Eyaz Taha - Problematicaa - February 20, 2020
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| Eyaz Taha, writer, journalist, and philosopher. |
The center consists of a structure based on a monolingual nation-state that has existed for a hundred years. Centralism, too, is not inherently fixed in nature; rather, it is a dynamic comprised of various factions that, at the cost of dissolving diversity, advocate for a monolingual nation-state. This center—also referred to as the dominant discourse—owes its continued existence to two key misconceptions, both of which are crucial to understanding current crises and could be resolved to address many of today’s problems.
The first is that the center always presents itself as a supra-ethnic and supra-class reality; this essay focuses on the supra-ethnic aspect. The second is that it assumes the social order revolves eternally around it.
If we assume that "class and people" are the two building blocks of ideological discourses, the first point—namely the claim of being supra-ethnic—is significant for understanding the nature of the existing whole. Despite always imagining itself as something above the state and society, the center is, in fact, a construct based on the language, eternal memory, and mythical history of a single ethnic group. Rather than acting as an empty site of power, it continually seeks to construct an ethnic-centric conception of identity and pass it off as a supra-ethnic norm—thereby sustaining the hegemony of a singular identity through the concealment of its ideological foundations.
It is based on this conception that centralists have spent the past hundred years trying to absorb all diversity into the narrative of one particular ethnic group. To the extent that all other ethnic groups have had to model their way of life on that group's worldview, philosophy, music, literature, history, and collective memory—and in return, consider their own cultural heritage, especially their language, as something foreign. Otherwise, they must carry the cross of separatism. This never-completed effort—always leaving a residue behind—reveals that despite the frequent use of the word nation in their discourse, the center has not actually transitioned from the level of ethnicity to that of a true nation.
The second point is that the center imagines that the social realm revolves around it with such eternal stability that it can determine the meaning of any event from that fixed vantage point, regardless of contingent articulations. At first glance, one might think that the turbulent past and violent historical-geographic contractions would deter the center from fantasizing about the eternal stability of its hegemonic discourse. But in fact, it is precisely this trauma of turmoil that reproduces an obsessive need for authoritarian stability.
The desire to fully absorb the "Other" into itself—or to annihilate it—is the product of this very need. In other words, it is precisely in reaction to this tumultuous past and a history of repeated failures that the center cannot see that its existence is a hollow space. It refuses to acknowledge that it has never existed as a permanent presence and that its alternatives have always coexisted with it. Even when it clings to Hegel, it forgets this Hegelian insight: alternatives do not simply replace something that existed before them—they are always already present within the thing itself.
This imagined stability of society unites various strains of centralism—from reformists and state conservatives to dissident intellectuals and racial nationalists—around a shared conviction: anything that challenges the center's inherent position stems not from legitimate potential but from an external threat. In other words, all forms of alterity are linked to a conspiracy. This is one of the sources of the severe charge of “separatism.” It is not surprising that large segments of both the political establishment and the opposition share similar approaches when it comes to alterity.
This conspiratorial outlook has a century-long history. Over these years, any flexibility toward challenges to the monolingual nation-state has been viewed by centralists as paving the way for the collapse of national unity and territorial integrity. There is no doubt that the forces pulling away from the center are strong enough to cause suspicion and concern. But this dynamic is, more than anything, a result of internal potential.
They attribute every form of difference and every pluralistic demand to conspiracy—first, to justify repression; and second, to project their own mounting fear onto the mindset of the accused by incessantly reproducing the accusation. This growing fear, while fueling violence and authoritarianism, also signals the decline of the dominant discourse. It is precisely from this point that we can answer the question: why do their ideas become more monopolistic, their language more abusive, and their responses more despotic in tandem with the unraveling of the harmonic structure of the dominant order? The violent crackdown on protests against fuel price hikes exemplifies this—its intensity revealing, above all, a kind of loss of power.
