Both Eastern And Western

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, many Western observers of Iran have seen the country caught between Eastern history and 'Western' modernity, between religion and secularity. As a result, analysis of political philosophy preceding the Revolution has become subsumed by this narrative. Here, Afshin Matin-Asgari proposes a revisionist work of intellectual history, challenging many of the dominant paradigms in Iranian and Middle Eastern historiography and offering a new narration. In charting the intellectual construction of Iranian modernity during the twentieth century, Matin-Asgari focuses on broad patterns of influential ideas and their relation to each other. These intellectual trends are studied in a global historical context, leading to the assertion that Iranian modernity has been sustained by at least a century of intense intellectual interaction with global ideologies. Turning many prevailing narratives on their heads, the author concludes that modern Iran can be seen as, culturally and intellectually, both Eastern and Western.

Studying intellectual trends in Iran in a global historical context, this new intellectual history challenges many dominant paradigms in Iranian historiography and offers a new revisionist interpretation of Iranian modernity.

The exchange of art provides a vehicle for creative interaction between East and West, a process in which great civilizations preserve their own character while stimulating and enriching each other. Here scholar Michael Sullivan leads the reader through four centuries of exciting interaction between the artists of China and Japan and those of Western Europe. 24 color plates. 174 halftones.

Presenting an engaging reflection on the work of prominent modern Iranian literary artists in exchange with contemporary Continental literary criticism and philosophy, this book tracks the idea of silence – through the prism of poetics, dreaming, movement, and the body – across the textual imaginations of both Western and Middle Eastern authors. Through this comparative nexus, it explores the overriding relevance of silence in modern thought, relating the single concept of "the radical unspoken" to the multiple registers of critical theory and postcolonial writing. In this book, the theoretical works of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Gaston Bachelard, Antonin Artaud, and Gilles Deleuze are placed into a charged global dialogue with the literary-poetic writings of Sadeq Hedayat, Ahmad Shamlu, Nima Yushij, Esmail Kho’i, and Forugh Farrokhzad. It also examines a vast spectrum of thematic dimensions including disaster, exhaustion, eternity, wandering, insurrection, counter-history, abandonment, forgetting, masking, innocence, exile, vulnerability, desire, excess, secrecy, formlessness, ecstasy, delirium, and apocalypse. Providing comparative criticism that traces some of the most compelling intersections and divergences between Western and Middle Eastern thought, this book is of interest to academics of modern Persian literature, postcolonial studies, Continental philosophy, and Middle Eastern studies.

The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term “Cold War Culture” is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether — or to what extent — the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.

This book examines the phenomenon of surrogacy from a comparative perspective. Bringing together experts from 21 countries across the world, it provides a comprehensive discussion of the ways in which surrogacy is regulated in both Eastern and Western jurisdictions, and seeks to establish a common ground to move forward in this morally and legally difficult subject area.

Publisher Description

This study was originally planned to follow certain regional papers with a similar account of the family Scrophulariaceae (figwort or foxglove family) for the Middle Atlantic & N. Central States. But it soon seemed preferable to include the southern Appalachians & the whole Atlantic Coastal Plain. The flora of the northern states has been profoundly modified by the glacial epoch, & any understanding of the composition & distribution of our northern flora should also consider the adjoining southern territory where vegetation was little or not affected & from which the north was again populated. So, it was decided to include again the South Atlantic & the West Gulf States. The plan of this study is both more thorough & more comprehensive than earlier efforts. Illus.