Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism PDF
Preview Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism
INSURGENT, POET, MYSTIC, SECTARIAN SUNY series in Global Modernity —————— Arif Dirlik, editor INSURGENT, POET, MYSTIC, SECTARIAN The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism JASON BAHBAK MOHAGHEGH Cover art: The Sectarian, photographic collage by RLS, used with permission. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2015 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Eileen Nizer Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mohaghegh, Jason Bahbak, [date]. Insurgent, poet, mystic, sectarian : the four masks of an eastern postmodernism / Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh. pages cm. — (SUNY series in global modernity) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5611-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4384-5612-6 (ebook) 1. Postmodernism (Literature) 2. Persian literature—Western influences. I. Title. PN98.P67M64 2015 808'.9113—dc23 2014020304 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my father, Hamid Mohaghegh . . . Contents Introduction: Modernity—Age of Extremity 1 Part I. Insurgent Chapter 1 Theorizing the Insurgent: Otherless Subjectivity, Radical Coldness, and the East-West Matrix 31 Chapter 2 Images of Resistance: Media, Modernity, and the Machine Within Iranian Revolutionary Ideology 81 Part II. Poet Chapter 3 The Poetics of Urban Violence: The Night Raid, the Martyred Body, and the Execution Spectacle 117 Chapter 4 Will to Chaos: Iranian Avant-Garde Literature and Western Thought 139 Part III. Mystic Chapter 5 Vision, Disappearance, and the Soundscape: New-Wave Iranian Cinema and the Postmodern Pack 213 viii Contents Part IV. Sectarian Chapter 6 Sectarianism I: And They Shall Dream of the Enemy 243 Chapter 7 Sectarianism II: Final Delineations of the Sect 275 Notes 303 Index 325 Introduction Modernity—Age of Extremity It is in this way, perhaps, that I discovered from the beginning the shadow of the devil lay waiting in ambush for me. —Ahmad Shamlu, “In the Struggle with Silence” Beneath the heavy tides of a mythology titled “the modern age,” and with its hired executioner “Western civilization” always close at hand, the so- called peripheries have succeeded in constructing four faces (or perhaps four masks) to combat the otherwise smooth procession of a death wish. These four existential prototypes—the insurgent, the poet, the mystic, and the sectarian—have served such “Eastern” or “Middle Eastern” adversaries well in their attempt to sabotage and dispute the moment. In the same fashion that they have rotated throughout the past century from one fix- ture of this subjectivity-constellation to another, so will this text slide between such hostile and relaxed patterns, trying on its different uniforms and attires, before finding itself at the threshold of another epochal rift.1 To decode the greater fictive duel between the East and the West in our time, this book explores the precise ways in which Middle Eastern thought has staged its own distinctive experiment to reverse, dethrone, or supersede the question of modernity. It therefore tracks some of the most compelling responses, engagements, and challenges offered primar- ily by Iranian (though alongside Arab, Turkish, North African, Armenian, Afghani, Chechen, and Kurdish) thinkers and artists of the last several decades, investigating their profound reinventions of individual and col- lective identity in the wake of these new transformative currents of the contemporary era. To this end, the book extends its focus across several volatile dimensions of the Middle Eastern experience, including voices 1
The list of books you might like
