De-politicizing Westoxification: The Case of Bonyad Monthly

Abstract

This article studies materials published in the Bonyad Monthly, a journal sponsored by the Pahlavi state. It was published for two years (1977–78), just prior to the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Bonyad Monthly’s mission was to engage in the ongoing intellectual debates at the time in Iran’s encounter with modernity. It primarily published articles, interviews and translations, with the aim of exposing the cultural and moral perils of modern western culture. The writers of Bonyad Monthly cast the modern world as morally soulless, culturally debased, politically imperial and arrogant. The Journal also depicted Iranian culture as the mirror image of the modern west, and part of the rising “Eastern spiritual” resurrection. More specifically, Bonyad Monthly helped invert and de-politicize the notion of Gharbzadegi (Westoxification). The Gharbzadegi discourse, a powerful rhetorical device, had been used by oppositional intellectuals to condemn the Pahlavi modernization programme. It was now ironically claimed by the Pahlavi state and used to craft a new state-sponsored anti-modern ideology. This signified a major ideological turning point for the modernizing state in Iran. The editor and writers of Bonyad Monthly were influenced by a broader anti-modernist current around the Pahlavi State. Very prominent scholars such as Henry Corbin, Ahmad Fardid, Hussein Nasr and Ehsan Naraghi articulated anti-modernist ideas, calling for the return to Persian and Islamic spiritual identity. This article discusses the ironies and complexities of a modernizing state imagining itself as the champion of anti-modern ideas and traditions.