

University of Toronto (Canada)

Text preceding or following the note

2015

Text of Note

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between 'traditionalists' and 'modernists.' Following this binaristic approach, early demands for reform within the country have often been (de)historicized as a theatre of national 'awakening' resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the 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. Historical evidence suggests that in fact the heated debate over the definition of being modern and the limits of modernization was often conducted on the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of Islam with modern civilization. This defining feature of Iranian modernity has been silenced in scholarship that views modernity as the dialectic, and diametric, opposition of the old and the new. The genre that recorded the dialogue of rival discourses, the munāzirah (debate or disputation), draws on a long-standing tradition in classical and religious literature. However, in the modern era the munāzirah gradually transformed from a polemic between the mentor and the disciple, the wise and the haughty, to a debate between competing discourses which engaged in opposing, informing, appropriating, and complementing each other. Beyond its narrative manifestation in the form of treatises, the discursive practice of the munāzirah was also present in social practices, official policies, intellectual endeavours, and cultural expressions. In each of these articulations, rival discourses had to vie for legitimacy, often with the shared but ambiguous sentiment that there is no fundamental difference between east-Islam and west-civilization. The binaries so central to the contemporary studies of modern Iranian history disintegrate into overlapping hybrids when put in historical perspective. The munāzirah is the account of modern Iranian histories.

Middle Eastern literature; Middle Eastern history; Middle Eastern studies; Articulation; Narratives

Subject Term

Language, literature and linguistics;Social sciences;Constitutional revolution;Dialogism;Iranian modernity;Modern Iranian history;Modern Iranian literature;Munazirah

Mallick, Suman

Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad

Subdivision

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

University of Toronto (Canada)

Call Number

1811409463; 10134179

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y