Referring to Reza Shah's “sartorial Westernization,” particularly the replacement of the Pahlavi hat by the French kepi (képi), Mehdi Quli Khan Hedayat (1927–33), then Reza Shah's prime minister, remembers the shah mentioning to him, in private, and in defense of the 1927 clothing decree, “All I am trying to do is for us to look like them [the Europeans] so they would not laugh at us.”Footnote 1 A fleeting, yet memorable, reference in Hedayat's memoir, the anecdote is taken up by historians to show Reza Shah's attitude toward the West and its sartorial practices. As the shah had made it clear in a speech to Majlis deputies, he saw the Western hat as a sign of “superiority.”Footnote 2 Hedayat's reminiscence of the shah's personal disclosure allows us to initiate a new inquiry into modern Iranian history, particularly into the underlying ideological incentives of Iranian modernity. If anything, the anecdote reveals Reza Shah's fear of Iranians becoming an object of the Europeans’ laughter and ridicule, and that the disciplinary power of this fear left a formative impact in a developmental moment in modern Iranian history.
Reza Shah's expression of inferiority vis-à-vis the West appears to be, as argued in this article, a manifestation of a broader discourse that had gained ground and caused a proliferation of similar expressions among numerous Iranian intellectuals and officials in mid- and late 19th-century in Iran. To delineate this widespread discourse, which I conceptualize as “self-deprecating modernity,” I reconsider Iranian modernity, placing an unprecedented focus on the sociopsychological role of self-conscious, and in particular self-deprecatory, emotions expressed by many Iranian intellectuals. In doing so, I hope to elaborate a seldom-explored dimension of the modern Iranian self, at least from the perspective of many intellectual elites and officials.
Extant historiographical accounts of Iranian modernity hint at a strong emotional framework in the mid- and late 19th-century intellectual milieu of Iran, shaped by the self-colonizing attitudes toward Europe (Farangistān) of many modernist thinkers who perceived Europe as Iran's idealized Other.Footnote 3 This self-imagination and self-fashioning took place mainly at the cost of the Arabs, who, in many accounts by Iranian nationalists, became Iran's abject Other.Footnote 4 Iranian modernity, although boasting nationalist and self-aggrandizing tendencies, also featured a self-conscious side, as I will demonstrate.Footnote 5 Through the discursive process of self-disparagement, many Iranian thinkers vigorously expressed and disseminated frustrated feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, and shame as collective self-criticism of Iran and Iranians. Self-deprecating modernity was a self-criticizing, often shame-inducing, and at times satirical discourse relying on an emotion-driven and self-orientalizing framework that developed out of many mid-19th-century Iranian modernists’ obsessions with Europe and the European; self-surveillance under the perceived European gaze; and the perceived humiliation of Iranians due to the ridiculing laughter of other nations at the expense of Iran and Iranians.
To explain the workings of this self-deprecation, I reexamine the works of three pre-constitutionalist thinkers, whose names also are tied, albeit for different reasons, to the birth of not only modern Iranian literary criticism but also modern Persian comedy: Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh (1812–78), Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908), and Mirza Aqa Tabrizi (d. 1915).Footnote 6 Considering these authors within the broader sociopolitical context of late Qajar Iran, specifically exploring their perspectives on shame, embarrassment, and ridiculing laughter, I show how their works were informed by, and helped to form, the discourse of self-disapproval. Given my reevaluation of the importance of ridicule and its disciplinary power in shaping collective discourses, I will, in the conclusion, briefly discuss some of the wide-ranging consequences my argument may have for a decolonial reconsideration of derisive self-critical practices and discourses—including in humor and satire—in modern Iranian history, culture, and literature.
Self-Deprecating Modernity
Extant accounts of Iranian modernity identify its origins in the emotional reactions of many Iranian elites to Iran's distressing confrontations, particularly militarily, with the imperial West during the early 19th century, when Iranians desperately sought to grasp the logic of their own defeats.Footnote 7 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, for instance, maintains that during the 19th century, “faced with military, fiscal, and social troubles, Iranians searched for creative ways to fight their crisis of modernity.” According to her, the “birth of the Iranian nation,” which also included “concomitant technological, social, and scientific developments,” was motivated in part by “territorial anxieties.”Footnote 8 Similarly, pondering the “the dawn of modernity” in Iran, Farzin Vahdat remarks that modernity “struck” Iran through “traumatizing” and “awakening” wars during the early and mid-19th century, first in the Russo-Persian Wars (1804–13 and 1826–28) and later in the Anglo-Persian War (1856–57).Footnote 9 Emphasizing these battles, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi also underlines Iranians’ “traumatic discovery of the European ‘other’” as the starting point for Iranian modernity.Footnote 10 The Russo-Persian Wars ended with, among other forfeitures, Iran's loss of huge territory through the “humiliating treaties of Gulestan (1813) and Turkamanchai (1828).”Footnote 11 Leaving lasting effects on Iranians’ collective psyche, the wars even provoked a new poetic genre revolving around “regret” (ḥasrat) and “despair” (ḥirmān), as remarkably represented by the poetry of the high-ranking Qajar official and minister Mirza Abolqasem Qa'em Maqam Farahani (1779–1835).Footnote 12 The Gulistan Treaty not only “humiliated the shah” but also “hurt the feelings of the people and the ulama,” who would not endure “the subjugation of the Caucasian Muslims by a Christian power.”Footnote 13 Having vehemently prompted people to commit jihad, in numerous tracts depicting the war as one between Muslims and the infidels, the ʿulamaʾ particularly lost face given that the Iranians’ defeat highly contrasted with their encouraging exhortations.Footnote 14
In these accounts, the inception of Iranian modernity is interlinked with Iranian elites’ collective feelings of shame and inferiority vis-à-vis Europe and its technological power. Iranians’ excruciating military defeats, after the immediate shock, “engendered a long and painful process of questioning, which gradually paved the way for what came to be known as Iran's modernist movement [nehzat-e tajadod],” introducing Iranians “to modern techniques of warfare, modern technology and, above all, the European systems of law and government.”Footnote 15 The losses notably caused Abbas Mirza Qajar (1789–1833)—the crown prince of Fath-Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834) and Iran's military commander during the Russo-Persian Wars—to contemplate, desperately and self-deprecatingly, “What is the power that gives [Europe] so great a superiority over us? What is the cause of your progress and of our constant weakness? You know the art of governing, the art of conquering, the art of putting into action all human faculties, whereas we seem condemned to vegetate in a shameful ignorance.”Footnote 16
That “long and painful process of questioning,” which involved an intermingling of emotions expressed by Iranian thinkers in terms of Europe being Iran's idealized Other, was a precursor to what Kashani-Sabet deems “modern Iranian humanism”: an intellectual movement that stressed the pursuit of “progressive reforms aimed at restoring what was seen as Iran's pride and former grandeur.”Footnote 17 This aim would entail Iranians acquiring “the cachets of civilization [tamaddun] and technological advancement—or, in other words, modernity.”Footnote 18 As Kashani-Sabet shows, by promoting the discourse of Iranian humanism, Iranian intellectuals intended “to move Iran closer to the community of humanists,” categorically associated with the imperial West.Footnote 19 Many works written during the late Qajar era thus “addressed the theme of humanism, focusing on education, the political well-being of the country, hygiene, or the creation of a civilized and thriving national community.”Footnote 20
Such works often featured perceived comparisons of Iran and Europe, frequently intermixed with feelings of awe for the progressive (mutaraqqī) Europe and humiliation for the backward (aqab-māndih), despicable (bīchārih), and ruined (vīrān) Iran. As also echoed in the abject address of Prince Abbas Mirza quoted above, the reasons for Iranians’ inexorable chagrin were numerous, including their perceived backwardness in scientific, economic, civil, administrative, and political arenas.Footnote 21 In pondering such difficulties, however, they were seeking possibilities for redress. Many mid-19th-century writings by Iranian modernists—revealing an Iran-as-Self vs. Europe-as-Other dichotomy, with the latter constantly watching the former—prescribe some preemptive self-discipline through self-deprecation to counteract the Other's scornful gaze. Indeed, many modernists resorted to self-humiliating or self-ridiculing critique to motivate liberal changes. This initiative emerged as an outcome of Iranians’ above-described multilayered, part-real, part-imaginary encounter with Europe. In this process, self-deprecation served as a discursive act of civilizational self-disciplinarity and a simultaneous self-destruction, directed toward reconstructing the Self through modernization. Self-deprecating modernity refers to this discursive process of self-construction through self-criticism of early Iranian modernists.
