New Discourses and Modernity in Postrevolutionary Iran

Abstract

Iran’s social and cultural climates seem to have undergone a relative
relaxation in recent years. The end of the Iran-Iraq war (1988), the death
of Ayatollah Khomeini (1989), and the emergence of Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani as president are some of the factors affecting this development.
A cursory analysis of the level of literate intellectual culture-
print media, film industry, literature, and music-reveals the range and
nature of some cultural activities in post-1979 Iran. For example, between
1981-91, the number of book titles published annually increased from
3,500 to 8,600, periodicals from 100 to 501, and public libraries from 415
to 550 units, while the number of people using libraries rose from 4 million
(1981) to 14 million (1991). In the film industry, despite a vigilant
censor, Iranian cinema matured and acquired a new character, a development
described as “the most stimulating event in arts” over the last
decade. More films were made by the local film industry and screened in
international film festivals in 1990-91 than during any single year prior to
the 1979 revolution.
A paradoxical linkage between constraints on cultural activities and
the flowering of creative potential also applies to music. Despite
Khomeini’s fatwa banishing music from the national radio and TV for a
time,’ it is now claimed that the creative range of modem Persian music
is unmatched in the sixty years of its recorded history. In literature, the
emergence of new writers, new experiments in form and technique, as
well as a phenomenal growth in the readership, sale, and publication of
works by contemporary Iranian authors have enriched the cultural scene
considerably? With sales of each best-selling title running between
15,000 to 35,000, together with the impressive quality of the works produced,
the literary arena appears to be more buoyant than at any other
period of recent Iranian history.” ...