What are the real causes of the flight from the center and the decline of the hegemonic discourse?Although various factions seek answers to this question in conspiracy theories, the true causes of such phenomena can be discerned between the lines of their veiled statements. For example, Javad Tabatabai fears the fate of the current totality because he knows that in democratic procedures, one cannot sustain a totality based on historical continuity—especially a totality he himself previously labeled as degenerate. In this regard, he does not hesitate to metaphysicize the current totality to such an extent that no cracks or openings can be found to enter it in order to counter any voice outside the harmony of the dominant discourse. This panic intensifies in the speech of some intellectuals when they see that with every chant for more totalitarianism, they unintentionally weave the old shroud of the current totality.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, in the role of a vetting observer, sets conditions for candidates in elections whose enforcement would require the establishment of an inquisition court. The task of this court would be to disqualify subjects related to identity politics because only by suppressing the liberating passion of these subjects can the destabilizing surplus of the political order be controlled. Alireza Alavi-Tabar resurrects the old assimilationist agenda belatedly to mask the fact that elites and the masses have become increasingly conscious of the fissures opened in the symbolic order. In a situation where the dominant discourse cannot continue to normalize itself and hide its ideological elements, he proposes the very problem—cultural homogenization—as the solution; a kind of problem denial that ultimately sanctifies the status quo. Unaware that while this solution might be effective in the normal functioning of the discourse, it produces even more separatist hatred in a crisis situation. In conditions where social capital has been largely lost, these reactions are themselves symptoms of a legitimacy crisis.
Clinging to conspiracy theories provides an excuse for these actors either to deny the problems related to the country's multilingualism or, even when admitting them, to continue defending the status quo. Meanwhile, the problem of alterities reflects a centralism that projects its own problems onto the centrifugal forces themselves—forces that are largely products of that same centralism. Perhaps the reason is what was previously noted: despite their emphasis on human rights and democracy, they know that the integrity of the existing totality depends on a centralized and oligarchic structure.
Advancing the project of centralization over the past hundred years without leaving a surplus has been impossible. This surplus has consisted of giving identity to the Other by emphasizing imagined conspiracies and denying tangible internal foundations. It is true that accusations such as separatism carry heavy penal burdens in undemocratic conditions, but one must not forget that “the identity of the Other” is sometimes constructed reflectively based on these accusations. For example, when the women’s movement started whispering in the West, upper-class men accused lower-class women of seeking complete equality with men. Early feminists rejected this accusation. But long-standing accusations ultimately, in a back-and-forth way, forged a new identity for women—an identity based on freedom, equal voting rights, employment opportunities, and equal status with men in legal claims. They loudly declared, “Fine, we are what you say we are.” And from here, gender equality began. What men had accused them of eventually turned into women’s rights. Thus, accusation cannot only provide grounds for repression; it also reinforces its subject.
Centralists have forgotten this valuable point—that they have, involuntarily, constructed the identity of the Other in reverse. Of course, this was inevitable because the coherence of any totality depends on that Other. The center has no natural place or eternal divine gift. It is merely a kind of function or a kind of non-place where unlimited numbers of alternative signs enter the arena of play, competition, and antagonism. The center is not a given essence; it is a phenomenon or function in a fluid field where various identities strive to replace each other—the pure field of pluralism.
Centralists cannot tolerate pluralism related to the national question for two reasons: first, their inability to overcome the nostalgia for the “primordial ethnic archetype,” and second, their fear of the collapse of the totalitarian structure if pluralism is accepted.
Firstly, the collective memory that continues within the Persian language carries the nostalgia of a unified primordial ethnicity and with its romantic zeal leaves no room for others with different myths. This unified ethnicity is an essence that precedes phenomenon and in the works of thinkers such as Ahmad Fardid, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Dariush Shayegan, and Reza Davari is given names like tradition, divine names, Khosrowian wisdom, and eternal memory. However, due to the cultural and intellectual poverty of this ethnic archetype, Islamic culture is paradoxically subsumed under it so that Iranian and Islamic wisdom become conflated. In the eyes of these figures, this supra-historical essence has been present from the beginning of the Aryan migration until today and, without being harmed by historical changes, acts as an eternal fountainhead that outlines the future lines of thought and culture. Its greatest claimed skill is to return to itself amid every turmoil and aggression and mercilessly absorb every Other into itself. This essentialism and the call to ethnic self-return would not be so problematic if it did not, at a crucial historical juncture, destroy the opportunity to form a nation. What is this crucial juncture?