A remarkable example of Iranians perceiving themselves to be under Europeans’ condemnatory gaze concerns the former's sexual mores—although, as will be described, this self-critique included many other social domains. Throughout the 19th century, via their published travelogues to Iran and Europe, Europeans and Iranians engaged in processes of watching, and being watched by, each other.Footnote 22 The Europeans’ uneasiness about and criticism of certain Iranian modes and practices, including the looks of many Iranians and sexual activity between some older men and younger men, emerged as early as the 17th century in the memoirs of European travelers, including Sir Thomas Herbert (1606–82), Sir John Chardin (1643–1713), and James Baillie Fraser (1783–1856). In one case, Fraser's remarks about male “Iranians’ having an excessive desire for beautiful amrad boys” aroused a furious response from Mirza Fattah Khan Garmrudi (1786–1847), an Iranian traveler to Europe, in his Shab-Namih (Nocturnal Notes; 1838), in which he resentfully noted Fraser's “prating” and “excess.”Footnote 23 According to Afsaneh Najmabadi, “anxiety over Europeans’ judgment of Iranian sexual mores and practices remained a preoccupation throughout the nineteenth century” and even played a formative role in inciting gradual modifications to the Iranian gender order.Footnote 24
Yet, Iranians did not just fear their sexual behaviors being watched by Europeans. By the late 19th century, Iranians’ self-critical deliberations and predilection to self-disciplinarity under the perceived gaze of Europeans had become commonplace among the elite. In more than one case, for instance, early Qajar officials’ “sensitivity toward adverse European opinion” prevented the former's exercise of “arbitrary rule.”Footnote 25 Many mid-19th-century narratives also render supporting evidence. In the introduction to his Siahatnamih-yi Ibrahim Biyg (The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg), Ziyn al-Abidin Maraqih-i constructs “the Western nations” (milal-i maghrib-zamīn) as the “fortunate” (nīk-bakht) residents of a utopia, which, by a systematic mechanism of self-observation, self-critique, and self-rectification—that is, through “the press” (maṭbūʿāt) and under “the Public's eyes” (anẓār-i ʿumūmiyyih)—maintain their own civil and social progresses, a merit from which “we the wretched [Iranians]” are deprived.Footnote 26 Emphasizing the “ill-starred homeland of ours” (vaṭan-i badbakht-i ma), the author anticipates that his “fellow-homelanders” will remedy the country's social “defects and evils which, in the views of the foreigners, have caused the nation's and the state's dignity to dwindle . . . and become a source of much humiliation and shamefulness.”Footnote 27
Such condescending comparisons between Europe and Iran, intended to urge social betterment, also reverberated in several contemporaneous fictional narratives, including Kitab-i Ahmad (Book of Ahmad) (1893–94) and Masalik al-Muhsinin (The Ways of the Righteous) (1905) by intellectual and reformer Abd ul-Rahim Talibuf (1834–1911), as well as Mirza Yusuf Khan Mustashar al-Duwlih's Yik Kalamih (One Word; written in 1870, published in 1907), all featuring self-satirical tones. In Masalik al-Muhsinin, for instance, Talibuf criticized the “land's officials” for being “superstitious people” who, instead of trusting modern warfare, depend on Imam ‘Ali's “two-bladed sword”; who, prior to Iran's negotiations with the English government regarding the Herat issue, would resort to renowned clergyman Mirza Hassan Gowhar to “recite a tongue-tying prayer for the English Queen”; and who would boast that “no other nations have the likes of our troops; each soldier requires an amulet to protect him from the enemy's gunshot.”Footnote 28 The satirizing of the gullibility of Iranian officials upon encountering their enemies’ superior military power represents those battles as shameful moments of a confrontation between two logics: one of superstition and illusion (the Self) against another of reasoning and reality (the Other).Footnote 29 As for Kitab-i Ahmad, as Talibuf himself puts it, Nasir al-Din Shah had reacted to it with a harsh outburst: “Look how this infidel [Talibuf] has derided the whole Iran [tamam-i Iran ra tamaskhur kardih].”Footnote 30 So widespread was the discourse of self-deprecating modernity that even a constitutionalist clergyman like Sayyid Jamal al-Din Vaʿiz Isfahani would resort to it in his pulpit preachings.Footnote 31
That many such renowned books were initially serialized in periodicals also affected the sensational and argumentative trajectories of the articles in these journals. Maraqih-i's complaints of Iran's misery were, for instance, echoed in a Calcutta Habl ul-Matin ([God's] Strong Rope) article.Footnote 32 A key editorial note in Sur-i Israfil (Israfil's Trumpet) attacked “[our] old-fashioned Sirs” whose “illusions and superstitions . . . have made us accountable to the world's mockery and derision” (mā rā mażhakih va maskharih-yi dunyā kardih ast).Footnote 33 In an editorial published in Jarchi-yi Millat (The Nation's Town Crier), a critical and occasionally satirical constitutionalist weekly, the author took up Mohammad ʿAli Shah's (r. 1907–09) dissolution of the Iranian National Parliament, satirizing its subsequent nominal opening. He deemed it risible that the parliament had not actually gained ground since its dissolution, while fearing that such events would “subject [Iranians] to all nations’ ridicule and mockery” (ālat-i maskharih va istihzā-yi tamām-i milal-i ʿālam) and make them “notoriously labeled by everyone in the world” (angusht-namā-yi khās va ʿām dar tamām-i rūy-i zamīn).Footnote 34
