On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today

Description

On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today is the first comparative analysis of two central political events that have altered our world forever: the Arab uprisings which started in Tunisia, and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Adib-Moghaddam demonstrates how contemporary forms of protest are changing our understanding about the way power and resistance function. In a theoretical tour de force which is substantiated with a range of primary material, he argues that acts of protest in Tehran to Cairo can be entirely linked to the same act in New York, London, Madrid and Athens. Breaking through the east/west, north/south divide, Adib-Moghaddam shows how the Arab revolts promise to shift the discourse away from the idea that Arabs and Muslims are peculiar, that "Middle Eastern Studies" cannot be linked to political theory, that the dynamics of rebellion "there" are fundamentally different from the politics of revolt "here". Adib-Moghaddam argues that the dialectics of power and resistance are truly universal and that they are unfolding within a globalised political context that is increasingly interconnected. In order to illuminate this argument theoretically, the study is organised around conceptual terms that feed into forms of power and resistance, such as revolution, radicalism, dissent, knowledge, neighbour and reform. These terms and concepts are discussed and deconstructed via an empirical discussion of pivotal events beyond the non-western world, demonstrating that for a long time, and without realising it, we have been living in the end times of unitary categories such as "west" and "east."

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Professor of Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS, University of London, UK.

Amid the plethora of recent books on the 2011 Arab uprisings, Adib-Moghaddam has written a compelling and original work on the global interconnectedness of power and resistance. This is a book that is both empirically and theoretically rich, placing the revolutions of Iran in 1978-79 and the Arab world in 2011 in a larger, global context. It should be essential reading for anyone interested in the serious study of contemporary Middle Eastern politics, revolutions, and social movements. -- Mehran Kamrava, author of "The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War" The unfolding Arab revolutions have challenged all our historical and theoretical frames of references and refuse to be assimilated backward into our inherited regimes of knowledge in any number of disciplines but most emphatically in the categorically overcome field of "Middle Eastern Studies." In his On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam has brought his formidable intellectual capacities to provide a groundbreaking comparative assessment of these revolutions in such a solid and provocative way that no future study can ignore or soon surpass. -- Hamid Dabashi, author of "Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism" (2011) Written in exceptionally clear, vibrant and eloquent prose, the book is a compelling read, weaving together theoretical reflections and analysis of events with the goal of understanding "global changes to forms of power and resistance" (1). -- Setrag Manoukian, McGill University * Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World *