The Politics of the Possible in Iran

 This panel will present four diverse theoretical approaches to the political futures of Iran.  These approaches seek to show the possible openings in the way state and society relate to one another in post-revolutionary Iran.  The panel aims at articulating those possible modes of reconfiguration of politics that are impeded by the current political institutions and by the dominant political discourse and ideology.  To this end, the panelists bring together various theories and approaches, from western philosophies to post-Islamist thoughts, in order to show that Iranian politics today is riveted with contingencies.  The themes explored by the panelist include: public discourse, public debate, social movements, secularism, the politics of the everyday, the role of the state and policy, ethics, the reform movement and ideology, republicanism, and various Shi’i political thoughts.  Given the baffling complexity of Iranian politics and society, the panelists would like to explore the outcome of different avenues that may lead to future changes in Iran.  

Chair
name: 
Afshin Matin-asgari
Institutional Affiliation : 
California State University, LA
Academic Bio: 
Afshin Matin-asgari has a PhD in modern Middle East history from UCLA. He is associate professor of Middle East History and Religion at California State University, Los Angeles and the author of "Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah" (2001) and more than a dozen articles on 20th century Iran's political and intellectual history.
Discussant
Name: 
Farzin Vahdat
Institutional Affiliation : 
Harvard University
Academic Bio : 
Farzin Vahdat is a Lecturer in Social Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. USA;
First Presenter
Name: 
Mojtaba Mahdavi
Institutional Affiliation : 
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada
Academic Bio : 
Dr. Mojtaba Mahdavi is an assistant Professor of Political Science and Middle East & African Studies at University of Alberta, Canada. His research interests include post-Islamist Islam, Islamism and democratization, new theories of secularism and modern Islamic political thought. His writing has appeared in the Canadian, U.S. and Iranian academic journals. He is currently working on a project on post-Islamism and democratization in the Muslim world. Dr. Mahdavi’s forthcoming book examines problems and prospects for democratization in the post-revolutionary Iran.
Concise Paper Title : 
Post-Islamism in Iran: Neo-Shariati’s post-liberal discourse and Soroush’s liberal Islam
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
New theories of secularization suggest that public religion is a fact of modern life. The emergence of Islamism in the Muslim world is a case in point where modernization contributed to the rise and revival of religion in the modern public sphere. In this paper I suggest that Islamism and post-Islamism represent two distinct features of public religion. Post-Islamism points to the transformation of Islamism in its discourse and practice; it represents both a condition and a project embodied in a multi-dimensional movement. As a condition, it refers to a new socio-political condition where Islamism reinvents and revises its role in a changing socio-political sphere. As a project, it refers to a radical attempt to re-conceptualize and re-interpret Islamist intellectual, social and political discourses in acknowledging secular exigencies; it is a radical call for a critical dialogue between sacred and secular, tradition and modernity, religion and reason. Hence, post-Islamism, both as a condition and a project, is neither anti-Islamic nor un-Islamic; it is an analytical rather than an historical category (Bayat 2007). This paper problematizes two post-Islamist discourses in contemporary Iran: neo-Shariati’s post-liberal discourse, represented by a new generation/interpretation of Ali Shariati’s thought/un-thought, and Abdolkarim Soroush’s liberal Islam. Iran’s two post-Islamist discourses will be examined based on how each liberal and post-liberal discourse defines (a) sacred/Islam, (b) secular/public sphere, and (c) the role and legitimacy of sacred/Islam in secular/public sphere. The paper will sheds light on how each discourse contributes to the ‘politics of possibilities’ in Iran. More specifically, the paper examines each discourse’s potential and/or contribution to transform complex socio-political and intellectual arrangements of the post-revolutionary Iran to a sustainable, authentic, and grassroots democracy.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Omid Peyrow Shabani
Institutional Affiliation : 
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Canada
Academic Bio : 
Omid Payrow Shabani is an associate professor at the University of Guelph (Canada). His areas of specialization are social and political philosophy and his research interests are multiculturalism, minority rights, theories of democracy and justice. His recent publications are: Multiculturalism and Law: A Critical Debate, (University of Wales Press, 2007); Democracy, Power and Legitimacy: The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (University of Toronto Press, 2003); “Constitutional Patriotism as a Model of Postnational Political Association: The Case of the EU”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 32/6, 2006, pp. 699-718; “Language Policy of a Civic Nation-State: Constitutional Patriotism and Minority Language Rights”, in The Language Question in Europe and Diverse Societies: Political, Legal and Social Perspectives, eds. D. Castiglione and C. Longman, Hart Publications, 2007; and “Cosmopolitan Justice and Immigration: A Critical Theory Perspective,” European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2007, 87-98.
Concise Paper Title : 
Between Revolution and Reform: The Prospect of Non-violence Politics in Iran
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Jürgen Habermas’ recent writing on religion has been aimed at opening up a space for religious reason in public sphere. To this end, he proposes an “institutional translation proviso” that would develop and carry the insight of faith-based arguments to the formal level of institutions. The proviso, however, can only work if religious and secular citizens have undergone complementary learning processes that enable them to see their conflict as a “reasonable disagreement”, ensuring peace and stability. Habermas holds that the complementary learning processes cannot be prescribed or be made the object of law. They only can be cultivated. I propose that this can be done through education and promotion of tolerance. Now, this lesson not only can be drawn for liberal democratic societies, but also for developing and undemocratic countries like Iran. I argue that in Iran there is no prospect for another violent revolution as the opposition groups have matured enough to reject violence as a legitimate means for advancing their causes. But given that there has not been a symmetrical learning process in which the government’s forces have evolved, this maturity is currently proving too costly for the opposition. I submit that in such a circumstance, the opposition needs to invest time, energy and effort in engaging the popular basis of the regime on the justice and merits of non-violent politics. The politics of non-violence engagement can be realized by fostering a culture of tolerance as the rejection of violent means in politics. There are sources indigenous to Islam that provide support for tolerance and non-violence, which makes the prospect of evolution and growth in the Iranian public sphere a promising one.