Seeking to cure the “figurative diseases” of the debilitated and “sickly motherland,” the Iranian modernist Self turned the perceived gaze of the European Other into a self-regulating, constituent, and transformative watch, deeming proactive self-critique as methodically necessary for the advancement and modernization of Iran.Footnote 35 For instance, in what looked like an invitation to panopticism and a preclusive move to promote correction and reform, the author(s) in Sur-i Israfīl's debut issue imagined themselves writing under the gazes of “two divine monitors and inspectors [nāẓir va mufattish-i ’ilāhī]” and “a country's individuals and nation's spirits with thousands of watching eyes.”Footnote 36 That issue's editorial also invited readers to constantly observe the journal's behavior.Footnote 37 Another article in the issue asked anti-constitutionalists to welcome constitutionalism, warning them about the nation's “watching” (nigarān) eyes.Footnote 38 Perhaps not accidentally, such self-regulating warnings and invitations appeared in a liberal, constitutionalist paper whose distinguished satirical column “Charand-u-Parand” (Stuff and Nonsense) was later recognized as a leading example of modern Persian social satire in Iran. Featuring “Stuff and Nonsense” as an essential column, Sur-i Israfil had apparently felt the need to deploy self-ridiculing critique as a modernizing tool.Footnote 39
To demonstrate the workings of self-deprecating modernity, and how it was a thriving discourse rather than a sporadic set of self-critical practices, I will offer brief interpretations of the works of the three pre-constitutionalist thinkers I highlight—Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Malkum Khan, and Mirza Aqa Tabrizi—within the broader sociopolitical context of late Qajar Iran; specifically, I explore their perspectives on shame, embarrassment, and the ridiculing laughter of others (non-Iranians), as well as their use of self-deprecation to convey their messages. These figures are not haphazardly chosen. Although all are recognized as figures associated with the birth of modern Iranian literary criticism, they also are all linked with the origination of modern Persian comedy in Iran. Although Akhundzadeh and Tabrizi are well recognized as the progenitors of modern Persian comedy, I study them here for the first time in light of how their philosophy of social satire was shaped by self-deprecating modernity.Footnote 40 Moreover, Mirza Malkum Khan's fate is tied to the inception of modern Persian comedy, as the first Persian comic plays published in Iran (now known to have been actually written by Tabrizi) were for decades erroneously attributed to Malkum.Footnote 41
Before continuing with these case studies, however, a couple of important caveats are in order. First, my foregrounding of this self-critiquing process does not serve as a denial of what Pardis Minuchehr calls the “global context of change” in which late Qajar Iranian diasporic thinkers were involved and through which they, and many others inside Iran, developed a “modernist discourse.” Far from manifesting an “Iranian Westernization,” this discourse signified a dynamic dialectic that “brought together various prevalent ideas of the time, from European socialism and republicanism to Shiʿi Islamic views and indigenous national Iranian concerns.”Footnote 42 In other words, self-deprecating modernity is not intended as a comprehensive phenomenon that explains the entirety of the ideological blend among Iranians during the Qajar era (1875–1925). Instead, I conceptualize and explore it as an often neglected discourse that has apparently played a determining role in the direction of Iranian modernity and the demands for sociopolitical modernization of Iran. Nor do I intend, by foregrounding this idea, to imply that it was a phenomenon unique to Iran. As Palmira Brummett indicates, around the same period there occurred in Turkey a similar proliferation in the press, especially the “satirical gazette” (mizah mecmua).Footnote 43 “As European economic dominance brought more outsiders to Istanbul,” she remarks, “the Ottomans were subjected to the painful scrutiny of civilizational comparisons that presupposed their own inferiority.”Footnote 44
Malkum Khan: Shaming the Nation into Europeanization
In 1950, while searching the Akhundzadeh archive in Baku, two Azerbaijani scholars demystified an erroneous, yet intriguing, authorship attribution. For more than three decades, the writing of four Persian comedies had been attributed to Mirza Malkum Khan. The scholars concluded that these comedies were in fact written by Mirza Aqa Tabrizi. Malkum is frequently acknowledged as “the intellectual progenitor of the Constitutional Revolution” and “one of the most renowned political intellectuals who remarkably affected the advancement of constitutionalism in Iran.”Footnote 45 He bemoaned Iran's hasty establishment of a new army after its military defeats during the Russo-Persian Wars, arguing for the prioritizing of administrative, legal, and governmental modernization.Footnote 46 In his numerous configurations of this argument, Malkum, as I show below, vehemently drew on and promoted self-deprecating modernity. His works often feature a fear of ridicule by the idealized Other or outsiders at the expense of Iran(ians), and disclose his keen interest in turning that fear into a preemptive self-ridiculing critique as a disciplinary, constituent, and modernizing force for the social betterment of Iran and Iranians. The aforesaid misattribution of authorship was not utterly groundless.
