Category: Manas (Bulgaria) – Манас (България)

Al-e Ahmad’s fight against occidentosis as a modernisation project of Iran

Al-e Ahmad’s fight against occidentosis as a modernisation project of Iran

The 1984 English edition of “The Occidentosis” by Jalal Al-e Ahmad carries the subtitle “A plague from the West” (source: The Persian Bridge of Friendship)

The pre-revolutionary Iranian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad looks for the creation of a new subject of the Iranian modernity – not in the blind Westernization, or in retreat to lifeless tradition, but in “a return forwad” to breaking the spell of machine and technology and putting them in service of the Iranian nation

Vladimir Mitev

This article was published on 20 November 2020 in the journal Manas of the Center for Eastern Languages and Cultures of the University in Sofia in its sixth issue (volume 1), 2020.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979) has been resonating as an event of prime importance in its region for the last 40 years. It is one of the first cases, when the political islam takes over the power in the Great Middle East. But the Islamic Revolution doesn’t come at an empty place. It was prepared both by the historic events of the 20th century in Iran (most of all by the American-British coup d’etat against Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953) and by the political, philosophical and literary searches of the Iranian intellectuals in the period between 1953 and 1979.

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