The guarded realms in which many search for a lost essence were a highly diverse mixture of Arab, Turkish, and Persian cultures, all under the dominance of Islamic culture. Of course, the mutual exchange between Persian and Turkish languages is itself a detailed story, and despite relentless efforts by Persian and Turkish language academies to purge each language of the other's vocabulary, brilliant manifestations of this interaction still persist. Although Reza Shah’s rise and his racist social engineering disrupted the balance of this diversity, after his downfall, pluralities re-emerged. This unparalleled diversity could have been the foundation for the emergence of a free society if the vacuum created by the fall of an authoritarian regime had been articulated in a democratic form. But that opportunity was lost. Why? Because a form of supra-ethnic nationalism gradually swallowed the pluralities. When the cultural agents of the Pahlavi II era transformed the mythic and unified Aryan self-return into the ideological core of cultural policies, the foundations for the formation of democracy were destroyed—an unfinished task that continues with many ups and downs.
Secondly, today’s Iran stands at a historical juncture typical of totalitarian regimes—one where retreat and advance paths are largely blocked. Just as totalitarian regimes consider any step back from the people as a prelude to collapse, a highly centralized political unit cannot move toward decentralized governance, as it views such pluralism as the prelude to disintegration. Awareness of this has shaken the confidence of various centralist factions so much that any proposal for decentralization is met with hostility. The recent harsh reactions to federalism proposals are related to this insecurity. Yet in a multiethnic (or multinational) country, demanding federalism should be the most natural action. In other words, it is unsurprising that federalism in Iran is seen as the most basic and first solution to escape the deadlock of centralism. However, when this solution was proposed by the head of the reformist government, it was met with silence from his like-minded peers and vehement denial by some politicians and intellectuals, accompanied by a barrage of accusations and insults. This denial did not go unanswered among constitutionalists; immediately, at one of the largest sporting events of the greatest rival power, the solution “either Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia” was put forward.
No government descends from the sky. Every government, democratic or totalitarian, is the essence of public will. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a large part of both the establishment and opposition share similar views about the structure of power. For example, some opposing intellectuals see no problem in the very centralized locus of power; their issue is only with those occupying that locus. They think if the Shah were to return to his throne, their problem would be solved—replacing a religious oligarchy with a familial oligarchy under a democratic façade. They do not seek democracy as an empty seat of power to be contested by rival discourses; rather, they want it only on condition that the unquestioned hegemony of one ethnic group be preserved. In other words, when the center is the empty seat of power, it is a temporary position that can be transferred among rival discourses’ contingencies through a democratic process.
The secular branch of centralism follows this same path. They want democracy—but democracy without pluralism and without real difference; like cigarettes without nicotine or coffee without caffeine. It is true that the system has reached this stage due to not only unjust centralism but also inefficiency, corruption, authoritarian structure, imperialist adventurism, and rentier economy—but in any democratic alternative, it would be illogical to remedy all these while keeping discriminatory centralism like a bone stuck in a wound. Surely, with the growing awareness about “difference,” this cannot be realized without generating considerable violence. Even if establishing a democratic alternative is possible without accepting difference, it would not be possible without sacrificing freedom and equality, and consequently without abandoning the social contract.
Given the two reasons outlined, centralists have no solution but to continue the cycle of totalitarianism. When confronted with pluralism—which appears as a disorder within the symbolic order—they think of colluding with a repressive power. Even opposition intellectuals, faced with this civil demand, instead of addressing the causes and motivations of the centrifugal forces, call on the current government for harsher repression. The similarity of this view to the regime’s strategy of “preserving the system is the highest duty” is clear. In the regime’s strategy, whenever the government’s existence is at risk, the principle of prioritizing justice over religious rulings is set aside; similarly, centralists oppose prioritizing democracy and human rights over gaining power in order to secure the discriminatory totality. They are not unwilling to replace public vote with repression against every other voice. Unfortunately, their words and writings imply that the current power institution cannot expand repression in this regard, and if they gain power, they will solve the problem with even greater force.
A large part of the establishment and opposition play the role of scholars who in the past excommunicated their opponents so that the ruling power would gain legitimacy to destroy them. The calamities that befell Mansur al-Hallaj, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, and Imad al-Din Nasimi would not have been possible without fatwas of excommunication.
The extremism of both ruling and anti-ruling factions in repression strategies ultimately leads to the theological sanctification of heavily loaded labels like “separatism.” Such labels are the domestic version of terms applied to foreign opposition—like “overthrow.” This accusation, with its heavy infernal resonance, satisfies an impossible desire: the wish to eternally fix the floating signifiers around which rival discourses might form.