In 1891, Malkum, as the “late Persian Minister at the Court of St. James,” delivered a speech to an English-speaking audience at the Queen's House, Chelsea. Opening his speech with a mortifying comparison between “the Asiatics” and “the Europeans,” Malkum adopts a confessional and self-demeaning tone, displaying a bewilderment at the former lagging behind the Europeans:
The first question that strikes us in Asia is this, when we compare Asiatics and Europeans: Why is it that European people have made such wonderful progress, while the Asiatic races, who were the first promoters of civilization, have lagged so far behind? I have asked learned people this question here and abroad, but I have never yet received a satisfactory answer.Footnote 47
Iranians’ sense of religious superiority, Malkum explains, has equipped them with a smug, jeering attitude toward European ways of living; upon hearing of the suggestions of Farangis (Europeans)for social and political progress, “they laugh at all these proposals, because they are always convinced that [Christianity] is a hostile religion that comes to destroy them under cover of civilization. Vous voulez nous mangez!”Footnote 48 Malkum's speech constructs a Self–Other dichotomy between Asia (represented by himself) and Europe, while also negotiating a safe level of self-revelation before the Other. Malkum discloses the Muslim/Iranian Self through his speech, but he also does some self-retouching to preserve Iranain self-esteem before the foreign audience at the Queen's House.Footnote 49 For instance, upon mentioning polygamy as “[the only Islamic] contradiction to your Christian principles,” Malkum makes a distinction between apparent Islam and what he deems “essential” or “pure” Islam; the latter, he contends, “is against polygamy.” Claiming that “no doubt in time, perhaps even before very long, polygamy will be abandoned by Musselmans, as it has been by the European Israelites,” Malkum supports his claim by emphasizing that “most of our superior classes and men of elevated minds attack the practice openly as one that disorganizes the family.” While tackling this shameful practice—whose elimination among Muslims by the Christians he also characterizes as a “salutary social reform”—one can imagine that Malkum himself, standing before his audience of strangers, those holders of “wonderful progress,” at the Queen's House, might have simultaneously been concerned about his own face as he carefully distinguishes “our superior classes and men of elevated minds” from other Iranians.Footnote 50
When writing in Persian and before his Iranian audiences, however, Malkum is incomparably candid, reminding his readers that their jeering laughter would indeed be at their own expense. Malkum frequently condemns his Persian readers’ derisive attitude toward all things European and warns them that their mocking of his own modernizing ideas would eventually lead to “nothing but our [Iranians’] excess misery and starvation as well as the whole world's deriding and denouncing us.”Footnote 51 For Malkum, the last laugh belongs to the more powerful.Footnote 52 This complex mechanism is especially evident in his “Rafiq va Vazir” (Our Friend and the Minister) a semi-satirical supplementary piece to his renowned Kitabchih-yi Ghiybi ya Daftar-i Tanzimat (Booklet Inspired by the Unseen, or The Book of Reforms; 1858–59). In its dialogic form (and partly satirical mode), “Rafiq va Vazir” is believed to have been influenced by the works of the Azerbaijani playright Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh.Footnote 53
In Kitabchih, concerned about Iranians’ indifferent “laughter” at European liberal ideas, Malkum disparages the Iranian shah and the minister and warns them against ridiculing his own ideas on the benefits of European legal and administrative systems, while also indicating that fear of the Farangis’ mockery of Iranians is a motivating force for reforms in Iran. Malkum's mouthpiece character, the Friend (Rafiq), announces that if “Luck were to face Iran” and even if “one of the laws mentioned in his Kitabchih were implemented [in Iran],” the results would be astounding. As if anticipating the disdainful response of his interlocutor (the Minister, or Vazir), the Friend warns the Minister: “Laugh as much as you'd like at this belief of mine, yet when you're done with much laughing, rest assured that the said laws [in my Kitabchih] are the very causes of the [European] ‘states’ order’ [naẓm-i duval] and that if you breach these rules, you will induce your own perplexity and ‘foreigners’ [Westerners’] ridicule’ [asbāb-i tamaskhur-i ghurabā].”Footnote 54 The treatise ends with an ironic note, with the Friend feeling remorseful for his “nose-poking” before the Minister and promising to never “make such audacious remarks.”Footnote 55
“Rafiq va Vazir” was later (in 1905) reprinted in installments in the Calcutta Habl ul-Matin newspaper.Footnote 56 The occasion was the ongoing Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, which had a “profound impact on Iranians. That Japan, a non-European nation, had been able to not only challenge but also defeat Russia, one of the two major European powers [with a presence] in Iran, impressed Iranian observers and reinforced their growing admiration for Japan.”Footnote 57 The text opened with a prologue on Japan. Years after his speech in England, Malkum had discovered an Asiatic progressive model for his Iranian audiences. Malkum opens the Habl ul-Matin version of his treatise with a peculiar prologue regarding a Japanese navy commander's achievements, as announced in European periodicals, wondering how “a nation, of whom no one knew anything a few decades ago, has now excelled other nations and is coveted by the civilized world.”Footnote 58 He finds the answer in the Japanese people's search for progress (taraqqī), as revealed through the story of a US general who had been invited to serve the Japanese state by “reforming the country's taxation and economy.” Upon entering Tokyo in 1861, the American official finds “a group of Europeans from various countries having arrived [to help Japan] with certain missions, noticing that the foreigners were holding all reins of power [in Japan].” Having visited the Japanese royal court, the dispatched American official deems it “a cause for laughter” (asbāb-i mażḥakih).Footnote 59 Yet, he becomes highly impressed with the extent to which the Japanese seek the “paths of progress” and the “rules of governance.” Upon returning to the United States, he observes a transformation in Japan: “They had regained the reins of power, the Europeans no longer interfering with their affairs; Tokyo had alluring streets aglow with lights at night; and their royal court, initially a cause of mockery and laughter (żuḥk va khandih), had become more orderly and elegant than the courts of European kings.”Footnote 60 Malkum's story about Japan was a nudge at his fellow Iranian officials. Like this exemplary Asiatic nation, he implied, Iranians should eliminate all grounds for the scorn of Westerners.Footnote 61
In his exercise of self-deprecating modernity, Malkum's presumed norms—that is, the idealized alternative as implied or stated in the comparative framework of his shame-inducing rebukes of Iranians—belonged to the imperial European civilization with which Malkum compared Iran, in his mortifying and occasionally satirical statements, a comparison in which Iranians repeatedly fell short.Footnote 62 This comparative framework also is evident in Qanun (Law), a newspaper that Malkum first published between 1890 and 1898 in London, which was regarded as “the most important and influential” publication during Nasir al-Din Shah's reign.Footnote 63 As a diplomat who had held many posts in the Qajar dynasty and yet remained in opposition to the government, Malkum published Qanun “as his primary tool for articulating and disseminating his oppositionist views.”Footnote 64 As Qanun's first editorial puts it, the paper was created by a few Iranians “dispersed in foreign countries who compare[d] the progress of foreign countries with Iran . . . wondering how to help the helpless ones that remain[ed] in Iran.”Footnote 65
