CSLC 188 The Political Imaginary: What Follows Postcolonialism?

This course will explore the specific and varied ways in which the traditional postcolonial responses to the ideas, practices and techniques of Western modernity and colonialism/imperialism are being reimagined and transformed by contemporary theorists, artists and activists from previously colonized places as they take up the possibilities and limits of their inherited colonial and postcolonial traditions.

The theoretical curriculum of the course will pair a careful examination of core theoretical works in postcolonial thought with attention to Iranian contributions to and appropriations of them. The course will thereby give students both a deep and solid foundation in postcolonial theory that will serve them in studying other cultural traditions, while showing the ways in which those core theoretical texts, ideas and approaches can be and are transformed, adapted or rejected under the pressure of historical, political, economic, and social forces, including the literary and language traditions into which postcolonial theory is received.  The theoretical curriculum of the course will then explore the ways in which Iranian scholars, activists and artists experience and describe the still-open possibilities as well as the limits of the dominant postcolonial theory in their own work, and the re-imaginations and transformations of those ideas and practices that they introduce or seek.

Having established an understanding of the complex relationship between not only Western modernity and postcolonial cultural traditions, but also between various postcolonial cultural traditions, the course will then take up a detailed study of modern and contemporary Iranian and Persianate literature and art as they reimagine and transform these intersecting traditions, discourses and practices in their own artistic projects. Placing the work of contemporary artists, poets and novelists from Iran and the Iranian diaspora― e.g., Filizadeh, Neshat, Farokhzad, Golshiri, Satrapi and Moshfegh ― in the context of the long Persianate cultural history as well as within the discourse and counter-discourse of Western modernity will allow students to see postcolonial thought and practice at work while also gaining a sense of the specificity of cultural re-formulations, transformations and reimagining of them, helping students appreciate the diversity of and tension between postcolonial cultural projects.