M Odabaei
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 51418 |
|---|---|
| NOME | M Odabaei |
| PRENOMES | M |
| SOBRENOME | Odabaei |
| ASSINATURA | ODABAEI M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1816-8963 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 12 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 17 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 12 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2019 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
In/Capacitations of Tradition
Scholars have long examined the varied capacities of ethical, political, and theological traditions to engage contemporary predicaments and political crises. This special issue instead problematizes the capacity of tradition, seeking to articulate multiple registers of its incapacity. By shifting our attention from affirming capacity to exploring incapacity, we do not seek to rehearse tired conclusions about the modern interruption of tradition. …
Held in Enmity
The June 2025 Israeli and American bombardment of Iran reignited a debate on the fate of Iranian freedom dreams amid domestic and foreign forces of violence and destruction. Most participants in this conversation settle on identifying the Islamic Republic and Israel as the sources of evil, thereby perpetuating a politics of enmity characteristic of these very states. This essay offers an alternative psychoanalytical and archeological problematiza…
For a Historical Grammar of Concepts
The term political theology is not central to the oeuvre of the anthropologist Talal Asad; in fact, much of his work is dedicated to problematizing conceptual translations across “religion” and “politics.” Meanwhile, much contemporary literature in the growing interdisciplinary field of political theology cites and engages his wide-ranging work. The chapter presents two divergent examples to illustrate Asad’s approach to political theology: his a…
Sickness of the Revolution
Conventional accounts of the 1979 Iranian revolution emphasize the loss of the revolution's “true” spirit in the violence of the Islamic state. In contrast, this essay foregrounds a recurring dream of parricide in the generation of children of revolutionaries to explore the fetishization of the revolution in such accounts. This dream refracts the violence and loss emphasized in the narratives of the revolution. In dethroning the fetish of the rev…
Burning translations
This essay radicalizes the call for foreignizing translation in anthropology by pushing translation beyond a reference to an anthropological self. What I recognize as “burning translations” responds to the abolitionist call for “letting anthropology burn” by developing the urgency of translation amid histories of racialization. In contrast to foreignizing translation as the self-reflexive hermeneutics of the other, burning translations are specul…
Abdolhossein Azarang, Tārikh-e tarjomeh dar Iran
Abdolhossein Azarang, Tārikh-e tarjomeh dar Iran: as dowrān-e bāstān tā pāyān-e asr-e Qajar [History of Translation in Iran: From Antiquity to the End of the Qajar Era] (Tehran, Iran, Qoqnoos Publishing, 2015) - Volume 55 Issue 3
Modernity from Elsewhere
Hans Blumenberg famously defined the modern epoch as the age of self-assertion.1 He was writing after the Second World War in Germany and responding to a debate on the legitimacy of the modern age in the face of unprecedented crises. Blumenberg offered a critical theory of secularization that countered accounts such as that of Carl Schmitt, who attributed to modern political society a religious essence.2 Blumenberg considered different epochs to …
Letting Live in Revolutionary Iran
The criminal laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran are organized around the right of the victim. In cases of murder and other intentional injuries, the judiciary recognizes the victim's next of kin or the victim as a private plaintiff with the right to retribution (qisas) . The injured party confronts the perpetrator in court and decides whether to demand retaliation or forgo it in lieu of a monetary compensation (diya) . If they choose qisas , th…
Law, society, and the anthropology of noncontemporaneous contemporary
The divergent theorizations of law and society in Parts I and II push Forgiveness work beyond its argument for the semiautonomy of the state and society. It suggests a radical semiautonomous political theology and philosophy of the state and society without reflecting on the implication of this finding. Part I, nonetheless, highlights the political-theological stakes of modern Islamic jurisprudence, pushing against the theorization of Islamic eth…
The slip of a philosopher and the sinking of the ship
This article examines the politics of translation in Iran in order to contribute to a debate in anthropology around cultural difference and epistemic violence. It does so through a critical exposition of the forced confession of an Iranian politician, Saeed Hajjarian, who testified that his translation of European concepts into an Islamic idiom was responsible for unrest in Iran. It locates Hajjarian's confession within Iranian histories of anti-…
The Outside ( Kharij ) of Tradition in the Aftermath of the Revolution
After Iran's 1979 revolution, the energies that had animated the struggle for a modern Islamic government were partially redirected to the task of the renewal of the Islamic tradition. Paradigmatic of this effort is “the Cultural Revolution” that has sought to combat what Islamic activists perceive as the destructive effects of Western culture and to align the production of knowledge with the teachings of Shi'i Islam. The effort to produce modern…
Religião E Política
The slip of a philosopher and the sinking of the ship
This article examines the politics of translation in Iran in order to contribute to a debate in anthropology around cultural difference and epistemic violence. It does so through a critical exposition of the forced confession of an Iranian politician, Saeed Hajjarian, who testified that his translation of European concepts into an Islamic idiom was responsible for unrest in Iran. It locates Hajjarian's confession within Iranian histories of anti-…
The Outside ( Kharij ) of Tradition in the Aftermath of the Revolution
After Iran's 1979 revolution, the energies that had animated the struggle for a modern Islamic government were partially redirected to the task of the renewal of the Islamic tradition. Paradigmatic of this effort is “the Cultural Revolution” that has sought to combat what Islamic activists perceive as the destructive effects of Western culture and to align the production of knowledge with the teachings of Shi'i Islam. The effort to produce modern…
