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Nostalgia, Diaspora, & Iranian Neo-Monarchists: A Genealogical Exploration of Longing and Politics
This article examines how a segment of the Iranian diaspora—particularly those identifying with “neo-monarchist” ideals—employs nostalgia to mythologize Iran’s Pahlavi past and rally political support for restoring the monarchy. Drawing on theorists like Kathleen Stewart and Hamid Naficy, it demonstrates how nostalgia functions as a “cultural practice” that can distort history and spark reactionary political fervor. Through examples from Los Angeles (“Tehrangeles”), the January 6 Capitol attack, and social media groups praising the late Shah, the piece illustrates how idealized memories of imperial Iran galvanize newly established organizations like Iranian Americans for Liberty, which advocate a U.S.-backed overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Ultimately, it warns that such nostalgia can foster discord rather than unity, serving as a powerful yet potentially regressive political force within the diaspora.
On Symbolic Economies of Resistance
In Symbolic Economies, Jean-Joseph Goux explores how Marx’s analysis of the genesis of money and value in Capital can be applied beyond economic contexts to understand broader logics of value exchange, both quantitative and qualitative. Goux begins by adopting a “radicalized conception of exchange,” which goes beyond traditional economic exchange. He is interested in exchange as a fundamental principle that applies to both economic systems and other domains of human interaction.
The Zettelkasten as Rhizome: Discipline, Reflection, and Architectures of Thought
In an era defined by instant gratification, the deliberate, methodical process of zettelkasten stands as a quiet act of resistance. It cultivates cognitive endurance, stretches attention spans, and fosters a richer, more reflective engagement with knowledge. Over time, it transforms the practitioner, nurturing a resilient mind attuned to nuance, complexity, and depth.
Temporal Multiplicity in E. P. Thompson & Reinhart Koselleck
This paper attempts to trace the semantic valences that invest particular textures of temporality with significance. I borrow the term “semantic valence” from the discipline of linguistics for reasons that should become more explicit. We need not dwell on the more scientific implications of these terms for linguistics. For my purposes, semantic valences are the varying shades and degrees of formal meanings associated with a particular concept, synchronically or diachronically. With this understanding of semantic valence in mind, I contend that one method of undertaking such a “trace,” especially when its object of inquiry is the characterization of time, is a historiographical comparison. This “trace” will sketch out how two scholars—who have been received as paradigmatic in their respective spheres of influence—characterize, express, and represent temporal change and multiplicity. In order to advance this inquiry, I will place E. P. Thompson’s seminal essay, “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” and Reinhart Koselleck’s Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time into conversation.
On Elective Affinities
To begin theorizing with Weber’s ideas about the “Protestant ethic,” i.e., to theorize alongside Weber (and perhaps even against him), I think it behooves us to come up with a working definition of what he could have possibly meant by Wahlverwandtschaften [Elective Affinities]. Perhaps it was Goethe’s play that exposed Weber to this idea and perhaps Goethe learned about it from the eighteenth-century Swedish chemist, Torbern Bergman, who coined the term in a treatise about molecular combinations. Swedberg and Agevall (2016) concede that “‘Elective affinity’ is not a carefully defined technical concept in Weber’s writings but rather a key phrase.” Scott (2015) argues that Weber used the term to “describe the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism.” In Scott’s view, the term “refers to the resonance or coherence between aspects of the teachings of Protestantism and the ethos of the capitalist enterprise: the contents of one system of meaning engender a tendency for adherents to build and pursue the other system of meaning. The actors concerned may not be consciously aware of this affinity.”
The Ringstrasse: Schorske, Olsen, and Bourgeois Self-Representation
In 1994 , a volume of essays entitled, Rediscovering History: Culture, Politics, and the Psyche, edited by Michael S. Roth, was released in which several historians contributed original research and analytical reflection. All of these essays relate, in some way, to the diverse methodological, conceptual, and theoretical insights articulated by intellectual historian Carl E. Schorske. Roth, in his introduction to Rediscovering History, provides a practicable avenue through which one can situate herself or himself in relation to Schorske’s own research goals as discussed in his 1980 book of essays (some of which were published earlier) entitled Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Upon its publication, Fin-de-siècle Vienna became an inflection point in Schorske’s career as a historian.
Recent Work on Colonial Violence in French Algeria
The primary texts under discussion include Benjamin Claude Brower’s A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902 (2009); Jennifer E. Sessions’s By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (2011); Judith Surkis’s Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in Algeria, 1830-1930 (2019); and Joshua Cole’s Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria (2019). Taken together, these texts provide insight about four typologies of violence and violent behaviors in the French Algerian colonial field: physical violence (including structural violence), ideological violence (including symbolic violence), juridico-discursive violence, and inter-communal violence (by way of) provocation.
