Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges ― Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry

Fischer reveals how the distinctive expressive idiom emerging in contemporary Iranian film reworks Persian imagery that has itself been in dialogue with other cultures since the time of Zoroaster and ancient Greece. He examines a range of narrative influences on this expressive idiom and imagery, including Zoroastrian ritual as it is practiced in Iran, North America, and India; the mythic stories, moral lessons, and historical figures written about in Iran’s national epic, theShahnameh; the dreamlike allegorical world of Persian surrealism exemplified in Sadeq Hedayat’s 1939 novellaThe Blind Owl; and the politically charged films of the 1960s and 1970s. Fischer contends that by combining Persian traditions with cosmopolitan influences, contemporary Iranian filmmakers—many of whom studied in Europe and America—provide audiences around the world with new modes of accessing ethical and political experiences.

Michael M. J. Fischer is Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the author ofEmergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice (published by Duke University Press) andIran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. He is coauthor of Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Traditionand Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences.