We are delighted to share Dr. Mostafa Abedinifard’s published journal article in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). The article is titled “Iran’s ‘Self-Deprecating Modernity’: Toward Decolonizing Collective Self-Critique.” A digital copy of the article is now made available in the UBC Library.
About the article
Extant studies of Iranian nationalism accentuate the self-aggrandizing side of Iranian modernity, mainly achieved through, and informing, a process of otherizing certain non-Persians/Iranians, particularly the Arabs. Dr. Abedinifard argues that equally important to understanding Iranian modernity is its lesser recognized, shameful and self-demeaning face, as manifested through a simultaneous 19th-century discourse, which he calls “self-deprecating modernity.” This was an often self-ridiculing and shame-inducing, sometimes satirical, discourse featuring an emotion-driven and self-Orientalizing framework that developed out of many mid-nineteenth-century Iranian modernists’ obsessions with Europe’s gaze; with self-surveillance; and with the perceived humiliation of Iranians through the ridiculing laughter of Other (especially European) nations at Iran’s and Iranians’ expense. To explore this discourse, he re-examines the works of three pre-constitutionalist thinkers and writers within the broader sociopolitical context of late Qajar Iran, surveying their perspectives on shame, embarrassment, and ridiculing laughter, and showing how they were significantly informed by, while also helping to form, self-deprecating modernity. Given the strong, self-colonizing presumptions of this discourse, he concludes the article with a stress on the importance of re-exploring collective self-critical practices in modern Iranian history, culture, and literature with an eye toward decolonizing self-criticism.
About Mostafa Abedinifard
Dr. Mostafa Abedinifard is the Assistant Professor without Review of Persian Literary Culture and Civilization in the UBC Department of Asian Studies. He is a literary and cultural critic and historian, with a special focus on modern Persian literature and the Iranian culture and cinema, within his broader interests in comparative and world literature. Outside UBC, he is serving as an Editorial Board member for Persian Literary Studies Journal; HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research; and The Journal of Men’s Studies.
