Iran Without Borders

Iran Without Borders:Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation

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A history of the cosmopolitan forces that made contemporary Iran

“No ruling regime,” writes Hamid Dabashi, “could ever have a total claim over the idea of Iran as a nation, a people.” For decades, the narrative about Iran has been dominated by a false binary, in which the traditional ruling Islamist regime is counterposed to a modern population of educated, secular urbanites. However, Iran has for many centuries been a nation forged from a diverse mix of influences, most of them non-sectarian and cosmopolitan.

In Iran Without Borders, the acclaimed cultural critic and scholar of Iranian history Hamid Dabashi traces the evolution of this worldly culture from the eighteenth century to the present day, journeying through social and intellectual movements, and the lives of writers, artists and public intellectuals who articulated the idea of Iran on a transnational public sphere. Many left their homeland—either physically or emotionally—and imagined it from places as far-flung as Istanbul, Cairo, Calcutta, Paris, or New York, but together they forged a nation as worldly as it is multifarious.

Reviews

  • Reading Dabashi is like going for an extended coffee with a very smart friend.

    Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations
  • In a grand sweep of Iran’s intellectual history since the eighteenth century, Dabashi discovers a cosmopolitan worldliness rooted in national freedom struggles. Written for a non-specialist readership, Iran Without Borders presents fascinating accounts of travelers, poets, artists, newspapers, the Babi movement, Mosaddegh and exiled Iranian students.

    Partha Chatterjee, author of Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World
  • A highly valuable book that transcends identity politics, showing how the Iranian cultural landscape—and this includes ordinary lives—has been remarkably cosmopolitan. Rich in detail and powerful in argument, Iran Without Borders is a major contribution to the debate about the idea of the ‘nation’ in Iran and beyond.

    Asef Bayat, author of Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East