This is the deadlock of the political realm. Those who, due to their demands, bear the stigma of alterity such as "separatism" branded on their foreheads, are called to a dreadful struggle. It is as if the speaker sits in the position of Ahura Mazda (the good deity in Zoroastrianism) and views the Other as Ahriman (the evil spirit). Such a perspective itself breeds violence and malevolence. When the carriers of the dominant discourse openly portray the excluded part of society as demonic, it means they will accept nothing but the destruction of that part. A crucial question arises: in this case, what happens to democracy, social solidarity, public participation, and civil liberties? Even if silencing opposing voices through some form of naked power is possible, such an approach cannot produce social cohesion or public participation because these depend entirely on desire, will, and awareness. These are directly linked to good governance, which inevitably depends on democratic structures. There is no doubt that a positive and meaningful relationship exists between good governance and social cohesion, so much so that any repressive action by the former leads to the disintegration of the latter.
Even if centralists find a way—undemocratic though it may be—to shelter under the boots of secular repressors, their work will not be accomplished. In such conditions, what guarantee is there that harsh treatment of a civil demand will not lead to reciprocal violence? Undoubtedly, opening the gates of death to the excluded part of society by denying their demands is a new form of evil that must be opposed. Resisting this evil is one of the duties of political agency, provided that this resistance occurs not in the realm of morality but in the sphere of politics. Nevertheless, resisting this evil is not only a political commitment but also a moral obligation. Because Hegel’s point still holds: evil is in the gaze that sees evil all around itself.
From the Preindustrial government of Pishevari to the grand gathering at Babak Castle in the early 2000s, identity activists have gradually configured their own independent discourse by breaking away from a century-old culture. This was a gradual reaction to the dominant discourse whose conceptual framework is the ground for producing political and economic discrimination. It can be said that the contractionary politics of the centralists—containing elements of authoritarianism and totalitarianism—was reflexively at the heart of the idea of rupture. The purpose of this rupture was not a return to particularism, localism, or premodern ethnic nationalism, nor should it have been; it was about rescuing and revitalizing differences that, by force, money, and media, were on the verge of being absorbed into a single identity. This represents a turning point in the history of political activism and an alternative to internal stagnation, which can be called the “discourse of liberation.”
Power is not omnipotent enough to completely subjugate the Other. Every power relation is necessarily a womb for provoking and strengthening resistances. Nonetheless, rupturing events that contribute to the formation of the discourse of liberation are not few:
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Episodes of the Constitutional Revolution;
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The street freedom movement, especially the journal Tajaddod (Modernity) edited by Taghi Khan Rafat;
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The phenomenon of Jahanqir Khan Urumi, head of the Islamic Union government;
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The government of the Democratic Fedai led by Pishevari;
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The “Friday Circle” organization in the 1960s centered on Samad Behrangi and Alireza Okhtai;
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Publication of the first independent Azerbaijani Turkish journal after Pishevari’s fall, named “Ulduz,” on January 17, 1979, by Ebad Ahmadzadeh;
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The vibrant competition of rival discourses in the early months after the 1979 Revolution;
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The Varliq [Existence] movement led by Javad Heyat, and the leftist circle of the magazine Yoldash [Comrade] led by Hossein Sediq;
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The collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Caucasus and Central Asian republics;
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Mahmoud Ali Chehraqani’s candidacy in the parliamentary elections;
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The racist questionnaire by IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) in 1995;
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The grand gathering at Babak Castle;
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Publication of the journal Yarpagh, edited by Ivaz Taha in 2004, which was a milestone in the development of Turkish publications and books both in content and form;
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The widespread uprising in 2006 following the publication of an insulting caricature in the Iran newspaper;
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The meaningful silence of Azerbaijan during the Green Movement;
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The reaction to IRIB’s “Fatileh” program;
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And the Tractor football team.
Though these events differ in the scope of their impact, each represents a crack within the core of the dominant discourse.
