The Discursive and Commemorative Construction of Iranian Identity in Post-revolutionary Iran
Creators: Kashfi, Seyed Ehsan
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2024

<p>This study seeks to deconstruct the discursive processes, commemorative practices, and rituals co-opted by the Islamic Republic of Iran to craft a hegemonic narrative of Iranian identity within the socio-cultural fabric of post-revolutionary Iran. While the current literature on Iranian identity provides a comprehensive exploration of its essence and origins during the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, the strategic maneuvers employed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to mold the collective memory of Iranians through its cultural machinery and ideological apparatus, especially under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei, remain relatively underexplored.</p>

<p>The primary objective of this study is to contributes to these relatively uninvestigated topic. To achieve this, it<br>
focuses on the following two research questions: 1) How has Ayatollah Khamenei defined Iranian identity in<br>
his writings and public speeches; 2) What major cultural and religious mechanisms has the Islamic Republic of Iran employed to embed its narrative of identity within the socio-cultural fabric of post-revolutionary Iran? This involves examining the content and themes of Khamenei’s public discourse over four decades to understand his vision of Iranian identity, as well as three specifics strategies of the Iranian state: manipulating national calendar and holidays, renaming streets and public spaces, and appropriating religious rituals and traditions. It demonstrates how these mechanisms serve not only as symbolic gestures but as powerful tools in forging a collective consciousness aligned with the Islamic Republic’s ideals. To answer these questions, I employ a threefold methodology: discourse analysis, archival research, and fieldwork. Discourse analysis is used to problematize Ayatollah Khamenei’s perspectives on Iranian identity, while archival research and fieldwork utilized to examine official calendars from 1978 and 2021, compare maps of Tehran’s urban transformations from 1979 and 2021, and engage in ethnographic fieldwork Najaf and Karbala (Iraq), and Tehran (Iran) in the summers of 2019 and 2021 during the Arbaeen Walk. Informed by critical and intersectional theories of identity politics, this dissertation challenges essentialist-primordial interpretations and certain readings of modernist approaches to identity politics. It illustrates how the construction, historicity, hybridity, and intersectionality of national identity offer a more nuanced understanding of the complexity involved in the formation of national identity in Iran.</p>

<p>The findings of this dissertation provide an in-depth understanding of the ways in which the state has harnessed and repurposed various facets of Iranian culture and religious practices to formulate and fortify a dominant national identity. It shows how the state can utilize symbolism to reinforce a specific narrative of national identity and control traditional practices to shape collective memory, sheds light on the role of symbolism and visual cues in politics and identity formation and traces the historical development of religious rituals and commemorations and their institutionalization by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Furthermore, this dissertation demonstrates how Iran’s civil society constantly and tirelessly countered the state’s top-down policies of identity formation by reclaiming national-religious traditions and public sphere, providing alternative national celebrations, and employing novel and nuance methods of socio-cultural resistance among both religious and secular social forces.</p>