Hamid Dabashi

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Critical Theory 20th-century philosophy


Name:	Hamid Dabashi
Birth:	June 15, 1951
School/tradition:	Anti-colonial Critique of Modernity
Main interests:	Liberation theory, Literary theory, Aesthetics, Cultural theory, Sociology of Culture
Notable ideas:	Trans-Aesthetics, Radical Hermeneutics, Anti-colonial Modernity, Will to Resist Power, Dialectics of National Traumas and National Art Forms, Phantom Liberties
Influences:	Nietzsche, Weber, Heidegger, Levinas, Foucault, Fanon, Adorno, Said, Shamlou

Hamid Dabashi (Persian: حمید دباشی‎ ) is an Iranian-born American intellectual historian, cultural and literary critic best known for his scholarship on Iran and Shi'a Islam. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies [1].

He is the author of 12 critically acclaimed books. Among his best-known are his Authority in Islam, Theology of Discontent, Truth and Narrative, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema [2]. In 2007 his book on Iranian history and politics Iran: A People Interrupted is scheduled for publication by New Press [3].

[edit] Biography

Born to a working class family and raised in southern city of Ahvaz in Iran, Dabashi was educated in Iran and then in the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in sociology of culture and Islamic studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff, the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic. An award-winning author and frequent lecturer around the globe, he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi [4].

[edit] Major Work

Hailed as "a leading light in Iranian studies" by the US Chronicle of Higher Education [5], Hamid Dabashi’s influential books are his Theology of Discontent, a definitive study of the global rise of Islamism as a form of liberation theology and the most comprehensive examination of the ideological roots of contemporary Islamist movements, and his Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future which is the founding text on modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of (Iranian) national cinema as a form of cultural modernity – featured even in the Lonely Planet travel guide for Iran.

In his Truth and Narrative, he has radically deconstructed the essentialist conception of Islam projected by Orientalists and Islamists alike. Instead he has posited, in what he calls a “polyfocal” conception of Islam, three competing discourses and institutions of authority – which he terms “nomocentric” (law-based), “logocentric” (reason-based) and “homocentric” (human-based) – vying for power and competing for legitimacy. The historical dynamics among these three readings of “Islam”, he concludes, constitutes the moral, political and intellectual history of Muslims. Dabashi’s most influential theory concerning the contemporary rise of Islamism is thus the predominance of the medieval juridical (nomocentric) dimension of Islam, at the grave cost of eliminating both its philosophical and mystical alternatives, but in effective contestation with European colonialism. The result is the formation of a double bind: the worst consequences of European colonialism conditioning and confounding the rise of medieval Islamic theocracies in the guise of modern nation-states such as the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Among his other influential work — which has been translated into many languages — are his essays Artist without Borders (2005), Women without Headache (2005), For the Last Time Civilization (2001) and The End of Islamic Ideology (2000).

Hamid Dabashi is also the author of numerous other significant articles and public speeches, ranging in their subject matters from Islamism, feminism, globalised empire and ideologies and strategies of resistance, to visual and performing arts in a global context.

In his Theology of Discontent Dabashi coined the term “colonial modernity," which refers to the paradoxical reception of the European project of Enlightenment modernity by the rest of the world, whereby non-Europeans are assigned subjectness precisely at the moment of the denial of their historical agency [6]. In his essay "For the Last Time: Civilizations", he has also posited the binary opposition between “Islam and the West” as a major narrative strategy of raising a fictive centre for European modernity and lowering the rest of the world as peripheral to that centre [7].

Dabashi’s late colleague and friend Edward Said spoke of Dabashi's scholarship as one sparkling "with verve and a sometimes punishing wit...Encyclopedic in its scope, informal in tone, shrewd in its interpretation, [his work is] indispensable...the perfect guide [8].

Furthermore, the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote that "the grand clash of civilizations and ideologies [over "Islam and the West"] will increasingly take place within the west, with such writers and intellectuals as Dabashi" [9].

[edit] Philosophy

Among the distinctive aspects of Dabashi’s thinking are a philosophical preoccupation with global geopolitics and the transaesthetics of emerging art forms that correspond to it. Dabashi’s principle work in which his political and aesthetic philosophy becomes historically anchored is his work on the rise of national cinema. There he contends that the only way out of the paradox of colonial modernity is the creative constitution of the postcolonial subject via a critical conversation with the historical predicament of the colonial subject. Dabashi argues that it is on the aesthetic site that the post-colonial subject must articulate the politics of her emancipation. In this respect, Dabashi’s major theoretical contribution is the collapsing of the binary opposition between the creative and the critical, the true and the beautiful, the poetics and the politics etc. On the colonial site, Dabashi argues in a memorable dialogue with Nietzsche and Heidegger, the Will to Power becomes the will to resist power.

