Art of Defiance

Peyman Vahabzadeh is Professor of Sociology at University of Victoria. He is the author of Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements (State University of New York Press, 2003), A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy and the Fadai Discourse of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (Syracuse University Press, 2010), Exilic Meditations: Essays on A Displaced Life (H&S Media, 2012), Parviz Sadri: A Political Biography (Shahrgon Books, 2015; in Persian), Violence and Nonviolence: Conceptual Excursions into Phantom Opposites (University of Toronto Press, 2019), and A Rebel’s Journey: Mostafa Sho‘aiyan and Revolutionary Theory in Iran (OneWorld, 2019). He is also the editor of Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice: Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism (Palgrave, 2017) and the co-editor, with Samir Gandesha, of Crossing Borders: Essays in Honour of Ian Angus (Arbeiter Ring, 2020). He has published eight books of poetry, fiction, literary criticism, and memoirs in Persian. His works have appeared in English, Persian, German, Kurdish, French and Spanish.

• Introduction: Reading the Invisible InkEvent and Myth: Preparatory Considerations for theStudy of Parallel MovementsLife Imitating Art: The Thirty-year Poetic HistoryChanted Defiance: Singing a Culture of ResistanceStark Realisms, Allusive Imaginaries: Short Fiction and RebellionRebels on the Silver Screen: How Movies Limned ActionConclusions: On Acting and the Arts: A Transnational Story

This is a highly original contribution to the existing studies of pre-revolutionary Iran as well as to the more general, theoretical literature on the political dimension of the intersection of the art and culture in social movements and revolutionary societies.