Uncomfortable, irregular, anarchist: an archaeology of repetition

Historic Environment, 2017

The 1978-1979 revolution in Iran saw the country move from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic. This gave rise to political, economic and social changes, but also a series of cultural shifts, most heavily effecting Iran’s pre-Islamic and Pahlavi Era inheritance. While some sites seamlessly transferred from one cultural context to the next, others were ignored or even defaced. Even within the positive recasting of pre-Islamic heritage during the reformist movements of the late 1990s, the concept of Iranian identity has remained complicated, an unstable foundation upon which to construct a uniform heritage policy. Finding a way to reconcile the various political movements has become central to the successful management and preservation of Iran’s heritage as a sustainable resource that can serve a complex nation with a long and rich history. This paper will examine three specific examples of heritage sites that were affected by the changes in Iranian identity politics: the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae, Sa’dabad palace and the Azadi Tower. An exploration of the similarities and differences between these sites before and after the revolution will then highlight the surprising creativity with which such heritage has been treated within the Islamic Republic.

International Journal of Middle East Studies , 2020

This paper examines the use of space and time at the Museum of the Islamic Revolution and Holy Defence (MIRHD) in Tehran, dedicated to the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). Its goal is to disentangle the ways the notion of resistance-crucial to the nationalist narrative that underpins the museum as an ideological artifact-is manifested through the organization of space and time within the museum, and how this idea of resistance is altered by visitors and social interactions that occur outside and in the museum. Temporality is important in the museum, because it displaces stories and data from a specific period of Iran's revolutionary history into the current time, assigning to the war a specific political function in the present era. Space is equally important, and the paper will consider the message it carries both inside and outside the museum. The museum proposes "resistance" as a fixed articulation of state ideology. This article proposes, however , that it is refashioned by visitors as an "intimate struggle" through their striving for self-construction. This argument is made by connecting the narrative of the museum to visitors' (mostly young Hezbollah affiliates) perception of it and to their social lives. More specifically, I argue that by memorializing and romanticizing popular mobilization and resistance during the war, the museum unintentionally assists the shift of resistance from a public or collective action that the state controls to an intimate act, one which connects individuals and the state through an individual-centered bond. Exploring this kind of intimate resistance is crucial to understanding the formation of revolutionary subjectivity in the present time as a creative process, not rigidly dependent on politics or religion but instead existing as a conversation between the past and the future self of citizens, which is at the same time dependent on and autonomous from the state.

Fabrications, 2018

For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people's daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting "Islamic architectural heritage. " Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution.

Archaeologies of Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and Repression, 2020

American Anthropologist, 2014

The relationship between nationalism, politics, and the development and practice of archaeology has recently become a popular topic among archaeologists. This paper reviews the relationship between nationalism, political developments, and the rise and progress of archaeology in Iran from the mid 19th century to the present. The Iranian reaction to foreign interference is investigated here, and the role Iran’s past has played in reinforcing nationalist sentiments is explored. It is argued that whenever the political situation provided a favorable environment, intellectuals and politicians, in various capacities, have exploited the archaeological and historical record, especially those of the Achaemenid and Sasanian empires, to advocate their nationalist agendas. This paper concludes with an assessment of the recent manifestations of Iranian nationalism in the postrevolutionary era, and its utilization of Iran’s history and recent sociopolitical transformations.

Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2018

For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people’s daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting “Islamic architectural heritage.” Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution.

Written under somewhat different circumstances in 2013, this paper utilizes a selection of antiquities offered by Clio Ancient Art, and other donated by Clio to museum collections, to examine the specific nature of the antiquities trade vis-a-vis antiquities of Iranian origin.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020

book, are located. For example, how can we understand heritage work that is simultaneously about statebuilding and institutionalization and about resistance, about establishing authority and challenging authority? How can creativity open up a space for creating and negotiating statehood and political subjectivity in colonial spaces, when the state itself does not exist? And finally, how can museums, as an epitome of colonial knowledge, be reworked to counter colonialism-to use De Cesari's own words, "What does it mean to museumify something that is not past, not dead, even, at times, not yet existing?" (p.194