Les parties étiologiques de l'Ardvīsūr Bānūg Yašt et les noms de la grande déesse iranienne

In this paper, we show that the Yats wehave are not authentic in so far as that theyare the fruit of the arbitrary mixture of thethree kinds of the original Yats: theliturgical one, the legal one and theetiological one. In a lot of our Yats, moreweight is given to the liturgical version (withyazamaide), but, in the bnYat, the legal one (with yazaa)plays the main role. By considering alltogether the etiological fragments thebn Yat contains, it is possible toenlarge upon what we knew already of what mayhave constituted the etiological myth of thesacrifice offered to a deity.Incidentally, all the different names thegreat Iranian goddess receives, ap-, areduu-,sr- and anhit-, are explained: `water, soft,opulent, unaffected'.     

Whatever Happened to The Little Black Fish?

This essay uses retranslation studies to trace the defanging and domestication of Samad Behrangi’s The Little Black Fish, a children’s story once hailed as a major revolutionary and literary text. Behrangi’s book is the only modern Iranian prose work to have been translated multiple times both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The study compares the texts from several of these retranslations, by considering whether they have been domesticated for their English readers, as well as their context, by looking at the cultural impact of such factors as the Islamic Revolution and US?Iran relations. It looks at how various translators and publishers have interpreted the story and how their perspectives reflect Iranian history, the influence of Middle East studies, and the interests of the Iranian diaspora. The result sheds light on translation norms, as well as on the circulation and interpretation of Iranian literature in the global context.     

Critique of Science as Critique of Society: Literary Figurations of Techno-scientific Fetishism (Introduction)

What's Next? Michael Crichtons und Mikhail Bulgakovs Kritik der Fetischisierung in den Lebenswissenschaften . Dieser Beitrag wurde angeregt durch den Thriller Next (2006) von Michael Crichton. Im Gegensatz zu dessen State of Fear (2004), wo die Behandlung eines aktuellen wissenschaftspolitischen Problems – des Klimawandels – mit einer harschen Kritik am Umgang politischer Aktivisten mit wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen einhergeht, setzt Next Hoffnungen und Ängste ins Zentrum, die im Zusammenhang mit dem ‚Human Genome Project‘ verhandelt wurden. Crichton stellt hier wissenschaftlich-ökonomische Verflechtungen dar, vor denen er schon in seinen Romanen zu Jurassic Park (1990) warnte. Hier wird auf die Gefahr der Fetischisierung im Zusammenhang mit utopisch untermalten wissenschaftlich-technischen Großprojekten und der Phantasie ‚Leben zu machen‘ hingewiesen, und es werden entsprechende Motive und Narrative der ,longue-durée‘ aufgegriffen, z.B. künstliche Menschen, menschliche Hybris und das Außer-Kontrolle-Geraten wissenschaftlich-technischer Großprojekte. Unter der Fragestellung, wie kritische Wissenschaftsreflexion im Medium von Literatur erfolgen kann und was der spezifische Beitrag aus der Wissenschaftsgeschichte wäre, behandelt dieser Essay neben Werken von Michael Crichton (vor allem Next und Lost World, 1997) auch die satirischen Novellen Die verhängnisvollen Eier (1924/1925) und Hundeherz (1926/1968) von Mikhail Bulgakov, da bereits dort die (mögliche) künstliche Hervorbringung von Lebewesen unter der Bedingung eines (versuchten) direkten Zugriffs auf deren Reproduktionsmechanismen fokussiert wurde. Wissenschaftskritik als Gesellschaftskritik zeigt sich hier als Reflexion auf die Grenzen zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft und auf die Verantwortung der entlang dieser Grenzen agierenden Menschen, aber auch auf strukturelle Gewalt und deren Auswirkungen auf die Verhältnisse zwischen Menschen und Naturdingen sowie unter Menschen. Summary: What's Next? Michael Crichton's and Mikhail Bulgakov's Criticism of Fetishism in the Life Sciences . This paper was first inspired by Michael Crichton's last thriller, Next (2006), which staged hopes and fears triggered by the completion of the Human Genome Project and by the perfection of Polymerase chain reaction techniques, enabling the replication of DNA on a large scale. These developments nourished fantasies about the artificial (re)construction of living beings from DNA. Crichton had already warned of the fetishization of artificially produced living beings in Jurassic Park and in the novels on which the film was based inventing a futuristic scenario where this was happening on a large scale. Here, the topics of hubris and hybrids were center stage. In Next, the fetishization of life is an effect of the growing encroachment of economic actors upon the life sciences. This paper compares Crichton's criticism of techno-scientific fetishism with Mikhail Bulgakov's critical account of human tinkering with the reproductive organs of humans and non-humans in his two satirical novels The Fateful Eggs and Dog's Heart. The works of both authors link criticism of science with criticism of society. They focus the borders between science and society and analyze the responsibilities of humans who are acting along those borders. The thrillers and satirical novels illustrate the – often violent – power relations between humans and nature and also among humans. Comparing two authors who wrote nearly a century apart from each other and focussing different social systems will help compare longue-durée and more specific forms of techno-scientific fetishism.     

