Podcasts about zia ebrahimi

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Reza Zia-Ebrahimi is Senior Lecturer in History at King's College, London.   Please consider supporting the show created by Sina Rahmani (@urorientalist) eastisapodcast@gmail.com www.eastpodcast.com

In this episode, I speak with Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, a historian and a Senior Lecturer at King's College London. We talk about what he calls 'dislocative nationalism', a sort of Iranian nationalism that was deliberately devised and disseminated, starting in the 19th century. He outlines the founding of dislocative nationalism and how it aimed to cast Iran's pre-Islamic period as the nation's golden age, interpreting Islam as an alien religion. He explains the otherization of Arabs in Iran and how the country was dislodged from its empirical reality and tied to Europe and the Aryan race by transforming and using European racial ideas of the time. 

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran's physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon.

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran’s physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran’s physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran’s physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran’s physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh century. As Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows in his deftly argued new book, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), these nationalistic myths are largely a modern invention—a phenomenon he describes as “dislocative nationalism.” Following a “traumatic encounter with Europe” in the nineteenth century, Zia-Ebrahimi argues, Iranians were left searching for explanations for their perceived backwardness vis-a-vis western civilization. And the answer increasingly offered by modernist intellectuals was that the genius of Persian civilization had been degraded by the invasion of an alien other—in the form of Arabs and Islam. These ideas, which borrowed heavily from contemporary European racial thinking of the time, were adapted and hybridized by Iranian intellectuals keen to cast Persians as a master race, superior to the Semitic Arabs. And in the twentieth century, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Pahlavi state as part of its drive towards secularization and western-style modernity. Zia-Ebrahimi calls these ideas “dislocative” because they suggest—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—that Iran’s physical location, in the middle of a region dominated by Arabs and Islam, is a mere accident of geography, and that Iranians are actually Europeans manques. The persistence of such dislocative ideas about Iranian nationhood, which continue to animate much of the chauvinistic discourse indulged in by Iranians both sympathetic and antagonistic to the Islamic Republic, makes them ripe for critical enquiry, and Zia-Ebrahimi offers a long-overdue assessment of the phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Reza Zia-Ebrahimi (King's College London) gives a lecture on Iranian nationalis, this is a joint event with the Oxford University Iranian Society. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.