Initially, issues of Qanun featured a subscription price of £1, but after a few months, new “prices” appeared—incongruously and probably to the shocked amusement of Malkum's readers—in the form of intriguing phrases such as “a bit of zeal” (yik zarrih ghiyrat), “a bit of common sense” (yik zarrih shuʿūr), “subject to [the reader's] humanity [or humanism]” (bi sharṭ-i ādamīyyat), and “adequate understanding” (fahm-i kāfī).Footnote 66 In the first editorial, shortly after the above-mentioned emphasis on Iranians’ miserableness compared to foreign nations—a theme recurring throughout this and several other issues—the authors blame the conditions on the Iranian “state's lawlessness and the ill-will and incompetence of the officials, who have subjected this monarchy and its maintenance to the world's amazement and pity [and, as mentioned elsewhere in the issue, to the world's derision].”Footnote 67 Published in Persian and addressing fellow Iranians, yet safe from the domestic censorship in Iran, Qanun is outspoken and colorfully critical, with an affective tone, ranging from admonishment, sorrow, warning, and anger to self-pity, humiliation, shame, and sometimes satire: “While shedding bloody tears, we admit that today, on the whole Earth, no other state is as disorderly, disheveled, and immersed in misery as Iran's. No pens can express even one-thousandth of the chaos in our administrative system.”Footnote 68 Somewhat in the manner of ‘Ubayd Zakani's (d. ca. 1370) Ta‘rifat (Definitions) albeit more motivated by scold than satire, a lengthy list of sometimes risible incongruities then follows to support the above claim, including the following: “The best interests of the whole nation: in the hands of ignoble, ignorant people; our troops: the world's laughing stock; our ambassadors’ mission: begging for salary; our princes: worthy of mendicants’ pity; our mujtahids and ‘ulama’: desiring the infidels’ justice; our towns: capital cities of dirt; our roads: worse than those of animals.”Footnote 69 Malkum ultimately locates the solution in the rule of law (qanun), which he asks everyone to seek: “If you have a religion, demand qanun! If you are detained by the state, demand qanun! If your home is destroyed, demand qanun! If your salaries have been plundered, demand qanun! If your positions and rights have been sold to the others, demand qanun! If you have a family, demand qanun! If you possess something, demand qanun! If you are poor, demand qanun! If you are human, demand qanun!”Footnote 70
Disclosing an indignant tone, the last line, which draws on a human–animal binary to shame its readers, hints at Malkum's “house of forgetting” (farāmūsh-khānih).Footnote 71 The same shaming rhetoric occurs elsewhere in Qanun. Two issues, for instance, warn that “this periodical is written only for humans. The nonhuman should not see these papers.” A modified version in another issue reads: “Anyone owning a copy of this paper can be deemed human, unless they commit a nonhuman act. Thus, care must be taken so hideous beasts never approach these pages.”Footnote 72
Self-deprecating modernity was apparently essential not only to Malkum's intellectual career but also to his official roles, penetrating into his daily official exchanges and correspondences. An 1890 Times of India piece informs readers that Malkum had “treated the Grand Vizier like an inexperienced boy. . . . He smiled at his ignorance and openly ridiculed his policy in telegrams and letters, and verbally to his face.”Footnote 73 Given Malkum's vested interest in the rhetorical power of sardonic criticism, his initially being mistaken for Mirza Aqa Tabrizi as a satirist playwright should be no surprise, as will be discussed.Footnote 74 In explaining the possible reasons for the decades-long misattribution of Tabrizi's comedies to Malkum in Iran, Hamid Algar considers other “circumstantial evidence,” including Malkum's “undisputed literary talent” and his being “an intimate friend of Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh,” with whose works Malkum was familiar.Footnote 75 Indeed, in his enthusiasm for the colloquial style, both in his treatises and in Qanun, Malkum appears to have been influenced by the Persian version of Akhundzadeh's Tamsilat (Plays; 1859).Footnote 76 For Akhundzadeh and the Persian drama, this translation was formative: while overseeing its completion via written correspondence with his translator, Akhundzadeh was attempting to introduce social satire, based on various European models, as a new genre to Iranians.
Akhundzadeh's Preemptive Critique-as-Satire
In August 1869, the Tbilisi-based Azerbaijani thinker and playwright Mirza Fath-`Ali Akhundzadeh wrote a letter, in Persian, to the like-minded constitutionalist Iranian diplomat and essayist Mirza Yusuf Khan Mustashar al-Duwlih in Paris, with whom Akhundzadeh had been in contact regarding his own “new alphabet” project.Footnote 77 Halfway through the letter, Akhundzadeh digresses to recount “a recent noteworthy” occurrence. An ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan from Tehran had entered Tbilisi, staying with the Iranian counsel Counsel ‘Ali Khan. The visit coincided with Akhundzadeh's passionate yet futile correspondence with Tehran officials regarding his alphabet plan, so when Akhundzadeh visited the guest, the latter insisted that Akhundzadeh bring along his writings on the plan the following night. Akhundzadeh obeyed, yet shortly after the meeting turned into a fiasco. In the middle of Akhundzadeh's reading, ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan was summoned to another room:
I learned that he was to be entertained by a prostitute. Since a consulate is a justice tribunal and thus somehow considered a sacred place, I believe that bringing harlots, for anyone, is blamable in the eyes of foreign nations [milal-i ajnabiyyih]. Anyhow, I stopped reading and sat there enraged. Shortly after, ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan returned, bewildered and distraught, demanding that I resume and finish reading. I said, “I will read for a sober and calm audience. Being intoxicated, you lack sobriety, and having visited the prostitute, you lack tranquility.” Counsel ‘Ali Khan approved, suggesting that I complete the reading sometime later and that I dismiss ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan so he could attend to the beautiful Georgian girl. I conceded immediately, and he returned to the Christian girl. Soon after, a noisy quarrel arose in their chamber. It turned out that the high-ranking Khan had vomited on the poor girl and contaminated all her garments, after which the girl had started to complain and escaped the Khan while throwing his way many swear words. All the while, the Khan, dead drunk and lying prostrate on the carpet, remained oblivious to himself and the girl. Seeing this all with my own eyes, I returned home and, that very night, produced these [invective] lines on ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan.Footnote 78
The letter continues. “You are aware I am not a malicious person,” Akhundzadeh tells Mustashar al-Duwlih, “yet people who, like ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan, disrespect me, will not be safe from my invective [hajv].”Footnote 79 Although this letter does not contain Akhundzadeh's invective lines on ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan, they do appear in another letter, addressed to the said host, Counsel ‘Ali Khan.Footnote 80 In what appears to be a typical instance of personally motivated hajv (invective), Akhundzadeh's diatribe and its contextualizing anecdote indeed suggest more than his renowned sense of humor; they also reveal his contemporary concerns, particularly his anxiety over the foreigners’ gaze.Footnote 81 Regardless of its literary value, or lack thereof, Akhundzadeh's invective, which remains an anomaly in his oeuvre, anticipates satirical diatribes like Iraj Mirza's “‘Arif-Namih” (Epistle to ‘Arif): that is, hajv pieces that are both personally and socially motivated—and are directed toward a Europe-obsessed modernization at that. In his letter to Mustashar al-Duwlih, Akhundzadeh highlights “foreign nations” (milal-i ajnabiyyih) and “Europe” (Farang), respectively, as foils against which ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan's act must be deemed “reproachable” (mazmūm) and a reason for his suffering and disgrace (sūkhtam).