The April 1977 Persepolis Conference on the Transfer of Nuclear Technology: A Third World Revolt Against US Non-Proliferation Policy?

ABSTRACT

Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi embarked on one of the most ambitious nuclear programmes of any state in the 1970s. This decision was in part motivated by the zeitgeist surrounding nuclear energy in the 1970s that envisioned the transition from a petroleum- to plutonium-based economy. This decision, however, was soon followed by the Indian ‘Smiling Buddha’ peaceful nuclear explosion. This led the United States and other nuclear suppliers to strengthen restraints on nuclear exports. Many nuclear recipients, particularly in the Third World, objected to US-led changes to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, including the creation of the London Club (later renamed the Nuclear Suppliers Group). To address perceived shortcomings of nuclear suppliers in cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, the Iranian nuclear leadership organized the Iran Conference on the Transfer of Nuclear Technology in April 1977. The Persepolis conference, as it came to be known, saw many nuclear suppliers, recipients and industry rally in opposition to US non-proliferation policy under President Jimmy Carter. However, following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran ceased to function as the lynchpin of this opposition to US policy, with the result that the coalition created at the Persepolis conference dissipated.     

Reproducing the Plot: Making Life in the Shadow of Premature Death

A protracted process of policy development has been underway in Jamaica to curtail the widespread incidence of informal settlements. Against the logic of emerging policy, this article aims to reconnect present-time unauthorised use of space to ancestral refusals of plantation land monopoly. Through ethnographic research and a reconsideration of historical texts, the article situates insecure tenure in a long history of conflict over land and livelihood—conflict that produces a boundary around the authorised use of space. That boundary is porous and mobile, the outcome of a palimpsest of colonial violence and its negation. This argument interrogates the gap between “landless” and “ownershipless”, revealing both the role of incomplete dispossession in racialised social reproduction and the spatial practices through which Jamaicans “make life” even in the shadow of premature death.     

James Cowles Prichard and the Linguistic Foundations of Ethnology**

This article examines the English scholar James Cowles Prichard's attention to language and comparative philology within his wider project on the natural history of man. It reveals that linguistic evidence was among the most important elements for Prichard in his overarching scientific aim of investigating human physical diversity, and served as the evidential foundation for his ethnology. His work on Celtic comparative philology made him not only one of the earliest British adopters of German comparative grammar, but a comparative philologist of European stature in his own right. More generally, linguistic evidence helped Prichard to keep his magnum opus, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, as logically ordered as possible, and therefore to turn ethnology into a discipline with analytical aspirations on a global scale.     

Experiencing ‘moments of home’ through diaspora tourism and travel

Whilst the relationship between diasporic communities and tourism has been explored in the tourism literature, it has generally been underpinned by a limited consideration of the notion of home. Based on ethnographic research with an Iranian diasporic community in the South Island of New Zealand, this paper explores the different ways in which this diaspora community engages with travel and tourism to (re)produce and taste ‘home’. It is argued that the notion of home should be viewed as incomplete, contingent and fleeting, rather than fixed and permanent, specifically within the tourism context. The concept of ‘moments of home’ is presented to illustrate how diasporic communities use travel and tourism to find, maintain or make home when away from their original homeland. Thus, ‘moments of home’ is proposed in order to allow a more complex and dynamic understanding of the relationship between diaspora tourism and home.     

The Phonology of Marvdashti Dialect

Phonology is one of several aspects of a natural language and it is the study of sound systems of languages. The purpose of this article is to study and describe the phonemic system of the dialect of Marvdashti. Marvdashti dialect belongs to the southwestern branch of New Iranian languages. The article deals with an inventory of Marvdashti dialect sounds and their features and it covers the phonological rules which specify how sounds interact with each other. This study first introduces and examines the consonants and vowels of Marvdashti dialect, and then explores phoneme arrangement, syllable structure and phonological processes such as assimilation, dissimilation, alteration, epenthesis, deletion and methathesis.     

