This paper seeks to theorize and delineate the contours of “The Idea of a Return to Self” [Ideh-ye Bazgasht beh Khish], a discourse that emerged in the years between the 1953 coup d’états and the Islamic revolution of 1979. “A Return to Self” was the Iranian version of the discourse of authenticity, which swept across many “Third World” countries in the 1950s. This discourse, led to a widespread anti-colonial uprising that resulted in the independence of more than thirty countries in the global south. In Iran, however, despite its wide appeal among several groups and parties, “the Idea of a Return to Self” has remained neglected, avoided, and even brushed off without due scrutiny. The main purpose of this paper is to fill that gap in the literature. I will first identify Jalal-Al-e Ahmad, Ali Shariati, Ehsan Naraqi, and Dariush Shayegan as the championing promulgators of “A Return to Self” and then suggest that, based on my in-depth examination of the texts they have produced, “A Return to Self” is not altogether regressive, romantic, and traditionalist. Quite the contrary, it contains progressive elements that transcend the nativism / modernism binary opposition, which has plagued discursive mappings of post-coup/pre-revolutionary (1953-1970) Iran, to this day. I will further suggest that the main pillars of the discourse of “A Return to Self” share several philosophical roots with the counter-Enlightenment discourses that emerged in Western Europe in the aftermath of the WWII, namely the Frankfurt School. Looking at the above-mentioned thinkers and belletrists in this new light will equip us, I suggest, with an improved philosophical insight into how the project of an Iranian modernity can forge ahead.
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