Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran

by Ali Mirsepassi

• ISBN13: 9780521650007
• ISBN10: 0521650003
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: modernity and ``culture''	1	(1)
Identifying a tension	1	(4)
Problems in the discourse of development	5	(5)
Recovering the local: the Iranian Revolution	10	(2)
The trajectory of the work	12	(3)
Western narratives of modernity	15	(39)
Introduction	15	(1)
Orientalism and the Occidentalist discontent	15	(3)
Montesquieu's Persian Letters	18	(6)
Hegel: the colonization of world history	24	(12)
Karl Marx: the materialist narrative of modernity	36	(4)
The ``popularization'' of the Islamic Other	40	(12)
Conclusion	52	(2)
Reconciling with the West's Other	54	(11)
Introduction	54	(1)
The Mashruteh movement: reconciliation through capitulation	55	(10)
The crisis of secularism and the rise of political Islam	65	(31)
Introduction	65	(1)
The decline of democratic secularism (1941-53)	66	(7)
Modernization and its discontent	73	(6)
The politicization of Shi'ism	79	(5)
Reform in Shi'i institutions	84	(10)
Conclusion	94	(2)
Islam as a modernizing ideology: Al-e Ahmad and Shari'ati	96	(33)
Introduction	96	(1)
Al-e Ahmad: ``return'' to the ``roots''	97	(17)
Ali Shari'ati: Islamic ideology as an authentic discourse	114	(13)
Conclusion	127	(2)
German intellectuals and the culture of modernity	129	(30)
Introduction	129	(2)
The German context	131	(6)
The ``discourse of authenticity'' in Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Junger	137	(9)
Martin Heidegger	146	(9)
Conclusion	155	(4)
The tragedy of the Iranian Left	159	(21)
Introduction	159	(1)
A brief history of socialist movements	160	(4)
The Revolution and the Left	164	(7)
The social bases and composition of the Left	171	(4)
Critiques of the Left	175	(2)
A response to the critiques	177	(3)
Modernities of our time	180	(14)
The ``Islamic mind''	180	(6)
Modernization and the survival of cultures	186	(3)
Predicament of secularism	189	(2)
Theoretical and political implications	191	(3)
Notes	194	(22)
Bibliography	216	(8)
Index	224