Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:58:34.662Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Changing Concept of the “Intellectual” in Iran of the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Negin Nabavi
Negin Nabavi*
Affiliation:
Near Eastern Studies Department, Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Ever Since The Appearance of the Notion of the “Intellectual,” Writers and theorists have been preoccupied with attempting to define just what an intellectual is, or ought to be. Is an intellectual a detached observer, one who is free from the immediate concerns of life, and interested primarily in the pursuit of timeless and universal truths, as Julien Benda argued in La Trahison des clercs, or is an intellectual one who very much engages with society, necessarily challenges power, one who, in Edward Said's words, “is a spirit in opposition” who raises “embarrassing questions … and cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug”? Sociologists and historians have adopted a variety of approaches to this concept: in a sociological sense, they have applied the term to all those who produce and propagate thought and culture, thus designating a neutral although wide socio-professional category, or in an attempt to narrow down the grouping, they have qualified the word with distinct characteristics, pointing out a certain way of acting in public life.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Summer 1999 , pp. 333 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Benda, Julien, La Trahison des clercs (Paris, 1927), 131–32Google Scholar; Benda, J., The Treason of the Intellectuals, trans. Aldington, Richard (London, 1969), 43-45Google Scholar. As Michael Walzer points out in his critique of Benda, Benda's worldview consists of a dualism: “an ideal realm inhabited by intellectuals and a realm of reality inhabited most importantly by politicians and soldiers.” While both groups are considered “necessary to the wholeness of civilized life,” they each perform their distinct functions; “intellectuals uphold the eternal values of truth and justice, politicians and soldiers do what must be done for the survival and enhancement of their communities.” See Michael Walzer, “The Politics of the Intellectual: Julien Benda's La Trahison des Clercs Reconsidered” in Walter W. Powell and Richard Robbins, eds., Conflict and Consensus: A Festschrift In Honor of Lewis A. Coser (London and New York, 1994), 366Google Scholar.

2. Said, Edward W., Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (London, 1994), xvGoogle Scholar.

3. Ibid., 9.

4. As an example of such an approach, see Lipset, Seymour M., Political Man (New York, 1960), 31Google Scholar.

5. Coser, Lewis A., Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's View, (London and New York, 1965), viiiGoogle Scholar.

6. Shils, Edward, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago and London, 1972), 7Google Scholar. Of course, the criteria used to define the intellectual tend to vary according to the context. So Syed Hussein Alatas, for example, writing on intellectuals in the developing world, specifies these characteristics to be those of “leadership in the realm of thinking,” and the ability to “explain the problems of society and to find solutions to them,” while Michael Keren, writing in the context of Jewish intellectuals, identifies the trait that makes an intellectual to be the “degree to which he applies universal norms to political discourse.” See Alatas, Syed Hussein, Intellectuals in Developing Societies (London, 1977), 9Google Scholar; Keren, Michael, The Pen and the Sword: Israeli Intellectuals and the Making of the Nation-State (Boulder and London, 1989), 7.Google Scholar

7. Coser, Men of Ideas, ix.

8. Of all the works on the “intellectual,” Sunil Khilnani's discussion of the French intellectual seems most relevant to the Iranian context. See Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France (London, 1993), 11–13.Google Scholar

9. In a roundtable discussion of the definition and role of the intellectual, published in the weekly Ketāb-e jomᶜeh, edited by Ahmad Shamlu, the element that is emphasised in the definition of the intellectual is his relation to society. So, for example, Baqer Parham, a renowned essayist, defines an intellectual as one whose primary task is the labour of the mind, “but in a particular social situation.” Similarly, Fereydun Adamiyyat, a prominent historian and participant in this discussion, depicts the intellectual as one who “enjoys a particular worldview (jahānbīnī), relating to man's character (shakhṣiyyat) and human society… In other words, he is not indifferent to what happens in society; rather he takes a stance vis-à-vis social problems.” “Rawshanfekrān va enqelāb” (Intellectuals and Revolution) Ketāb-e jomᶜeh i, no. 5 (8 Shahrivar 1358/29 August 1979): 3-14.

10. The Dreyfus Affair was the first time that writers and artists put aside their writing and painting, respectively, in order to engage in the services of an important “cause.” Acting as a self-conscious group, they intervened in the public sphere of politics and protested against injustice. It may have polarized them, but it also gave them a sense of identity, and meant that henceforth the action of intervening in politics became part and parcel of being an intellectual.

11. According to Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the translation of the term from the Arabic to Persian took place under the influence of the “purification” of the Persian language by the Farhangestan. (Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat-e rawshanfekrān [On the service and treachery of the intellectuals] new edn. [Tehran 1372/1993], 24.)