In an essay on Qur’anic hermeneutics, “In the Absence of the Face” (2000), Dabashi has also taken the Derridian correspondence between the signifier and the signified and expanded it from what he considers its “Christian Christological” context and read it through a Judeo-Islamic frame of reference in which, Dabashi proposes, there is a fundamental difference between a sign and a signifier, a difference that points to a metaphysical system of signification that violently force-feed meaning into otherwise resistant and unruly signs. It is from this radical questioning of the legislated semantics of signs incarcerated as signifiers that Dabashi has subsequently developed a notion of non-Aristotelian mimesis, as best articulated in his essay on Persian Passion Play, “Ta’ziyeh: A Theater of Protest” (2005). Here he proposes that in Persian Passion Play, we witness an instantaneous, non-metaphysical and above all transitory, correspondence between the signifier and the signified and thus the modus operandi of the mimesis is not predicated on a permanent correspondence in any act of representation. There are serious philosophical implications to this particular mode of non-representational representation that Dabashi has extensively examined in his essays on the work of the prominent artist Shirin Neshat. Dabashi’s political dedication to the Palestinian cause, and his work on Palestinian cinema, has an added aesthetic dimension in which he is exploring the crisis of mimesis in national traumas that defy any act of visual, literary, or performative representation.

Dabashi’s primarily feminist concerns are articulated in a series of essays that he has written on contemporary literary, visual and performing arts. There his major philosophical preoccupation is with the emergence of a mode of transaesthetics (“art without border”) that remains politically relevant, socially engaged and above all gender conscious. In his philosophical reflections, he is in continues conversation with Jean Baudrillard, the distinguished French philosopher, and his notion of “transaesthetics of indifference”. Contrary to Baudrillard, Dabashi argues that art must and continues to make a difference and empower the disenfranchised.

In a critical conversation with Immanuel Kant, the founding father of European philosophical modernity, Dabashi has articulated the range of social and aesthetic parameters now defining the terms of a global reconfiguration of the sublime and the beautiful—in terms radically distanced from their inaugural articulation by Kant. His essays on transaesthetics, where these ideas are articulated, have been published in many languages by major European museums.

So far in his political thought, Dabashi has been concerned with the emerging patterns of global domination and strategies of regional resistance to them. Equally important to Dabashi’s thinking is the global geopolitics of labour and capital migration.

[edit] Film and Art

Hamid Dabashi

Hamid Dabashi has been principal advisor for many globally recognized artists and filmmakers; most recently he was the chief consultant to Ridley Scott in his making of Kingdom of Heaven [10] [11] (2005, Fox Twentieth Century, Hollywood, USA). Scott defended his film by saying that it was approved and verified by Dabashi, he also said that in his opinion, Dabashi is "an important man in New York" [12].

Dabashi was the chief consultant to Hany Abu Assad's Golden Globe awarded for best foreign language film and an Academy Award nominee in the same category “Paradise Now” (2005), and Shirin Neshat’s “Women without Men” (2006).

Professor Dabashi has also served as jury member on many international art and film festivals, most recently the Locarno International Festival in Switzerland. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, he is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema [13] [14].

As a theorist of trans-aesthetics (“art without border”), his articles and essays on the relationship between art and politics have been featured, translated to many languages, and published by museums and cultural institutes in Europe. For his contributions to Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian film-maker called Dabashi "a rare cultural critic" [15].

[edit] Political activism

Chiefly informing Hamid Dabashi’s intellectual preoccupations in these and his other works are his moral commitments to political activism. Although he has achieved academic stardom, he is among an emerging group of peace and anti-war activists that challenge the scholarly isolationism of the academic community and seeks to re-think the social production of knowledge and the full range of their political implications and practical consequences. What distinguishes Professor Dabashi even in his political activism is his uncompromising critique of all forms of theocracies (Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Jewish or any other), any form of violence in which preemptive wars and pro-active terrorism are in fact identical in their destructive consequences. While he is not teaching world cinema, comparative literature, and social and intellectual history at Columbia University, he is an anti-war activist like other high-profile academics such as his late colleague and friend Edward Said at Columbia University. Similar to other American academics who are anti-war activists, like Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole, Norman Finkelstein and Howard Zinn, Hamid Dabashi’s activism has sparked criticism by neoconservatives in the United States, while earning him support from many in the academia as well as praise from the American anti-war movement.

