Frantz Fanon in Iran: Darling of the Right and the Left in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

This essay probes Frantz Fanon’s ideological influence across the political opposition to the Shah’s rule in Iran (1941–1979) during the 1960s and 1970s leading to the 1979 Revolution. Fanon’s counterhegemonic positioning galvanized both the right conservative faction, including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, and the clergy, nationalists, and intellectuals. They all felt betrayed by Marxism and liberalism alike. Fanon’s discourse informed by an indigenous framework bent to the future became the organizing principle of the Revolution to come. This essay will shed light on the role of Ali Shariati as the connoisseur of Fanon’s “art,” to reinscribe the other and reconstitute a new humanity which is not Eurocentric. He introduced Fanon to Iranians. Another focus of the present essay is to illuminate the role of the translations of Fanon’s works across the opposition to lay the ideological foundations of the Revolution.