Akhundzadeh was an Azerbaijani liberal.Footnote 82 As a pioneer of Iranian nationalism, however, he identified mainly as a Persian and Iranian.Footnote 83 His intellectual and political agenda particularly included the modernization of Iran through instigating reforms in the Iranian government and in educational and everyday culture. Therefore, he allotted many years to his project on the “reform of the Arabic script.”Footnote 84 Also, his philosophical and political work, Maktubat (Letters; 1860), which brims with a satirical tone, and his collection of six satirical comedies, Tamsilat (Plays; 1859), revolved around themes such as “the conflict between Reason and traditional superstitions, customs and practices,” criticism of Islam and the Shiʿa religious hierarchy, and attacks on the Qajar monarchy.Footnote 85 Akhundzadeh's undisputed solution to these problems was “a fundamental transformation of the traditional social order and the creation of modern political, social and cultural institutions modeled on west European states.”Footnote 86
Akhundzadeh's place as a progenitor of secular, particularly nationalist, Persian drama, and specifically comedy, is already acknowledged.Footnote 87 I, however, extend the scholarship on Akhundzadeh's oeuvre by calling attention to his intellectual and literary engagements with the discourse of modern self-deprecation and to his being an early, influential developer of this discourse among Iranians. These engagements are especially traceable in his personal correspondence, where he outlines his Europe-obsessed philosophy of critique-as-satire and attempts to forge a modern Persian comedy.
In an 1871 letter, Akhundzadeh responded to a communication from the Tehran-based Persian translator of his Tamsilat, Mirza Muhammad Jafar Qarachih-Daghi.Footnote 88 The latter had criticized the “ill-humored tone” of the fictitious character Kamal al-Duwlih in Akhundzadeh's Maktubat. In response, using the term “critique” (kirītikā) interchangeably with “satire” (sātrīq), Akhundzadeh asserts, “At stake here is not crabbedness [kaj-khulqī] but fault-finding and reproach. . . . Critique cannot be written without fault-finding [‘iyb-gīrī], scorn [sarzanish], mockery [istihzā], and ridicule [tamaskhur]. Maktubat is a critique, not a piece of advice.”Footnote 89 Deeming critique-as-satire as social corrective par excellence, Akhundzadeh claims, “Based on European thinkers’ experience and on irrefutable evidence, nothing will eradicate human vices and corruptions as critique, mockery, and ridicule [kirītikā va istihzā va tamaskhur] do.” He concludes, “The critical mode has not been common in Islamic writings so far, hence your [Qarachih-Daghi's] feeling intimidated of such things.”Footnote 90 Akhundzadeh also counters Qarachih-Daghi's similar concerns about Mirza Malkum Khan's “caustic and ridiculing” (taʿarruż va tamaskhur) tone, as opposed to a mode of “preaching, advice-giving, and gentleness.” Akhundzadeh retorts that Malkum's tone, similar to that of Kamal al-Duwlih in Maktubat, is adopted deliberately to achieve desired rhetorical effects, which would otherwise be lacking in a compassionate, didactic, and advice-driven language.Footnote 91
In the above letter, Akhundzadeh constructs a dichotomy between his notion of critique-as-satire on the one hand and the long-established advice literature (naṣayiḥ-nāmih-nigārī) in classical Persian literature on the other, the latter being best represented by the 13th-century Persian poet and author Saʿdi's (1210–91/92) Gulistan (Rose Garden; 1258). Critique, Akhundzadeh says, is preferable to advice, since the former would be incomparably more fun and intriguing to read, “a secret found out by European thinkers, yet still hidden to my own people.”Footnote 92 That the Persian classical advice literature is currently ineffective as a corrective tool, Akhundzadeh states, is proved by the “constantly increasing, and not decreasing, trend of injustice and oppression” in Iran: “If advice and words of wisdom were to have any effects—and Saʿdi's Gulistan is entirely loaded with preaching and advice—then why would Iranians miss his [Saʿdi's] points during the past six hundred years?”Footnote 93
Remarkably, although presenting critique-as-satire as an unprecedented European genre that Iranians urgently need, Akhundzadeh peculiarly leaves out the moral, satirical works of Saʿdi's successor, the 14th-century Persian poet and satirist ‘Ubayd Zakani, perhaps not knowing of the latter's work.Footnote 94 Nevertheless, Akhudnzadeh was highlighting a critical, temporal transformation: “Ruh al-Qudus [Mirza Malkum Khan] and Kamal al-Duwlih know their jobs as writers. Gone are the days of Saʿdi and Mulla Muhammad Rafiʿ the Preacher (1618–79). Our era differs from theirs.”Footnote 95 Thus, had Akhundzadeh even been familiar with Zakani, any modern followers of Zakani would have had to consider the drastic 19th-century change in Iran's intellectual milieu. A new norm, that is, the imperial West, would have to feed the comparative framework of any social satirist, a norm unavailable to a classical humorist.
European thinkers, Akhudnzadeh reminds Qarachih-Daghi, have written extensively on the use of satire to induce civilization, and the European states have spent immense amounts in each city on “high-rise buildings, named theaters [tīyātr], where men and women learn lessons by listening to stories deriding their own fellow citizens and by watching plays in which others become subject to ridicule.”Footnote 96 Expounding on the mechanism through which his desired critique-as-satire exercises disciplinarity—that is, through some form of panopticism—he remarks that “critique, derision, and ridicule entail people's being disgraced before their contemporary peers and companions [amsāl va aqrān], thus effectively preventing people's inappropriate manners.”Footnote 97
Akhundzadeh had long been up to something, considering himself to be no less than a progenitor of a new genre among the “Muslim nations.” A decade earlier, in 1861, upon the Turkish publication of his Tamsilat, he had mailed four copies to officials in Tehran, enclosing a note with each copy to announce the appearance of an innovative genre following the European tradition. Lest he come off as unpatriotic, in his note he also addressed a hypothetical objection:
This type of composition, which looks interesting and pleasant, while completely comprising preaching and advice, was not customary among the Muslim nation. I originated it. In these writings, employing ridicule, I have criticized some of the blamable actions and manners of the Muslims. This should not be construed as apathy toward my kindred [ʿadam-i taʿaṣṣub] or lack of patriotism [ʿadam-i ḥubb-i millat], because the main aim of these criticisms is to admonish and awaken the others so as to avoid such blameworthy manners.Footnote 98
As in the case of Malkum, Akhundzadeh's fear of other nations’ laughter at Iran's expense—also implied in his aforementioned invective against ‘Abdul-Rasul Khan—played an essential role in his advancement of the discourse of self-deprecation, on which he clearly built to create his own satirical comedies in Tamsilat. For Akhundzadeh, the insider laughter at the Self, by one's “peers and companions,” would preclude Iranians’ having to suffer the taunting of their idealized Other. Thus, when addressing Qarachih-Daghi's concerns about the derisive tone of the Kamal al-Duwlih character in Maktubat, Akhundzadeh reassures him that Kamal al-Duwlih is not a foreigner or stranger (bīgānih), so “why should we feel offended by his critique? Indeed, he is our coreligionist [ham-kīsh], fellow countryman [ham-vaṭan], and compatriot [ham-millat]. He resembles a brother jeering at and reproaching the morals and manners of his own brothers.”Footnote 99 Unsurprisingly, the outsider-insider laughter as well as self-deprecating discourse, both so central to Malkum's and Akhundazadeh's sarcasm and satire, also surface in the thoughts and works of Mirza Aqa Tabrizi, now acknowledged as the first composer of Persian comedies in Iran.
