Letters

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Friday
September 7, 2001

Errors and elitism

As much as the authors of "Staging a Revolution" have tried to use jargon-ridden texts and kalamateh gholombeh solombeh ["Stirring a nation"], it is basically an unreadable book, and a repetitive insult to the intelligence of Iranian readers. From usage, to numerous factual errors, to misprints, and grammatical mistakes to elitist language of the authors, one only asks who reads these books? Where are the editors, proofreaders, and critics?

First, it is highly unethical to use the artworks of artists and do not document the source and credits. Let us ignore the literary and grammatical mistakes. Forget that no one has heard the invented terms; "dramaturgical" and "semiological". The authors who emphasize, over and over, that every mood has to be documented, "Every genre of this mobilizing mechanisms, every mood of these systematic orchestration of public sentiments, ought to be understood carefully, and documented appropriately, before we can begin to comprehend both the semiological and the dramaturgical dimensions of the Revolution" become totally careless when documenting research materials about artists and their works.

The problem with crossing over to another field of expertise (visual art in this case) is that if you are not trained to differentiate between posters and artworks you can unprofessionally present and treat them as equals. Both these authors know very well how to do footnotes and give credits. You can not just publish someone's work without giving details about their names, size, dimensions, year and medium of the works. Where are the names of graphic artists, painters, titles, and other technical information?

One cannot help but see the irony when, either by mistake or purposefully, iranian.com calls one of the authors "the painter".

Where is the spirit of non-judgmental inquiry? This book is a subjective and a one-sided journalistic account of what supposedly happened in Iran during the early years of revolution. It does not offer an objective analysis. Do these authors think they are talking to morons from other planets? The purpose of the book is to "examine the massive orchestration of public myths and collective symbols". However, the authors in a very arrogant tone are telling us this is how you must conclude and since we are the experts, we determine the way you should judge, as well.

A valued academic research must present at least the appearance of objectivity. What happened to the promise of scholarly pursuit of truth, and apolitical research, gentlemen? If we can not trust scholars to give us in-depth and objective information, whom do we trust? We are Iranians. We are not stupid. We know what has happened to our country. Is this the way a so-called objective scholar writes about what happened in Iran: "The Islamic Revolution in Iran has been one of those remarkable occasions in history when the power of words and images has successfully challenged the military might of an established state"? Is this sentence objective? Or is it history being re-written in front of our eyes? What kind of connotation does it have? Are the authors the co-creators of history, too? The problem is, academic work is not supposed to be subjective; and the authors are not supposed to be artists. The authors are historians and sociologists. Do they even care to differentiate between factual and false information? Or is it passe to be apolitical?

This holier than thou language of the two authors who are trying to force upon us their own version of history, judgement and morality should not be aknowledged by our community. Why should the readers sympathize with their repetitive biased commentary, that is taken out of context? Using emotional images for visual references in order to prove the outdated linguistic theory of Signs / Signifiers and ultimately sell books does not count as a scholarly inquiry . Does the mere shock value of these images mesmerizes us to think highly of their research? Do these elitist authors believe that Iranians are unavoidably stupid? Or is it because no one has ever challenged these so-called scholars before?

Amir Hedayati

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