Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-30T19:02:11.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race and the Aesthetics of Alterity in Mahshid Amirshahi’s Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Amirhossein Vafa
Amirhossein Vafa*
Affiliation:
The Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Focusing on black women Qadam-Kheyr and Sorur in Mahshid Amirshahi’s novel Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr (1999), this article examines literary representations of the African-Iranian presence, and provides a critique of race and slavery in twentieth-century Iran. In light of the history of the Iranian slave trade until 1928, and the reconstruction of race and gender identities along Eurocentric lines of nationalism in Iran, the novel under scrutiny is a dynamic site of struggle between an “Iranian” literary discourse and its “non-Persian” Others. The “aesthetics of alterity” at the heart of the text is, therefore, the interplay between the repressed title-character Qadam-Kheyr and the resilient minor character Sorur, each registering Amirshahi’s artistic intervention into a forgotten corner of Iranian history.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 141 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Amirhossein Vafa would like to thank Goli Emami and Manijeh Abdollahi for their insight and encouragement in the development of this article, and the anonymous reviewers at Iranian Studies for their assessment and helpful comments.

References

Afary, Janet. Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Afshar, Haleh. “Age, Gender and Slavery in and out of the Persian Harem: A Different Story.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 5 (2000): 905–916. doi: 10.1080/01419870050110968CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. “Tamasha: didar va goftegu ba [A meeting and interview with] Mahshid Amirshahi.” By Erfan, Maryam. BBC Persian, YouTube video, August 8, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tedyg2Imz1EGoogle Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Hadis-e Nafs-e Mehr-Olia [Mehr-Olia’s self-reflections]. Stockholm: Ferdosi Publication, 2010.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Mah Asal-e Shahrbanu [Shahrbanu’s honeymoon]. Stockholm: Ferdosi Publication, 2001.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. “Zan az Did-e Dastan Nevisan-e Mo’aser” [Women from the perspective from contemporary fiction writers]. Iran Shenasi 48 (Winter 1379/2001): 893–906.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr. Stockholm: Ferdosi Publication, 1999.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Arusi-ye Abbas Khan [Abbas Khan’s wedding]. Stockholm: Ferdosi Publication, 1998.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Dar Safar [Abroad]. Los Angeles, CA: Ketab Corporation, 1995.Google Scholar
Amirshahi, Mahshid. Dar Hazar [At home]. Los Angeles, CA: Ketab Corporation, 1987.Google Scholar
Baghoolizadeh, Beeta. 2015. “Picturing the Other: Race and Afro-Iranians in Documentary Photography.” Ajam Media Collective. July 20, http://ajammc.com/2015/07/20/picturing-them-vs-us-race-and-afro-iranians-in-documentary-photography/Google Scholar
Parsi.Wiki, s.v. “Barzangi,” by Dehkhoda, Ali-Akbar, accessed 14 May, 2017, http://www.parsi.wiki/fa/wiki/topicdetail/e55e1cc6b85f4af09e1ae866c8d24023.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Chehabi, Houchang. “The Banning of the Veil and its Consequences.” In The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941, edited by Cronin, Stephanie, 193–210. London: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Daneshvar, Simin. Shahr-i Chon Behesht [A city like paradise]. Tehran: Entesharat-e Khwarazmi, 1361/1982.Google Scholar
Floor, Willem. “The Trade in and Position of Slaves in Southern Iran.” Studia Iranica 41 (2012): 255–294.Google Scholar
Hassanzade Ajiri, Denise. 2016. “The Face of African Slavery in Qajar Iran in Pictures.” The Guardian, January 14. https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2016/jan/14/african-slavery-in-qajar-iran-in-photosGoogle Scholar
Johnson, John. A Journey from India to England through Persia, Georgia, Russia, Poland, and Prussia, 1817. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818.Google Scholar
Khosronejad, Pedram, ed. Untold Stories: The Socio-Cultural Life of Images in Qajar Era Iran. New York: Lit Verlag, 2015.Google Scholar
Martin, Vanessa. The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milani, Farzaneh. “The Mediatory Guile of the Nanny in Persian Romance.” Iranian Studies 32, no. 2 (1999): 181–201. doi: 10.1080/00210869908701951CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mir-Abedini, Hasan. Sad Sal Dastan Nevisi-ye Iran [One hundred years of fiction writing in Iran]. 3 vols. Tehran: Nashr-e Cheshmeh, 1380/2002.Google Scholar
Mirzai, Behnaz A. “African Presence in Iran: Identity and its Reconstruction in the 19th and 20th centuries.” Outre-Mers 89, no. 336 (2002): 229–246. doi: 10.3406/outre.2002.3991Google Scholar
Moallem, Minoo. Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. London: Harvard University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Motlagh, Amy. Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southgate, Minoo. “The Negative Images of Blacks in Some Medieval Iranian Writings.” Iranian Studies 17, no. 1 (1984): 3–36. doi: 10.1080/00210868408701620CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sykes, Ella Constance. Persia and Its People. London: Elibron Classics, 2005.Google Scholar
Taj, al-Saltaneh. Khaterat-e Taj al-Saltaneh [The memoirs of Taj al-Saltaneh]. Edited by Ettehadiyeh, Mansureh and Sa‘d-vandiyan, Sirus. Tehran: Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran, 1364/1984.Google Scholar
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. London: The Women’s Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Woloch, Alex. The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza. The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza. “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the ‘Aryan’ Discourse in Iran.” Iranian Studies 44, no. 4 (2011): 445–472. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2011.569326CrossRefGoogle Scholar