Tabrizi the Protégé: Self-Critique to Avoid “Humiliation and Ridicule”
Highly influenced by Akhundzadeh—and particularly his satirical plays collected in Tamsilat (in its original Turkish)—and following a correspondence with him through letters, Mirza Aqa Tabrizi began to write his own comic plays, in Persian, in 1871. They were first “published as a feuilleton [pa-waraq] in the Tabriz newspaper Ittihad [Union] in 1326 [1908].”Footnote 100 None, however, were published, either separately or in a volume, in Iran during the Qajar era. In a letter to his guru, Akhundzadeh, Tabrizi requests that Akhundzadeh keep his plays “anonymous,” which partly explains their initial misattribution to another author.Footnote 101 In 1921–22, Kazimzadih Iranshahr published three of Tabrizi's plays in Berlin, acknowledging Malkum Khan as their writer. Attributing the authorship of the plays to “Prince Malkum Khan, formerly Persian Minister in London” also occurred later, in 1924, by Edward G. Browne.Footnote 102 Gaining international attention, the plays were translated into many languages, including Russian, French, and German.
In his letters to Tabrizi—similar to his previously discussed correspondence with others—Akhundzadeh felt the necessity of familiarizing his protégé with drama as a new “European” medium.Footnote 103 Akhundzadeh elaborately describes to Tabrizi the structure of a playhouse, enumerates some “principles” (shurūṭ) of drama, and emphasizes that “the main aim of drama is to refine people's ethics and to teach the audience a lesson.” He recommends that Tabrizi insert “remorseful” moments in the lines of his main characters.Footnote 104 In more than one place, Akhundzadeh wishes Tabrizi to introduce other Iranians to the “new mode of composition,” (the “noble art of drama”), since “today, there is no time for [Saʿdi's] Gulistan or [Majdi's] Zinat al-Majalis [The Ornament of Assemblies]. What serves people is the art of drama and the novel.”Footnote 105
Lest his works be misinterpreted by his audience, Tabrizi, much like his teacher Akhundzadeh, cushions his own comedy plays within meta-commentaries, including a prologue and epilogue in which he clarifies his understanding of the medium and the motivation underlying his satire. Heeding Akhundzadeh's advice, Tabrizi also states his own goal to be a disciplinarian, that is, to “discipline the nation and teach them [Iranians] a lesson” (tarbīyat va ʿibrat-i millat).Footnote 106 In the prologue to his collection of plays, Tabrizi pays homage to Akhundzadeh, crediting him and his Tamsilat as direct influences: “Because such works [as Akhundzadeh's comedies] are a means for the progression and education of people [māyih-yi taraqqī va tarbiyat-i millat] as well as for having them draw lessons from [others’] experiences [takmīl-i marātib-i ʿibrat va tajribat], in writing these plays I decided . . . to imitate [Akhundzadeh's satirical] style.”Footnote 107
Tabrizi's epilogue to the collection is formatted as a dialogue between himself and an imagined friend, unfamiliar with the genre of comedy, who happens to see parts of Tabrizi's finished manuscript. “What's the use of this vanity?” the friend immediately objects, enabling Tabrizi, in the manner of Akhundzadeh, to lecture both his friend and the readers on the subject. “[People's] reading and thoughtful knowledge of tales and narrated stories,” Tabrizi retorts, “will generate vision, enhance the nation's education [and provide] warning, all of which will then cause the progress and development of the country, altogether causing the government's orderliness and power. Therefore, reading such stories is not just beneficial; it is necessary.”Footnote 108 The friend objects to Tabrizi's disciplinary, didactic philosophy: “If this is your purpose, our forebears have produced further and more pertinent literature!” Reminding us of his maestro Akhundzadeh's reply to his Persian translator, Tabrizi responds: “These plays depict contemporary acts, and the narrator and the narrated live concurrently, leaving little place for misinterpretation.”Footnote 109 For Tabrizi, as also for Akhundzadeh and Malkum, the times had changed, rendering ineffective the tradition of advice literature. Like the other two writers, in part of the response to his imagined friend in the epilogue, Tabrizi foregrounds the outsider-insider mockery, elucidating it with an example:
A genuine friend mentions your vices to your face, while a wise enemy hides your defects, so they grow and become habitual. Especially when the indecent acts of a nation become publicly manifest insofar as allies and adversaries worldwide raise opinions, the former with contentment and enthusiasm and the latter with humiliation and ridicule—in such a case, it is necessary, even an urgent need, for all people to provide the means of awakening and heed so as to liberate their nation from the plights of depravity and incongruous manners.Footnote 110
That “means of awakening and heed” is, for Tabrizi, obviously social satire, as manifested in this mode of writing newly acquired from his guru. Tabrizi's plays include Ashraf Khan, Hakim-i Arabistan (Asharf Khan, the Governor of Arabistan; Arabistan would be the present-day Khuzestan); Tariqih-yi Hukumat-i Zaman Khan-i Burujirdi (Zaman Khan of Burujird's Governing); Karbala Raftan-i Shah-Quli Mirza (Shah-Quli Mirza's Karbala Pilgrimage); Ashiq Shudan-i Aqa Hashim Khalkhali (Aqa Hashim Khalkhali's Falling in Love); and Haji Murshid-i Kimiya-gar (Haji Murshid, the Alchemist). Influenced by Akhundzadeh's Tamsilat in theme and style, the plays also speak to many of the leitmotifs prevalent in Malkum's works, including the spread of bribery and financial corruption within the government; extensive superstition among the people; chaotic administration and extensive yet inefficient bureaucracy; the arbitrary nature of the state's power; widespread poverty and moral corruption in society; government and governance; and hypocrisy and sycophancy among the officials and the public.Footnote 111 Although the above themes in and of themselves do not seem problematic, heeding the self-deprecation that underlies Tabrizi's meta-commentaries alerts us to the self-colonizing manner in which his plays in general should be read and received. Due to similar resorts to self-critique, such interpretive practices also are expected of Malkum's and Akhundzadeh's works. Therefore, I end with a brief discussion on the necessity of decolonizing self-critical practices in Iran.
