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Persian Veils, Non-Persian Bodies: Multiscalar Spaces of Farsi as a Colonial Language and the Class Production of Iran as a National Territory
Abstract
Although the compulsory hijab is the most noticeable manifestation of the Shi’ist repression under the Islamic Republic, it is not the only form of veiling that exists. Farsism can be considered as an even more entrenched form of hijab serving to conceal non-Persian bodies of the colonized nations in Iran. Exploring the causes of such a distraction, I turn to the national state form and its associated class production of Farsist (Irancentric) knowledge and argue that a twofold mechanism of ‘dressage’ is underway: Shiism and Farsism. The latter is linked to the state production of mostly non-Persian internal colonies as integral parts of ‘Iran’. These two interconnected veiling practices tame and alienate individual and collective bodies (of women, non-binaries, and internal colonies). Docile bodies are produced to serve the interests of the ruling classes. An abstractly homogenized and monorhythmic Body (‘Iranian’ nation) is thus imposed on the differential polyrhythmic bodies through everyday Farsism. From a socialist perspective, it is imperative to see individual and collective bodies as dialectically interdependent rather than dualistically separate. Drawing on Lefebvre, Gramsci, and Poulantzas, I conceptualize Farsi as a colonial language characterized by a spatiotemporally dualistic framework manifested in the dichotomies like Persian-nonPersian. Produced as ‘specialized knowledge’ these dualisms have formed the everyday worldview of ordinary peoples who have been forcefully pulled into the state-produced Persian knowledge/culture. It will be discussed how these dualisms shape the hegemonic struggles that physically and conceptually reproduce the class relations of production. The Iranian national state is built on the interdependent pillars of Aryan Farsist racism and Islamic Shiist patriarchy, forming a single, conflicting entity known as Farshiism. Farsism and Shiism come together to absent the subaltern geohistories. Farshiism is evident in the dualistic feminization of territory that represents national space as Nāmūs (virtue or honor) or the mother of the integral Body of the nation whose ‘territorial integrity’ must be preserved at any cost. Drawing further on Dolores Hayden and Gillian Rose I argue that the dualist spaces of the nuclear family house – with its gendered division of labor – and the national territory are mutually constitutive. The marital space can be defined as the cell form of the national state space. National and marital spaces represent different scales of the same social form. Legally produced as privately owned and mutually exclusive bounded properties, these spaces form a material barrier to the development of emancipatory strategies.
Discipline
Architecture & Urban Planning
Geography
History
International Relations/Affairs
Language
Political Science
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
None