12. For studies of Mirza Fath ᶜAli Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Mirza ᶜAbd al-Rahim Talebof, see Fereydun Adamiyyat's Andīsheh-hā-ye Mīrzā Fatḥ ᶜAlī Ākhūndzādeh [The Ideas of Mirza Fath ᶜAli Akhundzadeh] (Tehran, 1349/1970), Andīsheh-hā-ye Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kermānī [The Ideas of Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani] (Tehran, 1357/1978), and Andīshehhā-ye Talebof-e Tabrīzī, [The Ideas of Talebof Tabrizi], 2nd edn. (Tehran, 1363/1984). See also Sandjabi, Maryam B., “Rereading the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire”, Iranian Studies 28, nos. 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1995): 39-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, see Bayat-Philipp, Mangol, “Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani: A Nineteenth Century Persian Nationalist”, in Kedourie, E. and Haim, S., eds., Towards a Modern Iran: Studies in Thought, Politics and Society, (London, 1980), 64–95.Google Scholar For a brief history of the notion of monavvar al-fekr, see Gheissari, A., Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century (Austin, 1998), 13–24.Google Scholar

13. For a study of the change of language and historiography by the monavvar al-fekr, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohammad, “Refashioning Iran: Language and Culture During the Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies 23, nos. 1-4 (1990): 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. The later monavvar al-fekr of the 1920s and 1930s, too, continued with the tradition of being a transmitter of new ideas. Individuals like Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh and ᶜAli Akbar Dehkhoda could still be characterized as writer-reformers who were committed to the concept of “modernity.” However, what distinguished them from the later rawshanfekr, as will be discussed below, was the fact that they did not derive their sense of identity from political activity alone, so that when they were unable to challenge the status quo, they also engaged in scholarly activity. See Daryush Ashuri, “Gofteman-hā-ye rawshanfekr: dar goftogū bā Daryūsh ᶜĀshūrī; gharbzadegī, rawshanfekr-e dīnī…” [The Discourse of the Intellectual: An Interview with Daryush Ashuri; weststruckness, religious intellectualism, etc.], Rāh-e naw [The New Way], 1, no. 9 (30 Khordad 1377/20 June 1998): 18.

15. For the intellectuals’ perception of the Tudeh in the 1940s, see Katouzian, Homa, Sadeq Hedayat: the Life and Literature of an Iranian Writer (London, 1991), 162–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. See “Gofteman-hā-ye rawshanfekr,” 18.

17. Among the emerging intellectual magazines at this time, the most important were Negīn, a monthly which first appeared in Khordad 1344/May-June 1965, edited by Mahmud ᶜEnayat; Jong-e Eṣfahān, a literary quarterly, which also started publication in the summer of 1965, edited by Hushang Golshiri; and Arash, another irregular literary review, initially edited by Sirus Tahbaz and then by Islam Kazemiyyeh. The latter had been first published in 1340/1961, and whereas at first, it had been dominated by short stories and new poetry, it was from the winter of 1342/1964 that its pages increasingly began to reflect the discussions of the role of the writer and intellectual.

18. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, who has come to be considered the “leading spokesman for the non-establishment Iranian intelligentsia,” has been written about extensively. Among the many articles and books on Al-e Ahmad, see Hillmann, Michael, “Cultural Dilemmas of an Iranian Literary Intellectual,” in Iranian Culture: A Persianist View (London, 1990), 119–44Google Scholar; Hanson, Brad, “The Westoxication of Iran: Depictions and Reactions of Behrangi, Al-e Ahmad and Shariᶜati,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15, no. 1 (February 1983): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (New York, 1996), 65–76Google Scholar; Gheissari, Ali, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century (Austin, 1998), 88–92.Google Scholar Whereas there is hardly an article or book on Iranian intellectuals that does not mention Al-e Ahmad, especially with regard to his popularization of the notion of gharbzadegī (often translated as “westoxication”), the same cannot be said of Khalil Maleki or ᶜAli Asghar Hajj Sayyed Javadi. For a discussion of Maleki, see Katouzian, Homa, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power (London, 1990), 95–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., ed., Khāṭerāt-e siyāsī-ye Khalīl Malekī [The Political Memoirs of Khalil Maleki] (Tehran, 1368/1989). For an examination of the life and political ideas of Hajj Sayyed Javadi, see Badie, Bertrand, L'Etat importe: l'occidentalization de l'ordre politique (Paris, 1992), 158–162.Google Scholar

19. The texts which form the basis of this study are Maleki's short piece Rawshanfekrān written in prison in the mid-1960s and published as an appendix to Homa Katouzian's aforementioned edition of Maleki's Khāṭerāt, 390-98; Al-e Ahmad's articles and discursive essays, in particular Dar khedmat va kheyānat, which was initially published in 1966 in the form of articles in Jahān-e naw [The New World], edited by Reza Baraheni, and only published in book-form posthumously; and finally Hajj Sayyed Javadi's numerous articles published in the 1960s in the monthly Negīn.

