Re-Thinking Iran
Hijab, censorship, a chauvinistic sense
of superiority over Arabs, an ancient culture, the monumental Persepolis,
clerics, the Islamic Revolution. The grid is probably enough to bring Iran into
public or even scholarly mind in the contemporary world. But does this picture
do justice to this nation-state and its diversity of cultures? Besides a
psychological desire and a quest for the exotic, discursive representations and
stereotypes have shaped the occidental understanding of the orient and the
global conceptualization of Iran.
In
a conversation with the CLCWeb editor, Ari Ofengenden, we agreed that
critical theory must seriously broaden its scope to include alternative
non-Eurocentric perspectives. Iran would be one place to look for this
alternative outlook. As it arises from a specific, though contingent, context,
however, (literary) theory cannot be treated as if it exists in a vacuum. That
is one reason why its travels are not necessarily guaranteed to always cause
brilliant results. Accordingly, for a thematic issue of CLCWeb, we are
interested in articles that freshly remap the contemporary Iranian literature, culture
and its pedigree, and contextualize and (re-)interpret it in its broader national
and transnational context. The issue intends to surprise the world by providing
a fresh and unexpected picture of Iran as located in comparative literature and
cultural studies.
We
like to receive different and opposing views in order to be able to represent
the diversity of the Iranian situation and shatter the homogeneous, essentialist
stereotype that has impeded a full appreciation of the country and its local
and global relationships in a world infested with wars, terrorism, (forced) (im)migrations,
displacement, global inequalities and asymmetries, and climate change, among
others. Such a rethinking will hopefully contribute to the establishment of
more constructive relationships between the world and Iran.
P.S.:
CLCWeb:
Comparative Literature and Culture
ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb>
Purdue University Press ©Purdue University
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (1999-), the
peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access humanities and social sciences
quarterly, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of
comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative
cultural studies." The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles in
regular, thematic, and special issues, review articles of scholarly books, and
research material in its
Library Series.
Publications in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture are
indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
(Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters
ISI-AHCI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete
(EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of
America, & Scopus (Elsevier).