Conclusion: Toward Decolonizing Collective Self-Critique
In his Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon proclaims his main purpose to be to “help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment.”Footnote 112 Following Fanon, in this article I have attempted to identify a discourse of self-colonization—what I call “self-deprecating modernity”—with the hope of improving understanding of the modern Iranian psyche.Footnote 113 As such, it is my contention that my argument may have far-reaching consequences in studies of modern Iranian history, culture, and literature. I have focused on the sociopsychological role of self-conscious emotions of Iranian modernity. Foregrounding its self-deprecating side enables us to reevaluate the role of ridicule—or the fear of it, to be more exact—in the development of modern Iranian selfhood. Specifically, it allows us to appreciate the formative role of ridiculing practices—including, yet not limited to, its occurrence in humor and satire—in modern Iranian history and culture. I began the article with a reference to one such moment in modern Iranian history: Hedayat's reminiscence of Reza Shah's self-proclaimed fear of being derided by Europeans as the incentive for his dress change policy. Would a similar mechanism of fearing embarrassment be applicable to Reza Shah's Aryanism?Footnote 114 By the same token, a sociopsychological probe into the modern Iranian “self” appears feasible, given the preoccupation of many modern Iranian writers and intellectuals with questions of “us” (the Iranian Self) versus “them” (the Western Other). In such analyses, it would be most fruitful to examine implied or stated comparisons with the West and Global South nations. To complicate the picture, how would nativist counter-discourses speak and relate to self-deprecating modernity?Footnote 115
Although self-deprecation does not necessarily occur in a humorous context, humor and satire do sometimes draw on self-deprecatory ridicule, thus being apposite sites for examining self-deprecating modernity. This is especially the case when forms of humor imply or state a collective us–them binary. Therefore, a focus on the colonial presumptions of self-critical satire in the Iranian context helps explore the motivations behind, and the possible functions of, much modern Persian humor. The aim is to decolonize such self-critical satirical practices.
My critical approach to self-deprecatory modernity, with its strong roots in a fascination with the West as an idealized Other, inevitably evokes the renowned notion of gharbzadigī (Westernization, or “weststruckness”), as debated and popularized by Jalal Al-e Ahmad in his 1962 book Gharbzadigī (Occidentosis). I do share Al-e Ahmad's emphasis on the sociopsychological aspects of the modern Iranian self, especially its alleged inferiority complex during encounters with the West. As Al-e Ahmad puts it, “though until some three hundred years ago our westward regard had, as its sole aspect, motive, and cause, hatred, jealousy, and rivalry, these have since been replaced by rueful, worshipful longing [ḥasrat va asaf va ‘ubūdiyyat].”Footnote 116 Nonetheless, to emphasize that self-critique itself might entail otherizing, I invite a critical reading of Al-e Ahmad, particularly his rhetorical approach to the criticism of gharbzadigī, which entails an appeal to ridicule. As part of his negative definition of the “occidentotic” (or “west-struck”) figure, Al-e Ahmad taps into heteronormative fears and anxieties associated with the then-debated social figures of fukulī (dandy) and qirtī (effete): “The Occidentotic is effete [qirtī]. He is effeminate [zan-sifat; iffiminih]. He attends to his grooming a great deal. He spends much time sprucing himself up. Sometimes he even plucks his eyelashes.”Footnote 117 This critique also holds true for Al-e Ahmad's inspiration, that is, Fakhriddin Shadman's Taskhir-i Tmaddun-i Farangi (Capturing the European Civilization; 1947), in which he similarly draws on ridicule as a rhetorical device to attack the fukulī figure associated with the Iranian self.Footnote 118
Arguably, since the Constitutional Revolution, self-deprecating modernity, as manifested in forms of ethnocentric or nationalistic humor, has persisted in modern Persian humor and satire. It is detectable, albeit to different extents, in many constitutional-era periodicals, including Kashkul (Miscellany), Ayinih-yi Ghiyb-Nama (The Unseen-Revealing Mirror), Istibdad (Tyranny), Mulla Nasriddin, and Sur-i Israfil. A few promising sites for the exploration of both self-deprecating modernity and nationalistic racist or ethnocentric discourses in subsequent eras include the decades-old satirical weekly Tuwfiq (1923–71) as well as the contemporary satirical late-night talk show Dorehami (Get Together), hosted and directed by renowned comic Mehran Modiri. The Tuwfiq Dictionaries, for instance, provide numerous definitions based on the binary of “national” (vaṭanī) and “European” (Farangī). In his nationally broadcast satirical show, Modiri has repeatedly drawn upon self-deprecating modernity, whether by uttering national self-deprecation through an implied or stated reference to us Iranians vs. the imperialist West, or through attempting comic effect by making demeaning references to certain Global South nations.Footnote 119 The Dorehami example is remarkable, since it makes us inquire how, as a Eurocentric discourse, self-deprecating modernity has survived even in a state-sanctioned comedy program on Iranian national television under the auspices of a state that is allegedly anti-Western and anti-imperialistic.
Similarly, worthy of reexploration through the lens of self-deprecatory modernity are some elite and popular forms of literary social satire and critique, as deployed by such varied modernist authors as Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh, Sadeq Hedayat, Iraj Pezeshkzad, and Jafar Shahri. In line with mainstream humor studies, scholars of modern Iranian humor and satire have mostly maintained an “ideologically positivist” attitude toward humor, seeing it both as positive and as categorically rebellious and subversive.Footnote 120 Following the emergent field of critical humor studies, however, I propose that we question the alleged benignity of humor and connect it with the complex web of power relations within Iranian society and culture.Footnote 121 When regarded as a discourse interacting with other discourses, humor can be shown to exercise disciplinary and norm-reinforcing functions as well, regardless of the creator's intentions.
Self-deprecating modernity also can be traced in some Persian ethnic and racial joke cycles in modern Iran. Recent scholarship in critical humor studies has attempted to explain the genesis and possible functions of modern Iranian joke cycles based on an affective framework within early modern Iranian history, showing, for instance, how Qazvini and Rashti jokes can respectively fuel homophobia, reinforce misogyny, and help maintain hegemonic masculinity.Footnote 122 This scholarship provides circumstantial evidence to link these joke cycles to the self-orientalizing discourses of early modern Iran. Pending focused studies, a similar line of argument appears to be applicable to the modern Persian “Arab man” and “Turki” joke cycles.Footnote 123 In other words, Iranians’ arguably shame-based resort to ridicule in these latter joke cycles also appears to lead us to the existence of a similar modernist, affective framework behind their ethnocentric themes, revealing yet another problematic manifestation of the discourse of self-deprecating modernity in Iran.
Neither self-criticism nor shaming and shame-based practices are necessarily problematic. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, in modern Iranian history shaming has worked to prevent inhuman acts or to promote humane behavior.Footnote 124 Nonetheless, due to the self-colonizing and orientalizing presumptions of self-deprecating modernity, the motivating shame directed toward a collective self may be achieved at the expense of otherizing or marginalizing certain identities. Such self-critique should itself be critiqued.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Omid Azadibougar, Homa Katouzian, Nojang Khatami, Babak Rahimi, Amirhossein Vafa, the three anonymous reviewers, and the editor-in-chief of IJMES for their helpful suggestions. I also thank Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, to whom this article is dedicated, for our great conversations and his unmatched ma‘rifat. This article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