20. Maleki co-founded the Ḥezb-e zaḥmatkashān-e mellat-e Īrān with Mozaffar Baqaᵓi in May 1950 within the framework of the National Movement. It had been an attempt to organise the forces of the National Movement and to suggest new ideas and programmes. For more details concerning this group, see Homa Katouzian, Khāṭerāt-e seyāsī-ye Khalīl Malekī, 89-94.

21. The Ḥezb-e nīrū-ye sevvom was founded in October 1952 after the rift with Mozaffar Baqaᵓi over the degree of support that Ḥezb-e zaḥmatkashān should give the National Movement. See Katouzian, op. cit., 94-97.

22. Jalal Al-e Ahmad was the editor of the first series of the monthly ᶜElm va Zendegī, [Science and Life]. ᶜElm va Zendegī had been first published in 1951, during Mosaddeq's premiership. Following the “coup” of August 1953, it ceased publication and changed its name to Nabard-e zendegī [The struggle of life], although later the title reverted to ᶜElm va Zendegī once again. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, too, contributed to the weekly newspaper of the party, also called Nīrū-ye sevvom.

23. Maleki, Khāṭerāt-e siyāsī, 258.

24. See Katouzian's introduction to Maleki's Khāṭerāt-e seyāsī, 4-5.

25. It is in fact the theoretical nature of this discussion that has led the editor of the memoirs to attach it as an appendix to the text. See introduction to the Khāṭerāt-e seyāsī, 244-45.

26. Rawshanfekrān, 391.

27. Ibid., 392.

28. Ibid., 393.

29. For a discussion of the concept of jabr-e tārīkh, see Katouzian, Homa, “History, Socialism and the Soviet Union” in Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power (London, 1990), 108–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This notion of historical determinism, in fact, was characteristic of secular intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s.

30. Quoted in Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power, 109.

31. Rawshanfekrān, 393-94.

32. Ibid., 398.

33. Rawshanfekrān, 397.

34. This was implemented by Hasan Arsanjani, Minister of Agriculture in the cabinet of Ali Amini. He was not the first to support land reform. The idea had been advocated as early as the Constitutional Revolution. Apart from the Shah's symbolic gesture of announcing the sale of the crown lands to peasants in January 1951, no measures had been taken by any government until 1959 when land reform was introduced in a bill before parliament by Manuchehr Eqbal, but did not pass.

35. For example, Al-e Ahmad wrote with reference to the White Revolution, “The regime has stolen these ideas from [Khalil] Maleki. For if the regime pretends to redistribute land, to give workers a share of the profits of factories and to grant rights to women, it is because they have kept the real socialists away from power.” (Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat, 336-67.) This attitude also extended to opposition parties like the Second National Front. In her book Liberal Nationalism in Iran: The Failure of a Movement, Sussan Siavoshi quotes an interview which she held with a member of the leadership of this party, whom she does not name. In explaining the reasons for their lack of programs, the latter says, “The issue was not that we should have come up with programmes. Why? Because the Shah would have stolen these programmes and implemented them.” (108).

36. Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power, 236.

37. See for example Vosuqi, Naser, “Keshāvarzī-ye khāvar-e meyāneh: masᵓaleh-ye zamīn”, Andīsheh va honar iv, no. 5 (Shahrivar 1341/August-September 1962): 307.Google Scholar

38. Since land reform had proved popular with the people, the regime persevered with it even after the resignation of Amini and Arsanjani. In fact, the Shah initiated the “White Revolution” in January 1963, and retroactively made land reform into a constitutive part of the program. The other reforms included at this time were: i) the sale of government owned factories to finance land reform; ii) a new electoral law including female suffrage; iii) the nationalization of forests; iv) the formation of a literacy corps mainly for rural teaching; and v) a plan to give workers a share of industrial profits.

39. This slogan was part of a communiqué that was issued by the Second National Front a few days prior to the referendum on January 26, 1963. (See Katouzian, Homa, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, 236Google Scholar.)

40. Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat, 15.

41. Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982), 483–85.Google Scholar

42. Al-e Ahmad, Kārnāmeh-e seh sāleh [The Three Year Report] (Tehran, 1357/1978), 10.

43. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Rawshanfekr-e maṣrafkonandeh” [The Consumer-Intellectual], Negīn, (July-August 1967): 7.