These events were obstacles to the society’s self-identity. Because a society that reduces its differences to a single identity is not a suitable ground for democracy. As Chantal Mouffe states, “Differences can only replace each other insofar as they oppose forces and discourses that negate those differences.” But wouldn’t the activation of differences and deep historical fault lines fuel a new nationalism? Such a risk is not impossible, but democratic ideals cannot be sacrificed forever to preserve an unjust unity. An ethnic group that has been rendered invisible behind supra-ethnic claims must sooner or later confront visible realities. Moreover, according to the majority of identity politics activists, by deconstructing the mono-ethnic core, the opportunity for political agency will be provided for all equal actors, and there will no longer be a need for nationalism. Provided that this opportunity is not formal or symbolic but radical in nature. Meaning that if every group and ethnicity has the potential to elevate itself to the status of a nation, it must be able to hegemonize its discourse. This will not be possible unless centralists stop the exclusive sanctification of their own culture, myth, and history and abandon the rigid and fossilized definition of “the people.” They assume that “the people” are always pre-formed and face a pre-existing rival called separatists. Whereas “the people are made through political struggle and are always subject to rearticulation through hegemonic interventions.”
A misunderstanding of the stable and pre-existing concept of “the people” has created an inquisitorial tone with which the center constantly interrogates or accuses the Other. This very interrogation was one of the driving forces that brought identity politics activists to their current point: a radical rupture; a rupture that has nurtured a peaceful liberation project within itself. This is itself a sign that a glimmer of hope for achieving demands through peaceful struggle still exists, but if for any reason hope for changing the ethnic structure is completely lost, opposing forces may rearticulate themselves as far-right.
According to identity politics activists, the liberation project begins with the rejection of the center’s inquisitorial approach; an approach based on ideological scrutiny. Refusal to play on the dominant discourse’s field is an important phase of this project. Previously, the center had tried to turn the compulsory game on the dominant discourse’s field for national, civil, and labor activists into a sacred ritual. In such a situation, the unjust hierarchical order appears as something natural. Under the influence of such a maneuver, identity activists were forced to defend themselves legally and criminally against separatism charges using the rhetoric of the dominant discourse. But offering arguments to reject accusations such as separatism within the framework of this discourse was precisely what the center wanted. First, you must perform a ritual of loyalty to the accumulated discriminatory unity, and then explain your victimization; a loyalty oath to a whole filled with discrimination. First believe, then reason. Gradually, it became clear that such a conversion is nothing but a vicious circle. Because from the perspective of the dominant discourse, in the end, the promise to accept national and ethnic discrimination is either a pathological problem or a conspiracy.
It became clear that clinging to such a pit within the dominant discourse yields nothing but disabling the subject’s imagination for change. Because if the margin does not constantly repeat its oath of loyalty to the whole in every discussion, it will be labeled as “shy separatists.” Moreover, a margin that demands rights within the conceptual framework of the dominant discourse is already placing itself in a condemned position. Dialogue according to the standards of a discourse that normalizes discrimination and conceals injustice in its ideological elements is the clearest sign of acceptance of oppression. Demanding rights within a discriminatory discourse is undoubtedly self-defeating.
The margin has concluded that refusing to play on the mentioned field will enable it to move beyond the outdated dichotomy of “either dominance of one language or disintegration of the country” and to be content with nothing less than the rotation of power and discourse. Only in this way can rival discourses become hegemonic preemptively and through a democratic process. This success will not occur unless cultures, nations, and languages have equal opportunities and fair competition. But relying on such an opportunity within the discourse is based on false hope. Of course, this does not mean that to obtain such an opportunity one must necessarily resort to reciprocal violence. In fact, the narrow focus on the horrific consequences of such a violent cycle has led the margin to restrict peaceful civil struggle to placing small sticks in the spokes of the dominant discourse’s large wheel. One of these sticks is the disappearance of the fear of separatism accusations: very well, we are what you say we are. These sticks have disturbed the harmonious rhythm of the dominant discourse so much that its bearers anxiously defend themselves, boast, justify discrimination, and attack the Other with the weapon of separatism accusations, becoming like a besieged camp in a state of readiness. As Foucault said, the alignment of many power relations, many control systems, and many forms of surveillance simply shows how weak power really is. The margin now knows that the purpose of these accusations is to instill fear in order to assimilate every Other into a unity that in fact rejects that Other.