The Dialogical Tradition of Iranian Modernity: Monazereh,Simultaneity, and the Making of Modern Iran

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between “traditionalists” and “modernists”—main categories comprised of related sub-headings such as “Islamist” versus “secular,” “reactionary” versus “revolutionary,” and “regressive” versus “progressive.” Following this approach, Iranian adaptations of modernity have often been (de)historicized as a theater of national “awakening” resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the obstinate resistance of traditional reactionaries, a confrontation between two purportedly well-defined and mutually exclusive camps. Such reductionist dialectics has generally overwritten the dialogic narrative of Iranian modernity, a conflicted dialogue misrepresented as a conflicting dialectic. It has also silenced an important feature of Iranian modernity: the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of tradition with modernity. The monazereh (disputation or debate) is the account of the interaction between rival discourses that engaged in opposing, informing, and appropriating each other in the process of adapting modernity. Narrativizing the history of Iranian modernity as the conflict between mutually exclusive binaries overlooks its hyphenated, liminal¹1 The notion of liminality has been theorized in different capacities. The anthropologist Victor Turner first used the idea of liminality in his study of tribal and religious rituals during which an initiate experiences a liminal stage when he belongs neither to the old order nor yet accepted into his new designation. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969). Turner’s insight has been expanded to investigate the general question of status in society. See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynam, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 27–51. Bynam applies Turner’s notion of liminality to the lives of Medieval female saints, arguing that Turner’s liminal passage applies more readily to the male initiate but does not in most cases reflect the experience of female initiates in Medieval times. Jungian psychology has shifted the focus from liminality as a stage in social movement to a step in an individual’s progress in the process of individuation. Jeffrey Miller, The Transcendent Function (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), 104. See also: Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Others have used liminality to describe cultural and political change, have prescribed its application to historical analysis, or have made reference to “permanent liminality” to describe the condition in which a society is frozen in the final stage of a ritual passage. Respectively, Agnes Horvath, Bjorn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra, “Introduction: Liminality and Cultures of Change.” International Political Anthropology (2009); Agnes Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013); and Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 23. Finally, the notion of liminality has been applied to the analysis of mimetic behaviour and to the emergence of tricksters as charismatic leaders, given the association of the figure of the trickster with imitation. Respectively, Agnes Horvarth, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013), 55; and Arpad Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 155. This latter sense seems to apply to the history of Iranian modernity, for the anxiety of imitation was indeed one of its central concerns, and influential figures such as Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908) were sometimes perceived (though this was not universally the case) as saviours or tricksters alternatively by different people. On this issue, Fereydun Adamiyat notes how different people had different views of Malkum. The “despotic prince Zill al-Sultan” considered him to be of equal status to Plato and Aristotle. Aqa Ibrahim Badayi’ Nigar thought he was devoid of “the fineries of knowledge and literature (latīfah-i dānish va adab). Minister of Sciences and chief minister Mukhbirul Saltanah Hidayat thought “whatever Malkum wrote has been said in other ways in [Sa’di’s] Gulistan and Bustan.” Fekr-e Azadi (Tehran: Sukhan, 1340/1961), 99. Mehdi Quli Khan Hedayat’s view of Malkum Khan was summed up in these words: “This Malkum knew some things in magic and trickstery and finally did some dishonorable things and gave the dar al-fonun a bad reputation,” Khaterat va Khatarat (Tehran: Zavvar, 1389/2010), 58. Having said that, my use of the notion of liminality, though informed by the theoretical perspectives cited above, diverges from them in one important aspect: liminality as perceived by contemporary theory seems to be based on a pre-/post- understanding of non-liminal statuses accompanied by a desire on the part of the subject to emerge from the liminal state. This approach does not explain liminality as a site for the synthesis of coexisting identities. The munāzirah is precisely the account of such a process. In the context of Iranian modernity, the discourse of tradition was not perceived as prior to the discourse of modernity, as we shall amply see. In fact, European civilizational progress was deemed to have resulted from the successful implementation of Islamic principles. Therefore, while the history of Iranian modernity can still be analyzed as a liminal stage where a weakened old order meets the promise of a new order, it must be understood in terms of the encounter of simultaneous and parallel discourses. It is in this sense that liminality is employed in this study.View all notes identity—a narrative of adaptation rather than wholesale adoption, of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, of dialogues rather than dialectics. The monazereh is the account of modern Iranian histories.     

The Perside Language of Shiraz Jewry: A Historical-Comparative Phonology

This study concerns the native language of Shirazi Jews, most of whom live in diasporic communities outside Iran. The language Judeo-Shirazi belongs to the Southwest Iranian group, as do most other native languages spoken in southern Iran. As such, Judeo-Shirazi shows general agreements with native rural varieties spoken in inland Fārs. There are, however, phonological features suggesting that Judeo-Shirazi is an insular survivor of the Medieval Shirazi language, from which a sizable literature has survived dating back to the fifteenth century.