Persian orientalism: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the construction of ‘Iranianness’

Abstract

This article excavates the Eurocentric roots of Iranian nationalist discourse, which emerged from the political and intellectual trajectories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Premised on the epistemic privilege of the Persian language, a selective remembrance of the past, and forging an internal Other, I contend that this raciolinguistic ideology equated Persianness with Iranianness and naturalised Persian as both a language and a race. I begin with tracing the origin of Iranianness or Irāniyat: a concept coined by Mirza Fath'Ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two influential figures in late Qajar Iran, whose writings introduced and disseminated the Eurocentric and Orientalist view of the non‐Persian Other. In the second section, I examine how the Berlin Circle, a group of Iranian nationalist intellectuals in the early 20th century, elaborated these ideas into a coherent racial and political ideology that later informed the Pahlavis' state‐building project in 1925. The last section of the article engages with the recent neologism of the ‘Persianate World’, an intellectual enterprise imbued with an Orientalist predisposition that aims to inscribe a trans‐border and transcultural quality to Persian culture far beyond its current boundaries, encompassing Eurasia and Central Asia.

Blood for bread: Necro‐labor, nonsovereign bodies, and the state of exception in Rojhelat

“…According to Mbembe (2003, 27), necropolitics is "the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not." As shown in this study, kolberi is not simply a precarious form of labor but rather a manifestation of a raciolinguistic discourse that defines and animates the politics of identity in Iran (see Mohammadpour, 2023b), one that divides the demos/population into two categories of sovereign bodies and nonsovereign subjects, such as Kurds, whose lives are perceived insignificant and thus disposable. This was evidenced in kolbers recurring emphasis during my interviews that "A beast's life is worth more than a Kurd's in their eyes.…”

“…This approach has garnered considerable scholarly attention and application, especially in non‐Western contexts, such as Latin America (see Emerson, 2019) and Palestine (Mbembe, 2003), when studying marginalized communities based on ethnicity, religion, and gender differences (Bailey & Mobley, 2018; Chakraborty, 2021; Islekel, 2022). According to Mbembe (2003, 27), necropolitics is “the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not.” As shown in this study, kolberi is not simply a precarious form of labor but rather a manifestation of a raciolinguistic discourse that defines and animates the politics of identity in Iran (see Mohammadpour, 2023b), one that divides the demos/population into two categories of sovereign bodies and nonsovereign subjects, such as Kurds, whose lives are perceived insignificant and thus disposable. This was evidenced in kolbers recurring emphasis during my interviews that “A beast's life is worth more than a Kurd's in their eyes.”…”

“…The IRI constitution recognizes the state's extrajudicial power to prevent, punish, or eliminate what it defines as antirevolutionary and antisystem (Zedde Nezam ) acts threatening “national” and territorial integrity. By normalizing and enforcing the synonymity of Persian‐ness with the community's sovereignty and its distinct “historical capacity” to exercise power and rule, the Iranian state legitimizes exercising extralegal violence against ethnic and religious others (see Asgharzadeh, 2007; Mohammadpour, 2023b). Therefore, the IRI's constitutional framework is conducive to existing state violence and its resultant disciplinary power in Rojhelat.…”

“…As anthropologist Jonathan Rosa (2019) has demonstrated in his study of the colonial legacies of Latinx cultures, raciolinguistic ideologies, imbued with colonial desires, will eventually translate and naturalize language into a racial category. In the case of Iran, this ideology has rendered Persian both a linguistic and a racial distinction (see also Mohammadpour, 2023b).…”