Abstract
This article critically examines dominant approaches that reduce Iran’s political culture to essentialist notions of “national character,” offering transhistorical explanations that obstruct both scientific analysis and democratic political practice. Drawing on a critical theoretical framework that combines Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology, transition studies associated with Jan Kubik, cultural studies, and the concept of “Iranian ideology” as articulated by Mohammad Reza Nikfar, the article argues that such cultural explanations are not objective analyses but ideological projects aimed at constructing a unified and imaginary identity. The function of these ideologies is to conceal the real contradictions and fractures of “the social” and to foreclose the field of struggle over meaning.
Through a critical analysis of three prominent intellectual discourses—Iranshahr thought (associated with Seyed Javad Tabatabai), Islamic nativism (associated with Hossein Kachouyan), and the “impossibility of thinking” (associated with Aramesh Dustdar)—the article demonstrates how, despite their apparent differences in content (pride, revival, and reproach), these projects converge in their ideological function of excluding pluralism. All three discourses, by presupposing a fixed “essence” of Iranian identity and neglecting the determining role of institutions and social structures, lead to anti-democratic impasses: Iranshahr thought tends toward a non-participatory, racialized elitism; nativism toward an authoritarian Islamic exclusivism; and the theory of impossibility toward cultural determinism and political passivity.
The article concludes that moving beyond these totalizing ideologies—subsumed under the rubric of “Iranian ideology”—and returning to critical social sciences is a necessary condition for understanding the obstacles to transition and for opening pathways toward a democratic and plural political culture.
Keywords: Iranian ideology; Seyed Javad Tabatabai; Hossein Kachouyan; Aramesh Dustdar; Iranianism; Islamic nativism; the impossibility of thinking.
