Democracy in Modern Iran: Islam, Culture, and Political Change

7. The Predicaments of Iranian Public Intellectuals

| 149 7 The Predicaments of Iranian Public Intellectuals Within the context of contemporary Iranian and Middle Eastern politics, where a striking variety of ideological discourses have competed with one another and held sway over several decades—among them nativist , nationalist, and Islamist ones, just to name a few—intellectuals have likewise tended to define their roles within the limited discursive boundaries of religion, secularism, or other “local” ideological parameters. Against this politically charged background, Iranian intellectuals currently face fundamental challenges. These challenges require renewed communicative tools and an imaginative vocabulary so that they can overcome the limitations of the existing intellectual traditions and raise the questions necessary to define the currently evolving intellectual impasse, its tensions and apertures, and its possible futures. This need for open communication and new vocabularies also presents Iranian intellectuals with an opportunity to take an active role in the development and expansion of democracy in Iran as an alternative to those paths which have so far, wittingly or not, been an obstacle to its growth. Generally, it is fair to say that in many modern societies intellectuals have at times facilitated the emergence of conservative and even totalitarian regimes and at others they have taken a courageous stand against oppressive political regimes in order to create a democratic alternative. This is the significant choice faced by Iranian intellectuals at the current political conjuncture . I would suggest that Iranian intellectuals liberate themselves from rigid identification with the ideological compartments which prevail and think of themselves rather as “public intellectuals.” This concept is linked to the idea of a “public sphere,” whose social function is to serve as an open and free space for every possible manner of discussion, debate, and intellectual inquiry. By this redefinition of the intellectual’s role, the principal focus will shift from the harmful intergenerational transmission of a dogmatically 150 | The Predicaments of Iranian Public Intellectuals conceived and sealed “truth” to the central political and cultural issue in contemporary Iran, which is the democratization of the social order. Public discourse and unfettered communication in the “public sphere” will allow the obstacle to democratization created by an obstinate attachment among elite intellectuals to an unassailable “truth” to be overcome. The existing definition of the intellectual’s role in Iran, featuring lines of division among religious intellectuals, secular intellectuals, cosmopolitans , and so on, confines intellectual endeavors within restricted boundaries which make it extremely difficult to put democratization at the forefront of political discourse. While all intellectual positions should be involved in the debates of the “public sphere,” it is nevertheless very limiting for the intellectuals themselves to be contained in the self-defined blocs of ideological identity which currently prevail. However, identifying oneself as a “public intellectual” certainly need not imply disconnecting oneself from local traditions , national belonging, or moral concerns. This is because the very challenge that Iranian intellectuals face is to define and create, through a new way of communicating born of a dialogue that accepts diverse points of view, a self-understanding as cosmopolitans who live in a common, national concerns and imaginary. Beginning with the Constitutional period of the 1906s, one may identify two modes of intellectual discourse in Iran. The first consisted of those we may call nationalist modernizers, who envisioned themselves as the spokesmen for the wishes of the Iranian masses and the advocates of the “Iranian nation.” They were not only first and foremost concerned with the revival of Iran’s power and might within the global context, but they also introduced the ideology of “Iranian nationalism” into the political discourse. Included in their ranks were Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Ebrahim Poordavood and many others, who thought of themselves as modernists highly knowledgeable on world issues, although their principal focus was always the land of their forefathers and the struggle of their “homeland” to achieve modernity and full independence.1 The second intellectual current to appear during the Constitutional period and to find reception particularly in the 1940s and 1950s was that of the “cosmopolitan ” intellectuals (Arani circle, many of the socal literary intellectuals, and the Marxist and socialist intellectuals). These thinkers were far less concerned with notions of “homeland,” “ Iranian identities,” or “religion,” Even when they addressed such concerns, they always had a universal outlook and focused on topics such as “secularism,” “civilization,” “freedom,” and particularly “social justice.” Although these intellectuals were of “leftist” tendencies, The Predicaments of Iranian...