EHESS Seminar / Revisiting the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Chowra Makaremi (CNRS research fellow and director of the ERC ‘Off-Site’ project) and Yasmin Nadir (ERC ‘Off-Site’ post-doctoral researcher) are co-organising with Marie-Ladier Fouladi (CNRS research director) the EHESS seminar Revisiting the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

The aim of the seminar is to demonstrate that, contrary to the prevailing ideas and discourse, the Iranian Revolution was neither Islamic nor religious in its genesis, and even less so was it Khomeinist. This revolution, like all revolutions, was the work of a complex group of antagonistic actors and ideas. It was the result of a slow process that gained momentum as the waves of protest mounted and brought together ever larger sections of society. However, the Shiite clergy, under the guidance of Khomeini, was better able to capture the momentum of the protest movement than the competing social groups and political formations, be they secular Muslims, democrats or extreme leftists, communists or non-communists in a vast array of Maoists, Trotskyists, Stalinists or libertarians. The aspiration to freedom from tyranny and the risk of civil war that presided over the Iranian Revolution of 1979 remains despite its confiscation by Khomeini.

We will be looking at the formation of the Iranian state and the state violence against opposition political organisations in the first decade after the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

Programme:

Session 1: Introduction

Session 2: 1979: From one referendum to another

Session 3: The difficult chronology of the revolutionary years

Session 4: The Cultural Revolution of 1980

Session 5: Revolution and Wars

Session 6: Economies of terror

Session 7: A new history: the making of the revolutionary past in Iran

Session 8: Presentation of students’ work; conclusion of the seminar