[edit] Selected Bibliography

[edit] Islamic and Iranian Studies

2006 Iran: A People Interrupted. New York, New Press. [16]
2005 Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. (Second Edition) with a New Introduction. New York, New York University Press (1993). New Edition, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers.[17].
2005 "Ignaz Goldziher and the Question Concerning Orientalism,” as an Introduction to a new Edition of Ignaz Goldziher’s Muslim Studies. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers. [18]
2000 “The End of Islamic Ideology,” Social Research. Volume 67, Number 2, Summer 2000. pp. 475-518. [19]
1999 Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (With Peter Chelkowski). London, Edward Booth-Clibborn Editions.
1993 "Historical Conditions of Persian Sufism during the Seljuk Period." In Leonard Lewisohn (ed.), Classical Persian Sufism: From Its Origins to Rumi. London and New York, Khaniqahi Nimatallahi Publishers.
1992 Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads. Second Edition. New Brunswick, NJ & London, Transaction Books. Winner of the 1990 Association of American Publishers Award in the category of religion and philosophy.
1989 Expectation of the Millennium: Shi’ism in History. With S.H. Nasr and S.V.R. Nasr. New York, State University of New York Press.
1989 "By What Authority? —The Formation of Khomeini's Revolutionary Discourse, 1964-1977." Social Compass, vol. 36, no. 4, December 1989.
1988 Shi’ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality. With S.H. Nasr, and S.V.R. Nasr. New York, State University of New York Press.
1986 "Symbiosis of Religious and Political Authorities in Islam." In Thomas Robbins and Roland Robertson (eds.), Church-State Relations: Tensions and Transitions. New Brunswick, NJ, and London, Transaction Books.
1986 "The Sufi Doctrine of 'The Perfect Man' and a View of the Hierarchical Structure of the Islamic Culture." Islamic Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2, Second Quarter, 1986.
1989 "Modern Shi’i Thought". The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modem Islamic World.

[edit] Islamic Philosophy

1999 Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani. London, Curzon Press.
1996 "The Philosopher/Vizier: Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and His Isma’ili Connection." In Farhad Daftari (ed.), Studies in Isma’ili History and Doctrines. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
1994 "Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: The Philosopher/Vizier." In Oliver Leaman (ed.), A History of Islamic Philosophy. London, Routledge.
1994 "Mir Damad and the School of Isfahan.” In Oliver Leaman (ed.), A History of Islamic Philosophy. London, Routledge.
1994 "Ayn al-Qudat: That Individual." In Oliver Leaman (ed.), A History of Islamic Philosophy. London, Routledge.
1990 "Danish-namah-yi AIa'i”. Encyclopedia Iranica.
1990 "Mir Damad". The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[edit] Visual, Performing Arts and Aesthetics

2005 “Artists without Borders: On Contemporary Iranian Art” in Octavio Zaya (Ed), Contemporary Iranian Artists: Since the Revolution (San Sebastian, Spain: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005). In English, Spanish, and Catalan.
2005 “Shirin Neshat: Transcending the Boundaries of an Imaginative Geography” in Octavio Zaya (Ed), The Last Word. San Sebastian, Spain, Museum of Modern Art. In English and Spanish.
2005 “Women without Headaches: On Shirin Neshat’s ‘Women without Men.’” Berlin, Germany, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart. In English and German.
2005 “Ta’ziyeh: Theater of Protest,” in The Drama Review (TDR). [20]
2002 “Bordercrossings: Shirin Neshat’s Body of Evidence,” Catalogue of Castello di Rivoli Retrospective on Shirin Neshat. Turin, Italy. January 2002.
2000 “In the Absence of the Face,” Social Research, Volume 67, Number 1. Spring 2000. pp. 127-185. [21]
1993 Parviz Sayyad's Theater of Diaspora. Costa Mesa, CA, Mazda.

[edit] World Cinema

2006 Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema]. Edited, with an Introduction. London and New York, Verso. [22]
2006 Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema. Washington DC, Mage. [23]
2004 Yami Karano Kobo] (The Light Arisen from the Darkness: On Mohsen Makhmalbaf) —in Japanese, Tokyo. [24]
2002 “Dead Certainties: Makhmalbaf’s Early Cinema,” in Richard Tapper (Eds), Studies in Iranian Cinema. London, I.B. Tauris.
2001 Close up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future. London and New York, Verso, 2001. [Translated into Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish].
1999 “Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Moment of Innocence,” in Rose Issa and Sheila Whitaker (Eds), Life and Art: The New Iranian Cinema. London, The British Film Institute, 1999. pp. 115-128.

[edit] Persian and Comparative Literature

2003 "Nima Yushij and Constitution of a National subject," Oriente Moderno, Volume xxii (lxxxiii), 2003.
1994 "Of Poetics, Politics and Ethics: The Legacy of Parvin E’tesami. In Heshmat Moayyad (ed.), Once a Dewdrop Accosted a Rose: Essays on the Poetry of Parvin E’tesami. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers.
1988 "Forough Farrokhzad and the Formative Forces of Iranian Culture." In Michael C. Hillmann (ed.), Forough Farrokhzad: A Quarter Century Later. Literature East and West.
1985 "The Poetics of the Politics: Commitment in Modern Persian Literature." Iranian Studies, Special Issue, The Sociology of the Iranian Writer, ed. by Michael C. Hillmann, vol. 18, nos. 2-4, Spring-Autumn, 1985.
Year? "Persian Literature" for The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modem Islamic World.

[edit] Postcolonial Theory

2001 “For the Last Time: Civilizations,” International Sociology. September 2001. Volume 16 (3): 361-368. [25]
2001 “No soy subalternista,” in Ileana Rodriguez (Ed), Convergencia de Tiempos: Estudios subalternos / contextos latinoamericanos estado, cultura, subalternidad. Atlanta, GA: Editions Rodopi b.v. 2001. pp. 49-59.