Culture
Social transformations, structures of power and changing regional balances.
Culture
Ali Shakeri-Zand and the political cost of standing apart
His support for Shapour Bakhtiar placed him at odds with much of Iran’s revolutionary opposition. For Shakeri-Zand, national independence had little meaning if it came at the expense of political freedom.
Habermas and the limits of power without justification
His account of democracy asked more of government than effective rule. Citizens needed the freedom, institutions and public space to challenge the reasons offered in their name.
How antisemitic conspiracy narratives survive political change
Marcel Gauchet argues that discredited racial doctrines can give way to geopolitical narratives carrying familiar suspicions. His account links that shift to a test of equal citizenship in France.
The Courage to Think: Reading and Questioning Aramesh Dustdar
Aramesh Dustdar’s critique of religious culture asks what makes thought possible. Three objections situate questioning within political life, language and the historical relationship between reason and belief.
Returning to Tehran After Twenty-One Years
Nine days in Tehran in March 2005, after twenty-one years away. A personal notebook on a city revisited, exile’s memory, inequality, everyday encounters and the distance between society and authority.
The ‘Independent Democratic Left’: A Project Stillborn in Armed Struggle
Taking From the Setareh Group to the Communist Unity Organisation as its point of departure, this essay confronts the memory of one current of the Iranian left with the question the book avoids: what legacy did armed struggle actually leave to democracy?
The Quran and the Dreams of a Seer
Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of the Quran as Muhammad’s dream experience humanises revelation, but it resolves neither the text’s historical formation nor the political question of who has authority to interpret it.