The thick veil that conceals such a process is the separatism of the center itself. This means that the center, in pursuit of its ethnic and religious purity, excludes and separates every Other. The center accomplishes this through a dual mechanism of elimination and integration aimed at the destruction of the Other—a mechanism that Giorgio Agamben refers to when explaining the status of “exception and paradigm” in the general rule. He calls the paradigm “exclusionary inclusion” and the exception “inclusive exclusion.” The paradigm is an exclusionary inclusion because it is removed from the set it refers to; the exception is an inclusive exclusion because through its removal it is integrated into the normal state.[11]
The mechanism of elimination and integration owes its continuation to the ideological apparatuses of the state. At the same time, it signals what was mentioned at the beginning of this discourse: the center has not yet been elevated from the ethnic level to the national level. Arguments that Iran has never been part of a nation and that from the dawn of its history it inherently carried the characteristics of nationhood clearly confirm this point. In fact, when they say “nation,” they imagine a unified ethnos that has always been attacked by real and imaginary enemies. This ethnos has “a common origin, history, myth, and language.” In every ethno-genetic text, there is an excessive emphasis on these four elements.
Every ethnos is governed by organic unity. This unity, however, is not synonymous with equality but is a relatively stable hierarchical system in which positions and roles are predetermined. This rigid determination means that moving from one social role to another is either impossible or very difficult. An individual finds meaning only by belonging to this unified spirit or body. But in a demos, equality of opportunity is a political premise, and freedom and choices are so abundant that the social hierarchy cannot easily pin individuals to a particular rank or status. Only in a demos can an African Christian-Muslim black person become president of a predominantly white Protestant country far from their lineage. Although ethnic memory and common language played progressive roles in the struggle against the dominance of the Latin cosmopolitan language and the collapse of the church empire, the spiritual fathers of Europe knew that the formation of the nation-state based on equality and freedom was not possible without severing ties with ethnic history and myths. Diderot and d’Alembert defined a nation as a community living in a territory with defined borders under the rule of a government—a purely legal and political definition without a single word about history, language, culture, or religion. Humans as rational individuals, beings with equal rights regardless of their minority status, in a community of equals.[12] Contrary to some Enlightenment thinkers who sought to free the nation from the bonds of history, here any brief reference to violated citizenship rights with allusions to a long list of glorious historical privileges, real or imagined, is considered a crime.
The desired liberation is similar to what Maurice Blanchot describes.[13] “Radical rupture means saying that we are always and everywhere in a state of struggle with things as they are; that we live under a law we do not recognize.” We endure the heavy shadow of a society whose values, educational system, history, music, truths, and privileges are alien to us. This rupture also includes the concept of power itself when it is unjust; a rupture from the way we understand ourselves; a rupture from the identity constructed as a scaffolded body for us; a rupture from the symbolic tutelage of the invisible ethnic minority; a rupture accompanied by an affirmative ‘yes’ to the political without drowning in pure politics, which is opposition to any existing power.
Under the symbolic tutelage of the dominant discourse, neither the ground for the courage to know will be provided, nor freedom realized, nor citizenship rights guaranteed. Without rejecting the tutelage imposed on the subject or internalized through the hegemony of the dominant discourse, there is no way to liberation. The condition for realizing the political, which begins by disrupting the positive order, is to emerge from this cocoon of dominant discourse tied to a specific history, myth, and language. The path to democracy is symbolic suicide in the positive order based on ethnic nervosity and birth in the ideal order of the demos. This negation creates the possibility of reinvention. Perhaps one can overlook the freedom that Rawls considers a key component of justice in the organic unity of premodernity and the mechanical order of feudalism. But in a democratic order, one cannot overlook freedom without sacrificing democracy.
Resistance against the homogenizing structure, going beyond the existing discourse, and affirming democracy is possible through the revival of difference. Democracy is the transition from a feudal subject to a liberal rights-bearing citizen. Democracy requires transcending the organic structure of homogeneity to a pluralistic society by recognizing the floating chain of differences. In the twenty-first century, any attempt to stop such a floating chain of differential signs is possible only through massive violence. Now, one must say yes to difference and plurality. With this approach, the imagination of alternative situations and other possibilities begins. When you reject a situation for its injustice, you can no longer dwell in it.
Footnotes:
[1] In Western political culture, instead of this violent approach, terms are used that do not violate rights, such as separatism, natural independence, and federalism. Therefore, when Quebec and Scotland consider separation from the mainland, public opinion is the ultimate judge, not moral accusations that nullify the law. In fact, the charge of "separatism," which is the mantra of the inquisitorial courts of centralists, is not a legal category but a tool to excommunicate the Other before any fair trial.
