Iranian Cosmopolitanism

Iranian Cosmopolitanism
Author: Golbarg Rekabtalaei
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108418511

A unique look at how cinema shaped the cosmopolitan society in Tehran through cultural exchanges between Iran and the world.

Beyond Shariati

Beyond Shariati
Author: Siavash Saffari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2017-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107164168

A new reading of Ali Shariati's intellectual legacy on Iranian political discourse and concepts of Islam and modernity.

Iranian Cosmopolitanism

Iranian Cosmopolitanism
Author: Golbarg Rekabtalaei
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108304982

From popular and 'New Wave' pre-revolutionary films of Fereydoon Goleh and Abbas Kiarostami to post-revolutionary films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian cinema has produced a range of films and directors that have garnered international fame and earned a global following. Golbarg Rekabtalaei takes a unique look at Iranian cosmopolitanism and how it transformed in the Iranian imagination through the cinematic lens. By examining the development of Iranian cinema from the early twentieth century to the revolution, Rekabtalaei locates discussions of modernity in Iranian cinema as rooted within local experiences, rather than being primarily concerned with Western ideals or industrialisation. Her research further illustrates how the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of Iran's citizenry shaped a heterogeneous culture and a cosmopolitan cinema that was part and parcel of Iran's experience of modernity. In turn, this cosmopolitanism fed into an assertion of sovereignty and national identity in a modernising Iran in the decades leading up to the revolution.

The Discovery of Iran

The Discovery of Iran
Author: Ali Mirsepassi
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503629805

The Discovery of Iran examines the history of Iranian nationalism afresh through the life and work of Taghi Arani, the founder of Iran's first Marxist journal, Donya. In his quest to imagine a future for Iran open to the scientific riches of the modern world and the historical diversity of its own people, Arani combined Marxist materialism and a cosmopolitan ethics of progress. He sought to reconcile Iran to its post-Islamic past, rejected by Persian purists and romanticized by their traditionalist counterparts, while orienting its present toward the modern West in all its complex and conflicting facets. As Ali Mirsepassi shows, Arani's cosmopolitanism complicates the conventional wisdom that racial exclusivism was an insoluble feature of twentieth-century Iranian nationalism. In cultural spaces like Donya, Arani and his contemporaries engaged vibrant debates about national identity, history, and Iran's place in the modern world. In exploring Arani's short but remarkable life and writings, Ali Mirsepassi challenges the image of Interwar Iran as dominated by the Pahlavi state to uncover fertile intellectual spaces in which civic nationalism flourished.

Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism

Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism
Author: Lucian Stone
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1472567439

Since cosmopolitanism has often been conceived as a tenet of 'Western civilization' that emanates from its Enlightenment-based origins in a humanist age of modernity, Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism: Spheres of Belonging advances a highly innovative gesture by contemplating the implications and relevance of the idea in a so-called non-Western cultural territory. The particularities of the Iranian and Islamic context shed new light on advancements and obstacles to cosmopolitan praxis. The volume provides four principle disciplinary assessments of cosmopolitanism: philosophy, political science, sociology, and cultural studies,including literary criticism. The authors in this collection critically examine topics including the historical encounter between Iranian and Western thinkers and its impact on Iranian political ideals; the tension between maintaining apolitical-theology rooted in metaphysical assumptions and the prerequisite of secularism in cosmopolitan and democratic philosophies. This highly innovative volume will be of interest to scholars and students of Middle Eastern and Iranian Studies, Islamic Studies, Globalization, Political Science and Philosophy.

Cosmopolitanism and Empire

Cosmopolitanism and Empire
Author: Myles Lavan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2016
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190465662

Cosmopolitanism and Empire traces the development of cosmopolitan cultural techniques through which ancient empires managed difference in order to establish regimes of domination. Its case studies of Near Eastern and Mediterranean empires combine to demonstrate the centrality of cosmopolitanism to the establishment and endurance of trans-cultural political orders.

Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire

Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire
Author: Seema Alavi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2015-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674735331

Seema Alavi challenges the idea that all pan-Islamic configurations are anti-Western or pro-Caliphate. A pan-Islamic intellectual network at the cusp of the British and Ottoman empires became the basis of a global Muslim sensibility—a political and cultural affiliation that competes with ideas of nationhood today as it did in the last century.

Secularism and Cosmopolitanism

Secularism and Cosmopolitanism
Author: Étienne Balibar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2018-06-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231547137

What is the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism—the worldwide and the worldly? While cosmopolitan politics may seem inherently secular, existing forms of secularism risk undermining the universality of cosmopolitanism because they privilege the European tradition over all others and transform particular historical norms into enunciations of truth, valid for all cultures and all epochs. In this book, the noted philosopher Étienne Balibar explores the tensions lurking at this troubled nexus in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism itself. Balibar argues for the idea of the universal against its particular dominant institutions. He questions the assumptions that underlie popular ideas of secularism and religion and outlines the importance of a new critique for the contemporary world. Balibar holds that conflicts between religious and secular discourses need to be reframed from a point of view that takes into account the cultural hybridization, migration and mobility, and transformation of borders that have reshaped the postcolonial age. Among the topics discussed are the uses and misuses of the category of religion and the religious, the paradoxical genealogy of monotheism, French laïcité’s identitarian turn, and the implications of the responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks for an extended definition of free speech. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference that seeks to make room for a renewed political imagination.

Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit

Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit
Author: Bruce B. Lawrence
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1405155140

Discover the essence of the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit and what it has contributed to societies across the ages In Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit, author and expert, Bruce B. Lawrence, delivers a spiritual elan filtered through cultural practices and artefacts. Neither juridical nor creedal, the book expresses a desire for the just and the beautiful. The author sets out an original and fascinating theory, that Islamicate cosmopolitanism marks a new turn in global history. An unceasing, self-critical pursuit of truth, hitched to both beauty and justice, its history is marked by male elites who were scientific exemplars in the pre-modern period. In the modern period, these exemplars include women as well as men, artists as well as scientists. The Islamicate Cosmopolitans have had special impact across the Afro-Eurasian ecumene at the heart of civilized exchange between multiple groups with competing yet convergent interests. The Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit is a boundary busting challenge to those who think of the world merely in terms of an “Arab” Middle East. Readers will also benefit from: A thorough introduction to the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit across time and space An exploration of premodern Afro-Eurasia and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean A practical discussion of the future of the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit Perfect for all students of Islamicate civilization, both traditional and progressive, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit will also earn a place in the libraries of general readers of world history and those grounded in the larger history of Islamicate Asia will find a perspective that centers their own contribution to the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit.