Book contents
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- The Global Middle East
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Allure of the “Anti-modern”
- 2 De-politicizing Westoxification:
- 3 Ehsan Naraghi:
- 4 Iranian Cinema’s “Quiet Revolution” (1960s–1970s)
- 5 A Garden between Two Streets:
- 6 The Shah as a “Modern Mystic”?
- 7 The Imaginary Invention of a Nation:
- 8 An Elective Affinity:
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Imaginary Invention of a Nation:
Iran in the 1930s and 1970s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2019
Book contents
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- The Global Middle East
- Iran’s Quiet Revolution
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Allure of the “Anti-modern”
- 2 De-politicizing Westoxification:
- 3 Ehsan Naraghi:
- 4 Iranian Cinema’s “Quiet Revolution” (1960s–1970s)
- 5 A Garden between Two Streets:
- 6 The Shah as a “Modern Mystic”?
- 7 The Imaginary Invention of a Nation:
- 8 An Elective Affinity:
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Any given society in any given time is produced by the continuously combined, interacting activity of reason and imagination. However, the history of the past is usually presented as a rational or, at least, a rationalized process, which excludes the participation of imagination. Imagination is the privilege of poets, artists and prophets; it creates images, parables, symbols to add an aesthetic dimension to the realities of human existence, or to show a transcendent truth beyond the ordinary explanations of reason.1
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Iran's Quiet RevolutionThe Downfall of the Pahlavi State, pp. 173 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019