Book Review: Mehrzad Borujerdi, "Iranian Intellectuals and the West" Center for Iranian Research Analysis Review (1997)

Copyright (c) 1997 by Darius Rejali, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification of the publisher

Merhzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Pp. xix + 256.

Darius M. Rejali
Department of Political Science
Reed College

Mehrzad Boroujerdi's book is about the triumph of nativism in Iran. Nativism is an intellectual doctrine that affirms authentic cultural customs and indigenous beliefs. In the Iranian case, it is the doctrine that affirms one's Perso-Islamic heritage as being foundational to one's identity and crucial to one's future. Nativists contrast themselves with other intellectuals who claim greater knowledge not on the basis of being connected to one's heritage, but on the basis of their Westernized, secularized attitudes and their savoir faire in getting around the modern world. Despite this, Boroujerdi insists nativists are not traditionalist thinkers. Rather, modernity produces nativists. Nativists only come to recognize themselves in contrast to and in competition with Westernized intellectuals. And nativism lends itself to some of the most violent, xenophobic, jingoistic aspects of state building in the Third World.

Boroujerdi argues that in late twentieth century Iran, nativism triumphed because it was "the sole ideological candidate suited to unite most segments of the intellectual polity" (p. 178). He cites a list of reasons here: disillusionment as a result of serious political and economic failures of modernization; the lack of Pahlavi ideological hegemony; its populist character; the failure of secularism as a way of thought to take hold despite rapid socio-economic secularization in practice; its call for collective consciousness helped cure the agony of modernization, and the ability of the clergy to promote nativism among the population. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and it is difficult to tell how to prioritize these causes in terms of their salience or whether Boroujerdi is arguing for some specific causal conjuncture. What it does show is the variety of explanatory mechanisms to which Boroujerdi appeals to make his case: cognitive dissonance brought by modernization, resource mobilization skills of different groups; structural characteristics of the rentier state that lead to a rentier mentality; a functionalist theory of legitimacy, and simply that sometimes nativism suited specific economic and political interests of this or that group.

Boroujerdi spends a great deal of time tracing the permutations of nativism in different sectors of the "intellectual polity" moving between broad sociological analyses of movements of thought (clerical or mujahidin subculture) and literary analyses of specific figures who made a "substantive theoretical contribution." (p. xv) Readers will find a great deal of biographical detail. The encyclopedic appendix profiling Iranian intellectuals is certainly a welcome addition. But a question that becomes overwhelming as one reads the book is, why is it interesting to know that nativism became the sole ideological candidate suited to unite most segments of the intellectual polity? Is it because the Iranian intelligentsia showed themselves particularly unique in some respect when compared to other intelligentsia?

Nativism emerges in all countries, even in the US where some treasure authentic family values, Christian revivalism and English speaking heritage. What is it that distinguishes and justifies the study of nativism among the Iranian intelligentsia compared to others? Boroujerdi broaches the comparative question early on in the text but does not return to it. He argues that the Iranian intelligentsia was different from other Middle Eastern intelligentsia because they were not assimilated by a colonial state and did not have direct access to Western thought. Their partial, mediated connection meant that they were not particularly inventive with Western ideologies (unlike the Russian intelligentsia) lacked a fierce commitment to secularism (unlike the Turkish intelligentsia), and lacked the stamina to translate so many Western books (unlike the Japanese and Indians). All of this is a bit perplexing since only one of these groups (the Indians) were colonized; all the rest had a similarly partial mediated relationship with the West much like the Iranians. Yet the important issue here is NOT what the causes of these differences were - whether it was the absence of direct colonization (p. 24) or the peculiar characteristics of the Iranian rentier state (p. 29) What is important is why study the Iranian intelligentsia, and the triumph of nativism in that context at all, if the Iranian intelligentsia was so undistinguished in all these comparative respects?

I suspect the answer is, though Boroujerdi does not say it in as many words, is that in Iran, nativism not only came to dominate the entire intellectual field (perhaps as much in the end by guns as by words) but that the Iranian intelligentsia articulated a particularly extreme and xenophobic version of nativism. (p.18-19, 154, 177, 180) one which Boroujerdi believes is impoverished and dangerous. Of all the characteristics that according to Boroujerdi caused the triumph of nativism, only one, the rentier quality of the state, seems to set the position of the Iranian intelligentsia apart. As Boroujerdi himself says (p. 31), not having to pay for it, the people nevertheless came to rely on it, especially the intelligentsia who depended on access to the benefits the universities provided. Could it be that Iranian "rentier mentality" (an extreme form of dependency without any respect for authority) leads to a more uncritical and extreme adoption of nativism? One wishes Boroujerdi had been clearer.

Intellectuals writing about intellectuals is a very perilous enterprise, not the least because it can become self-absorbed and parochial. Boroujerdi broaches a question, however, of the first importance and it is this: how can one continue to be associated with modernity, with all its dangers, and keep a critical distance? Iranian nativism turns out to be one answer to a very complicated question that goes well beyond Iran and applies to the Iranian diaspora and multiculturalism more generally. How can Iranians abroad, for example, be critical of American culture without sounding like they speak from the "outside," that is, indulging in exactly the nativist discourse Boroujerdi maps? And if we agree with Boroujerdi that this way of speaking itself is caused by modernity, that it fails to escape the very thing it criticizes, what are the alternatives? Is there a way of being critical of American culture (or Western culture) that is neither "inside" nor "outside" but just something else. Boroujerdi gestures towards this (also) very perilous enterprise (p. 181). He argues that Iranian intellectuals (and could one say CIRA intellectuals?) live in two disparate worlds and are in a position to answer this question better as a result of this. Whether they are really on the cutting edge of history, I would say is probably prematurely congratulatory. The question, as always, is whether they do anything interesting with their new found freedom.