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Peyman Vahabzadeh
Institutional Affiliation : 
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Canada
Academic Bio : 
Peyman Vahabzadeh received his PhD in Sociology from Simon Fraser University (2000) and completed a two-year SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Studies at the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He has taught sociology, political science, CSPT and humanities at SFU, UVic and Brock University (Ontario). He is the author of Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements (SUNY Press, 2003) and A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Discourse of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (Syracuse State University Press, 2009), the guest editor of the special issue of West Coast Line on “Writing Rupture: Iranian Emigration Literature” (2006) and the co-guest editor of the special issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory on “Democracy, Religion, and the Politics of Fright” (2007).
Concise Paper Title : 
The Politicization of Shi’ism in Iran and Its Possible Futures
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
The paper argues that an epistemic and maximalist reading of Shi'i principles should be understood in the context of the clientalist structure of Iranian economy today. This necessitates the expulsion of doxic Shi'i thoughts from government. This process has been under way since the foundation of the Islamic Republic, despite setbacks and reversals. The rise of reformists to power in 1997 and the attempted reversals of the reforms, as epitomized by the electoral defeat of reformists in 2005, show that the process of politicization of Shi’ism is still an unfinished project. Politics does not emanate from the state and is not limited to the policies of the state apparatus. It involves the mundane process of everyday negotiation between the state and society. This paper will emphasize the constitutive role of social movements in today’s Iran: from women’s movement, to the student movement, the workers’ movements and trade unionism, to various ethnic and environmental movements, we will see emerging loci of secular politics. Iranian reformists partly live off such movements, but the movements have outgrown political Shi’ism as monopolistic, state-sponsored ideology. In the face of social movements, Shi’ism has to justify itself within the practices of the everyday, which in turn will lead to its secularization.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada
Academic Bio : 
Victoria Tahmasebi is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto at Scarborough (Canada). Her areas of specialization are social and political thought and gender studies. Her research interests are political philosophy of ethics and non-violence, feminist theory, middle-eastern women’s issues, and gender in Islam. Her recent publications are The Ethical Work of Liberation: Levinas and Gandhi on Political Praxis and (Non-) Violence (University of Toronto Press, 2009 forthcoming); “Does Levinas Justify or Transcend Liberalism?: Levinas on Human liberation”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, forthcoming Volume 35, 2009; “Levinas, Nietzsche and Benjamin’s ‘Divine Violence,’” in Difficult Justice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics, Ed. A. Horowitz and G. Horowitz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 172-190, and “The Velvet Revolution of Iranian Puritan Hardliners: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Rise to Power,” International Journal, (Autumn 2006), 959-970 (co-authored).
Concise Paper Title : 
Engendering Ethics: The Production of Ethico-political Discourse in Post-Revolutionary Iran
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
This paper begins by investigating how ethical discourse is envisioned, imagined, produced, employed and inscribed in post-revolution Iranian polity. I submit that after the revolution of 1979, discourses of ethics, morality and proper mode of “Muslim-ness”, have informed Iranian political discourse(s) in myriad ways. Claims of higher moral order have consistently been the underpinnings of Iranian politics; these claims together operate as an authoritative mechanism for the state and its procedural policies. More importantly these discourses have been mobilized to discipline, control and refashion the individual, the social body and the Iranian body politics. Further, this paper examines the role of gender normativity in the construction of Iran’s ethico-political discourse after the revolution of 1979. The main themes that inform such query are the gendered nature of the moral debate in Iran and the intimate link between women’s identity, ethics and politics. The paper argues that the national debate around the identity of “proper Iranian woman” has played a significant and foundational role in shaping Iran’s ethico-political discourse after the revolution of which “hijab” is the most visible, and sometimes a misleading example. The juxtaposition of ethics and politics in Iran is mediated by the discourse of gender identity and more specifically by a search for a proper National-Muslim identity for Iranian women. By demonstrating the multifaceted consequences of this mitigation, this paper argues that the centrality of gender in Iran’s ethico-political discourse has presented us with two seemingly contradictory developments. On one hand, due to the centrality of the “woman question” in the discourses of morality, there has been a material and symbolic expansion in Iranian women’s status as sociopolitical actors. However, and on the other hand, the attempt to reduce moral debate to demarcation around the feminine occurs at the expense of disregarding other moral considerations such as economic justice, public welfare, social responsibility to vulnerable others, individual rights and responsibility, the protection of human dignity, and so on. Ironically, these evaded ethical imperatives, far from being western, are claimed to be indigenous to Shi’i ethics. Insofar as the core of Iranian state’s claim to legitimacy is its appeal to the Islamic abstraction of the ethical relation that must be incarnated in the life of the political realm, this reduction marks the failure of Iranian state’s moral project.

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