Reading & Heuristics
Someone recently asked me if I keep a list of books I’ve read, am reading, or plan to read. In fact, I used to be much better about this. In college, I was fastidious about keeping a tidy LibraryThings account. I toyed around with Goodreads, too. In reality, however, I think there’s something about record-keeping for its own sake that elicits jouissance. I don’t value my opinions highly enough to offer reviews of things with any reliable regularity.
Victor Turner, Christian Women, & Emancipation in Ritual
Rituals are a common thread across culture, time, and space. Examples of rituals studied by ethnographers include everything from circumcision ceremonies in central Africa to Christmas holiday shopping in megamalls across the United States. There exists a rich trove of theoretical apparatuses from which we can mine to better understand the seemingly impenetrable worlds of other religious procedures that defy Euro-American norms of liberated femininity and female emancipation. This is never more true than it is in the realm of the anthropology of theology, religion, and religious ritual.
Towards an Apocalyptic Catechism
What would an ecumenical, Reformed, and apocalyptic exposition of the Christian faith look like?
Elsewhere: Forms Podcast (II)
My Twitter friends @henryjwallis, @masonmennenga, and I (@WoeToChorazin) recorded a new podcast on Forms about religious deconstruction and American evangelicalism. Be sure to listen to it today!
Elsewhere: Fruitless & Mammonburg Podcasts
Featured interviews from the “Fruitless” and “Mammonburg” podcasts.
Iranian Nationalism & Nostalgia: Fragment on a research interest
On 15 October 2021, I delivered a short presentation at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Workshop on “Violence, Witnessing, and Recovering the Archives” entitled, “Nostalgia, Diaspora, and Iranian Neo-Monarchists.” My talk focused on the political and cultural functions of nostalgia by a segment of the contemporary Iranian diaspora, particularly in the United States. In thinking here through nationalism and nostalgia in the American case, I hope to explore in my dissertation the ways in which memory was and is utilized, revised, and weaponized by the Iranian diaspora in France.
Elsewhere: Society for the Study of French History Blog Post
I wrote a blog post for the Feature Archive section of the Society for the Study of French History (UK) on Iranian student movements and social activism in Paris.
Elsewhere: Tears of Eden/Uncertain Podcast (II)
My friend and colleague Katherine Spearing invited me back to the Tears of Eden/Uncertain podcast to discuss my article about Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Assault and Humiliation. Find the episode page here or listen through Spotify below.
Jesus as Victim of Sexual Humiliation & Assault: Preliminary Thoughts with Tombs and Bonhoeffer
Victims of sexual humiliation and abuse likewise receive the exhaustion of the rage of the world in their bodies. Living day by day with the stigma and scars of their crisis, they suffer with the crucified one who truly knows their pain in a direct, visceral, and experiential way.
Workflows: Research Practices & Digital Infrastructure
In May 2020, I published "Workflows" on my blog. In July of that year, I published a sequel—meant to be one in a series of posts about research productivity—entitled "'Welcome' to Graduate School." Unfortunately, the Workflows series died with that second post. The outline I had envisioned in the first post was far too optimistic, while some of the topics I'd wanted to write about fell far beyond my expertise. With this new post, I hope to revive the series by sharing with you my experiences in the archives. While you can keep up with my activities in Paris through my Newsletter, this post will include some deeper thinking on my current analog and physical practices for retaining information without losing my mind. While reading the inaugural post isn't essential, it does provide a list of literature to which I'm indebted in shaping my thinking about research, time management, and productivity. The second post provides a snapshot of my methods for capturing data and saving it. I will revisit some of these points here, showing how my process of information capture has changed (out of necessity and by choice).
Elsewhere: Forms Podcast
My Twitter friends @henryjwallis, @YAgamben and I (@WoeToChorazin) recorded a new podcast on Forms regarding Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's address to clergy in Paris, The Church and the Kingdom. Be sure to listen to it today!
Exteriorizing Subjectivity: Snapchat & Pharmacopornographic Biocapitalism
Welcome to the pharmacopornographic regime. Digital screens, monitors, and interfaces of every size buzz, pulsate, and project wave-particles of light into the air, all around us, twenty-four hours a day. For those born after the advent of Web 2.0 (at the new millennium), there has never been a period of non-digitally mediated subjectivity. The entanglements of technology, late-modern capitalism, and our use of technology in the context of late-modern capitalism raise questions of baffling complexity and of intense urgency.
Elsewhere: Migration and Displacement Interdisciplinary Workshop at UofM
"According to UNHCR, the number of forcibly displaced people both within countries and across borders as a result of persecution, conflict, or generalized violence has grown by over 50 per cent in the last 10 years; there were 43.3 million forcibly displaced people in 2009, and the figure was 70.8 million by the end of 2018 (UNHCR, 2019). Today 1 out of every 108 people in the world is displaced." (Source)