{"id":162,"date":"2015-12-09T12:27:06","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T16:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/?p=162"},"modified":"2015-12-09T16:11:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T20:11:52","slug":"21st-century-orientalism-in-iran-and-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/2015\/12\/09\/21st-century-orientalism-in-iran-and-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"21st Century Orientalism in Iran and the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeing the movie Persepolis<\/em> in the sixth grade was one of the first truly globalizing moments of my life. Up until that point Iran, and the entire Middle East really, was in my narrow perception simply a land of conflict and intense religiosity. Being conditioned by both considerable privilege and the media of a post 9\/11 world I built definitions of \u201cAmerican\u201d and \u201cArab\/Muslim\u201d that were simplistic and wrong. Persepolis<\/em> was my first glimpse at a non-western perspective of the west, Iran, and Islam, and they<\/em> started to seem a lot more like us<\/em>. What was particularly disturbing however, was the picture of us, the U.S., that was revealed. This wasn\u2019t the champion of democracy I\u2019d been shown before, this was my first glimpse of the United States as an aggressive imperial power. Years later, viewing this film as a primary source in comparison with other scholarly lectures and articles such as those of Hamid Algar and Soroush, the unfortunate truth somes into sharply focus; the west, and the US in particular, has abused the Iranian people and has profited from their oppression, both politically and economically.<\/p>\n

\"simonpic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1953<\/a> the CIA in cooperation with the British, orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected Mossadeq government in order to protect western oil interests from nationalization as well as reinstate the Shah who was sympathetic to western interests. Both goals were accomplished, with Mohammad Reza Shah in control of the country and 40% of Iran\u2019s oil consortium going to the U.S. The CIA and the Israeli Mossad went on to help train and support the Shah\u2019s secret police, the SAVAK as well as other brutal and violent organizations meant to suppress the descent and political agency of the Iranian people. It\u2019s clear that in the case of Iran the common and self assumed identity of the west as the bastion of liberty and democracy breaks down. The United States and other imperial powers actively supported a tyrant and attempted to deny the self determination of a nation. In particular I found in Hamid Algar\u2019s lecture \u201cIran and Shi\u2019ism\u201d an apt summation of the situation:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may say that had it not been for the continued interference in Iranian affairs first by Russia then by Great Britain, and most recently by the United States and Israel, Iran today, instead of looking back on a quarter century of struggle and a year of revolution in which at least fifty thousand people were slaughtered, might well have been able to look back on more than half a century of constitutional and parliamentary rule\u201d (Algar, 25)<\/p>\n

With the return to power of Mohammad Reza Shah, the United States alienated the Iranian people and condemned them to decades of inept, oppressive, and often violent rule. This subversion of democracy seems distinctly \u201cun-American\u201d. To the critical eye it is undeniable that \u201cThe deeply-held American values of freedom, self determination, and human rights of others have become subordinated to national interests\u201d (Sheikhneshin, 93). And yet to this day, the question of whether or not Iran can be trusted is central to many of our foreign policy debates – particularly following the recent Nuclear Deal pioneered by Secretary of State John Kerry. American politicians and media alike continue to cast an oppressive theocratic Iran in contrast to an enlightened and liberated west. In 2002<\/a>, President Bush even went so far as to include Iran in an \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d, rhetoric that continues to color American perceptions of Iran to this day. This, is orientalism in practice on a national scale.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, my experience with Persepolis<\/em> was a realization that my definitions of American and Iranian, West and East, secular and religious, all existed as stark opponents of one another \u2013 and as such these definitions were wildly insufficient. Using difference as the primary method of defining one\u2019s identity can quickly and easily lead to fear of the different and ignores the possibility of complexity and cultural exchange. This fear, as Soroush puts it, is caused by \u201c\u2026the lack of a strong cultural digestive system and also the misconception that each culture is an indivisible monolith, accepting one part of which equals accepting the whole\u201d (Soroush, 164). Both Iran and the US take part in this misconception, with chants of \u201cdeath to America\u201d on one hand, and threats of sanctions and bombs on the other.<\/p>\n

And so the question remains: why is this orientalism so effective, and how does it effect our perceptions? In short, the orient occident comparison serves national interests and helps to support nationalist ideas. As Edward Said states in the introduction to his book Orientalism<\/em>, \u201cThe relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony\u2026\u201d (Said 5). In the case of Iran and the U.S. this relationship was characterized at first by an outright dominance and more recently by a cultural and ideological contrast. This dynamic of assumed dominance, while upset by the 1979 revolution remains to this day. When a leading republican candidate for the presidency seriously propose shutting down mosques and issuing special ID’s to muslim citizens (whether as a vote-getter or as serious policy) it is more crucial than ever that we forestall such blindness and hatred by expanding our perspectives.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Graham, Robert.\u00a0Iran, the Illusion of Power. New York: St. Marin’s Press, 1978.<\/li>\n
  2. Hamid Algar, \u201cIran and Shi`ism,\u201d in Roots of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, four lectures by Hamid Algar (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2001 [rev. ed.]), 13- 46.<\/li>\n
  3. Keddi, Nikki Ragozin.\u00a0Roots of Revolution. An Interpretive History of Modern Iran. New Haven: Yale U. P., 1981.<\/li>\n
  4. Persepolis. Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. France: The Kennedy\/Marshall Company, 2007. Film.<\/li>\n
  5. Said, Edward W. \u201cIntroduction.\u201d Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. 1-28.\u00a0\u00a0 Print.<\/li>\n
  6. John Obert Voll, \u201cEuropean Domination and Islamic Response,\u201d in Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994)<\/li>\n
  7. Sheikhneshin, Arsalan Ghorbani. 2009. \u201cIran and the US: Current Situation and Future Prospects\u201d.\u00a0Journal of International and Area Studies\u00a016 (1). Institute of International Affairs, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University: 93\u2013113. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/43107186.<\/li>\n
  8. Weiss, Cathy M. “Why Iran Must Remain a US Enemy.”\u00a0– Al Jazeera English. N.p., 10 May 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.<\/li>\n
  9. “Text of President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address.” Washington Post. January 29, 2002. Accessed November 3, 2015.<\/li>\n
  10. Cassidy, John. “Donald Trump and America’s Muslims – The New Yorker.”The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2015.<\/li>\n
  11. . Merica, Dan, and Jason Hanna. “In Declassified Document, CIA Acknowledges Role in 1953 Iran Coup – CNNPolitics.com.”\u00a0CNN. Cable News Network, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 04 Dec. 2015.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Seeing the movie Persepolis in the sixth grade was one of the first truly globalizing moments of my life. Up until that point Iran, and the entire Middle East really, was in my narrow perception simply a land of conflict … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[274396],"tags":[122530,302,16825,274603,274598,198,12575,224943],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-post","tag-imperialism","tag-iran","tag-islam","tag-modernity","tag-persepolis","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-usa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AttX-2C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}