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The Decolonial Aesthetics of Failure in Ali Hatami's Haji Washington (1982)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2025

Amirhossein Vafa Open the ORCID record for Amirhossein Vafa [Opens in a new window]
Amirhossein Vafa*
Affiliation:
Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Iran
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Based freely on the writings of Hoseyn Qoli Khān Nuri, Persia's first ambassador to the United States (1888–1889), Haji Washington (1982) was Ali Hatami's first feature film following the Islamic Revolution. This article explores Hatami's departure from historical record in light of his aesthetic and political appropriation of Nuri's image as a failure. Viewing the film through a methodology that recasts failure as decolonial praxis beyond post/colonial mastery, I argue that Haji's embrace of failure, and his ultimate adoption of relationality as a mode of worldliness, constitute a “decolonial aesthetics of failure” with broad implications for both the world of the narrative and the moment of the film's production in postrevolutionary Iran.

Keywords

Ali HatamiHaji WashingtonHoseyn Qoli Khān Nurifailuredecoloniality
Type
Article
Information
Iranian Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 17
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Iranian Studies

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