[2] Conspiracy is not an imaginary issue but part of everyday realities. However, conspiratorial thinking is a pathological outlook that attributes all undesirable events to demonic forces. The point is: if the entire existential philosophy of Otherness is attributed to conspiracy, then Reza Shah Pahlavi would be nothing but the product of the British conspiracy of Esfand 1299 (March 1921), and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi nothing but the product of the conspiracies of Shahrivar 1320 (September 1941) and Mordad 1332 (August 1953). Regarding today, when a government sends its forces to fight over a range from the Fertile Crescent to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, it should not be surprised if met with counter-conspiracies. Usually, those who exercise conspiratorial thinking in absolute terms are themselves the most skilled conspirators.
[3] These conditions are: 1. Rule of law and opposition to any use of violence. 2. The right of Iranians themselves (not Washington and London, or Beijing and Moscow) to determine Iran's fate. 3. The continuation of national integrity and opposition to any divergence and separatism. These conditions open the way only for reformists within the government. Because no objective criterion is offered to determine who decides their own fate and who takes orders from Washington or Moscow. Based on these conditions, even those who seek closer interaction with the world can be accused of dependency. The same applies to separatism. Who are separatists? A group? A party? Registered somewhere? Or can any dissenting voice against centralism be accused? It seems that separatism is a code word for suppressing any activity toward gaining citizenship rights, including mother tongue education. And if we consider that Tajzadeh has never defended this human and legal right, it becomes clear what his real intention is.
[4] These agents feared that the existing vacuum would be filled by one or three groups: the Turkish independence-seekers who had lost their historical sources of wealth and power with the rise of the Pahlavi monarchy; traditional religious clergy whose historical status had been damaged; and leftists who were gaining ground due to Marxism’s status and the international power of the Soviet Union. With the events of 1325 (1946) and the failure of Pishevari’s autonomous government, the Turkish element was removed from the scene; the leftists were fatally struck by the 1332 (1953) coup; and finally, the traditional clergy, who had collaborated with the monarchy in both cases, became the monarchy’s bane.
[5] Mehrangiz Kar says: “The ethnic crisis, which the government colors as foreign interference and says nothing about its internal causes, is a taboo for the opposition as well, who prefer not to approach it to avoid accusations of separatism. This taboo has penetrated every cell of ours so deeply that we know the crisis is serious but out of fear of accusation, we do not say it is serious… Both government and opposition prefer to deny the ethnic crisis under other names… Currently, Iran’s capacity is such that it may lead to disintegration under specific conditions. Why should we not talk about these possibilities?” (Source: iranwire.com/fa/blogs/399/22543, accessed 8/8/98 [29 October 2019]).
[6] Rare individuals who showed some favor toward federalism within the dominant discourse, such as Shirin Ebadi, were accused of separatism.
[7] I owe this point to Gahraman Ghanbari.
[8] When one-third of the parliament deputies formed the Turkish representatives’ faction, Kourosh Zaeem appealed to security forces from prison to suppress them.
[9] It is doubtful that this matter is inherently unrelated to ethnic nationalism but merely a reaction to the ethnic structure of the whole. Because in the process of forming the rival discourse, the emergence of right-wing ethnic nationalism and salvation theology cannot be denied, both of which can marginalize the signs of justice and freedom. In the course of rupture from the center, various motives and demands from nationalism to disorderliness, from foreign provocation to racism, have been involved, but the main driving force was the reaction to the discriminatory nation-state structure. Since ethnonationalism discourse derived its meaning from ethnic superiority, countering it required offering a new definition of friend and foe with reference to the ethnic superiority of the opposing side.
[10] omnipotence
[11] Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, translated by Mohammad Reza Ghorbani, Tehran, Rokhdad No, 1389 (2010), p. 12.
[12] Stern Heil, “Fascism is a part of our culture,” translation by Golnaz Ghabraei, interview with Spiegel, Tribune of the Times, accessed 12 Shahrivar 98 (3 September 2019).
[13] Maurice Blanchot, The Disruptive Words, translators Iman Ganji and Mahdashe Zare’, Tehran: Ban Publishing, 1398 (2019), 3rd edition.
Tags: Evaz Taha, separatism, violence, state, nation-state, federalism, ethnicity, nation, nationalism
The archived link to the original Persian text «هراس از جداییخواهی» by Eyaz Taha on Problematicaa:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200402061235/https://problematicaa.com/separatism/