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From Pahlavi rule to a Iranian Diaspora – Shojaeddin Shafa' and his polemics of Iranian identity
Abstract
This paper will present the oeuvre of Shojaeddin Shafa’ (1918-2010), an Iranian intellectual and bureaucrat, who was central to the efforts of the Pahlavi state to educate the masses and cultivate its perception of Iranian nationalism, in the course of the last decade and a half of its existence. Active at the crossroads between the political and the intellectual, Shafa planned some of the famous events of the Pahlavi state, the greatest of which was the Celebration of 2500 years of Iranian monarchy, held in October 1971. Moreover, Shafa’, who lived in exile from the Islamic Revolution until his death in 2010, kept defending and expounding the Pahlavi historical view of Iranian nationalism, history and identity. In his polemical writings against the Islamic Republic, he demonstrated that the collision between the Islamic Republic and at least part of Iranian nationalists living outside Iran is far from over. This biographical work is part of a larger project that ventures to trace the cultural aspects of the Pahlavi state and its adversaries, mainly from 1963 to 1979, and the echoes thereof in contemporary discourse in and outside Iran.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
Identity/Representation