Modernity from Elsewhere
Hans Blumenberg famously defined the modern epoch as the age of self-assertion.1 He was writing after the Second World War in Germany and responding to a debate on the legitimacy of the modern age in the face of unprecedented crises. Blumenberg offered a critical theory of secularization that countered accounts such as that of Carl Schmitt, who attributed to modern political society a religious essence.2 Blumenberg considered different epochs to …
Law, society, and the anthropology of noncontemporaneous contemporary
The divergent theorizations of law and society in Parts I and II push Forgiveness work beyond its argument for the semiautonomy of the state and society. It suggests a radical semiautonomous political theology and philosophy of the state and society without reflecting on the implication of this finding. Part I, nonetheless, highlights the political-theological stakes of modern Islamic jurisprudence, pushing against the theorization of Islamic eth…
Religião E Política
The Outside ( Kharij ) of Tradition in the Aftermath of the Revolution
After Iran's 1979 revolution, the energies that had animated the struggle for a modern Islamic government were partially redirected to the task of the renewal of the Islamic tradition. Paradigmatic of this effort is “the Cultural Revolution” that has sought to combat what Islamic activists perceive as the destructive effects of Western culture and to align the production of knowledge with the teachings of Shi'i Islam. The effort to produce modern…
Religião E Política
The slip of a philosopher and the sinking of the ship
This article examines the politics of translation in Iran in order to contribute to a debate in anthropology around cultural difference and epistemic violence. It does so through a critical exposition of the forced confession of an Iranian politician, Saeed Hajjarian, who testified that his translation of European concepts into an Islamic idiom was responsible for unrest in Iran. It locates Hajjarian's confession within Iranian histories of anti-…
Letting Live in Revolutionary Iran
The criminal laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran are organized around the right of the victim. In cases of murder and other intentional injuries, the judiciary recognizes the victim's next of kin or the victim as a private plaintiff with the right to retribution (qisas) . The injured party confronts the perpetrator in court and decides whether to demand retaliation or forgo it in lieu of a monetary compensation (diya) . If they choose qisas , th…
Law, society, and the anthropology of noncontemporaneous contemporary
The divergent theorizations of law and society in Parts I and II push Forgiveness work beyond its argument for the semiautonomy of the state and society. It suggests a radical semiautonomous political theology and philosophy of the state and society without reflecting on the implication of this finding. Part I, nonetheless, highlights the political-theological stakes of modern Islamic jurisprudence, pushing against the theorization of Islamic eth…
Burning translations
This essay radicalizes the call for foreignizing translation in anthropology by pushing translation beyond a reference to an anthropological self. What I recognize as “burning translations” responds to the abolitionist call for “letting anthropology burn” by developing the urgency of translation amid histories of racialization. In contrast to foreignizing translation as the self-reflexive hermeneutics of the other, burning translations are specul…
Abdolhossein Azarang, Tārikh-e tarjomeh dar Iran
Abdolhossein Azarang, Tārikh-e tarjomeh dar Iran: as dowrān-e bāstān tā pāyān-e asr-e Qajar [History of Translation in Iran: From Antiquity to the End of the Qajar Era] (Tehran, Iran, Qoqnoos Publishing, 2015) - Volume 55 Issue 3
Modernity from Elsewhere
Hans Blumenberg famously defined the modern epoch as the age of self-assertion.1 He was writing after the Second World War in Germany and responding to a debate on the legitimacy of the modern age in the face of unprecedented crises. Blumenberg offered a critical theory of secularization that countered accounts such as that of Carl Schmitt, who attributed to modern political society a religious essence.2 Blumenberg considered different epochs to …
Sickness of the Revolution
Conventional accounts of the 1979 Iranian revolution emphasize the loss of the revolution's “true” spirit in the violence of the Islamic state. In contrast, this essay foregrounds a recurring dream of parricide in the generation of children of revolutionaries to explore the fetishization of the revolution in such accounts. This dream refracts the violence and loss emphasized in the narratives of the revolution. In dethroning the fetish of the rev…
For a Historical Grammar of Concepts
The term political theology is not central to the oeuvre of the anthropologist Talal Asad; in fact, much of his work is dedicated to problematizing conceptual translations across “religion” and “politics.” Meanwhile, much contemporary literature in the growing interdisciplinary field of political theology cites and engages his wide-ranging work. The chapter presents two divergent examples to illustrate Asad’s approach to political theology: his a…
In/Capacitations of Tradition
Scholars have long examined the varied capacities of ethical, political, and theological traditions to engage contemporary predicaments and political crises. This special issue instead problematizes the capacity of tradition, seeking to articulate multiple registers of its incapacity. By shifting our attention from affirming capacity to exploring incapacity, we do not seek to rehearse tired conclusions about the modern interruption of tradition. …
Held in Enmity
The June 2025 Israeli and American bombardment of Iran reignited a debate on the fate of Iranian freedom dreams amid domestic and foreign forces of violence and destruction. Most participants in this conversation settle on identifying the Islamic Republic and Israel as the sources of evil, thereby perpetuating a politics of enmity characteristic of these very states. This essay offers an alternative psychoanalytical and archeological problematiza…
Islamic Studies and History (8 obras) · Philosophy (7 obras) · Sociology (7 obras) · Political science (6 obras) · Politics (6 obras) · Law (5 obras) · Law (5 obras) · Philosophy (5 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (4 obras) · Islam (4 obras)