New Discourses and Modernity in Postrevolutionary Iran

Iran’s social and cultural climates seem to have undergone a relativerelaxation in recent years. The end of the Iran-Iraq war (1988), the deathof Ayatollah Khomeini (1989), and the emergence of Ali Akbar HashemiRafsanjani as president are some of the factors affecting this development.A cursory analysis of the level of literate intellectual culture-print media, film industry, literature, and music-reveals the range andnature of some cultural activities in post-1979 Iran. For example, between1981-91, the number of book titles published annually increased from3,500 to 8,600, periodicals from 100 to 501, and public libraries from 415to 550 units, while the number of people using libraries rose from 4 million(1981) to 14 million (1991). In the film industry, despite a vigilantcensor, Iranian cinema matured and acquired a new character, a developmentdescribed as “the most stimulating event in arts” over the lastdecade. More films were made by the local film industry and screened ininternational film festivals in 1990-91 than during any single year prior tothe 1979 revolution.A paradoxical linkage between constraints on cultural activities andthe flowering of creative potential also applies to music. DespiteKhomeini’s fatwa banishing music from the national radio and TV for atime,’ it is now claimed that the creative range of modem Persian musicis unmatched in the sixty years of its recorded history. In literature, theemergence of new writers, new experiments in form and technique, aswell as a phenomenal growth in the readership, sale, and publication ofworks by contemporary Iranian authors have enriched the cultural sceneconsiderably? With sales of each best-selling title running between15,000 to 35,000, together with the impressive quality of the works produced,the literary arena appears to be more buoyant than at any otherperiod of recent Iranian history.”

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