44. The pressure to be of relevance extended to the creative writers of this period as well. For a more detailed examination of this notion in the domain of modern Iranian literature, see Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, “Introduction: Iran's literature, 1977-1997,” Iranian Studies 30, nos. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 1997): 193–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dabashi, Hamid, “The Poetics of Politics: Commitment in Modern Persian Literature,” Iranian Studies 18, nos. 2-4 (Spring-Autumn 1985):171–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Shakl-e kalāmat va shakl-e zendegī” [The shape of words and the shape of life], Negin, (August-September 1967): 66.

46. Many intellectuals shared such an opinion at this time. Mahmud ᶜEnayat, the editor of Negīn, for example, also illustrated this rift by taking Saᶜid Nafisi, an otherwise well respected scholar and historian, as an example. In an editorial, while praising Nafisi for his scholarship, a comment which he thinks may irritate the younger generations, he adds, “if one can find a characteristic missing in Saᶜid Nafisi, it is his abstention and turning away from social problems. He remained a scholar and historian until the end of his life.” (“Būdeh-hā va nabūdeh-hā,” [What has been and has not been], Negīn ii, no. 6 [October-November 1966]: 3.)

47. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Ḥodūd-e qodrat dar marz-hā-ye mellī va bayn al-melalī” [The limits of power within national and international boundaries], Negīn 3, no. 2 (June-July 1967): 71.

48. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Rawshanfekr-e maṣrafkonandeh,” Negīn 3, no. 3 (July-August 1967): 5.

49. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Shakl-e kalāmat va shakl-e zendegī,” Negīn 3, no. 4 (August-September 1967): 4. Once again, this need to be of consequence by means of some sort of activism was typical of other intellectuals at the time. For example, ᶜAli Shariᶜati, too, shared a similar view of what constituted an “intellectual.” Although he has generally been regarded as one of the main ideologues of the Iranian revolution, if one examines Shariᶜati's discussion of the rawshanfekr, it becomes clear that he, in fact, shared many of the concepts of the secular “intellectual of the left” of the 1960s. So, he, too, differentiated between a rawshanfekr and a “thinker” [motafakker], and stated further that the intellectual need not be a highly educated man, since what mattered was his awareness of the problems of society. So it is in one of his lectures, which was later published as a booklet entitled Rawshanfekr va masᵓūliyyat-e ū dar jāmeᶜeh, [The intellectual and his responsibility in society], that he depicted the rawshanfekr as “one who thinks in a new way. If he has no learning, so be it. If he doesn't know philosophy, so be it. If he is not a jurisprudent [faqīh], so be it. If he is not a physicist, chemist, historian or a literary man, so be it. [Instead], he must discern his age, understand the people, and realise how he should think now, what responsibility he should have, and on the basis of this responsibility, he should have a sense of self-sacrifice.” A. Shariᶜati, Rawshanfekr va masᵓūliyyat-e ū dar jāmeᶜeh (Tehran, n.d.), 55.Google Scholar

50. Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat. 84.

51. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth was first translated in book form under the title Dūzakhiyān-e rūy-e zamīn” by ᶜAli Shariᶜati in 1958. However, in the 1960s, articles about and reflecting Fanon's ideas were widespread in publications such as Ferdawsī, and they were usually written or translated by Manuchehr Hazarkhani.

52. Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, 12th edn., (London, 1985), 118.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., 74.

54. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Ḥodūd-e qodrat,” 71.

55. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, “Beh būdan ya nabūdan” [In being or not being], Negīn (March 1968): 11.

56. Hajj Sayyed Javadi, like many other intellectuals of his time, joined the Association of Iranian Writers (Kānūn-e nevīsandegān-e Īrān) during the brief period between 1968 and 1970, with the aim of promoting freedom of expression and the rights of the writer. However, his political activities broadened later when he founded a political party at the time of the revolution in 1978.

57. Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat, 89.

58. Ibid., 442.

59. Ibid., 255-256.

60. Ibid., 255.

61. Ibid.

62. Jennings, Jeremy, “Mandarins and Samurais: The Intellectual in Modern France” in Jennings, J., ed., Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France (New York, 1993), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This is a reference to the case of the French intellectuals in the postwar period. However, as mentioned earlier, it also applies to Iranian intellectuals who after all aspired to the French model.

63. Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va kheyānat, 42.

64. Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, Iranian Intellectuals and the West, 14.Google Scholar

65. Brad Hanson, “The Westoxication of Iran,” 12.