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Dismembering and Re -membering the Beloved: How the Civil Code Remade Marriage and Marriage Remade Love

in Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran

This chapter examines how two canonical novels influenced the reforms of the 1931 Marriage Law and the 1936 Mandatory Unveiling Act: Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl and Bozorg Alavi's Her Eyes. It ... More

This chapter examines how two canonical novels influenced the reforms of the 1931 Marriage Law and the 1936 Mandatory Unveiling Act: Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl and Bozorg Alavi's Her Eyes. It explains that these novels share a similar interest in revising marriage as a plot element which can dramatically rewrite reality and influenced the marriage reforms by making a distinction between two types of marriage, hierogamy and wedlock. The chapter also argues that they share a common preoccupation with the fraught transformation of the figure of the beloved of classical poetry into a public, heterosexual partner and precursor to the role of wife.Less

The Road to Officialdom

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi

in The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation

Chapter 7 covers the rise of dislocative nationalism in the aftermath of the constitutional period and the rise of the Pahlavi state. It shows how dislocative nationalism, initially a marginal ... More

Chapter 7 covers the rise of dislocative nationalism in the aftermath of the constitutional period and the rise of the Pahlavi state. It shows how dislocative nationalism, initially a marginal doctrine, became part of the official Pahlavi ideology.Less

The Master Essayist

Hamid Dabashi

in The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad

Our conclusions towards the end of the last chapter open up new ways of thinking about Al-e Ahmad’s prose and politics as we move steadily towards considering his legacy for the posterity of a ... More

Our conclusions towards the end of the last chapter open up new ways of thinking about Al-e Ahmad’s prose and politics as we move steadily towards considering his legacy for the posterity of a post-Islamist liberation theology. The question of gender remains central and even definitive to the moral imperative of that liberation theology. If that liberation theology will remain pathologically masculinist and its politics ignorant of the gendered disposition of being a Muslim, let alone an intellectual, then that liberation could never shed its reactionary disposition. It is of course absolutely necessary and indispensable for women of different classes and races to be integral to the social and political disposition of that liberation – in the formation of the very public sphere upon which that theology is to be articulated.Less

Before “Paul Smaïl”

Christopher L. Miller

in Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity

As part three of Impostors begins, the enigma and problematic identities of Jack-Alain Léger (né Daniel-Louis Théron) are introduced, and his various pseudonyms are reviewed. His Paul Smaïl hoax was ... More

As part three of Impostors begins, the enigma and problematic identities of Jack-Alain Léger (né Daniel-Louis Théron) are introduced, and his various pseudonyms are reviewed. His Paul Smaïl hoax was among the most audacious acts of intercultural impersonation in France in the twentieth century, and once exposed it provoked outrage. The thirty-eight novels and autobiographical books by this author are reviewed, in an attempt to account for the many common threads and obsessions that run through his works.Less