Chapter Three: A Metamorphic Movement

Abstract

The coupling of the nation and the state has been a historic mistake, a vestige of the European colonial history and heritage, carried unthinkingly into the postcolonial history of other nations. As a nation, Iranians have never come anywhere near a democratic state. From their imperial past they collapsed into a colonial encounter with European empires, and from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 they began dreaming of democracy. That dream has proven a nightmare. From the Qajar absolutism they were delivered to the Pahlavi tyranny, and from the Pahlavi monarchy to the even more tyrannical Islamic Republic. The ruling stats have systematically improved their techniques of domination: The Pahlavis were better in seeking to justify their monarchy than the Qajars were, and the Islamic Republic is even more efficient than the Pahlavis in manufacturing the sham of consent. What we have forgotten, and left entirely un-theorized, is the fact that the nation has also changed, altered, expanded, and opened up its horizons to newer and more enabling vistas. The urgent task at hand is to decouple the nation-state and let the state dwell on its delusion of legitimacy and have a far more accurate conception of the nation and its defiant, successive rebirths.