Iran's Troubled Modernity

This book continues my earlier study on the influence of the Heideggerian counter-Enlightenment in Iran. My last book, "Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought," focused on Ahmad Fardid's thought, as part of the broader circulation of intellectual ideas to Iran (European counter-Enlightenment tradition), and the reception of Persian Islam to Europe (in Henry Corban's thought). The book explores the nature of these ideas and tradition as they travel back and forth. More specifically, I examined the ideological hazards of excessive anti-modernity, projected in the Gharbzadegi discourse (Westoxification) in Iran. I further discussed the social significance of politicized Erfan (Persian mysticism), or the desire for achieving "Eastern Spirituality", and the violently anti-democratic predicament of what Michel Foucault celebrated as the "politics of Spirituality." The current volume continues this important scholarly investigation, although in a rather different format. This new and complimentary book engages in a dialogue on Ahmad Fardid's intellectual legacy, by those who admire him, some who were once inspired by him but are now critical of his thinking, and others who may hold a more mixed and ambivalent view of Fardid and his ideas.