Book contents
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- The Global Middle East
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Allure of the “Anti-modern”
- 2 De-politicizing Westoxification:
- 3 Ehsan Naraghi:
- 4 Iranian Cinema’s “Quiet Revolution” (1960s–1970s)
- 5 A Garden between Two Streets:
- 6 The Shah as a “Modern Mystic”?
- 7 The Imaginary Invention of a Nation:
- 8 An Elective Affinity:
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - De-politicizing Westoxification:
The Case of Bonyad Monthly*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2019
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- The Global Middle East
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Allure of the “Anti-modern”
- 2 De-politicizing Westoxification:
- 3 Ehsan Naraghi:
- 4 Iranian Cinema’s “Quiet Revolution” (1960s–1970s)
- 5 A Garden between Two Streets:
- 6 The Shah as a “Modern Mystic”?
- 7 The Imaginary Invention of a Nation:
- 8 An Elective Affinity:
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter presents the Iranian state’s anti-modern ideology in its “non-political” aspect, articulated intellectually in the discourse of “Westoxification” (gharbzadegi). The story highlights a strange irony: intellectuals, loyal to the Iranian state, precisely as it violently imposed “material” modernization upon society, collaborated with the state in providing a hospitable cultural space for a radical, anti-modern ideology. This chapter demonstrates how the Pahlavi state elite undermined themselves. Their fall resulted from an almost blind hostility to modern Western ideas and the embrace of an imagined Iranian spiritual superiority, posited politically as an alternative to the modern nation-building project.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Iran's Quiet RevolutionThe Downfall of the Pahlavi State, pp. 27 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019