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Appropriation and Explosion in Reforming Language-Games: A Model for Discursive Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sina Mansouri-Zeyni*
Affiliation:
Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Mohammad-Ali Rahebi
Affiliation:
Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd.

—Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
With the linguistic turn came an ever-increasing tendency to see language as the locus where truths are born, passed along, or modified. As such, postmodern theories have proved highly compatible with postcolonial studies, which have inspired studies of modern Iran as a country that was colonized, only not officially. However, the latter seem to have fallen for extreme abstraction where metaphysical claims abound: presuming constructivist views of language but failing to present a tangible framework, these studies discuss “discursive change” without giving a clue as to what either discourse or change is. Convinced as such, we have adopted Wittgenstein's idea of language-games to present a tangible model for discursive change.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2013

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Footnotes

We dedicate this paper to Dr Gholamreza Shafiee-Sabet and Dr Omid Ghahreman, two prominent figures getting out of whose shadows has been (and we at once fear and hope will continue to be) the most productive effort of our lives.

References

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2 The relation between postcolonial theories and the postmodern mode of thinking has itself been subject to much debate; however, it is safe to say that the two share a similar regime du savoir, to say the least. Ashcroft, for one, firmly states that “the problem with the relationship between post-colonialism and postmodernism lies in the fact that they are both, in their very different and culturally located ways, discursive elaborations of postmodernity.” Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformation (London and New York, 2001), 7–13.

3 For instances of the three types of studies mentioned see, respectively, Viswanathan, Gauri, “The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India,” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987): 2–26; Franz Fanon, “The Negro and Language,” Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Markmann, Charles Lam (London, 2008), 827Google Scholar, and Dabashi, Hamid, Brown Skins, White Masks(London and New York, 2011)Google Scholar; and, Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London and New York, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With regard to the last case, it might be worth noting that in our most recent correspondence Ashcroft stated that he no longer uses “writing back” and prefers “transformation” instead.

4 We borrow the term appropriation from Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin. The influence of their The Empire Writes Back on our study is obvious; however, it is not appropriate to recurrently acknowledge such influence due to the different direction our “appropriation” takes from theirs.

5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G.E. (Oxford, 1963), §1Google Scholar.

6 Rorty, “The Contingency of Language.”

7 Ibid.

8 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§26–36 and §§243–75.

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20 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §373.

21 Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein and the “Philosophical Investigations” (New York and London, 2002), 67.

22 Smith, The Wealth of Nations, iii.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid, 7.

25 Ibid, 3.

26 Marx, Karl, Capital (Marxists.org, 1999)Google ScholarPubMed, chapter 5. We use this source this one time to stress the translation of Marx's “Geldbesitzer” by a rather diminutive “moneybags” which might stand in contrast to Smith's “monied man.”

27 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (London, 1976), 228.

28 Ibid., 480.

29 Ibid., 482.

30 Ibid., 475.

31 Ibid., 716.

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34 Afary, “Shi‘i Narratives of Karbala and Christian Rites of Penance,” 23.

35 Afary, “Shi‘i Narratives of Karbala and Christian Rites of Penance,” 24–5.

36 Afary, “Shi‘i Narratives of Karbala and Christian Rites of Penance,” 27.

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39 Ibid., 38. The necessity of this re-rendering of Shi'ism has to do with the rebellion that is inscribed in it. See Dabashi, Hamid, Shi'ism: A Religion of Protest (London and Cambridge, MA, 2011)Google Scholar; and Ali Mirsepassi, “The Crisis of Secularism and the Rise of Political Islam,” in Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization. Dabashi and Mirsepassi present a genealogy of Shi'ism, arguing that protest and rebellion are in the raison d'être of Shi'ism.

40 Haggay Ram, “The Myth of Early Islamic Government,” 43.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 49.

43 See Tavakoli-Targhi, “Contested Memories,” Refashioning Iran. The problems arose from the fact that “the androgynous identity of Kayumars and the perception of her/him as the progenitor of humankind was irreconcilable with the Biblico-Qur'anic view of Adam as the primal man.” What descended from this disparity was a number of replacements of various mythistorical figures (i.e. the vocabulary) as the progenitor of humankind (i.e. the grammar).

44 Bataille, Georges, The Accursed Shared Vol. I (New York, 1988), 21–6Google Scholar. See also his Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–1939, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr (Minneapolis, MN, 1985), 118.

45 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, MN, 1978).

46 Derrida, Jacques, Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL, 1988), 7Google Scholar. See also Derrida, Jacques, “Psyche: Inventions of the Other,” Psyche: Inventions of the Other (Stanford, CA, 2007)Google Scholar.

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49 For two definitive treatments of the theme, see Hofstadter, Richard, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA, 1996)Google Scholar and Barkun, Michael, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley, CA, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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53 Ibid., 18–175.

54 Iraj Pezeshkzad, Dai jan Napelon [My Uncle Napoleon], 176. The translations from the original Persian are ours.

55 Ibid., 185.

56 Ibid., 201.

57 Ibid., 226.

58 Ibid., 331, 342.

59 Ibid., 381.

60 Ibid., 382.

61 Ibid., 267, 353.

62 Makki, Tarikh-e bist-saleh-ye Iran, 65.

63 Chehabi, Houchang E., “The Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography,” Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, ed. Atabaki, Touraj (London, 2009), 155Google Scholar.

64 The title of an influential book by Ahmad Khan-Malik Sasani, qtd. in Chehabi, “The Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography,” 158.

65 Makki, Tarikh-e bist-saleh-ye Iran, 65.

66 Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon, 178.

67 Ibid., 210.

68 Ibid., 226.

69 Ibid., 234.

70 Ibid., 370.

71 Chehabi, “The Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography,” 175.

72 Iraj Hesabi, Ostad-e eshq [The master of love] (Tehran, 2011).

73 For the sake of brevity, we shall only cite the page numbers relevant to the three categories. For the obstacles see Ibid., 1, 4, 42, 46, 49, 52, 56, 96, 100, 102, 147, 149, 162; for his knowledge, 15, 77–8, 83, 88, 94, 95, 98-9, 160, 184–6; for the list of achievements see 187–92.

74 Ibid., 122–3.

75 Reza Mansouri, “Shayyadi zir-e lava-ye nam-e marhum Hesabi” [Deceit under the protection of the late Hesabi's name], http://www.rmansouri.ir/userfiles/file/Articles/shayadi.pdf (accessed March 20, 2013).

77 For this emerging more realistic mindset see Sina Mansouri-Zeyni and Sepideh Sami, “The History of Ressentiment and the Emerging Ressentiment-less Mindset,” Iranian Studies 47, no. 1 (forthcoming).

78 See Agamben, Giorgio, “What is an Apparatus,” What is an Apparatus (Stanford, CA, 2009)Google Scholar.

81 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 65.