Revising Iranian Nationalist Historiography and Shaping a New Intellectual Field

Abstract

Historiography is our narratives and interpretations about the past. As our views toward events change our beliefs about the past also transform over time. Hence, we need to regularly update and revise our narratives and interpretations about the past. Yet, revising history is not merely a scholarly occupation; rather it may cause severe reactions of the established system due to its vital role in the formation and continuity of social identities and political orders. This study analyses the main aspects of Iranian nationalist historiography criticized by revisionist scholars. To this end, in the first step, I discuss the concept of revisionism in historiography and its challenges to the established paradigms of official national histories. Then, I describe the main pillars of the nationalist historiography of Iran shaped under the influence of Aryanism and orientalism in the West, socio-political developments during the late Qajar era, and the foundation of the Pahlavi monarchy. Furthermore, I examine the main aspects of the nationalist historiography criticized or revised by revisionist scholars of Iran. The results of this study attest to the formation of networks among two groups of scholars: (a) those with Islamist tendencies inside of Iran and (b) secular scholars outside of Iran. While these networks and intra-group factions appear promising, a lack of serious inter-group debates among these scholars or between revisionists and proponents of the nationalist historiography produces the main obstacles to the formation of an intellectual field. Nevertheless, revisionist scholarly work has challenged nationalist historiography through criticizing or revising the Aryan myth, the claims as to the immortality/antiquity of the nation, national identity, the territory of Iran, and its time, space, inclusion, and exclusion policies. These critiques may fail to result in a shift in the national historiography in the short run. Paradigms resist anomalies and, as Kuhn also underlines, the sheer falsification mechanism hardly can lead to a shift in a dominant paradigm supported by a political regime. Nevertheless, the findings of this study suggest that criticism may attest to the arrival of new forces that defy nation-states as the patrons of the official national historiographies.